Shadows & Tall Trees 7

by Michael Kelly

  Because in her mind, that strange light was responsible. It had compelled her into the sea, charging the water with its mysterious energy. It was inconceivable to Elspeth now that Aphrodite was merely washed in with the tide, transported from some place far or deep. No, she’d come to feel that Aphrodite was part of her. Not just because she fed her from time to time but because she had engendered her that night in the glowing water. Aphrodite was the fruit of her loins and the sea, a surrogate womb, had carried her and deposited her, newly-formed, on the shore.

  Maybe that was why she experienced this feeling of disappointment more acutely. Even when Aphrodite did crawl toward her later, nuzzling her wet and bloodied body against her skin, Elspeth did not stroke her seaweed mane, nor caress her seashell skin, but lay there tight-lipped and unmoving, denying her the stories and songs she’d previously given so freely. Aphrodite reached out her slimy appendage and placed it against Elspeth’s cheek, meaning perhaps to wipe away the tears.

  As the radio had forecast, the weather worsened as the week progressed and Elspeth had a convenient excuse not to leave the croft-house. She watched the sea from the window, tumultuous and wild and thought of Aphrodite alone on the shore. In her more compassionate moments, she considered bringing Aphrodite out of the rain and wind and into the house but then she’d remember the backpacker’s mutilated body and didn’t know how she would ever forgive her.

  She knew if Aphrodite didn’t already have a ready supply of food—with regard to the remainder of the backpacker’s body—she would have found a way to feed her, though the idea of personally nursing her as she had done, was suddenly repugnant. Likewise, though she wanted to punish Aphrodite, her protective impulse was stronger, convincing her of the need to conceal the evidence, filling the man’s backpack with stones and casting it out deep into the ocean.

  As for his body, it was diminishing day by day. What Aphrodite didn’t eat, the sea washed away, as if both Aphrodite’s mothers were complicit in covering her crime.

  Elspeth had found the first few days the hardest. She had turned up the radio to drown out the sound of Aphrodite’s cries. There was no mistaking her high-pitched squall for the sound of the gulls anymore, for since Aphrodite had killed the backpacker, the birds kept their distance. Where oystercatchers and seagulls used to converge on the surf, the gannets on the roof of the croft, now they avoided the beach altogether.

  Lately though, either the wind was more riotous or Aphrodite called for her less. Elspeth suspected it was the latter; Aphrodite was certainly becoming more independent. Without the driftwood boat to contain her, she roamed the shore unimpeded, her movements confident and agile. Watching her progress through binoculars, Elspeth saw that she delighted in chasing crabs or collecting debris from the beach, decorating the prow of the boat with nets of kelp as if constructing a lair. At some point she had pushed the driftwood man forward, so that he fell pitifully against the boat, his oilskins gaping open to form a tarpaulin enclosure. Even within this makeshift den, when the wind and rain was particularly ferocious, Aphrodite dug herself into the sand, so that only her shell exterior was visible.

  And when she disappeared beneath the earth like this, Elspeth thought of the flower shop and the seeds she planted in the rich soil, wondering if when Aphrodite re-emerged she would have grown into something else. Perhaps something more beautiful.

  Elspeth woke to a scratching outside her window. She lay staring into the darkness for a long time, unsure whether she was imagining things. Just as she was ready to dismiss it, the sound resumed with renewed fervour. There was something outside in the darkness, scratching eagerly at the pane.

  Curiously, Elspeth’s first thoughts were of the trows from the island’s folk stories before she even considered Aphrodite. She imagined the impish sprites emerging from their hollows and mounds, climbing up onto the roof and dancing wildly to plague her peace of mind. And she wondered if the original owners of the house had adhered to superstition, leaving water outside for them, sweeping the hearth on a Saturday as was the custom, to appease their troublesome natures. But as the scratching became more feverish, she realised that the monster outside her window was of her own making.

  Elspeth made her way slowly to the window, thankful that she had pulled the curtains, not wanting to see Aphrodite’s pearlised exterior in the moonlight. Moreover, the fact she had crawled all the way to the croft-house was alarming. Though she was becoming increasingly strong, she had never covered so much ground. And she had never left the shore. Yet here she was curled up outside Elspeth’s window, drumming her shell-clad mantle against the pane.

  “Go away,” Elsepth called.

  And softly, within the whistling of the wind she thought she heard the creature emit a deep, growling exhalation,

  “Die…”

  Elspeth edged closer, her heart beating faster.

  “Die-ty”, the voice repeated and Elspeth realised she was trying to say her name.

  “Aphrodite,” Elspeth called, as if correcting her, “go back to the shore.”

  And with that she heard a low shuffling, a scraping sound against the shingle path, the sound diminishing as Aphrodite retreated into the distance.

  Elspeth made her way back to bed, Aphrodite’s words swimming in her head. It was miraculous, incredible that she could communicate.

  Die. Die-ty. But it was the word deity that she thought about the longest.

  At dawn, Elspeth made her way down to the beach. It had been a week since the death of the backpacker, an inordinate amount of time in Aphrodite’s brief lifetime to experience solitude. But arriving at her lair, Elspeth saw that Aphrodite was not there, though the place on the shore looked more inhabited than ever before. Lifting the oilskin roof, she peered into the darkness, the ground strewn with the remains of crabs and cuttlefish. Seaweed hung from the spine of the driftwood man and entangled within it were human bones and the torn shreds of the backpacker’s clothing.

  Elspeth backed away, aware of the smell of decay. She had only thought of the shore bringing life, not death. What had prompted Aphrodite to build such a place, to nest among dead things? Maybe it was for comfort, a way to cope with the sudden isolation; being among the dead was better than being completely alone. Or maybe they were trophies.

  Elspeth turned to make her way back, spying a protrusion in the sand up ahead. She watched as the sand bulged upward, growing mound-like, a sandy hillock existing suddenly where none had stood before. Then she saw the flail of seaweed, the chitinous carapace before the serpentine body coiled itself out of the sand.

  Aphrodite was much bigger. She no longer crawled across the sand but seemed to glide, on limbs that appeared slender and long. As she got closer, Elspeth could see tatters of the backpacker’s oilskin enmeshed within her seaweed train and as she sidled up alongside her, Elspeth noted the other curious development.

  She had grown hair. Thick dark hair sprouting from the edge of her seashell skin, emerging from the pink fleshy parts of her body.

  Elspeth reached out a tentative hand. The backpacker’s hair had been dark. There had been no other identifiable features left after Aphrodite’s attack. But his hair had fanned out upon the waves, moving like seagrass through the water. Had Aphrodite appropriated his hair as she had done his clothes? How could they grow so naturally from her flesh?

  Aphrodite let Elspeth rest her hand against her skin. The texture was reassuringly cold and slimy, as it always had been.

  “There, there Aphrodite,” Elspeth cooed.

  But as she withdrew her hand she saw that the flesh of her palm had been eaten away. She clutched the gaping wound with her other hand, stumbling back bewildered.

  “Die-ty, die-ty,” Aphrodite called as Elspeth ran from the creature on the shore.

  “You were right,” Elspeth’s voice wavered, “I am crazy to stay here. Please come.” She spoke the last words softly into the receiver, still unsure whether inviting someone else in was the right thing to do. Though Elspeth
was her mother, Aphrodite was still a creature of the island and maybe an islander would be better equipped to deal with her. She listened to the beep of Donal’s voice recording, longing to hear a human voice, before hanging up.

  She’d bandaged her hand, applied antiseptic to the lesion, surprised to see that it didn’t gush blood as she would have suspected from a wound of its kind. It was as if it had been cauterised at the same time the flesh had been torn, or else the blood had been sucked away. Elspeth felt faint thinking about it and sat down heavily on her chair beside the hearth.

  It had taken all her energy to barricade herself inside the croft-house. All the doors were locked, the curtains pulled in case Aphrodite crept toward the window once more, to clink her seashell bulk against the pane. She’d thought about driving to the ferry in the hope that it was running. Even waiting in her car, miles from the shore would be better than being stuck inside the croft-house with Aphrodite lurking outside. But she couldn’t drive with her hand the way it was and she worried about passing out at the wheel, feeling drowsy already from the cocktail of painkillers she’d taken.

  Her hand still throbbed, her body broadcasting the loss of its flesh. She reached for the whisky bottle on the table and poured herself a generous measure. Beside it was the compendium of mythology, where she had read about Aphrodite’s namesake. The goddess Aphrodite wasn’t the only thing conceived when Uranus’ genitals had been cast into the sea. From his blood had come the Furies, hideous hags with snakes for hair. Elspeth thought of the creature on the shore and of which set of sisters she resembled most. Maybe it had been foolish of her to think that her Aphrodite was made of the stuff of gods. She should have accepted her monstrous nature from the beginning.

  Elspeth rose slowly and made her way to the window. Pulling the curtain aside, she could see Aphrodite slithering across the shore, scurrying into the sand in pursuit of crabs. In the diminishing light she looked even more surreal, like some mythical sea serpent from the pages of a medieval bestiary. A creature constructed from the imagination, rather than of flesh and shell.

  Frankenstein had killed his she-monster, torn her apart with his bare hands in front of his first creation, fearing his monsters would procreate and fill the world with their hideous progeny. Elspeth thought of Aphrodite’s body, of the living mantle on her back, wondering if she would be able to grow her own children one day. Would she be able to produce life asexually, sprouting her offspring as easily as the hair follicles she’d assimilated from the backpacker, or would she need a mate, a creature as strange as she was, to fertilise her somehow?

  Elspeth felt tired. She had not thought of the future, of Aphrodite’s legacy. She imagined the croft-house surrounded by an army of eerie shell creatures, crawling onto the windowsills to bang their shell-limbs against the glass, or scurrying up onto the roof to dance like the trows. All of them baying for human blood, needing to be fed.

  She realised then what a mistake it had been to call Donal. How could he possibly know what to expect or how to deal with such a creature. Besides, Aphrodite was stronger and faster than she’d been since her encounter with the backpacker. Donal wouldn’t stand a chance; she’d make a meal of him in no time at all.

  Elspeth poured herself another whisky and drank it quickly before she could change her mind, then she went to the front door and opened it wide, welcoming the darkness in. She stood for a moment on the threshold, seeking the aurora’s luminescence in the sky, a twinkle of green above the water. But it was black. On her way to the bedroom, she stopped by the kitchen and found a long, sharp knife in the drawer.

  She waited a long time. Such a long time that she lay back on the bed and closed her eyes. She could see the green haze then, dancing in her mind’s eye as it had done that night in the water and then just before she let herself drift into it entirely, she heard a scrapping sound on the shingle path, the clinking of shell against shell that signalled Aphrodite’s approach.

  She had always wanted to bring Aphrodite into her world. To give her a home, a place to let her grow but now, the sound of her progress up the stone steps and into the hallway, the scratching of shell against the hardwood floor, made her uneasy. She could hear the crash of Aphrodite’s body against the chair and table legs, the slick slither of her seaweed mane against the polished surfaces. And then she was purring outside her bedroom door.

  “Die. Die-ty.”

  Yet she entered the room soundlessly and crawled up onto the bed with similar stealthy dexterity, so that Elspeth was almost surprised to see her shadowed outline at the foot of the bed. It was too dark to see her clearly, to make out her slippery form beneath the husk of shell. Besides, her mind was still glowing green, the green of new life, of waxy seedlings pushing their heads out of the earth. And she thought of her flower shop and the life cycle of plants.

  Often asexual reproduction involved the annihilation of the parent. Daffodils and potato plants grew their replacements beneath the earth, a lateral bulb forming when the old plant died. Maybe this was the natural order of things, Elspeth thought as Aphrodite climbed up on to her. And it wasn’t as if she’d be forgotten. In the same way Aphrodite had assimilated the backpacker, perhaps something of her would become reproduced in Aphrodite’s malleable flesh. She would live on in her daughter, part of her monstrous inheritance, unless of course she raised the knife and aimed it beneath the rim of seashell.

  The purring became more contented as Aphrodite slid up Elspeth’s body, her seaweed tresses licking her skin. She could smell the sea and the iron-reek of blood as she welcomed her shell baby to her breast.

  THE ATTEMPT

  Rosalie Parker

  SASKIA COULD SEE THAT THE ICE NEAR the shore was several centimetres thick. Pieter had told her that the lake never froze over entirely, that there was always an expanse of water at the centre which remained liquid. As he had also insisted that there were monsters in the bottom of the lake, she thought it was probably safe not to believe him.

  She stepped tentatively onto the ice, her booted feet sliding a little on the slippery surface. The lake was so large that it was impossible for her to see to its centre. Ahead was a vast expanse of white. Pieter had been taken into the city for his piano lesson so she should have at least three hours, more than enough time for her attempt. It was not fair that Pieter should have the piano lessons that she wanted so badly, just because he was two years older. He wasn’t even particularly enthusiastic about them, but whining and arguing for lessons had so far got her nowhere.

  Pieter said that no one had ever walked across the frozen lake, that if she did then it would be a world record. Saskia was not sure if she believed him about the world record but it sounded exciting. She picked up her pace over the ice, heading towards where she thought the middle of the lake must be. It was a beautifully still, bitterly cold day—her padded coat, hat and gloves kept out the worst of the chill—the sky a translucent pale blue. After three or four minutes she turned and looked back to the shore. The buildings were far away already, small, like the toy town she and Pieter had created from their plastic building blocks, populated by tiny articulated figures. She thought she could just make out their house up on the rise, bigger than its neighbours, the red paint standing out from the ochre and yellow all around. The cold seemed to be keeping everyone inside.

  Saskia marched on over the ice. When she turned round again, the houses were just specks of colour. All around her was a dull expanse of white, and Saskia began to be uncertain of which direction she should take. According to Pieter the other side of the lake was another country, so she would, strictly speaking, need a passport, but he said that the people of the country would be glad to see her so it wouldn’t matter that she didn’t have one. He said they would help celebrate her world record. Saskia had never been abroad and this was one of the great attractions of the attempt. Apart from showing Pieter that she could do it. She picked a spot on the horizon and headed for it.

  There were bubbles of air trapped beneath
the ice that expanded and contracted under the pressure of her feet. Saskia grew so entranced with watching them that she lost contact with her spot on the horizon. Still, it did not matter, as long as she was aiming in more or less the right direction. The far shore might be as wide as the one she had started from, so exactly where she landed was not important, so long as it was inhabited.

  After an hour or so Saskia felt thirsty. Feeling proud of her forethought, she took out a small bottle of water from her coat pocket. After a couple of sips, she put the bottle back and extracted a chocolate bar. She ate a few squares, then wrapped up the remainder carefully. An icy breeze was now blowing from the far shore and the sky had clouded over. Saskia shivered. The town was no longer visible behind her, and she could see nothing ahead but ice.

  As she strode on over the lake, Saskia thought of the little figures in the toy town back home. Her favourite was a family called Petrova, with two children, a boy and a girl. She and Pieter put them through all kinds of adventures and traumatic experiences, including a fire and an earthquake. The boy, Boris, was the hero of most of these escapades, the girl, Anna, the coper, the nurse, the cook. Saskia liked her practical strength. Pieter often pretended that he didn’t really care about the Petrovas and their adventures, but he spent as much time as Saskia thinking up scenarios and acting them out. The senior Petrovas were distant figures, often away at work or outside gardening. One of the best things about the toy town was that Boris and Anna did not have to go to school.

  Saskia stopped and shielded her eyes. Ahead, in the far distance, tiny black specks were appearing. She walked on at a faster pace. Her watch told her that she had been walking for an hour and a half, and although she was beginning to feel tired, she was glad that she would reach the far shore at her first attempt.