IGMS Issue 15 (12 page)

Fresh and Smoked Fish, Whale Meat

Spermaceti Lamp Oil, Whalebone Stays

Many more products of the sea.

Hook and Net, Outer Ring, Docks Central

That night I dreamed I was in my nightgown, standing before a door in an empty room filling with frigid water. The water rose to my ankles before I realized the key that would open the door hung from a leather cord around my neck. As the numbing water licked my ankles and the tops of my feet, I removed the key, only to find that the key didn't open the lock. Nearby sat a heavy, ironbound chest. I quickly tried the key as the water tickled my shins -- dear God, it was cold -- and inside was another key. My fingers shook so badly I could hardly fit the new key into the door. This didn't work either. Behind me, another ironbound chest had appeared. I worked frantically, opening chest after chest, each of the keys failing to open the door; all the while the water crept up my thighs and hips and stomach, until I was forced to duck my head under water in order to try the door or open the new chests.

I woke with a gasp and a body-heaving jerk.

The sun had yet to rise. I was cold and sweaty despite the warmth of the blankets.

Close enough to dawn, I thought, while shivering at the memory of the dream.

I swept the shop and dusted the honey jars. Joseph ducked in shortly after dawn to let me know that two ships had come early to trade. He remained in the doorway, looking at me as if I were a cracked china doll ready to fall to pieces. I shooed him out and fussed over the shop one last time.

Years ago ships wouldn't have left harbor until the village floated close enough to make it a day's sail or less, but the wares of Crucialis had built a keen reputation, and merchants wanted to cherry pick the goods before the common man could get their hands on them.

More to the village's favor, I thought.

I opened the shop door and sat with a cup of blackberry tea and my needlepoint, waiting for buyers to wander along the boardwalk.

I took the ointment and rubbed it into the bee sting. My thoughts wandered, and a vision of holding the hand of a child breezed through my mind. It was a momentary glimpse, like a twinkling of the sun through the verdant leaves of a maple. The child's wrist was marked by a mole. I bore no such mark myself, so I tried to think through the many Sundays at the village square where I would sit and watch the children play on the lawn. But I couldn't remember any of them having a mole. Then again, why would I? I'd never bothered to look for such a thing.

Shadows darkened my doorway, and an older couple entered. I clapped the lid back on the tin of ointment and waited as they wandered, inspecting my wares, adjusting like land lubbers as the shop creaked and swayed in time with the waves. The woman smoothed her earthy green dress while inspecting the honey. The man stood with hands shoved deeply into his pockets, looking at nothing in particular while pointedly ignoring both his wife and me.

They weren't here for dried flowers, I knew, nor flax thread, nor honey. They were here for my candles.

"May I help you?" I asked.

They traded uncomfortable glances. Then the man cleared his throat. "I heard word that you have bees . . ."

The woman stepped forward. "That you can help a man forget."

I smiled as kindly as I could. "You heard right." And I waited. I had to hear the story.

It was the woman who spoke. "You see, my father . . . My mother died a few months back. Fifty years they were married, and now that she's gone he's lost the will to live. He sits home, stares at the ceiling, doesn't want to eat. He's wasting away, and we just thought . . ."

I shrugged. "The candles can help, but there's a steep price to pay. You have to understand what his mind will do. It's a resilient thing, and when it finds a gap, it will bridge it. He'll no longer recognize you as his daughter --" I turned to the man "-- nor you as his son-in-law."

The woman seemed shocked; nearly everyone did when they learned the truth. "But he's my father . . ."

"Don't worry, dear. He'll remember. Your mother will simply be missing. He'll think of you as a close friend, like a daughter but not quite so. You'll see the changes in little ways. He'll be distant from you. Cordial. He'll ask after your children, but more out of politeness than true interest. He'll come to your house for holiday dinners, but might not invite you to his."

I waited for the words to sink in. The husband stood now at the entrance to the shop, his face troubled. The wife, however, smiled, a fleeting thing, and nodded to me.

"I require one hair from your mother, the longer the better."

The woman pulled a small linen bag from her purse and held it out. "It's the longest I could find."

"You know the price?"

"We do," she said.

I accepted the bag with the hair in it. "Come back in three hours."

The couple were the only unusual customers that day, but I still sold a sizable amount of honey and boot polish.

I set the beeswax to melting, and in between customers carefully braided the hair the woman had left into a flaxen wick. Then I dipped the wick into the melted wax over and over, slowly building its layers until the candle was complete.

When the couple returned, I told them to make sure her father was alone while the candle was burning; leaving it in his room while he slept would be best.

They gave me their money and took the candle. Neither of them thanked me.

WARM and COLD HERBED and SALTED Baths

SHAMPOOING, Shaves, and Haircuts Given

Purity Bath & Barber, Outer Ring, Due West, Adjoining the Guiding Light Hotel

After the ships left, I walked along the canals to the Childress's. Rose was the village's midwife; if anyone would know about a child with a mole, it would be her.

We sat in rocking chairs as the sun touched the horizon, sipping hot toddies from porcelain cups and watching the wind play among the flowering cucumber and cantaloupe. Rose wore a calico dress -- pretty fabric, but she sewed her dresses too tight, and the neckline was altogether too revealing. She was staring at the knitted shawl I'd just given her.

"Do you like it?" I asked.

Rose gave a half-hearted smile. "I can't think of what I've done to deserve it."

I didn't return the smile. We both knew I'd given it to her because of the cut of her dress. "You'd like them if you only gave them half a chance."

Rose folded the shawl and set it on the grass near her feet. "Let's not start that again."

"It's for your own good."

"Susanna, I'm asking nicely."

I stared at Rose, my blood rising, but I stopped myself. Rose never responded to directness. I'd make her a different type of shawl, perhaps a nice cornflower blue.

After the sun had set -- and my temper had cooled -- I broached the subject of my bee sting and the events that had followed.

"A mole?" Rose asked.

"Yes, here." I pointed to my wrist, spilling a bit of my drink in the process. Perhaps I should have stopped at one.

Rose laughed. She had a heavy laugh, like a man. "That's all you have is a mole?"

"I'm afraid so."

Rose shook her head. "No, dear, I don't recall."

"It seemed so real . . ."

Rose winked. "Dreams have a way of doing that, don't they?"

I smiled, trying not to look at Rose's disgraceful hemline, which was practically up to her armpits. "I know it's foolish, but I can't shake the feeling that it really happened, that it wasn't a dream at all."

"Then look this Sunday. If you find a match, you can put the mystery to rest."

I nodded. Church would be a good place to look, indeed.

I avoided the ointment for several days, dearly hoping the dreams would stop -- hoping, in fact, that the visions would stop as well. It seemed to work, for I couldn't remember my dreams after I woke each morning. I did, however, have an undefined, anxious feeling that sat at the base of my gut and stewed all day, as well as feelings of yearning and loneliness I'd never experienced before.

I started to forget things now and again. This was to be expected, and I made up for it by writing the important things in a journal. I
usually
remembered where the journal was.

Pastor David was in rare form that Sunday -- his voice was resonant, his words vengeful -- but my mind was so scattered that I couldn't focus on any of it. I kept studying the mothers around the hall, especially Jane Skolfield with her two daughters, Mary and Alice. Mary had just turned eleven; she was bouncing in the pew, praying the sermon would end so the celebration on the village green could begin. Jane, every so often, would shush Mary, but a moment later she would absently smooth her daughter's hair down.

That simple gesture nearly made me cry.

After prayers I attended the party. It gave me a perfect opportunity to inspect the girls' wrists. The green was actually a ring of barges around the church, each lashed to the next in the chain. Rock and soil and grass filled their interiors. Thirteen girls, ranging from five to seventeen, wove colorful ribbons around the maypole set into the barge on the backside of the church. I sat on a wooden bench, watching them. As the ribbons wound their way ever lower, a feeling of discomfort grew within me, especially when I was watching the older girls.

I made a fool of myself going up to every girl, casually inspecting their wrists while trying to keep the conversation with their parents light. I wondered if Joseph had talked, because the mothers seemed to be choosing their words carefully, and they sent furtive glances my way when they thought I wasn't watching. But whatever Joseph had or hadn't done, none of the girls bore a mark that matched my dreams.

I returned home to my garden, glad to be alone.

I sat in a hanging chair Joseph had built for me, the one I used to watch the sunsets and my bees. They were active, flitting about the flax and blackberry bushes. I bid several of them to fly nearer. It was something I'd found I could do from time to time, when the feeling was right. It was a secret I'd kept from everyone, and it was immensely comforting, the fact that it had returned so soon after the taxing experience on the green.

The summoned bees traced patterns in the air above my lap. They looked like a herd of porpoises, leaping and diving among the waves. One landed on my knee, and I placed my hand next to it, feeling bad that one of its brood mates had died in stinging me. It crawled onto the back of my hand, tickling my skin. The feeling of control, so strong a moment ago, faded like a comforting breeze that would soon be forgotten. The bee lifted from my hand and circled the air near my head before following the others back toward the blue flowers of the flax plants.

Near sunset, over eight hours later, the piping of the unborn queen --
brrr-rap
-- brought me out of my inexplicable feelings of self-loathing. I was sitting in the same chair, staring blankly at the bees. My heart sped up when it struck me how low the sun was. I stared at the bee sting, wincing as I probed the swelling around it. It was getting bad. Visions or no visions, I was coming dangerously close to losing myself to the venom.

I returned to my home and immediately applied more of the ointment. The dreams returned that same night.