Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 18 Read online

Every night, after Jorge returned home from the Institute, he sat in a chair in his room, staring at nothing, until darkness fell and he crept into bed. By early summer, his color, never healthy, had turned corpse-like. His hair was thin and lusterless, his lips red and cracked. The skin stretched tightly over the bony bridge of his nose. He ate little.

  It occurred to him that his body was failing by degrees, that soon, within weeks or months at the most, he would die. It was this realization that finally prompted him to act. Even a castrated man for a time retains, out of habit and custom, some traces of carnal desire. Deprived of his soul, Jorge still retained the urge to live, perhaps out of mere habit, or perhaps because that vital impulse arises from the flesh, not the spirit.

  He dressed himself one night and took his father's carbide lantern.

  Father was sitting in a chair by the fire, drinking hard cider and reading a book of moral philosophy. “I am going to get my soul,” Jorge said. His father did not reply.

  Jorge struggled towards the wood, through the moist, cool air of an early summer night. He felt as if there were a steady headwind, pushing him back. Each step was an effort he could barely make. Each step forward was a battle won and lost in a war against himself.

  In the forest glade, souls danced above the rubble. Jorge's soul seemed to him fainter than before, and the starlight shone through it. It danced in complex mathematical arabesques with the other souls, a canon or fugue of pale lights flickering in the dark glade.

  His soul paused in its dance. “What do you want?” it asked.

  "We need to join again,” Jorge said.

  "No. Go away."

  "I have found I cannot live without a soul,” Jorge said. His body felt too heavy for his muscles to support, and he fell to his knees in the moss and weeds. “I am failing, I am dying. I desire nothing, I need nothing, I want nothing. My body cries out for a reason to live, but I am empty inside. You must return to me, or I will die, and then you will die."

  "But you hate me, don't you?” his soul said.

  Jorge was silent.

  "Going out on that windy night was not an accident. You wanted me gone, you've wanted me gone for years. Why do you want me back? You hate me."

  "I want to live,” Jorge said.

  "You are a weak thing,” his soul said. “And now you're afraid of death, and you want to take back your decision."

  "I hate you because you are cold. Because you made me incapable of joy. Because you mistake cruelty for strength. Because you're like my father."

  "And you still want to rejoin with me?"

  "I want to live,” Jorge said. “Please...” Pleading with his own soul for his life was the hardest thing Jorge had ever done, not painful, but infinitely difficult, like running in hundred-pound boots.

  His soul was unmoved. “I prefer to die, and so should you,” it said, and moved off to rejoin the dance.

  Jorge fell forward into the wet moss and lay there a long time.

  A girl's voice said, “I will go with you, if you will have me."

  Jorge pushed himself up with his hands. A soul floated in front of him. “Who are you?” he asked.

  "I am the soul of Ivy Tabi,” the soul said.

  * * * *

  And so they left the glade of wayward souls, Jorge and Ivy, a human boy and a flicker of light, of warmth and feeling, that vanished when the glare of the carbide lantern shone across her. They clung together as they walked across the heath so that Ivy's soul would be not be wrested away by the breeze.

  "I wanted to love Ivy,” her soul told Jorge. “But as she became older, we grew apart. When we spoke together, there was no understanding between us. She was overwhelmed by the world. She felt crushed by its cruelty, grief, and loneliness. I understood those things, but I also understood joy. She thought me shallow, and was ashamed of me. Eventually she came to hate me, and she went out on the heath one night, and though I clung to her, I was carried away."

  When they arrived at Jorge's home, Father looked at them suspiciously. “That is not your soul,” he said.

  "My soul refused me,” Jorge said. “Ivy's soul offered to be with me."

  Father spat into the fire. “I have never heard of such a thing,” he said.

  At the Institute the next day, Ivy sat by Jorge in class, a faint flicker in the pale cold light of the classroom. She said nothing, but Jorge found her presence reassuring, and he was able to pay attention to his studies for the first time in months. At lunchtime the other children glanced at Jorge and Ivy curiously: they had never seen such a thing before, a boy keeping company with the errant soul of a girl. One or two of them got up the courage to come over and ask, “What's it like?"

  It was not like having one's own soul, Jorge discovered. There was still a deep ache in him, an emptiness. It was not as good as being all of a piece, but it was better than being alone. As they sat at lunch, or walked home over the heath in the evening, Ivy told Jorge little stories of her life, her dreams, a boy whom she had been in love with once, the petty cruelties others had done her. Jorge had always been smart in a bookish way, but bad with people, stumble-tongued and prone to offend by saying the wrong thing. Ivy taught him when to speak and when to be silent, and how to give comfort or ask a question without giving offense. Sometimes at night when they lay together in Jorge's bed, he felt that she was almost part of him. He imagined her voice was his, played on a different instrument, and that her thoughts were his reveries. As he lay on the verge of sleep, she sometimes seemed to slip inside his flesh, nestle close to him, knit with his sinews and bones, almost as if she were his real soul.

  When other children asked him, Jorge tried to explain what it was like. A boy named Olen Thorey said to him, wistfully, “I wish I could be like that."

  Jorge shook his head, and said: “I think it's better to have your own soul, if it fits you.” But he noticed that there were many children who felt ill at ease with the souls with which they had been born.

  As summer passed, and then fall, Jorge lost his sickly appearance. His appetite improved. He took more interest in study and sport, and made friends more easily than before.

  Then one day the class proctor told him Ivy could not stay with him in class. “It's abnormal,” he told Jorge. “The Institute Governing Council has been talking about it. They don't like it.” Jorge fretted, but nothing could be done, so Ivy started waiting for him in the hall outside during class time. Jorge began to notice that when he and Ivy walked through Abalia, adults whispered and shook their heads. Some wagged their fingers at them.

  In late fall the superintendent called Jorge to his office again, and berated him. “You cannot keep company with a soul not your own,” he said. “It's unheard of. It's unnatural. Send her back to wherever you found her."

  Jorge shook his head. “I can't do that,” he said. “I won't do that. She's my friend."

  "It's abnormal."

  "I don't care,” Jorge said stubbornly. “She's my friend."

  "Are you disobeying me?"

  Jorge was silent.

  "You are a bad influence,” the superintendent said. He removed his pince-nez, breathed on them, and polished them on his handkerchief as he spoke. The skin surrounding his eyes was pale as bone. “The tutors inform me that they have overheard other students talk of letting their souls blow free, and exchanging them for others'. Where could they have gotten this abhorrent idea but from you? If you continue to consort with that girl's soul, you will no longer be welcome at the Institute. The Margrave of the city has this matter on his desk as we speak, and if he decides against you, you may not be welcome in Abalia at all."

  Jorge and Ivy stayed away from the Institute the next day. They wandered together across the heath, avoiding other people. The sky was the color of a bruise, the air raw and damp. Clouds hid the tops of the Berge des Mondes, and a November snow whitened the mountains’ lower slopes. A cold wind whistled through the gorse and bell-heather, and over the stony banks. Jorge held Ivy tightly. “Must I leave
you?” Ivy asked.

  Ivy had changed since she had been with him. Instead of an inchoate smear of light, she now resembled the ghost of a girl, with delicate misty features, skinny shoulders, and shadowy hair and skirt that fluttered in the wind. Jorge squeezed her tightly in his arms. “Never,” he said. “Never."

  When they arrived home at dusk, Jorge's father said: “The provost marshal and his men were here. The Margrave has made you outlaws. You must leave within a day, or Jorge will be jailed and Ivy banished or exorcised.” He pointed to a bulging pack on the floor. “Take that. I have packed your clothing, some food, and half my coin. I can't protect you from the entire town, Jorge. I do not approve of Ivy, but you are still my son, and I would not have you imprisoned or slain."

  Jorge embraced him, and said, “Father, thank you."

  Jorge and Ivy set forth after night had fallen. “Before we go,” Ivy said, “We should warn Olen Thorey."

  Olen Thorey's house was a quarter mile away. Jorge went around to Olen's bedroom window and rapped on the pane. After a moment, Olen pulled back the curtains and threw open the casement. The wind fluttered his nightshirt.

  "Olen,” Jorge said. “You told me once you were unhappy with your soul, and wished to exchange it for another."

  "So?"

  "We've come to warn you. You mustn't do it. The Margrave has outlawed Ivy and me. They will do the same to you."

  Olen scowled. “All the more reason to do it now,” he said. His voice was fierce and longing. “There are a lot of others who want to swap their souls, too. If we all do it together at one time, they can't banish us all.” He leaned out the casement. His dark hair blew around his face. “The wind is up. Tonight we'll meet on the heath and do it.” He clambered onto the windowsill, then leaped to the ground.

  "Olen,” Jorge said, “I told you before: I don't think this is the right thing for most children."

  Olen shook his head. “I've made my decision,” he said. “I'm going to tell Thad Whishaw and Ruby Njalbus.” He ran off into the darkness.

  Ivy squeezed Jorge's arm. “We should do something,” she said.

  "I don't know whether we can,” Jorge said. “Oh, Ivy, I don't know how this is going to turn out."

  "We have to at least try,” Ivy said.

  Jorge and Ivy walked through town towards the heath. In the darkness they heard whispered voices, running footsteps. Children dashed across the road, from house to house, rousing their friends. Children emerged from side streets and alleys, giggling to each other, swinging lanterns. A cold, bright moon had risen, and the etheric wind tore through the children's flesh and tugged at their souls. A crowd of two hundred or more children converged on the center of the heath, on the high downs, where the wind blows most strongly.

  Jorge said, “Surely most of the children in the town are here."

  "I think many of them are unhappy with themselves, but don't know why,” Ivy said.

  Jorge and Ivy ran from child to child, trying to convince them to stop, to wait. A few listened to them, but most brushed them off. “It'll be fun,” some of the children said. Or: “You don't know how unhappy I am. I hate myself. I want to be someone else.” Every child had a different reason. None seemed to recognize the danger. “I almost died,” Jorge told them. “I think I would have if Ivy hadn't joined me. It's better to make peace with your own soul if you can."

  "You're just jealous,” they said. “You and Ivy did it, and now you want to stop us from doing it? How boring."

  The wind gusted, making the gorse and bracken tremble, hissing through the branches of the bent junipers. Some of the children shrieked. Then, as the wind increased, their souls began to tear free. Pale souls squeezed out of their fleshy prisons, oozing out from beneath fingernails, from nostrils, mouths, ears. The children screamed as the wind ripped their souls out of them.

  When the souls finally broke loose, they flew away, first by ones and twos, then dozens at a time. It seemed to Jorge as if a dandelion had released its seeds, or a milkweed: a cloud of pale moonlit shapes erupted from the mass of children and tumbled across the heath, carried by the wind. Behind the cloud of blowing souls, the children ran yelling, chasing the souls here and there.

  Some of the children found souls for themselves quickly. Some did not. After a few minutes, most of the souls were gone: taken, or blown away. A few collected in eddies in the wind, against a copse of trees at the bottom of the downs. Jorge could see them flickering in the moonlight, spinning slowly like leaves in a dust devil. Other souls had blown into the trees, or had been lost in the night. The children's shouting voices became less happy and more anxious. Some dashed over the heath with increasing desperation. A few, like jilted cotillion dancers, stood with stiff unease and stared around them.

  "I think most eventually will find souls to be with,” Ivy said. “But not all.” She put her arms around Jorge's waist. “I wish they hadn't done that, Jorge."

  "In the morning,” Jorge said, “the adults will discover what happened. They'll blame us. If we stay, the provost marshal will hunt us down."

  "Where can we go?"

  "Out of the high country, down to the lowlands and the coast. They say there are cities there bigger than a hundred Abalias. Maybe people there will like us better, but even if they don't, it might be easier to lose ourselves in a crowd than in a little town like this.” Jorge shrugged Father's pack into a more comfortable position on his shoulders. He took Ivy's hand, and they set off down the slope.

  "It's strange to be a fugitive,” Ivy said. “In stories, sometimes fugitives are the heroes, sometimes they're villains."

  "Which are we, Ivy?” Jorge asked.

  "I don't know,” Ivy said, which was not the answer he was expecting. She let go of his hand, and went skipping ahead in the darkness. She turned and beckoned him. She seemed almost solid, now, like a living girl. In the moonlight, her hair blew about like the surf spray on shoals where ships founder, but her smile was brave and guileless. “I don't know,” she said, “but I want to find out."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  This Is the Train the Queen Rides On

  Becca De La Rosa

  (Do you believe in trains?)

  Mr. Gorman

  In Helsinki airport he spills scalding tea on his arm, and when he finally finds a chemist he realises that he does not know the Finnish word for salve, or the word for ointment, or even the word for burn. His baby daughter Ella is not impressed with his attempts to demonstrate what happened through an elaborate game of charades, although the shop assistant becomes very excited. In the end he steals a packet of butter from the nearby cafe to smear on his burnt arm and hopes no one will notice.

  Ella's rag-doll gets abandoned in the confusion. She screams and screams. “I'm dreadfully sorry,” Mr. Gorman says to several bystanders, in English, “my wife just died."

  They find an old cat in the train station, sleek and well fed, sitting on a bench and licking its paws. Ella squeals in delight. “Oh Ella,” Mr. Gorman says wearily. “No, darling, he doesn't belong to you. Leave the poor cat alone. Do you want some chocolate?"

  The cat, whose collar reads Prospero, follows them around the train station with an indulgent air, as if he is humouring them, and slips past the ticket inspector when they finally board the train. He curls up in the middle of the bunk in their cabin and closes his eyes resolutely.

  For Mr. Gorman the journey lasts much longer than four hours.

  When the train derails, he just drops his head in his hands.

  * * * *

  (Do you believe in cats?)

  Prospero, The Cat

  My dear fellow, someone says.

  Light walks out of the shadows, a path to follow. Prospero does not hesitate. He says, I am a cat: unseater of darkness, destroyer of solace found in small things, hunter and supplicant. I am a cat: unwatched listener at doors, glint of eyes in the night. I am wise and wary. I land on my feet.

  And the someone says, Then follow me.
>
  * * * *

  The Odd Man at the Window

  Who has white hair and white hands and a neat white suit, and stands watching.

  * * * *

  Darling Bettina

  She carries nothing but a notebook and pen, tucked under her arm, and a Finnish phrase-book that is quite unnecessary because it seems that she can speak the language perfectly. Her passport fits into one jacket pocket. The other is stuffed with bill-notes and a handful of coins. Her name is Darling Bettina but she would like you to call her Tee.

  The sleeper train from Helsinki to Rovaniemi cost almost as much as her honeymoon would have. The bus to Inari will cost even more. On the back of a cheap postcard, bought days ago in Kuovola, she writes: I am a bitch and a whore and I hope you hate me for this. She sucks ink from the tip of her pen, tears up the postcard, and takes out another, identical. Neddy, she writes, I am so sorry. I don't know what's the matter with me.

  But all of that is a lie.

  She buys a cup of bittersweet coffee, stamps the snow from her boots, and finally, hastily, writes: I had to go. I took the violin and the money. You are a lovely man, which is true.

  There are some things you know by heart and some things you tease out of air and light as if you are carding wool. Darling Bettina takes out the violin, chestnut brown and glowing, and plays to miles of Finnish snow.

  * * * *

  (Well, do you believe in fairy tales?)

  Ring Around the Roses

  Sun bakes the stone hard and hot. Roses wrap around it, notch fists in its spine, like arms. The tower has been here for a long time. Maybe there is a princess at the top. Maybe she has a long, long braid of golden hair, the colour of nasturtiums, of egg yolks, of cornfields. Maybe, if you ask her nicely, she will let you climb.

  The tower has been here for a long time. There are notches in the stone, homes for the pigeons who sing curdled, rhythmic songs. There are places where the tower is worn a different colour. It is definitely a tower. There are stairs, a thousand. There are bats. Bats live in towers, you know. There are chinks for windows. Oh, if we know only one thing, we know this is a tower. There are turrets and balustrades. There is soap. There is never enough soap when your hands are dirty. There is a sink, metallic. There is a dim mirror. There is a folding door. The toilet flushes with a noise like a bird flapping its wings, like a bird flying, like many birds flying away from the tower when the princess lets down her long golden hair. Maybe she will let you up. Ask nicely.