A Tyranny of Petticoats

by Jessica Spotswood

  “Your sister’s beauty will have to make up for us all.” He smiles and then sets the snake down on the ground. A clangor of church bells fills the air as we watch the snake slink off into the desert. “Adiós, monstruo,” James calls, and for a moment, I am unsure as to whether he is talking to the snake or to me.

  I met him first. Few folks remember it this way, or if they do, they’ve realized it’s a truth that’s hardly worth mentioning. Perhaps that’s irony for you; the only love story I’ve ever played any part in, and my role has been reduced to nothing but an afterthought. Back then we were newly young, newly formed, my sisters and I still uncomfortable in our skin. I’ve never understood the claim that folks make around here, that young people act as if they’re impervious to death; I’ve never felt more mortal than when I woke up to that dark sky and the looks of wonderment across my sisters’ now youthful faces.

  I remember the cocina was bathed in a gentle quietness, the kind that only comes in the early afternoon when everyone else is taking their daily siestas. The kitchen fire popped and crackled in the hearth, and I could smell the heady, pungent odor of the dried garlic that hung on the walls. A handful of peppers, large and bright green and still warm from the sun, lay splayed on the wooden table in front of me.

  And then there he was. This tall lanky boy barely seventeen years of age, strolling into the kitchen like he had as much a right to be there as I did. But then again, his papá might have been as Americano as they come, but his mamá shared the same bloodlines as our mamá. So, by all fairness, he did belong there. Far more than I did. Because what blood could have possibly run through my veins? Maybe folks around here were right. Maybe we were made of stardust. And it was with this thought rolling through my head that I took hold of the knife in front of me and sliced a thin line in the tender skin of my palm.

  I’d split open what mortals from lifetimes ago called the fate line. That was the funny thing about people. Didn’t matter when or where my sisters and I landed, whether we were giants who sat at the Tree of the World or three young girls abandoned in the desert, the people around us always liked to act as if their destinies could be found in the palms of their hands. I looked down, mesmerized by the line of red that bloomed in mine, a welcome reminder that I was as much human as I was immortal. Not one or the other, but both.

  The boy strode across the kitchen and wordlessly inspected my injury for a moment. I admired the pleasant variance of his pale complexion against the rich terra cotta that was mine. Then, before I could even gasp in surprise, he lifted my hand to his mouth and sucked away the blood.

  It was all so intimate. The quick touch of his tongue against my skin, his body so close I could see his blond eyelashes reflecting the sunlight. It was too intimate, far too human for my monstrous heart to bear, and before I knew it, I had fallen in love with him.

  Then he met Rosa, who was eager to hide her monster behind perfectly plaited hair. Of course he would choose her over me. My monster wouldn’t be stifled; my unruly hair was forever unkempt. Plus, everyone knew she’d make a beautiful bride.

  Our friends and family celebrate my sister’s happy union with a feast and, when one of the vaqueros brings out his guitar, an impromptu fandango that continues long into the night. Mamá sits along the side, looking the part of the contented mother of the bride, with sweet Maria Elena perched at her side, happily nibbling on a piece of caramelized cajeta candy. As our neighbors dance, I can smell the sweet scent of mint leaves and freshly picked wildflowers that sprinkle the ground at her feet.

  I watch it all with a feigned detachment that I’ve perfected over so many lifetimes. The voices painted with joy and elation. The skirts arching high into the air like fans in multitudes of colors. James makes a show of asking Maria Elena to dance. He swings her easily onto his shoulder and she is all laughter and mirth. For a moment, my sisters have everyone fooled, perhaps even themselves. For a moment, Maria Elena is simply an ordinary young girl, and Rosa the quintessential blushing bride. James leans down in passing and kisses me drily on the cheek. It is brotherly and fleeting and utterly heartbreaking, and I hide my hands behind my back and wish I had claws.

  Hours later, when I sneak off into the shadows, I can still hear the mellifluous notes of a solitary guitarra. For reasons of which even I’m unsure, I persuade Maria Elena to come with me, coaxing her out of the bed Mamá just tucked her into moments before. I carry her on my back, and though her grip remains tight around my neck, I can tell she’s half asleep. With each of my burdened steps, her head bounces heavily on my shoulder. I hoist her higher as I make the ascent up a neighboring hill. My skirt snags in the spines of a nearby cactus and I yank it free, leaving a piece of the fabric trapped among the prickles. Trudging upward, I feel as if I’m walking straight into the night, as if I’m climbing into a bucket of dark water.

  When we reach the top, I swing Maria Elena to the ground as gently as I can, and as we settle into the dirt, the dust becomes a cloud of grit and sand that irritates our eyes and gets stuck in our teeth. We look down at the ongoing party. The distance makes the lights appear dim and opaque, and suddenly it all seems so inconsequential and I am yet again nostalgic for the days of isolation and seclusion. When my sisters were my only companions. Up here, it seems we have only the stars, but even they seem small in the midst of that terrifying night sky, and it is then that I realize the reason I brought Maria Elena with me. I suppose even monsters can be afraid of the dark.

  We wait there for a long while, with Maria Elena shivering against me, until a familiar form makes its way up the hill.

  Rosa, still dressed in her bridal gown, is running late for her evening duties, but it is her wedding night. Perhaps she deserves this one luxury.

  “Sisters,” she says upon recognizing Maria Elena and me, the monsters hiding in the shadows. Her voice is a lilting song against the harsh garble I use in my reply. It is the tongue of a past life, one that we spoke long ago when we looked like the horrors we are. As I speak, I hold out my hand, where a thread lies curled in my palm like the discarded skin of the rattlesnake James saved only hours before. The thread is a withered, transparent thing that resembles nothing of the virile man whose life it embodies. Maria Elena gasps at the sight of it.

  Lifetimes ago, when our place was at the foot of the Tree of the World, the mortals believed that a snake encircled the earth, its teeth clamped down at the end of its tail. They believed that if it let go, the world would end.

  Rosa’s eyes widen and she backs away from me, stumbling over her silk-clad feet in her haste to get away, as if it is truly a snake that I hold cupped in my hand. As if it is that snake whose appetite for its own tail controlled the fate of the world.

  “No.” It is a simple answer. One said in a voice not of fear or defiance but of resolution. I don’t know how to respond; suddenly I know what it feels like when a small pebble collides with a mountain.

  Maria Elena takes the thread from me. She strokes it lightly with her finger, and when she begins to hum, her voice is as sweet as a lullaby.

  “We have no choice,” I say, but my reply is weak, and my resolve even more so.

  “And who is it that dictates that?” Rosa screeches. This time her words are formed by that ancient jargon, and it sounds like gravel, grating and rough, and for a moment I feel as though I have my sister back. That it is She Who Cannot Be Turned standing in front of me and not the good girl Mamá turned her into. The heavy pounding in my chest is slowed. But She Who Cannot Be Turned has never refused to cut before. No matter to whom the life was attached. She raises her arms to that sky. “Who’s out there? Do you know, sister? Because as far as I know, there is only us. For lifetimes, we have been both the judge and the jury, the creator and the executioner.” Rosa’s face contorts oddly, and then I realize: she is crying. She is crying, this merciless sister of mine, and I cannot think how to react. She is ugly when she cries, and for a moment, I am pleased to see her like this. To see there is a crack in the al
abaster, a flaw in the perfection. To see the mask of humanity begin to slip and the monster begin to emerge.

  A lamenting cry fills the air. The thread begins to sing, and it’s a mournful, heartrending elegy, full of regret and remorse and an unfinished life. And with it those shears, all glinting and huge and terrifying, appear in Rosa’s outstretched palm. She screams, wrenching her hand out from under them. And they fall, tumbling through the air until they land with the blades wedged in the ground a few feet away.

  She falls to her knees in front of me. “Who says there will be repercussions, sister?” she pleads. “What could be the harm in sparing this one life?”

  Strands of her hair, now loose and tangled, cling to her cheeks and underneath her nose, plastered there by tears and snot. “It is by our hands that the scales are balanced, sister,” I say, brushing Rosa’s hair off her face and smoothing it back into place as best I can. “And it is a power that cannot be abused. One that is too large for any one of us to try to manipulate. It is a beast that can never be tamed.”

  I take a deep breath and say the words I’ve been rehearsing in my head since last night. “It is a duty that surpasses everything. Even love.”

  I need her to say that I’m right, but instead she turns her back on me and cradles her knees with her arms. “I won’t do it,” she says petulantly.

  I glance toward those shears so mercilessly stabbed into the earth. My whole body trembles as I pick them up, but my hands are hesitant and unsure and I drop them twice before I have a steady grasp on them. They are so heavy I need both hands to manage them.

  I don’t know how I’m going to hold the thread in order to cut it until Maria Elena slides toward me. She leans her head down to the thread in her hand and whispers something. Perhaps it’s good-bye. Then she holds it out, one tiny hand on each side of that thread. Its mournful cry is so loud I want to cover my ears. I catch Maria Elena’s eye. She nods her head. And with trembling hands I raise those shears and cut the thread.

  The world is suddenly silent. In the distance, a lone coyote howls, and his forlorn cry echoes across the valley. Hours later, when I finally allow myself to cry, I know I will sound as desperate and lonely as that coyote separated from his pack.

  Behind me, Rosa whimpers quietly. Her cheek is pressed against the dirt and her tearstained face smeared with the deep-red clay that covers the ground. I crawl toward her, marking my skirt with the same red that stains her face. Grabbing her hand, I tie one end of the cut thread around her ring finger.

  Maria Elena settles herself in my lap, and I consider wrapping the other end of the thread around my own finger. Instead, I hold it out to the wind and we watch as it flutters away and disappears into the dark night sky.

  Folks around here call us el destinos. They like to say we came from the stars. And when I stare up at the infinite heavens stretched out above us like a shroud, it’s hard to imagine we came from anywhere else.

  I place my hand over Rosa’s trembling one, and after a moment, she intertwines her fingers with mine. And it is like this, while sitting on the hill, that my sisters and I wait for the day to blossom like a flower over the desert plateau.

  I’ve always been fascinated by mythology, a fascination that started when I was in middle school and hasn’t yet been forced aside by other, more pertinent topics. I always found mythology to be a delicious combination of magic and humanity.

  The Three Fates — immortal goddesses that appear in Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology — were once believed to control the destiny of each mortal from birth to death. It was while thinking of these three powerful deities that I also began to wonder what it might be like to live as a young teenage girl during a time of upheaval and change in American history. I thought of all those times when one’s cultural and national identity seemed at odds, and I wondered, what might it be like to be divine and yet, at the same time, utterly human? I suppose all these thoughts wove themselves together, because suddenly I had Valeria, Rosa, and Maria Elena, three immortals sent down to live as Mexican American sisters during the years after the Texas annexation.

  THE BLOOD SPATTERED ACROSS KLIO’S cheek and jaw had yet to dry. She drew a clean, delicately embroidered kerchief from her pocket and wiped her face, staining the white square scarlet. She tucked the kerchief away and surveyed the room.

  This job had been too messy for her taste. For the most part, Klio fulfilled contracts in a quick, tidy manner. She went in, did her work, and left the target with little more than a startled expression forever written across his or her face.

  The man sprawled half on the foot of the bed and half on the floor did not look startled. His face had gone slack, his eyes glassy. But the dark splotch just below the left breast pocket of his waistcoat piqued Klio’s annoyance. She rarely fell back on her dagger to finish a job.

  The room bespoke of a haphazard kill: chairs overturned, papers strewn from the desk onto the floor, an overturned inkwell rolling along the desktop while its contents dripped over the edge to a widening black pool below, and feathers floating in the air above the pillows from which they’d erupted. Jagged shards of glass were scattered across the room.

  So many still believe mirrors will make a difference. Klio wondered how such misinformation managed to stay in circulation despite all the evidence to the contrary.

  With one last disapproving look about the room, she pulled on her gloves and exited into the hall. The other doors in the boardinghouse remained shut. No curious eyes peeked out. No cries of alarm roused the house matron.

  Some of Klio’s jobs would have necessitated finding another way out of the room, an escape by which she would not be seen. This boardinghouse, however, was home to those who were doing their best to remain unnoticed, and becoming curious about a neighbor’s business was a sure way to ruin their own anonymity . . . and possibly lead to their own demise.

  Klio fluffed her heavy silk skirts, making sure they lay smooth over her crinoline. In the dim light of the hall, her garments appeared black from prim veiled hat to polished, buttoned boot. Only when she moved directly into the gleam of a lamp did the silk’s deep amethyst shade reveal itself.

  At this late hour the streets of Boston were quiet but for the occasional clip-clop of shod horse hooves, a sound so banal by day as to be unnoticeable, now harsh as it cut through the heavy silence. Whitby stood alongside Klio’s cabriolet, holding the carriage horse’s reins. His eyes flashed silver against his ebony face. While his expression otherwise gave nothing away, Klio knew that her coachman was troubled.

  When she glanced at the cab again, Klio noticed that despite the clear, warm night, its curtain was drawn to shield the passenger compartment. Klio looked to Whitby, who gave the briefest of nods. Whatever had perturbed her associate didn’t present a true threat.

  The horse gave a snort and tossed its head as Klio drew near. Whitby tightened his grip on the reins. They had yet to find a horse that grew accustomed to Klio’s scent. Most would bolt should she come too close; if they didn’t try to run, they shied and reared.

  Bothersome animals, Klio thought.

  Before she could draw back the curtain, the slender tip of a mahogany cane snagged the edge of the thick fabric and lifted it. Klio nearly jumped back in surprise at the visage peering out at her.

  “I pray your forgiveness for calling upon you in this uncustomary manner, Miss Vesper.” Hamilton Stuart tipped his tall hat. “May I have a few minutes of your time?”

  “Of course, Mr. Stuart.” Klio signaled Whitby to take them through the streets. She accepted Stuart’s hand and climbed into the cab.

  “Ah,” Stuart said as she settled beside him. “You do know who I am, then.”

  “That surprises you?” Klio asked. With the curtain back in place, shadows flooded the interior. The lack of light did little to obscure Klio’s vision, if that had been her visitor’s intention. Still, Klio tugged on the fingertips of her gloves, loosening them just enough that she’d be able to strip them off in a
moment should the need arise.

  Stuart laughed, quiet but throaty. “I suppose it should not. But tell me, Miss Vesper, did it not surprise you to see me here?”

  “It surprises me to see anyone other than myself in my cab,” Klio replied, then decided against being coy. “Nonetheless, your faction hasn’t sought my services in the past, so yes, your appearance is unexpected.”

  “It’s an appropriate time for unexpected actions,” Stuart murmured. “You’re aware of the Game?”

  Klio peered through the darkness to study Stuart’s features. He looked to be a young man, with dark hair curling at the nape of his neck and an unlined face like porcelain, but Klio knew better. His kind bore the semblance of youth well past the age that death took most mortals. Stuart was likely a century older than she, if not more.

  Rather than speak, Klio nodded. A test to reveal whether the warlock had cast a spell that aided his sight in this dark enclosure.

  The corners of his mouth turned up in approval. “I’m sure you’ll understand the Coven’s interest in the outcome of the Game.”

  “As all the factions are,” Klio said. “Whoever wins the Game determines the course of this nation.”

  “This fractured nation.” The pleased note in Stuart’s voice faded. “We have thrown our lot in with the Union and a future of free enterprise in the West, while our adversaries hope to expand their plantations beyond Texas and Missouri. We are particularly concerned that this war does not cost us the significant investments we’ve made. We want to ensure that none thwart our victory.”

  Klio leveled a sharp gaze at Stuart. “The Game prohibits any attempts upon the lives of the players.”

  “I’m aware of that, Miss Vesper.”

  “You do know what kind of work I do, do you not, Mr. Stuart?” Klio was beginning to lose patience. The night’s job, while not executed perfectly, was complete, and this pompous warlock was wasting time that she could have spent toasting success with Whitby, then indulging herself in a warm bath.