Redder than Blood

  “You see?” asked Cristena’s husband excitedly.

  Cristena did. It was only a case of time, and already she was leaden and self-possessed.

  Finally, after only twenty minutes, sabotaged by the sun-lamp, the lid of dense snow had melted off and the sides of the grave gave way. The upheaval in the earth pushed from below, and the Snow-Drop came out once more from the dark.

  The cryogenic cold had preserved her flawlessly. The pressure on her spine made her sit slowly up in the grave to the astonished wonder of the three gaping men. And she was as ever white as snow, black as wood, and her pale red mouth opened and the bit of apple, also exactly preserved, fell out. And so she sat there exquisitely, with her lips parted and her eyes closed, dead as a door-nail, until the men turned to Cristena with their questions.

  Magpied

  (Translated from the Germanic-Alurguric Poem of the Same Name)

  His clothes were those of the magpie—

  Black and white.

  He entered the town with the brown sky

  Of first night.

  The traveler, in garments of white and black, enters the elegant and stone-built town at evening, but discovers the streets are full of rowdy youths and children, running and shrieking, drinking alcohol copiously, and doing battle with each other. Unable to pass through the pack, and sometimes receiving blows, he stands staring:

  Like casques and masks, lacking all mind,

  Their faces.

  So much red-pride-flushed and drunk-gushed blind.

  No traces

  Were there, of care, or sanity,

  Living shells—

  Unlike births of Man, humanity;

  These—From hells.

  A man then rushes out of a house, and drags the traveler back inside with him, locking the door once they are within. He warns the traveler that these young persons rule the town after sunset, breaking into stores for purposes of robbery, hunting for stray older people in order to attack them; vomiting on the roadway:

  You, stranger, such danger were in

  On the street,

  The hordes of these young—you among—spin

  And retreat!

  Beware of their arrogant slights,

  Dirty words,

  Their scuffles, each trick, broadcast sick, fights,

  Scattered turds.

  The traveler remains that night in the comparative safety of the man’s house, whose windows—as are all those in the town—are shuttered up after dark.

  Sleep though is constantly disturbed by the screams and yowls of the young outside. And once some of the creatures get up on the roof, hurling first stones, then feces down the chimney—a regular urban occurrence, his host assures the traveler.

  The next morning:

  When pale the sail of the dawn rose,

  Fair and gold,

  They broke the first fast, tumult passed; close

  The host told,

  In low tones, slow, how the anthem

  To loved boys

  And girls—as if royal—did so spoil them

  They to noise

  Went, vile deeds, while—in enough time—

  They ruled all,

  And nightmared each night, till new light climb

  The day’s wall.

  By day the young, it seems, sleep off their excesses in various purloined roosts. None go home, for which their former parents and guardians are very grateful. A modicum of business and normal life resumes in the town daily, but interrupted always by the necessity of cleaning the streets and byways of the stinking mess in which the town’s children nightly have left them.

  At the traveler’s request, his host then takes him to the house of the Mayor. This fellow, to begin with, makes excuses, but in the end breaks down and weeps. Hundreds of adults gather, also in tears. From adoring them the townsfolk have come to hate, loathe, dread, and be terrified of their young. They have been driven half mad and have no idea any more what to do.

  The traveler then, flexing the snow and ebony magpie wings of his sleeves, makes the Mayor and the townspeople an offer.

  He can play upon a magical pipe and:

  This reed with speed, such is its sway,

  Will subdue,

  And mesh in a net like a debt they

  That harm you.

  To wit, each chit and child uncouth,

  Snared in steel,

  And locked as in jail, each most bale youth,

  Till earth reel.

  For some subsequent hours the town debates with itself a dilemma many parents must perhaps, now and then, acknowledge, whether they wish their offspring good or ill—or elsewhere entirely, and forever.

  But eventually the sun tilts toward the west, the sky flames, and bothering sounds once more start to filter up from round about, reminiscent of wild beasts waking. Although it is a fact no beast, however maddened or savage, can approach—let alone surpass—the sometime evils of mankind.

  Then the townsfolk hurry to the magpie traveler and entreat him, giving over everything into his hands—before once again dashing into their homes, putting the boards and shutters up at their windows, and bolting fast their doors.

  Left alone upon the thoroughfare the piper, standing then in the evening’s final rays, seems not quite as he has been. He is taller, perhaps, and his face less evident, and his garments both blacker and more white, while in his hand, the pipe he has spoken of gleams with a thin and silvery sheen, though it was surely only of wood, and nothing at all special in its looks:

  Then lout and loutess, ever quick,

  In a crowd,

  Come armed with their flasks and dark tasks sick,

  Laughing loud.

  Nevertheless, immediately, before even the road is properly filled up by the horde, a peculiar music commences:

  So soft that often, sure, none hears,

  Faint as sighs,

  Yet thundered like drums, still it comes; ears

  Burn—and eyes.

  Each walk all talk has lost; all sound

  Now quite done.

  A massive full tide, vast miles wide, ground

  And air—one.

  Those that squint through shutter-cracks or keyholes hear and see a miraculous gleaming, which accumulates. And they see, too, how the demonic young are instantly snared inside it—as promised—and made and kept dumb. There they stand, unvocal and motionless, unprotesting, gazing, and gaping like things mesmerized by the glare of a colossal snake, or some unthinkable sorcerous spell, which supposedly it is.

  And when the magpie traveler, the piper piping on, moves off and up the street, the horde parts to let him by, as never would they, or have they for years, any creature other than themselves. And when he has passed by, stupefied as somnambulists, they troop after him. They do not speak or call, they do not screech or fight or throw up their drink. There is no upheaval. Only the flagons and bottles fall from their hands and bleed stolen liquor on the lane.

  So, as the shadings of night begin to seal the avenues, the town’s children ebb away after the piper, away through the town and out of it, up into the high hills beyond:

  The skies, their size with darkness lave,

  Fill the jar

  Of town, closing black, front to back, save

  Just one star.

  Void is all this, and no last noise,

  Single form,

  No roaring girls reign, no profane boys.

  Speechless storm.

  The troublesome young are never seen again. Never heard of. They have vanished, like dried rain, or blown dust. Not even a chip of bone, not a footprint, to mark their passing, or their being. Only the dropped flasks for a while spilling wine.

  Perhaps there are maybe one, or three, nine or thirteen children left, so
ns, daughters. But these are those that never went out to join the nasty revels. These would drink socially among their own families, indoors, and sing there, or read, or discuss proper matters, properly; unusual children old beyond their years and having, perhaps, parents more than usually lovable.

  After the filthy sea of the miscreants is gone, these few thirteen or so children and young people are respected and reverenced in lieu of the rest. They are held up as examples, and accept this modestly, and kindly.

  As for any of the adults who thereafter pine again to produce offspring, they guard sternly against the desire, saying it is a brutish one, and they are not “mere” animals, and will resist. Which they do. Instead they breed and adopt intelligent and pretty rats, whose playfulness, geniality, and warm fur entirely satisfy any parental urge:

  With red and bred black coats, or white,

  They give joy,

  And yearning hearts fill through furred skill, bright

  Rat-girl,—boy.

  As for the Magpie, the traveler, the piper, he too is never heard nor seen there again. Except in legend, or the mind’s eye. Yet. . . .

  Well hid; where did he send clod, bitch,

  To their doom?

  To some cliffs high brink? The sea’s sink? Which

  Unworld tomb?

  Or to a new world, tolerant

  Of vile youth.

  To hearts, much too wise more to prize rant—

  Than love truth.

  For where—foul, fair—is childhood lured,

  By what?—Fuss?

  Or pipe’s shadow sob, perhaps obscured:

  Jealous, us?

  Centuries after, it seems, when taxed by other communities on the disappearance of its children, the town lied, and blamed an itinerant, magpied piper, who—they said—had spirited the perfect youth of the place away, from sheer meanness.

  But it is a fact, they still love their rats the best.

  She Sleeps in a Tower

  THROUGH THE DARK wood, the man rides on his horse. Birds sing sometimes in the heavy boughs, among the brackish leaves, but he is not looking out for birds. Nor for hares, though once a pale one ran across his path.

  Then, he reaches the clearing. It is as they had described it. The fallen tree and beyond, the stone sundial, and there the ruined garden, in which still the tall and somber roses grow; and from which they have mounted up into the trees. Up the walls of the towers the roses have risen also, among the black-green ivy. Roses with terrible thorns.

  And presently, the old woman, the hag, comes creeping out in her gray old mantle.

  She bows low. “Good day, sir prince. Do you know where it is you’ve come to?”

  “The tower,” he says, the man on the horse.

  “And do you know the story?”

  Excited, the man twitches in the saddle.

  “Tell me, old dame.”

  “A young girl, little more than a child. A princess. Bewitched. She lies in the tower, sleeping a sleep that may not be broken—save by her true prince.”

  “I’ll wake her,” says the man. He swings from the horse. “If she’s young, and beautiful.”

  “Oh yes. There is the way then. Through that door. You must cut your path with your knife.”

  As he passes her, the man puts a silver coin into the old woman’s hand. It is the usual amount.

  • • •

  Sex isn’t for women. I always knew. My mother told me first. No, sex is for men. But women are the vessels.

  You have to survive. God says you must, and then God tests you by making it very hard.

  My father used to beat my mother, she was always black and blue, and sometimes he’d lay into me, but never so much. My uncle, my father’s brother, used to protect me. “Get behind me,” he’d say. Or, “Run to the well-house. I’ll tell him you’ve gone into the wood.”

  When I was ten, and in the well-house, a year or so after my mother had died, my uncle came and sat beside me.

  He told me I was a pretty girl and he played with my hair. When he put his hand on the little mound of my coming breast, I knew at once what he wanted and what would happen . . . and I knew it was only what must always happen.

  So when he suggested it, I lay down, and first he put his finger inside me, and then he put his penis in. It was agonizing, but I didn’t cry, and he said afterward I was his special little girl and he’d never let any harm come to me.

  He did protect me, too, from my father. But one day my father broke his leg, and it went bad and he died. I was nearly thirteen by then, and my uncle was losing interest in me, so he married me to a rich man’s son, but the son wasn’t right in the head, so no questions were asked.

  That was how I came to live in the grand house with the three towers, which belonged to my husband.

  My husband, who was a booby, was also hearty in bed, and very big, so I was glad I had already been with my uncle.

  Inside a few months I was in the family way, and when I gave birth to a daughter, the rich man, my husband’s father, cast us off, saying I was a slut and worthless. My husband, though a fool, would often beat me as my father had. However, because he had no mind, I could now and then outwit him and keep the baby safe.

  In the next two years I had another two, both girls. By then the house was going to wrack and ruin, the roof leaking and ivy growing in through the walls. Great stones had fallen out, and all the servants had gone away, but for one old woman. She hated me, and usually tried to poison me. In the end, she made a mistake, and poisoned my moron husband instead. Then she ran off, and I was all alone with my three little girls.

  I lived as best I could, but I found the only way I could pay for anything was by opening my legs. And so I did. A great many men had me, and every year I grew thinner and more wrinkled, and my hair turned gray and was like straw.

  But my little girls were bonny. They were dressed only in rags, but their hair shone like copper and their skins were fresh and white as milk.

  One night there was a storm, the rain rushed and split the leaves and in the house it rained too, and up in the three old towers the rats rattled in the leaves and thorns that had broken through the walls.

  A stranger came knocking near midnight. When I let him in, he stood before the poor fire and said, “I’d heard there was a woman here served men. But you’re an old crone. Where is she?” I said, “I fear she’s gone away, sir.” Just then my eldest daughter, ten years of age, came into the hall. She had been out gathering sticks to dry for the fire, and rain hung like crystals in her hair. “What’s this?” said the man. “This is nice. I’ll take her.”

  My first thought was No. Most mothers would think this, although it wasn’t wise. But then he took out a silver piece and put it on the table. “I’ll give you that for a go with her. But I like it a particular way.”

  What he wanted was that she go up and lie on a bed and pretend to be asleep. And then he would slip in and mount her, and at the end she would wake up and fling her arms around him and cry out he was her long lost love.

  I could see she was listening carefully, so I took her aside. I told her it would hurt, but that she must pretend to be happy, and praise him. She was always a good girl.

  When he came down he was sullen, but many of them are, after they’ve come, so I didn’t worry, and indeed he let me keep the silver piece. My daughter had survived, though she bled for a week. She was cheerful, however, and boasted to the other girls that she’d been clever. Then they wanted to do it, too.

  Well, their chance came for that, though not right away. A month later another man came knocking. It was afternoon, and he was pleasant enough. He said he’d heard a girl lay asleep who could be woken by a kiss—that was the story which had gone round apparently, rather like some of the old legends of the wood. And he said that the girl was in a tower.

  S
o I asked my eldest if she’d go up into the west tower. She agreed, and she lay on the old bed there that had been my husband’s mother’s bed. She said, my girl, she was glad when the traveler came up, because, lying so quiet as she had to, the rats were skulking out. But he scattered them with his boot, and cut the thorns away from the bed—in a fortnight, they were back again.

  It went on from there. And the story became a little more elaborate. And, as time went by, my other girls . . . well, they know the way of it, how life is.

  I come out to them in the garden, and I ask, do they know where they’ve come to. And they don’t say, “The brothel,” no, they play along, these kinky fellows. They say they’ve come to the tower. And some of them even say, “Is she sleeping here?” And, of course, she always is. Three shes. One in each tower. I go by how they talk of her youth, whether they want the youngest now, who’s ten, or the middle girl of eleven, or my eldest, who’s just twelve years.

  We never have any trouble, and I’ve never been short-changed. Once even a rich man came and gave me a piece of gold. Perhaps he thought that was the fee, and I, obviously, didn’t say No.

  • • •

  The man climbs up the stone stair of the east tower, his heart hammering. He lops the deadly murderous thorns with his long steel knife, but he breathes fast from hope, not exertion.

  At last he reaches the wooden door, and thrusts it wide. A mad skitter of rats.

  He takes the chamber in. Even in the summer light it is damp and chill, yet the roses have blossomed in the walls, and all about the mildewed bed. And on the bed she lies. Oh . . . but she is lovely.

  Slim as a wand, upon a cloud of dark red gleaming hair. Her skin like cream. Her hands crossed below her bosom—and oh, she is so young, only the faintest swelling there, like two sweet kisses.

  She wears, she princess, a dress, of white silk, a little stained and worn, but this he does not see. In any case, she has been sleeping years—decades—perhaps a century, awaiting the true touch of love.

  He goes to the bed and pulls away her skirt—easy, it might have been arranged for him to do it.