Godmother Night

by Rachel Pollack

  The girl looked about seven years old, though her crumpled face and posture made it hard to tell. She wore a red T-shirt and bright yellow overalls, stained all over with dirt and grass and some kind of purple berries. Her blond hair, all tangled up and half in her face, shone brighter than her clothes in the dull cloud-harried light. She looked like she’d been hiding in the woods for days.

  Moving very slowly toward the girl, Kate said, “It’s okay. I’m here to help you.” As the child uncurled her body, Kate saw that she was clutching some bundle, wrapped in a blue cloth. Even before she knelt down beside the child and gently tugged at the corners of the cloth she knew what it was. The bones. The same bones she’d seen—weeks ago?—when she’d come for her supply of Phytolacca. The bones gleamed, and Kate wondered if the girl had washed them in a stream, or maybe licked away the dirt.

  “They’re really precious to you, aren’t they?” Kate said.

  “They’re my brother’s.”

  “Oh God,” Kate whispered. She closed her eyes for just a moment and saw a terrible vision of a screaming child being hacked to pieces. When she opened her eyes again she discovered she was crying. She pulled the child close to her.

  She was still holding her when she heard a growl behind her. The girl began to yell and struggle, but Kate held on tightly to her. “What is it?” she said. “What is it?” The growling got louder and Kate realized it was coming from behind her. Shit, she thought, it must be a dog or a wildcat or even a bear. But when she turned around she saw something so strange she cried out and pulled the girl even more closely against her. A woman stood there. A woman of medium height, wearing an old-fashioned dress, tight at the bodice and flaring out stiffly, like metal flanges, from the waist. Her hair—she seemed to have wound her hair into tight coils on either side of her head. Her face—but Kate couldn’t see her face, just as she couldn’t see her neck or her arms, or even really her hair. For wherever her body should have shown there was only the outline of a form, and within that form a darkness. It was the darkness that terrified children each night as they lay down in their beds. An infinite darkness filled with monsters.

  There was nothing of the refuge that Kate had discovered when she would close her eyes before looking for her godmother by the beds of sick people. Instead, waves of rage and hunger battered her, and with each wave an undertow tried to suck her in, clawing away her skin, her face, everything that kept her human and safe. The child’s crying had changed to screams that vibrated through Kate’s body so that all her bones were screaming. “Keep away from her,” she managed to say. “You can’t have her. I won’t let you.”

  The moment she said them, the words struck her as ludicrous. The monster would leap at her, sink its invisible teeth into her face…But instead, the creature changed. Instead of the darkness, Kate saw the normal skin and eyes and teeth of a woman hardly older than Kate herself. Like her clothes, there was something old-fashioned, even sweet, about her. She looked like a picture of an ideal mother from some storybook hundreds of years old. She said, “Oh, thank you for taking care of my daughter. I’ve been so worried about her.”

  The girl had fallen silent now, and as Kate loosened her grip, the child looked from Kate to—her mother?—and back again. Kate concentrated, trying to remember the woman’s other form, and what it was that had frightened her so much.

  The woman said, “She’s been so much trouble since her poor sweet brother died. Poor little thing. I’ll take her now.” She stepped forward.

  “I don’t know,” Kate said.

  “Here,” the woman said. “Let me take her. The poor darling is so scared. I’ve been looking everywhere for her.”

  Kate looked down at the ground. The bones lay there, glowing, as if a fire of rage burned inside them. Flashes of vision sparked in Kate’s mind—a child slashed and cut to pieces, a small body boiled in a red pot while the bones shrieked in an agony that went on for thousands of years. When Kate looked up again the kind face of the woman still smiled at her, but inside it, underneath the skin, she could just make out that dark ocean of destruction. “No,” she said, and her own voice sounded chalky to her. “No, you can’t have her.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” the woman said. “What do you think you could do against me? Give me my daughter.”

  Kate’s whole body was shaking, but she held on to the girl. The woman opened her mouth. Deep inside, Kate could hear a churning noise, the sound of all life being torn apart over and over. Why? Kate thought. Why didn’t the creature just devour the child, and Kate as well. And then she realized. The woman had lied. There was in fact something very powerful that Kate could do. Except that it would mean the final surrender of hope.

  “Give me my daughter,” the woman told her, “and I will let you go. Wouldn’t you like to return to your love? I will help you. And my help will never turn against you.”

  Kate tried to think. She could almost see Melissa in front of her, even feel Melissa’s body pressed against her. Once again she saw that vision of the two of them, old women walking together along the edge of the water. She started to smile and her grip loosened around the little girl. Only, in the vision, the girl was walking with them. She held Kate’s hand, and as the foam of the waves rushed over her feet they cut her so that her blood drained away in the undertow…She heard the child whisper “Please. She’s not really my mother. She says she is and I believed her. But she’s not, she’s not.”

  Kate focused her eyes to see the woman’s hand only inches away from her face. Weeping, she reached into her blouse and brought out the silver whistle that still hung, as it had for so many years, on the line of gold circling her neck. She blew into it, first softly then louder, and the trill rolled in the air. Even when Kate dropped the whistle the notes continued, changing, it seemed, to the call of a bird somewhere high above the trees.

  The woman half stumbled backward. She beat her hands against her ears, as if to crack the drums and keep out the sound. And then another sound joined the lilting whistle. Hands. Five sets of hands clapping in unison, slowly, over and over, as they kept time with the trill.

  From all sides of the circle of trees they came, forming the five points of a star. Cara and Lillian and Ester and Amy and Gloria, driving the false mother into the open where the light of the sun pushed through the clouds to touch her with fire. She tried to run, first one way, then another, and each time the clapping hands drove her back to the center. Except the last time. One hole remained in the circle, the sixth point of the star. The creature turned around and around until she saw them, her two intended victims crouched together in the dirt. Still holding her ears she ran at them with her mouth open, silently roaring.

  Kate couldn’t seem to move. The creature’s face and neck had begun to shred, bringing back the darkness. Inside the mouth, Kate could see flashes of lightning. Kate managed to let go of the girl and hold up her hands. She couldn’t do it, she knew. She would get the beat wrong, she would destroy their rhythm. “Kate!” Lillian shouted at her. “The bones!”

  Kate dropped down to the blue cloth and grabbed a large bone in each hand. Just before the woman could grab her she banged the bones together, striking them at the same moment as the hands of the Motorcycle Girls. A shock of fire jolted her backward but she kept hold of the bones, kept striking them together.

  The creature, all darkness now inside its ancient dress, ran back to the center, where it spun around. Spokes of darkness, lit by flashes of pain, shot out from it in all directions. It began to spin, and spinning rose from the ground, slowly at first then faster, until Kate found herself staring at it several feet above her head. It was going to escape, she thought. Whatever they could do just wasn’t strong enough to hold it.

  From the side, Kate saw a flash of motion. A short woman in a dress of many colors ran past her, swooped down to the ground for a handful of dirt and in the same motion flung it at the spiked and whirling beast. The creature fell with a thud, still spinning, still shooting out
spikes of rage. Already the dirt was spinning off it, freeing it once more to escape.

  Mother Night yanked a single hair from her head and held it out to Kate. “Take hold of the end,” she said. “Hurry.” Kate dropped the bones and reached for the end of the hair. It came alive in her fingers, like an electric snake, when Mother Night let go of it. “Throw it,” Mother Night told her. Kate held it in front of her. “Now.”

  With a flick of her wrist Kate flung the hair at the false mother. It wrapped itself around and around the spiked darkness, and the more the thing struggled the tighter the coils pulled. As Kate watched, it began to come apart, first slowly, then faster and faster, while the Motorcycle Girls speeded up their rhythm. The spikes disintegrated, the mass lost its form then broke up into blocks, then jagged lumps, and finally pearls of darkness which hung briefly in the air until a puff of wind blew them away. With a great sigh Cara and the others dropped their hands. Mother Night looked at Kate and nodded. “Good,” she said.

  Too weak to stand, Kate got down on her knees and took hold of the girl. She hugged her so tightly she almost thought she could absorb the child directly into her body. When she looked up they were all standing around her. “That thing—” Kate said. “Is it gone? Did we kill it?”

  Mother Night said, “Yes. Others like it will come, but this one is gone. I am very proud of you, Kate.”

  “Thank you,” Kate whispered. Then louder she said, “I have to go with you, don’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t see Melissa?”

  “Not now.”

  Once more Kate hugged the child and then she stood up. When she turned to her godmother she saw something she never would have thought possible. Mother Night looked nervous. “Kate—” she said, and hesitated. “I must tell you something. If I have harmed you in any way—if I have come between you and your mother—I am sorry. I have not taken a godchild in many years. Perhaps I acted wrongly. Cara believes so. I am sorry.”

  Kate nodded. “Thank you,” she said. She turned to the girl. “Will you be all right?”

  The child said, “Sure. I like these people. Aren’t they great?”

  “Yes,” Kate said. “They are.”

  “But you’re the best. You’re even kinder than the other lady.”

  “Other lady?”

  “She helped me bury the bones. She was kind, but you’re kinder.” She reached into the pocket of her overalls. “Here,” she said, holding her fist out to Kate. When Kate put out her hand the girl dropped a stone into it. “The other lady gave me this, so now I’ll give it to you.”

  Kate held it up to the sun. She recognized it immediately, of course. It was the stone Dead Jimmy had thrown at her. The one she’d tried to give to Laurie. But when she looked at the stone closely, it seemed to have changed. Or maybe she was just seeing it more clearly. For there were faces in it. On the side with the tree she saw her own face, very small but clearly her, there among the branches. And on the boat side, the stick figure poling the boat along the river also had a face. A young woman with curly hair and round eager expression. At first, Kate tried to tell herself she didn’t know who it was, but a moment later she gave way to the knowledge. “Jaqe,” she whispered. She could feel Mother Night touch her shoulder, but she paid no attention. Instead, she held up the stone for the sun to light the face. “Jaqe.”

  Five

  The Laughing Women

  Everyone at the funeral agreed they had never seen anything like it. Louise, who had taken charge of the arrangements, had expected a “decent-sized turnout” as she’d put it, but nothing unusual. After all, Kate had traveled so much she’d never stayed in one place long enough to spin a real net of friends. So when Mark told Louise to rent a hall rather than depend on the chapel in the funeral home, Louise had simply stared at him. “Trust me on this,” Mark said. “Rent the biggest place you can find.”

  From all over the country they came, and even across the sea. Laurie could only stare in amazement as the hall filled up, row after row after row. Melissa, who had come off a hospital bed only days before, said that most of the people would have had to start traveling the moment they’d read the news in the paper or heard it on the radio. After the rabbi had offered her formal prayers, and Louise and Mark had given eulogies, with Laurie nodding and Melissa’s bruised face coated in silent tears, the others began to speak. One by one, they told how Kate Cohen had saved their lives, bringing them back to land, when everyone else had set them adrift down the river of death. And more, they described the spells Kate cast over them, so that when they found themselves brought back to the world they also found themselves different. Able to accomplish the things that had always slipped away, or to replace bitterness with love. A woman named Alice Harmon said nothing about whatever destruction Kate had saved her from, but talked only of her constant amazement at the weight of the air on her skin, or the way her husband’s face moved when he spoke to her. Kate Cohen had understood such things, she said, and that understanding had taken away fear, leaving only the purity of surprise.

  Toward the end of the service (which ended only because the funeral director pleaded with the crowd to allow the body to go to the cemetery), a whole new group of people came into the hall. Laurie wondered if they belonged to some sort of cult where Kate had taught a workshop, for they all arrived together, about twenty or thirty of them, and even though they dressed differently from each other, some in very old-fashioned styles, their clothes all looked a little shabby, as if the cult leader forbade them to wear anything new. Laurie’s suspicions increased when the group began to make a low whistling noise, hardly more than a sigh except that it went on and on. Laurie might have asked them to leave if the funeral hadn’t ended just then. Luckily, the strange group didn’t go to the cemetery. Maybe, Laurie thought, the cult forbade them such direct contact with death.

  After the burial, when they’d returned to the apartment, Laurie told everyone, even Melissa, that she wanted a few hours alone. The night before, Louise and Mark had stayed with her and Melissa at the funeral home until eleven, and then Laurie and Melissa had stayed up another three hours, telling their very different stories of Kate. Melissa would have stayed up all night, but Laurie insisted she sleep. Now Laurie told Melissa, “I just want to sit by myself and think. Try to take in some of the things all those people said—I still can’t believe it. I never had any idea. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Of course not. Miracle cure or not, I should go rest. And I do need to change my clothes at some point.” Though she’d rented a hotel room, Melissa had slept in Laurie’s old room, wearing to the funeral the same clothes she’d traveled in the day before. They all agreed to meet at six, Melissa, Mark, Louise and Aggie, and Kate’s grandparents, Allan and Marsha Lang. And then suddenly Laurie was alone for the first time in days, the first time in over thirty years. For a while she just stood there, shaking her head, but then she sighed and went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of black tea. Holding the cup before her like some stone of power, she sat down in the living room to stare at the two huge plants guarding the window. All those people, she thought. How modest Kate had been. Never a word, and if Laurie had tried to ask about the strange (and frightening) fact that Kate actually healed people who were dying, Kate had always waved the questions away.

  Like Melissa, Laurie thought. Two-thirds dead only a week ago. Oh Kate, she said to herself, if you could do that, why couldn’t you have rescued yourself? All those people.

  I should have got up there and joined them, Laurie thought. She saved my life too. If Kate hadn’t been there when Jaqe died, Laurie knew she would have drifted into some place emptier than death. She got up and moved to her bedroom, where she had collected in a lacquered bowl the few items found with Kate’s body. Everything, even the two coins found in her pocket, seemed to glow, as if Kate’s last breath had refused to leave the world but instead had taken refuge in these random objects. Laurie fiddled with Kate’s emerald stud earrings and
her onyx ring. And then she picked up the odd thing, the small silver whistle on its golden chain. According to the police report it had lain alongside Kate’s body, as if she’d been holding it when she died. Laurie held it up to the light. Kate had worn this thing for years, since she was a child in fact. Laurie couldn’t even remember where Kate had gotten it. Maybe Mark had given it to her. It looked like his kind of thing, a silver tube with a precise labyrinth inscribed on the side. She should give it to Melissa, she thought. Melissa would like that. She put the whistle in her pocket.

  In the living room again, she finished her tea, and then, for no reason at all, she turned on the radio. Listlessly, she turned the dial in search of some peaceful music, but all she could find was raucous commercials and even more raucous talk shows. She was about to give up when she caught a station, very faint and crackling, with seemingly nothing on but two women talking and laughing together. What a strange program, she thought, but the sound relaxed her, so she sat back in the chair, smiling, with her eyes closed.

  “Jaqe!” she shouted suddenly, and jolted forward in her seat. That was Jaqe’s voice. She couldn’t make out the words, but she would know that laugh forever. And—and—Kate. The other voice belonged to her daughter, she was sure of it. Out loud Laurie said, “Oh shit, I’m losing my mind.” But she knew she didn’t care. Crazy or not, she just wanted to hold on tightly to that gorgeous duet.

  She had no idea how long it lasted. A minute, five minutes—She rolled in it, swam in it, even though she could only catch one word, repeated several times during the conversation. “Laurie.” She laughed and clapped her hands at the thought that they were talking about her.

  When the voices began to fade into static she leaped forward to try and bring it back, though she knew it was hopeless. Within seconds, the static had swallowed the last shreds of their voices. Laurie turned down the sound, leaving it on just in case they returned. For a while she stayed there, bent forward slightly. Funny, she thought. Kate was older now. Older than Jaqe. Only when she noticed that she couldn’t hear the static did she realize she was moaning, rocking back and forth and moaning so loudly she became scared someone would come banging on the door or even call the police. She pressed her lips together and clenched her fists. When she felt she could sit up without shaking she turned off the radio.