Lure, p.10
Lure, page 10
A stirring comes from behind the curtain. A low groan like the grinding of oyster shells. I draw back the curtain and look down on the catastrophe that was once our heroic fisherman.
Gunther the Brave is a giant of a man, with massive arms and a broad chest. His injuries have rendered him half that now, more ghost than man. His skin is sallow and beaded with a greasy sweat. Where his legs had been, there are now only stumps wrapped in coarse bandages. The blood has stained the linen to a blackish color and foul maggots writhe within its folds. Another dressing is applied to the left arm where the limb has been cleaved off. The bandages here ooze a dark, jelly-like substance. His cock, which Gunther constantly boasted of, is a worm shriveled into its nest of hair.
Worst of all, however, is Gunther’s face. Gone is the anger and the pride that had always animated his features. His mouth is open, the eyes shrunken and terrified as if he is witnessing some terrible vision on the ceiling above. A gurgling hiss rattles from his throat.
My mouth is dry. “Gunther? Can you hear me?”
His eyes wheel about until they find me. Even this small action seems painful.
I fetch the bottle from the table and hold it up for him to see. “I brought some brandy. For the pain.”
I think he understands. His eyes focus, become clear.
With a small flourish, I pull the cork and raise the bottle in a salute to his health. Then I guzzle down a hearty swallow of the stuff and stick the cork back.
Confusion clouds his darting eyes as I set the bottle aside. The bafflement drains into fear when I take the pillow from under his head. If the brave fisherman had but a fraction of his fabled strength, he would hurl me across the room. As it is, his one hand paws at mine like a weak kitten. I throw my weight against the pillow to stifle him, but still he thrashes. The stump of his severed arm wiggles up and down like a puppy dog’s tail. His body twists and flails, the bandages coming undone. Blood and worms spill over the bed sheet. I hear him mewling through the pillow. Is he calling out for Agnet or for his first wife, Isolde?
Smothering the life out of him takes a long time. My arms are limp from the effort of it when it is finally over. I lift the pillow away. His mouth gapes open, the eyes bald and bloodshot. If terror has a face, here it is.
“Who’s the hero now, Gunther?”
I want to feel exultant over this, but that is not to be. I feel nothing, in fact. Neither remorse nor triumph. I have despised Gunther with everything I have, but now that he is dead, that anger dissipates like smoke. I tell myself that I have been merciful by putting the harpooner out of his misery. I have freed Agnet from a life of grovelling poverty caring for half a husband. I want to feel like a hero from the old sagas, but what have I really accomplished here? I have smothered a cripple. It is no more heroic an act than drowning a kitten.
I draw the curtain, so I do not have to look at him. Settling into a chair, I place the brandy on the table and wait. When Agnet returns, I will break the unfortunate news to her. I will tell her how I had brought the brandy to ease her husband’s pain, only to find that I was too late. Poor Gunther has expired in his sickbed. She will be shocked, and she will cry. I will pour Agnet a dram of the brandy to settle her. My arms will hold her, my words will console her in her grief.
When the shock ebbs away, Agnet will dry her eyes and be relieved. She will even be grateful for my shoulder to cry on. I will take her gentle face in my hands and tell her that I will always be hers, that I have never stopped loving her and will cherish her until the day I die.
My knack for phantasy and woolgathering has always been a problem. My father often scolds me for daydreaming the hours away, my work neglected and undone. There are two worlds: the real one and the other that lives inside my head. If only I could stitch one to the other.
Agnet does not return. I don’t know how long I have sat here dreaming, but the shadows have grown thick, and a sharp smell is drifting up from behind the curtain. I open the door to find that night has fallen. The sky is clear and dotted with stars so green they glint like emeralds against ink. The moon is strong, washing the village in a silvery haze. Looking up, I see that she is full. A comet arcs past her face, scratching the velvet night with a pale scar that throbs and does not fade.
***
Where can she be at this late hour? Agnet is not one to shirk her duties or gallivant about. The only place I can think of is her parent’s house, up on the northern rind of the village where the forest begins. I make my way there, careful not to slip in the dark on the evil slime coating the street. Rounding the miller’s hut, I see old Ulric standing in his doorway. He seems agitated, and he holds a poker in his fist.
When I call to him, the old fisherman startles and raises the poker like a weapon. “Who’s there?”
“Ulric, it’s me. Kaspar. What’s wrong?”
The poker comes down, but he remains alert. Frightened. “Have you seen Sabine?”
His second daughter, a friend of my sister’s. As I come closer, I can see his face better in the light. The old man’s lip is swollen and cracked with dried blood.
“What happened?”
“Something has taken my Sabine,” he says. His rheumy eyes dart hither and yon, as if he expects an attack from the shadows.
He isn’t making sense. “Someone took her? Who?”
“No, no. The girl’s bewitched. Not herself. God preserve us.”
I touch his arm to calm him, but he flinches. Stumbles back. “Easy, Ulric. Tell me what happened.”
“She was sitting by the fire, the darning in her lap, when she became upset and animated about something. She said someone was singing and wasn’t it the most glorious sound we had ever heard. I heard nothing. My wife has been deaf for ages, and she heard nothing. Sabine dropped the stocking she’d been mending and went to the door. She said she had to know who was singing like an angel. When I tried to stop her, she became violent. Her eyes were like that of a wild animal. She knocked me to the floor and threatened to do the same to her mother. Can you imagine?”
“What on earth came over her?” I do not know Sabine Dulfgutter well, but she is a mild mouse of a girl.
“She stole my sword,” the old man says. He seems to deflate upon telling his tale, leaning against the doorframe to keep himself upright. “Do ye know how many generations that cutlass has been passed down? Sabine said she would gut me with it if I tried to stop her.”
“Go rest, Ulric. She’ll come back.” His wife comes to the door to guide her distraught husband inside.
“Ulric, which way did she go?”
His hand comes up, one gnarled fingerbone pointing south. “There. To the water.”
I wonder if Agnet is with Sabine. I thank him and make my way to the wharf. I slip twice, falling once to the rancid slime. When I turn out of the laneway to the open air of the bay, I see them. Agnet is there, along with Sabine, and even my sister. The silver light of the moon flashes, reflecting off the polished cutlass in Sabine’s hand.
They are lined up on the pier, every girl in the village. Eyes on the water, they watch the mermaid swim in the moonlight. Although I can hear nothing but the waves lapping the shore, I know that the mermaid is singing, and she is singing only to the assembled daughters of our cursed village.
18
THEY KNEEL ON the stone pier, hands folded in their laps as they gaze upon the mermaid in the bay. All silent, all enraptured by a song only they can hear. Some arcane ritual is being performed before my eyes, one that feels both holy and profane. My heart deadens at the sight of Agnet among them. I want to go to her, to bring her away from the others, but I dare not go any closer to the water. Not with the sea-woman out there.
The breeze skimming across the face of the water changes direction, and the girls all stand as one, the way the congregation rises at the conclusion of prayers. There are a few remaining fishing boats still tethered to the dock. I watch Agnet, my sister, and Sabine climb down into the boats and rummage around each vessel. They hand up tools and these are passed around to those waiting on the pier. There is an eerie martial precision to the way they march from the wharf and onto the thoroughfare that leads into town. As they move past my position, I see the tools they have taken from the skiffs. Knives and long hooks, harpoons and a club for braining fish. Sabine holds her father’s cutlass, while my sister clutches a machete that I recognized as belonging to Clovis.
Agnet holds an iron hook in her small hand as she falls in line at the end of this silent procession. I creep from my hiding place and take her arm. When she turns, her eyes are not her own, looking at me like she doesn’t know who I am.
I keep my voice to a whisper. “What are you doing? Why do you have the hook?”
She says nothing. Her head turns to the procession of girls who are now melting into the shadows. I have to shake her to bring her attention back to me.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
Has she suddenly been struck deaf? Has the mermaid taken her tongue?
“Agnet, listen to me. Something has happened. To Gunther.” I am out of breath and tripping on my own words. But she needs to know. “He’s dead. I went to check on him, and I found him cold. He suffers no more.”
Her reaction is a blink, but nothing more. No surprise, no tears. A lock of her hair falls across her gentle face, so I brush it behind her ear. The moon lights her eyes in a way that reveals something otherworldly and terrifying. This is not my Agnet, this is not the girl I have given my heart to. She is changed.
“Do you hear me? He’s gone. You are free.”
What has the mermaid done? What enchantment has stolen Agnet’s wits along with her tongue? She should be overjoyed to learn she is free from the brute she was forced to wed. I rattle her again, desperate to get through to her, to pierce this enchantment.
“Agnet, you are free. We are free. We can be together now. Without shame, without sin.”
Her reaction is that of someone stepping barefoot onto a hot coal. She tears her arm from my grip.
“What have you done?” Her eyes light up, but not in a kind way. “What have you done, Kaspar?”
I bungle a response. This is not going how I want it to. “I did what needed doing. It was merciful, I swear. But now you are free. You are saved.”
“Saved? From whom?” She pushes me away and turns to leave. “Go home, Kaspar. Your sister wants a word.”
I watch as she slips into the shadows. Out on the water, in the rippling moonlight, is the sea creature. Did she observe our exchange? I walk home, wanting nothing more to do with mermaids or ungrateful widows.
I find the door to the rectory open to the night air.
The house is empty, the fire in the hearth has gone cold. Where the hell is everyone? I call out for my sister, my father, my pinheaded brother. No reply comes.
I cross the yard and enter the church, calling their names. The first thing I see are the bones scattered on the floor. Our sacred sea monster has been vandalized. A few pieces still hang on the wall, but the remainder of the skeleton lies in pieces on the flagstones of the chancel. There is a mouse darting among the broken fragments.
That’s when I see father. Flat before the dais, and as still as stone. It’s as if he’s thrown himself to the floor, seeking mercy from the Almighty.
“Father, what’s wrong? Why are you on the floor?”
I do not see the blood until I step up into the chancel. A great puddle of it on the cold slab, glistening and still growing. Red lines trace the grout of the flagstones. His head is not there. The stump of neck is an obscene display of gristle and bone, his lifeblood dribbling out from the thick arteries.
The brandy in my stomach curdles and comes back up. On my knees, I wretch and cough in a greasy sweat. I am brainless for a long moment, unable to comprehend the thing lying on the floor behind me. My first fevered thought is to blame the mermaid. That she has somehow slithered her way into the church to murder our father. But that is ludicrous.
It isn’t until I hear the screaming that my shattered brain clicks upon the true culprit. The screams come from outside, and from every house. Shrieks of bald terror and calamities of violence. I hear names among the screams, pleas to stop whatever is happening.
Lilja, no!
Heloise, stop!
No, Miriam! For the love of God, stop!
Bryndis, no! NO!
That last voice. Pip. I stagger outside, looking for my brother. I hear him cry out once more, somewhere on the far side of the church. I lurch around the stone wall to the yard, but there is no Pip there. No Bryndis.
Bryndis.
Could our sister really have done this wickedness to Father? Bryndis is no fainting flower, but she is gentle with all living things. I can no more picture her speaking a harsh word to Father, let alone docking his head from his neck. It is too nightmarish to consider, and yet some twinge in my belly tells me it is true.
I call out for my brother, but immediately shut my mouth when shadows pass over the wall of the church. At the sound of footfalls in the lane, I hide behind a tombstone and make myself very small. As much as I cannot stop trembling, I force myself to peek out from behind the stone. The village daughters emerge from their cottages and hovels and into the streets. The tools in their hands drip with blood, the metal clotted with scraps of hairy scalp.
I run, scuttling away as quietly as I can. Searching for Pip but steering clear of the women now stalking through town. Sidling along walls and clinging to shadows, I make my way to the wharf. There I see a gangly creature with thin limbs and an oversize head, pacing up and down the stone pier. Pip, in a panic and veering dangerously close to where the wharf drops to the water below. On the moonlit ripples, I see the sailfin of the monster break the surface.
Bolting into the open, I snatch my brother away from the edge just as the water churns and boils. She surfaces in the sea foam, glaring with those double-lidded eyes as I drag Pip to safety.
Pip is ragged with tears. He sputters and babbles, making no sense. The only word I can decipher is our sister’s name. Did he witness our father’s murder? Did he watch the desecration of his body?
I pull him close to stifle his trembling. His runny nose dampens my collar as he shrinks into a shivering kitten. His voice hitches into a single question, repeated over and over.
Why?
When the first of the village girls steps into view, I clamp a hand over his mouth to silence him.
They make their way to the pier in a silent procession. Their bare feet on the cobblestones are painted red. Every daughter of our little hamlet passes by the shadow where Pip and I squat in terror. Every unmarried girl, every widow.
Pip buckles and goes into a fit when he sees what they are carrying in their clenched fists. I cannot hold him still with my ruined hand and he turns, seeing the horror in full. He sees the husks dripping gore along the stones. Heloise clutches her father’s severed head by the beard, Sabine holds Ulric’s noggin by one large ear. Father’s head is gripped at the scalp by our sister. I see Agnet stride past with Gunther’s head tucked under one arm like a gourd harvested from a garden.
Pip goes limp, fainting in terror. He slips through my useless hands like an eel. I want to scream, but my mouth is chalk and will make no sound. All I can do is watch the procession file out onto the pier where the mermaid glides across the bay. She is waiting for them.
A plop and a splash. The first head is tossed in. Then another and another, until the decapitated heads of all the men are pitched into the harbor in some pagan tribute to the sea goddess.
I unstick my tongue and hiss at my brother. “Pip, wake up. We have to get out of here.”
There is no reply. My hands are empty. Pip is gone.
Distracted by the horrific ceremony on the pier, I do not notice him crawling away. There he squats, rocking back and forth with his head in his hands. Less than a yard from the water’s edge. Vulnerable.
The sea erupts in a volcano of spray and saltwater. The mermaid bursts forth like the deity of some time before man ever was. Webbed fingers snatch Pip by the hair and pull him under the waves before he can even cry out. One of his tattered shoes clatters on the stone. The rest of my brother is gone.
I bury my face in my hands, telling myself that this is all a nightmare, a dream that I will soon wake from. The cry of the gulls fills the silence, along with the gentle wash of the surf on the beach. And beneath that everyday, mundane sound, I swear to God I hear a voice singing in a strange tongue. It is the most sublime thing I have ever heard.
19
MOTHER WAS A gifted storyteller. Every night, she would gather us close in the tallow light and tell us a story before bed. There were stories about knights finding enchanted swords or princesses escaping a witch’s dungeon. Some were romances where the lovers were kept apart by wars or petty gods, but always united at the end and happily wed. Sometimes even death could not keep the lovers apart.
Mother had a knack for weaving her stories to a fevered pitch that left us breathless in fright and cowering under her skirts. And yet, no matter how dire the turns of the story, mother always thrilled us with twists and surprises, always, always stitching her stories closed with a happy knot. The downtrodden were lifted to glory, the underling stableboy made a knight by his king. The monster was defeated, the hero rewarded for her bravery with some fabled treasure.
Pip, being the youngest, would nestle in mother’s lap like a bird and listen in holy rapture as she spun her tales.
When mother disappeared, it was the stories that we missed most, I think. Pip had the hardest time accepting that, not only was mother gone, but so too were her fairy tales. At bedtime, he would light the candle and wait for mother to come, refusing to bed down until he had a story. Bryndis tried to pacify him, but her stories came out confusing and contradictory. I tried my hand at spinning yarns, but I would get lost in the plot and could never thread my way to the happy ending.
