The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror(9)

That evening, Paul was using her mother’s soap to scrub the dishes in her sink and was up to her elbows in foam when the godmother appeared in the doorway. Paul briefly dropped one knee in the lightest possible genuflection without releasing the dish in her hand.

“When you need something next,” the godmother said, “you do not go to her. You will come to me.”

Paul shrugged. “It is no concern of yours, I think,” she said. “I have rejected nothing from you, nor sought any of her favors. What I am given, I use, and give thanks for it, as you have taught me.”

For a moment the only sound in the kitchen was the light splashing of Paul’s hands in the sink. Then the godmother was at her elbow, spilling a low and steady stream of words in her ear.

“You cannot continue to take from the dead without incurring a debt you cannot possibly pay. My yoke is easy, and my burden is light; the yoke of the dead is not so easily thrown off. What you need, I will provide. No one else.”

“You do provide for me,” Paul said. “I seek nothing from her but shade at noon, and yet I cannot turn away a gift given unasked.”

“Then you do not love me,” the godmother cried. “You do not love me, and I have loved you with my whole and living heart from the first day I mothered you, and I will perish for the want of you.”

The godmother plunged her hand into the sink and groped blindly until she found Paul’s fingers, and clutched at them. “You will kill me,” she said again. “Have I not given you more than your sisters, although you love me less? Have you not the privilege of sharing my own bed? Do I not appoint you in the best clothes, the first pair of new shoes, the best tools, the first choice of food, when you have earned food? Who else’s hand would I clasp against my own? Who else have I offered my heart to but you? Yet you spurn it, and offer me stares, and dawdle in the fields rather than sit at my honored side at table. If I thought it would bring a smile to your face, I would let myself slip underground like your first mother, to have you willingly climb under my branches, to know you love me.”

Paul let her hands go slack under the water. “I love you,” she said, and the godmother clasped her all the harder, stroking between each knuckle with her long fingers.

“How do you love me?” the godmother said. “How can one be so young, so lovely, and so unfeeling?”

“I will come to you,” Paul said. “I will come to you for everything.”

The godmother smiled in great triumph, and her fingers encircled Paul’s wrists tightly. “And you will bring me the gifts she gives you? Not hoard them to yourself? Not drive me off, as some stranger unfit to share your joy?”

“I will bring you everything.”

“Not to come to me,” the godmother said, “suggests you are not prepared to be grateful to me. It smacks of ingratitude. Am I not your proper godmother? Is not my power sufficient? There is nothing I would not give you, if you would only acknowledge my right to grant you favors. What is it that I ask of you, that you find so impossible? What have I only ever asked of you?”

“To be good,” Paul said. “To be a good girl, a good daughter, and to return your love honorably.” The godmother looked at her with a long and searching look, and nodded, and broke her hold, and shook her hands dry over the soaking-water.

The godmother handed her a dish from the drying rack. “This is dirty. Clean it again.” Paul thrust it back into the sink and scrubbed again, then handed it back for inspection. The godmother swiped it with the dishcloth that hung from her belt and stacked it neatly with the others.

“Everything you need, I will provide,” the godmother said again. “All I ask of you is to love me and to be good. Are you prepared to meet those terms?”

“I am prepared,” Paul said, and allowed herself to lean a little against the edge of the sink.

“You need salt,” the godmother said—it was not a question—and flashed something small and white in her hand. Paul shook her head and pressed her lips together.

“You have been crying,” the godmother said in her most businesslike tone, “and have been at half rations for nine days. Your head aches, and you cannot eat, and you are clutching at the sink to stay upright.”

Paul nodded, and in an instant the godmother’s hands flew to Paul’s face, one at her throat and one on her lips. Paul felt the familiar prickle on the back of her tongue, and tried to swallow. The hand at her throat stroked gently downward as she gulped and heaved over the sink. “I can’t,” she said, gasping, and then there was a glass of water at her lips and a hand in her hair, and she accepted both gratefully. Finally she swallowed, and felt the prickle blossom into a hot, hysterical pool in her stomach.

“Are you going to be sick?” the godmother asked, brushing the back of her hand over Paul’s forehead. “Shall I fetch a bucket?”

“No,” Paul said, and shook her head tightly. She straightened up and kept her hands close at her side. “No, I’m not going to be sick.”

“Are you quite all right now?” the godmother said, and her voice was gentle.

“Yes,” Paul said. “I’m sorry. I’m all right now.”

*

It did not happen that the members of the parish gathered together often; there were monsters on the earth in those days. But the priest’s son was in need of a wedding, and the neighborhood offered up their children for his selection.