The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror(12)

“I am sorry,” Paul said.

“Your sisters’ feet,” the godmother said, yanking at Paul’s sleeves, “who hobbled them? Their hopes—who trammeled them, that your clumsy hands might be stuffed threefold with gifts? Who wedged their bloody feet in hob-nailed shoes, that you might walk the freer? Who did all this and more for you?”

“You did,” Paul said. She did not look at her sisters sitting quietly at the kitchen table, hands hidden in their laps.

“I, I, I,” the godmother crowed, and smiled, and settled back down onto her heels. “Who has mothered you better? Who has mothered you else?”

“None have,” Paul said.

“Who could marry you better? Who has sought your heart, as I have sought it? Not for an evening, not for a conversation—your heart, whole and dangerous.”

“None,” Paul said.

The godmother smiled, and pulled again at her sleeves. “Paul does not deserve such fine things to wear,” she said to no one in particular. “Paul should not go about in clothes she is not suited for.” Paul felt the fabric molt and sag into something loathsomely soft; she knew rather than felt the press of dead fur against her, and little dead mice peeled from her skin and dropped onto the floor.

*

When Paul woke next, she was married and in bed in the priest’s house, now hers and her family’s, too. The window had been left open, and she could see out over the path leading up to the front door.

She rose up on one elbow and took further stock. The door was open, and the hallway was full of low, earnest voices. Her husband was seated at the desk in the corner and smiled when she looked at him. “You’re awake,” he said. “You’re awake, and you are married to me.”

Paul smiled back.

“I’ve got to confess something,” her husband said to her. “I know it’s a bit early to be confessing to you, but I figure I ought to get into the habit. I’ve had your things sent for. I should have waited for you to wake and ask you directly, but I’ve never had occasion to—ah—wake someone after giving them cause for sleep, and I didn’t like to disturb you. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” Paul said, and meant it. “Te absolvo.”

“A shriving wife,” he said, looking enormously pleased with himself. “Or a shriving husband, if you’d like. I didn’t know if you wanted to be a wife or not, so I guessed, but we can still change it. I’m trained for both, if that helps.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Paul said again. “I don’t mind anything. God, but it’s nice out today.”

“I know what you mean,” he said. “Listen, give me five minutes to finish attending to this, and then let’s have a proper fight about which of us gets to be wife. Let’s have a terrible argument. Practice all the names you’re going to call me.”

“In five minutes, then,” Paul agreed. “Married life certainly is orderly.” She looked out the window and saw a black figure struggling over the horizon, resolving itself more clearly with every step through the haze of the day’s great heat. At first there was only a head visible over a squirming, flickering mass; gradually the torso solidified and was eventually joined by a pair of legs, as it made its way up the main road. It paused briefly under a great cypress tree, nearly vanishing in the blackness below its branches, then resumed its journey under the sunlight to the front door. Paul did not need to see the figure’s face to know it could read, and write a little when the situation called for it; could walk in the noonday sun without fainting; commission deacons; haggle with the grocer; perform minor miracles; turn a dog into a man for upward of three hours; cast out territorial spirits; slaughter a chicken without spilling a drop of blood; initiate mysteries; and name over one thousand neurotoxins. The godmother was terribly useful to any household fortunate enough to hold her. She was going to be a great help to Paul in her new position. Paul was terribly lucky to have her.

Paul bounded out of bed, her face warm and cold by turns, and pressed her hands against her temples. Her lungs seized at nothing, two empty fists in her chest. There was no air in this room, no air in the world. Her arms bloomed all over in hot pinpricks, the insides of her eyelids exploded into dark stars, and somewhere outside those footsteps came closer to her door. “Ah,” she cried softly, “I shall be sick, I shall be sick, I shall be sick—”

“What is it?” her husband asked, crouching at her feet, pressing cool hands against hers. “What’s the matter? Can you speak? Can I bring you water?” Someone near the door slipped out and returned with a glass a moment later. He brought it to her lips, and she drank deeply, and then fixed him with her steadiest smile.

“I’m all right,” she said, catching her breath. “I’m sorry, everyone. I’m quite all right now.”





THREE

Fear Not: An Incident Log

In the beginning, when I was first making appearances to mortals, most of them died before I could speak the first word of truth. Just from the sight of me—they fell right over. Great burly men and women too, not like the kind you see nowadays. I mean, real antediluvian hulks with chests the size of wine barrels and legs like cedar trunks. Their consciences would seize right up; they were that certain I’d come to find them out. And they’d give up the ghost—practically flung the ghost right at me—rather than listen to a word of what I had to say. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and the distribution and installation of wisdom is the task with which all powers and principalities have been charged, not excepting myself. Fear being the operative word, and not panic, which is why most of us have learned to start each incident log with a command like “Fear not,” or “Dread not,” or “Be thou not dismayed,” or some other variation thereof; most people are full of the beginning of wisdom already, and appearing before them without some form of reassurance is liable to result in total system overload, followed shortly by shutdown.