1
No one wants to marry a woman who accidentally summons demons at inconvenient times.
Not that there’s ever a particularly convenient time for a demon to pop up in the parlor, the bathroom, the kitchen, or the back garden…
The local people call them “demons,” but I’ve never been quite sure what they are. To me, they have always seemed more like strange beings from another world. Hybrid creatures, familiar yet unnatural, sucked through some dimensional veil by the intensity of my emotions, or by my careless words, or by… fuck if I know. There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to it.
I’ve tried to figure out how I’m summoning the creatures so I can stop, but nothing seems to work, and I can never predict when a summoning is going to occur. Each event is a shock to me and anyone else who happens to be around at the time. Like the suitor who’s sitting in my mother’s parlor, smiling earnestly at me and my sister Anne.
Henry Partridge looks exactly like his name sounds—well-bred, solid, and respectable. I remember him being a decent-looking boy in school, but time has not been kind to him. His face is large, lumpy, and asymmetrical, pitted with countless scars where he scratched his face when he had the pox. I can usually find something attractive about anyone, but I’m struggling in his case, and I know that my sister is even more particular about looks.
Still, he seems like a gentle sort of young man. Pleasant and sincere.
Thankfully he hasn’t yet noticed the fat, gopher-like creature who appeared behind him and is now creeping up the plaster wall with hooked talons it shouldn’t possess. Tiny antlers protrude from its skull, right above its four slitted red eyes, and a cluster of red mushrooms grow from the center of its back.
Anne is smiling in a frozen sort of way, which tells me she has spotted the creature. Our mother, seated next to Henry Partridge, chatters to him, blithely oblivious.
“Mama,” Anne bursts out. “Don’t you think we should have more tea?”
“More tea, dear?” Our mother blinks. “I just brought out a full pot.”
“Some cake then, if we have any. Or perhaps we should take a walk in the garden.”
“Yes!” I exclaim. “The garden is so very… well… it’sthere, isn’t it? So why shouldn’t we look at it?”
To be truthful, we haven’t had a gardener in ages. Anne tries her hand at a bit of weeding sometimes, but neither she nor I have the knowledge or skill to make the property look as good as it used to when we were children.
We don’t have maids or a cook anymore, either. We do everything with our own hands, including repairs that we really have no business attempting. The money Papa left us ran out last year, despite Mama’s careful budgeting and the odd jobs we pick up from time to time. Everyone in this region is struggling, so work like mending, laundering, baking, or cleaning is scarce. Afew nights ago, Mama said that if one of us does not marry well, and quickly, we will have to sell the house, move to a city, and find better work. Otherwise we’ll have to endure another winter like the last one, and this time, we won’t survive.
No one is coming to save us. If we want to keep our home, we must find a solution ourselves.
Hence the presence of Henry Partridge. At age twenty, he’s two years younger than me and four years younger than Anne, but he’s one of the only eligible men in the area who will come calling. And that’s only because he’s too young to know better. He has been away, first to boarding school, then under the guidance of a mentor, and he has only just returned to this region. He hasn’t had time to be frightened away by the strange things people witness when they come to our house.
“You want to walk in the garden?” Henry looks confused by my suggestion. “Isn’t it raining?”
“Gardens are so much more interesting in the rain,” I tell him. “Anne, take Mr. Partridge outside, and I’ll be there in a moment. Mama, go with them.Please.”
It’s the ferventpleasethat alerts my mother to what’s happening. Her eyes widen, and she glances around the room, trying to locate the demon I’ve summoned. The gopher-thing on the wall slips, its talons dragging through the plaster, and I cough loudly to cover up the scratching sounds.
“Outside!” Mama’s voice is a frantically jovial bellow. “Let’s go out in the rain! What fun!”
She and Anne drag Henry Partridge off the couch and hustle him into the hall. I jump up from my chair, grab the knitting basket, and dump out its contents. Holding it ready, I creep toward the antlered gopher.
“There, there, little monster,” I croon. “I won’t hurt you. Not one bit. Come here, that’s a good demon.”
But the gopher has climbed too close to the ceiling for me to reach it. Cursing, I drag over a chair and balance with one foot on each of its arms, holding the knitting basket as high as I can.
The gopher-creature begins making its way across the ceiling, carving grooves into the lovely designs painted there by my great-grandmother and restored so beautifully by Anne’s skilled hand. Heedless of the destruction he’s causing, the little demon looks down at me with his four burning eyes.
Voices recede outside and the front door slams. At least Mama and Anne managed to get Henry out of here before he noticed the demon.
“Come on,” I urge, muscles straining as I try to stretch my arms farther. I’m too short to get anywhere near the ceiling. Why did our great-grandfather have to make this room so lofty and grand? Maybe the damned creature will make things easier on both of us by jumping into the basket.
It does jump. But not into the basket.
The gopher flies directly at my face, every toe of its tiny paws spread, each miniature curved talon ready to hook into my flesh.
With a scream, I jerk back. My heeled shoes slip off the arms of the chair, and I fall backward, my stomach dropping with a hideous lurch. I crash into the center of the tea service, followed by the gopher-demon. The low table breaks, the lid flies off the pot, and scalding hot tea splashes us both.
