Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 18 Read online

  * * * *

  Lady Christina Annabelle Lucinda Davenport-Raleigh the Fourth

  She smokes very thin cigars. She wears gold spectacles on a golden chain. She is not sure in what order all her names should go (although she knows there are a lot of them). She is thin and greyish, like one of those fast dogs, and she is pure-bred. She is purer than you.

  Lady Christina Annabelle Lucinda Davenport-Raleigh the Fourth knows she is a lady-in-waiting to someone, although she does not know who, so she smokes a skinny wand-like cigar, and waits.

  * * * *

  (Do you believe in changelings?)

  Baby Ella

  Ella is happy now. The movement of the train feels like a cradle, rocking. She sucks on Prospero's tail (he does not seem to mind) and thinks of her mother, who had red hair, red lips, and wore long red dresses, and who left a long time ago. Was it a long time ago? Ella does not care for time. She listens to her father crying softly. It sounds like wind blowing, like leaves rustling, like trains.

  * * * *

  Our Narrator, Anonymous but Golden-Tongued

  Is wise and tricky.

  Is long like a snake, glass-eyed like a cathedral, winged like a dragonfly.

  Is witty.

  Is clever.

  Is cleverer than you are.

  Is beautiful to look at but not to touch.

  Is not Prospero, not Caliban.

  Is maybe Ariel.

  Is made of glass, of snow, of gold, of wind, but not of iron.

  Is listening.

  * * * *

  Some Music from the Chestnut Violin

  Darling Bettina plays and plays, until the tips of her fingers swell and bleed. Her blood drips into the belly of the chestnut violin and makes the music sweeter. She does not think of Neddy. All that seems very far away.

  The violin is second, third, fourth hand. Neddy's mother bought it at an antique store in Brighton. She hung it over the mantelpiece in a shadow box; firelight caught its gloss. Neddy brought Darling Bettina over for dinner one night, three years ago, and she stared at the violin trapped in its frame over the mantel. (Neddy's mother had noticed, that night, how pale and wide Darling Bettina's eyes could be, in the firelight.) Darling Bettina visited Neddy's mother again, not long after, to show off the glittering diamond ring on her finger, and then to discuss cake and cathedrals, and to try on the heavy wedding dress that smelled of mothballs and other people's promises.

  The chestnut violin had belonged last to a one-eyed jazz musician who found it in a taxi underneath a pile of shiny tulle netting. It had been left there by a ballerina with black hair, who had received it as a present on her eighteenth birthday from a mysterious man in a red leather jacket, who had stolen it in the park, from where it sat on the ground beside three small children with crystal-coloured eyes.

  The day before her wedding Darling Bettina broke the shadow box, and stole the violin, and ran away.

  And now she is playing, playing, playing.

  When glass crashes and all the lights go out she almost doesn't notice.

  * * * *

  A Riddle

  What is fast as a train, strong as a train, bright as a train, light as a train, cold as a train, bold as a train, shrill as a train, sharp as a train,

  but is not a train?

  * * * *

  An Answer

  A train, of course.

  (Do you believe in fairies?)

  * * * *

  This Is the Train the Queen Rides On

  No black horses, no white. There are metal wheels instead. No will-o'-the-wisp, fairy-lanterns, ghost lights bobbing. That is what electricity is for. No pale kings and princes (although the man in white, the man with one white glove and one bare hand, has very fair skin).

  But there is music, the rhythm of wheels and the wail of a chestnut violin.

  And there is an engine-driver with silver hair and an enigmatic smile.

  And there is the servant and there is the master.

  And there is the changeling.

  And there is the queen.

  * * * *

  The Engine Driver with the Silver Hair and the Enigmatic Smile

  The fire flames hotter than hot, because he feeds it on the finest words, torn from the strangest books, the kind that crackle when you read them, the kind that weave odd music long after they are ash and dust. He smiles because the fire is hot and his work is good. He sings a song that sounds a little bit like flames licking over old paper, and a little bit like a fat man singing, very out of tune.

  This is the train the queen rides on. He is the engine driver. He knows where things go when they disappear, and he knows what comes at the end of snow and frost.

  "Burn, burn,” the silver-haired engine driver sings, smiling enigmatically.

  * * * *

  (All right. Do you believe in ghosts?)

  The Queen

  Red. Red. Red.

  * * * *

  The Glassblower

  Anyone who knows about anything will tell you it is impractical to have a glassblower blowing glass aboard a train.

  Anyone who knows everything will not speak to you at all.

  The glassblower makes vases and bowls. They are all the colour of snow. He tries to make them red and blue and green and gold, but they all come out the same. He makes snow-coloured wine glasses, platters, goblets. After a while he grows more adventurous. He tries to make a dragon, but it comes out shaped like a train. When he looks closer it almost seems as if there are tiny glass people inside, waving at him, snow-coloured. The glassblower makes glass disks like biscuits and eats them absently. The crumbs stick in his long white beard. His beard used to be red once, he thinks, although he really isn't sure. After he is finished eating he carefully stamps each bowl and vase and glass with his seal, a mark in the shape of a ladder or a section of railroad tracks.

  The glassblower makes a glass rose. It ends up looking like a wheel. Perplexed, the glassblower turns it. There is a crash, a flicker of lights. Everything is still. The glassblower smiles. In the dark, the stamp on his hand glows red-hot; the stamp of a ladder or a section of railroad tracks printed into his skin, which is the colour of snow, which is the colour of everything.

  * * * *

  And There Comes a Crash from the Dining Carriage

  And there comes a shriek from the wheels, and all the lights click off.

  And someone screams, although it might not be a scream at all, but a cry of recognition.

  And there really aren't many passengers travelling to the Arctic Circle on Christmas Eve this year.

  And it might be nothing but the northern lights.

  And then again, it might not.

  * * * *

  Illumination

  There is no light in the train but the light of his pale skin, the light of his bright eyes. He wears all white. He bows to them, lifts a delicate hand, and beams.

  "Lost,” he pronounces.

  No one speaks.

  "Follow,” he says complacently, and so they do.

  * * * *

  In the Olden Days

  There were dancing days and wild music. There were forests of trees fluttering with paper lanterns and ribbons, and the folk danced and the lights danced and the stars danced, far up, as if they were spinning on a great glass wheel. There were songs. There were wells and hills. There were dishes of milk left out at dark, and loaves of bread on fences and beside cornfields, and gifts of trinkets, spinning dolls, pretty baubles. There were fights and truces. There were wild nights. There were stories.

  Now, there is mostly snow.

  * * * *

  What They Brought with Them

  One violin, chestnut.

  One silver bell on a cracked leather collar.

  Crumbs of glass caught up in a white beard.

  One wife. One mother.

  * * * *

  What They Left Behind

  One rag-doll, eyeless, drooping.

  One dictionary of Finnis
h phrases.

  Three torn-up postcards.

  One packet of black cigarillos.

  Soap.

  Eight suitcases, two backpacks, one snakeskin purse.

  One glass dragon, train-like.

  One last look over his shoulder.

  Everything.

  * * * *

  What the Fire Ate

  A fiancé, a handful of years, a handful of words, some dreams.

  (Tell me: what do you believe in, then?)

  What You Should Believe In

  In dragons. In cats. In fairy tales. In fairies. In changelings. In masters, servants. In ghost-lights. In ghost-music. In ghosts. In glass. In roses. In snow. In golden coins that are made from snow, and that will return to snow when the song ends. In songs that never end. In engines. In stories. In gods, monsters, demons, shadows, dreams. In trick-doors and secret passageways. In clocks that run backwards and dandelions that tell time. In secrets. In magpies. In ravens, crying “Nevermore.” In wells, hills, holy places. In towers. In queens. In disappearance.

  But you should never believe in trains.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Two Poems

  Jenny Benjamin-Smith

  The Irishman Washes The Floor

  She sat on a stool,

  Her black-booted feet perched

  At the stool's base,

  And waited for her son-in-law,

  The Irishman,

  To work his way across the linoleum

  On hands and knees with a dishrag.

  His scoot and shuffle had a determined,

  Quiet method, square by square

  He worked his way to her waiting hand.

  Without looking he handed the rag up to her,

  And she dipped it in the bucket of lye and

  Rung it out, leaving just enough damp

  For him to begin his next section of floor.

  This Irishman made the first mistake

  Of being Irish, not Italian, and meeting

  Her daughter during the war

  In Denver, Colorado.

  They worked in the infirmary,

  And Mac saw her while he made a plaster cast,

  Charmed her until they married.

  So after years of her scrutiny and his efforts to make

  His mother-in-law like him,

  Maybe love him,

  He won her

  By washing the floor.

  She did not coo over Mac's work, but sat

  Like a satisfied bird atop a high wire

  With no expectation for the day.

  While looking down at his work,

  She decided, at that moment, to send him

  Five dollars every birthday.

  * * * *

  Inception

  I have decided to hunt down my dead grandmother, the why and how escape me.

  It's an animal pull to find the dark den I came from, to find her side of the hill, how it meets the vastness here.

  She was a mystery, I thought, just mean, but as I want children, I begin to understand her meanness, a woman surrounded by men.

  Her father insisted on a new life, her marriage.

  A shadowy chest of home sat inside of her like a cancer, motherless.

  So I have begun to see her, her eyes on fire, behind my own.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Diabolique d'amour

  Scot Peacock

  I was chosen as a volunteer from the audience by Pepperghost the Conjurer. Although being the center of such exhibitions does not usually appeal to me, I was insistent in this case, waving so flamboyantly that the conjurer could not possibly ignore the spectacle I was creating on the main floor of the Folies-Magique. I would have done anything—even trample the people seated in front of me—to stand upon that Paris stage where the devilish Beatrix, Pepperghost's assistant, handled her submissive charges.

  Beatrix played her part to the hilt. Two red devil-horns poked through her long black curls. The spade-end of her slender red tail rose like a dagger above her bottom as she bowed (whether in obeisance to Pepperghost or greeting to me it was difficult to tell). Climbing to the stage from the orchestra pit, I saw, for an instant, into the black round holes of Beatrix's eyes—while her tart smile to the audience plumped with mischief, the trembling ingenue within her pulled down the blinds. Then the hot stage-lights came up, a blend of yellows and magentas, and a haze materialized from the molten sheen of her red satin leotard.

  Pepperghost loomed over me. “Prove to me you have a heart,” he demanded as Beatrix retreated.

  I was stunned by the ferocity of his request. The expression of shock on my face prompted the audience to laugh. The conjurer's bulk was enormous—when he stepped closer to me, with his opera cape fanning out, he became an imposing black wall that I could not see around.

  "Do you have a heart?” asked Pepperghost testily.

  "Yes!” I replied nervously.

  "Prove it!” he said.

  "Just listen!” I cried. The audience applauded.

  "I do hear something,” he said. “Perhaps your watch—running a little fast? No, you'll have to show me."

  "That's impossible,” I said.

  "I'll prove you wrong,” Pepperghost countered. “Tonight, I'll serve you your heart on a platter.” Savoring my shock, he added, “I promise to put it back when I'm done.” Then the bleak house known as Pepperghost thumped upstage toward the audience and doffed a stovepipe hat. There was Beatrix again, from behind the conjurer, reaching to take my hand.

  She led me downstage to a bright yellow cabinet decorated with astrological symbols. “Now remember,” she whispered, “what I said at the cafe—the pain is just an illusion.” I wanted to embrace Beatrix right then and there, but Pepperghost's voluminous cape swept between us—she vanished, for a moment, behind a giant wing of black silk—then reappeared, poor docile little devil, being carried by the waist, in the crook of Pepperghost's arm.

  The conjurer opened the cabinet and heaved Beatrix inside. The audience murmured as he locked the door; he secured it again with a chain threaded through cast-iron eyes embedded in the thick wood panels. Next, Pepperghost turned to me—indicating a chair placed a short distance away, he ordered me to sit.

  I sat without protest, my stomach in knots. The audience now enjoyed a full view of my chalk-white profile while I stared, in dread, at a yellow side-wall of the cabinet. As Pepperghost delivered a bombastic speech to the audience, in which he elaborated on the evil trick to come, I recalled my first flirtation with Beatrix, only two hours before the show:

  * * * *

  "I see you're looking at me,” she had said with a grin. “Perhaps it's because of the way that I'm dressed.” She was wearing a skirt as well as a cloak, but the devil costume was smoldering under her clothes.

  "Red gloves, black cloak—a startling combination,” I replied. “And, I see, red stockings and slippers, an unusual choice for the evening."

  We stood at a railing along the rue Lamarck, on a butte overlooking Paris. Behind us, at an even greater height, was a forest of great white pillars (the foundation for a Sacre Coeur still under construction).

  "My uniform,” she said. “Not of choice. But it flatters me, don't you think?” She plucked the devil horns out of her purse and arranged them in her hair—"You might say temptation is my trade. That's why I'm talking to you."

  I thought to check my pockets for cash.

  "No,” she said, stopping my hand. “Quite the opposite."

  * * * *

  "—is she a woman in devil's dress?” Pepperghost cried. “Or a curvaceous demon with a pretty face? My assistant, ladies and gentleman, lied to me on her resume!"

  The bright yellow cabinet in which Beatrix was confined began rotating slowly on its axis. A heaving Pepperghost (that seedy dwelling on lifts) waved a magic wand and exclaimed: “Look into Beatrix's Closet to discover her true identity!"

  The conjurer was addressing me, foremost. I was the first
to see her pass. The back-wall of the cabinet, made of glass, exposed the cruel suffering of Beatrix. Wrists tied to a cast-iron eye in the ceiling, mouth stuffed with a Pepperghost handbill—both blinds shot up in the dark holes of her eyes and she wept like a heavenly creature.

  Smokeless flames began licking Beatrix's feet. The cabinet's interior filled with a sickly glow. I bolted off my seat to save her, but Pepperghost warned me back down with his wand, which was spritzing a shower of voltage. “Ladies and Gentlemen, look!” the conjurer said. “Observe Pepperghost's sleight of hand!” Dollops of blood dripped from his fist to the stage-floor. Flowing along a recessed plank, the blood collected in front of my chair.

  Beatrix rotated away from me. I heard gasps from the audience, one after another. Pepperghost laughed, from the deep pit of a madhouse. I hadn't the heart to fight him.

  * * * *

  Beatrix had taken me to her favorite Montmartre haunt, the Cafe Cardinale. “Is this a successful seduction?” I asked. A bit of froth from her café au lait was stuck to the end of her nose.

  "If I can tempt you into a little white sin,” Beatrix replied. She patted her nose with a napkin. “I don't know what a hero is anymore, nor the consequences of ‘goodness'—if you wish to possess me for at least one night, then please help me kill a magician."

  * * * *

  During Beatrix's second revolution, the small flames leapt like piranhas. Singe-holes appeared in the red devil suit, revealing parts of her body. The smokeless fire did not turn her skin to cinders—in fact, it barely pinked her. Nevertheless, Beatrix, writhing, weeping, struggled in mortal terror (pouting inside the dark holes of her eyes, she implored me to honor our deal).

  Pepperghost squeezed my heart in his hand. Blood squirted as if from a sponge. While I lurched back and forth in my chair and my temptress was tortured by fire—while Pepperghost sprayed my blood in the air—the auditorium shook with applause.

  "A platter, please,” Pepperghost ordered. A stage-hand rushed one out. The mess was then placed upon my lap. “And you said it couldn't be done,” he said.