The Furies

by Katie Lowe

  ‘Vivi,’ Robin said, turning to me with a wide grin, hair burning in the light. ‘There you are.’

  ‘We said eight-thirty, right?’ I said, glancing at my watch.

  ‘We couldn’t wait.’ She shrugged. ‘Thought we’d come and get set up before it got too dark.’

  I smiled, dimly. It seemed unlikely that Alex and Grace were in any rush to begin. Alex having insisted she wouldn’t go along with it right up until the end of the week, when she’d said ‘See you tomorrow’ with a meaningful look. All drama, Robin had said, matter-of-factly. She knew Alex wouldn’t be able to resist, no matter how much she protested.

  There was a flutter, an echo of something in the corner; a ripple in the shadows. I turned to see Grace clicking the bars of a tattered birdcage, greening with rust. ‘What’s that?’ I said, walking over to see. I heard claws, the faint ring of the bars beneath; she lifted it, carefully, to the light. It was a pigeon, wings slick and silvery, a greenish grey beneath.

  ‘It was the only one we could catch,’ Grace said, a smile forming in shadow. ‘Turns out we’re not much for hunting. Alex kept running away every time it got close.’

  Robin snorted; Alex shook her head, blushing. ‘I just don’t like birds. They’re just like …’ She gave an involuntary shudder. ‘They carry diseases. It’s gross.’

  I stared at it, eyes black and amber, ringed with gold. Grace pushed the cage towards me, palm holding the gate shut tight. ‘You look after it for a while. Make sure it doesn’t get away.’

  I sat down beside it, the bird flapping restlessly each time the fire crackled; the heat, I suppose, was glaring, flames licking at wingtips and tail. The last time I’d been this close to a bird – by choice, at least – I’d been crouching in the corner of the living room as Dad shooed at a sparrow that had fallen down the chimney, Anna and I giggling and squealing with delight.

  When he caught it, at last, he held it close, let us stroke it; the silky wings and downy neck a thrill, a life contained in Dad’s wide palms. I tried to recount the story back to the girls, but in the telling it seemed stupid – a trite, childish thing. I saw Alex and Grace exchange a look, a glance I couldn’t read; they turned back to me with the same weak smile.

  ‘Okay then, bitches,’ Robin said, standing grandly by the fire, arms outstretched like a preacher. ‘Let’s do this.’ She sat by the fire, and the three of us joined her, each beside a torch and a blade; Alex and Grace by her sides, and I opposite. Through the flames, she seemed already like some penny arcade Medusa, smoke and sparks surrounding her face when the wind washed through.

  The rain, now, beat down on the roof with such force it seemed not like raindrops, but like the sea itself, waves of roaring breath. She opened a bottle of red wine with a pop, and poured a little into the flames, which burst orange, spitting rust into the sand. ‘For the goddesses we bring to bear.’ She took a sip from the bottle and passed it on; spat her gum into the sand. Alex passed the wine to me, and I took a sip, sweet and bitter rolling on my tongue.

  ‘I hope you’ve all done the required reading,’ Robin said, in an eerily accurate imitation of Annabel. I nodded, thinking of the damp photocopies Robin had handed each of us as we left Annabel’s last class. The Fates and the Furies, it read, Bouguereau’s painting of Orestes’ torment in faded black beneath.

  One section in particular stuck in my mind: ‘Once summoned, the Furies cannot be sent back, only leave of their own accord. To summon them without due reason, therefore, is to risk a life of torture, the deepest suffering of the human soul. They are court, jury, executioner, and their judgments will be entirely their own.’

  I brushed it off, thought of Tom; thought of the sharp stab in my gut, shoulder on stone, his sweat on my skin. Due reason, I thought, and read on.

  ‘Let’s begin, then,’ Robin said, rubbing her hands together and pressing them close to the fire. ‘Have you got the …?’

  I nodded, handed her the skirt and underwear I’d worn that day, still stained, dried in the shapes they’d taken in the well of my wardrobe. She took them, gently, and placed them by her side. Slowly, she leaned her torch towards the fire; the kerosene smell caught on the air in the split second before it burst into flames, and the three of us did the same, standing up around the fire, dizzy with expectation. The bird rustled, a high-pitched coo. I leaned my foot against the door of the cage, feeling the feathers brush my ankles as it tried to escape.

  ‘Repeat after me.’ She coughed, and raised her torch high above her head with one arm. I saw the knife’s blade gleam in her other hand, and bent to pick mine up as she closed her eyes and took a deep, slow breath. I will never forget my friends’ faces as we waited, nervously, for her to exhale. Grace’s eyes, usually cast downwards, thoughtful and shy, were wide with fear; Alex’s mouth was slightly open, transfixed.

  ‘We stand before you, Furies,’ Robin said, her voice low, ragged with smoke. ‘We ask you to share with us your secrets, your knowledge, your power. We come to you as your humble servants, and accept your judgment, should you choose it.’ We repeated the words, my voice unfamiliar, as though coming from somewhere outside of my chest, a foot or two behind. A breath of wind blew through the arches, swirling the fire’s hot breath around and out.

  I felt goosebumps prickle on my forearms, and closed my eyes as the cold settled on my skin. We raised our torches higher. ‘Furies, we summon you from the underworld, and ask you to join us in our mortal realm.’ There was a deafening crack from the flames, a log sparking shards of light, pouring gold dust into the sand; the bird began to coo, now, a steady rhythm, growing faster and more frantic with each breath.

  Robin opened her eyes, and stared at me. Grace took the torch from my hands.

  ‘Get the bird,’ she whispered.

  I glanced at Alex. ‘It’s got fleas.’

  ‘Jesus, Vi, come on. Don’t be a wuss.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Ugh,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Come on. You’re ruining it.’

  I crouched down beside the cage, reaching a tentative hand through the bars. The red hiss of a scratch across my palm; I pulled back, muttered a complaint too low for them to hear. The fire seemed to pick up, a warm swell behind. I reached in again, clutching the bird from above, wings first. It wriggled, legs kicking as I scooped it up and pulled it to my chest, bones writhing underneath, like another hand in mine.

  ‘We bring to you this sacrifice,’ Robin said, ‘that you might see our intentions are true.’ Her smile wide, she nodded at me, and I felt the knife’s warm presence in my hand, damp with sweat. The realization felt more like remembering something I’d always known, some shock of the repressed.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said, voice catching in my throat.

  ‘You have to,’ she said, flatly. I looked at the girls; Alex smiled, a glint in her eyes that made me wonder if this was a test – one I would no doubt fail.

  The bird squirmed, and settled, as though it knew. ‘It’s just a pigeon,’ I said.

  ‘Violet,’ Alex said, her voice sharp. ‘You said yourself, it’s got fleas. It’s gross. Lift it up, and aim for the throat. It’s the fastest way.’ I stared at Alex, her eyes gold in the light, flickering with fire, her skin damp with sweat. I closed my eyes, breathed in, and raised the bird high, feeling it writhe in my hand.

  ‘Look up, so you make a clean cut,’ Robin said. ‘You’ll hurt it otherwise.’

  I stared up at the bird, claws running circles in the air. Drew breath, sighed; drew breath again. I took aim, the knife reflecting spectral on the walls, and closed my eyes. You should look, I thought, and I did. I pushed the knife up and in, and dragged the blade across its neck, surprised at the ease with which it tore hide and flesh, catching as it reached bone. Blood spilled hot tracks down my arms, into my eyes, down my neck and chest. I remember thinking it strange that such a little thing could hold so much.

  I waited to feel horror, but it never came. No revulsion, no fear; none of the things I had expec
ted to feel as the body stilled and grew heavy. Instead, I felt alive, heart and chest filled hot with light. The body shuddered once more, grew still, turned cold, my arm turning stiff and sticky with blood.

  ‘We present this sacrifice to you, Furies, as we present ourselves, agents of your will. We pray that you might reveal to us your mysteries, and help us correct those wrongs done to us, and others of our order. We present to you our souls, on the Fates’ golden thread, and beg for your grace.’ Alex took the body from my arms, hanging by the feet; she dragged her knife down the bird’s torn breast, and passed it to Robin, who did the same. Grace was last. She whispered something as she threw the little body into the fire, and stepped back as it turned black, silver, gold once again.

  ‘Look,’ Robin said, pointing to the arches of the dome. I turned, and saw a white figure lurking in each, long fingers braced around the frame. Behind, the sea lapped black on the sand, stars connected in a silvery web above. In a blink, they were gone, and I fell into the sand, never realizing I’d left the ground.

  I woke up at home, in my own bed, hair still damp and crisp with salt water, clothes still stuck to my skin.

  Memories returned like shades, flashes: a cry, cold hands held tight around my jaw. A low howl, like some monstrous beast, echoed from within the cove. An ambulance slowing as I walked by the wheels of an upturned car spinning in the air, the wreck a bright distraction on a busy, crowded street. The glossy spider’s web on the window shield; the winking glitter in the glass, red, orange, green. I smelled blood, the same warm blood of the little bird, who writhed as I cut its throat.

  I rolled over, and went back to sleep, dreaming of night.

  Chapter 10

  One reads Macbeth and thinks of the washing of hands as a metaphor for guilt. In reality, however, it’s rather closer to the truth than the casual reader might expect. Even when the colour fades and there’s nothing left visible to the naked eye, there’s a stickiness, a stiffness to the skin, like clay drying into your hands, exposing every line, getting into every crack. One might wonder how it was that Shakespeare knew.

  I spent the weekend wringing my hands, slathering them with moisturizer stolen from the local pharmacist on some long-forgotten afternoon. It’s all I remember but for the brief appearance of my mother at my bedroom door, asking if I wanted tea or juice. I rolled over, said nothing. I was heartsick, trapped in feverish dreams of stags and dogs, of blood and sand and silver fire.

  When I finally mustered the energy to shower, I saw two thin lines down my shoulder blades, bruised blue, and had a memory of wings I could not recall in any more detail than the image, black perhaps, feathers possibly wilting. I neither thought of my friends, nor of what we’d done, but passed from one fractured, delirious state to another, all one and the same.

  And then, at last, I came to. It felt like falling, a vertiginous drop from one state to another, and I was restored.

  ‘Who can tell me the conventions of the revenge play?’ Professor Malcolm looked around the room, each of us averting our eyes. He’d long since ceased to expect answers to be volunteered by me; had, indeed, taken to emitting a low sigh whenever he handed back my essays, with increasingly dire notes scrawled in seeping, red ink.

  ‘Not your best,’ he’d written, earlier in the term. ‘Disappointing,’ at the start of the next. Now he’d stopped writing anything at all but for the circled grade at the top of each essay. Even now, when our paths cross on campus, there’s an almost invisible shake of the head, a tension in the set of his jaw: his disappointment ill concealed.

  He sighed. ‘Thank you for your valuable contribution. It’s good to see you’ve all done the reading.’ He turned to the blackboard and wrote the words in chalk, the crack of each letter ringing in my ears.

  ‘MURDER,’ he wrote, first. My eyes flickered to the empty seat beside me, Robin absent from class; behind, Nicky clicked her gum, turning the pages of her textbook with glazed eyes.

  ‘MADNESS,’ Professor Malcolm wrote below.

  I felt a faint shudder of relief as Nicky sensed me looking, and smiled – benign, as though looking through me, a stranger passing by. She was fine, despite the poppet – and whatever had passed between the girls and me before the weekend was just the same. A temporary madness, a folie à deux – no more.

  Still, I wondered – turning back to the board where ‘GHOST OF VICTIM URGES REVENGE’ had appeared, the letters sloping downward and falling away – it had certainly seemed real, in the moment. And ever since, the feeling – a sharp, cold ache that settled in the pit of my stomach, knotted tendrils reaching into my chest – that we had done something very wrong. Some monstrous and terrible thing.

  I ached to see the girls, to ask them if they’d felt it too – the shadow of the past emerging from the darkness, bony claws in the spaces between our ribs. The sense of eyes watching, fanged grins in the pooling dark – was it possible we could have imagined such a thing, simply because we wanted it to be true?

  ‘“Vengeance is in my heart,”’ Professor Malcolm read, ‘“death in my hand. Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.”’ Nicky coughed, motes of dust lingering in the light between us; the Campanile ravens left shadows as they burst into flight.

  Finally, I found Alex and Grace sitting cross-legged on the wall outside the Arts building. Grace’s head rested on Alex’s shoulder, eyes closed as though sleeping, the whispering movement of her lips the only sign she was awake. I walked over, still a little weak, aware of every tendon and vein in my calves as I walked, and sat down beside them.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  Alex muttered a dim hello; Grace sat up and smiled. ‘Feeling better?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Well, kind of.’ I changed the subject, a little raw from the experience. ‘Where’s Robin?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her,’ Grace said, looking out at the students gathered in front of the library, pointing at the diggers rolling across the Quad with a strange fascination.

  They were to tear down the trees during the spring break, despite much protest from the student body. I’d signed a petition, knowing that it would be pointless. The Headmaster was set on his grand green space, and no amount of student protest would change that. He had taken the lightning strike that charred the wych elm to be something of a sign, or an easy excuse to begin clearing the Quad, tearing down the trees whose branches had provided centuries of comfort and shade to Elm Hollow students.

  Grace pulled an apple from her bag, and took a bite, juice rolling down her chin. I remembered the bird’s blood tracing the same path, the taste of it, the warmth; I blinked away the thought.

  We sat in silence, watching the sun stream through the buildings, light buttery with dust. Finally, Robin appeared, shambolic as ever, loping towards us with her backpack slung low at her side. ‘There you are,’ she said, pinching my arm as she sat.

  ‘Here I am,’ I said, weakly.

  ‘I’ve got news,’ she said, leaning across me to take a bite from Grace’s apple. She chewed, leaned forward, and spat a mound onto the path below. ‘Still can’t eat. Christ.’

  ‘You’re sick?’ I asked.

  ‘As a dog. Haven’t been able to swallow for days.’

  ‘What’s your news?’ Grace said, leaning forward.

  ‘Okay, so: I went to Andy’s yesterday, and everyone’s wearing black and wailing because – drum roll please …’

  The three of us stared at her. I knew where this was going. A wave of hot, sticky nausea washed over me; I looked down at my knees. A memory (not a memory, really, so much as a haunting, a single image of an upturned tyre spinning in glass) flickered into my vision, and I asked a question, though I knew what the answer would be. ‘What happened?’

  ‘There was an accident. Tragic, really.’ She looked at me, and winked, almost too brief to catch. ‘Flipped his car on the high road in the early hours. Rumour has it the paramedics found body parts all over the road. A real Humpty-Dumpty type situation.’

&nbs
p; There was a silence, none of us quite sure how to react. It wasn’t possible. We couldn’t have done it. It had to be a coincidence.

  And yet, I thought, the eyes of the girls aflame with the same combination of hope and fear that I felt, long fingers wrapped around my heart – what if it wasn’t? What if – through the power of our will, the Furies’ rightful vengeance, we’d killed him; the little bird’s blood his, sticking clay-like to my skin?

  It couldn’t be true.

  Finally, Alex laughed, a hand at her throat. ‘You’re sick, Robin.’

  She lit a cigarette. ‘I know. It’s why you keep me around.’ She turned sideways, and put her head in my lap, feet on the wall, and blew smoke in perfect circles into the air.

  We sat like this, silent, absorbed in our thoughts – bonded by them – until the clock tower rang ten. In a single movement, Grace and Alex jumped down from the wall, dusted themselves off, and headed in their separate directions to the next class. Robin and I remained, watched them leave without a word. The lavender and lemon in the air seemed stifling and thick; my lungs too shallow, throat closed and tight. I gripped the wall with both hands; Robin curled a finger through the gap and squeezed, tight. It’s not possible, I thought. It’s a coincidence. But still the memory remained, like a shadow caught in a still pool. The shards of glass reflecting the ambulance’s blue light. The orange glow of street lamps. The black pools glinting on the tarmac, growing smaller as I walked slowly away. I’d been there; I was sure of it.

  I felt a sob rise in my chest, felt sick. At least we were in this together. Looked upwards to the sky, watching the white clouds split blue. I took a breath, sighed … and laughed. A bark of a laugh, really, almost inhuman. Robin looked up at me, mouth open, for a moment; coughed on her cigarette, and sat up, gasping for breath. We laughed into the faces of students who passed, laughed until it hurt, until our throats were dry, the air too thin to grasp. We laughed, tears rolling down our cheeks, and hugged, and felt nothing but joy, and I was so grateful, so lucky to have a friend who truly understood.