I pressed the milky underbelly of my arm to the surface and felt an exquisite pain cut a line through me like a spike of lightning.
As though you’re waiting for your life to begin.
I turned my father’s words over like a newly acquired geological specimen, some shiny square of pyrite or rough wedge of schist, looking for the grain, the structure, the signs of its origin and nature.
I pulled my arm away and inspected the scalded red flesh.
If no one wanted me, then I would make myself disappear.
III
Whispers of a curse filtered through the palace like smoke.
Everything that could go wrong in the preparations for Bismark, did. Only a matter of weeks separated us from the conference when Cook slipped on a dropped dish towel and put her back out. Then two scullery maids ran off with their gentlemen callers; and due to some poorly labelled bottles, the silverware had been polished with machine oil and all three hundred pieces would need redoing.
It was thought that my father hung us out like bait on the hook. To hold an event like this before the Witch had safely been dispatched with a new companion was considered a terrible risk, an act of hubris. The Witch was a shadow in every room, behind every conversation. Memories were long in Blumwald and people began to shut themselves away; shops closed at dusk, cafe tables fell quiet, spinning wheels stilled. No one wanted to be abroad when she came.
In the cathedral, the cluster of candles at the shrines swelled each day. Not a single companion had ever returned after being chosen by the Witch.
We called them her companions because it was more palatable than her prey.
Perhaps they really did live out a life of service to her – or perhaps she used them for whatever wicked magic she worked. Our ignorance left too much space for horror to harness our imaginations. My father knew his people’s fear, but the date was set and he would not be swayed; the opportunity to gain Bismark’s favour was too great to let pass.
While townspeople nailed iron to their lintels, my stepmother ordered farms to slaughter animals, gather eggs, churn butter, mill flour, open beer stores and wine cellars. When fresh flowers were brought into the palace, she followed the maids from vase to vase with her secateurs, snipping off each imperfect bloom. I picked up a rose, one side crushed under her shoe, and brought it to my room where I hung it upside down above the stove to dry. The only joy I found left to me was in bringing nature inside: wildflowers and ferns, gathered in fat armfuls to be arranged in jars and glasses around my room, catkins and thistle as the weather changed, and dried lavender sprinkled on my sheets. I tended plant cuttings lined up on my windowsill: aspidistra, philodendron, hedera helix, neanthe bella palm, each sat in a teacup of water to propagate.
b
A few weeks after my father had returned with the news of the conference, I sat outside a coffee house, my sketchbook propped on my knees to work. In my room hung a clumsy drawing I’d made of the forest coiling up the mountainside. Today, I had in mind a different view: the snow-capped peaks cresting over the snakeskin roof of the cathedral. Fingers smudged with charcoal, I worked quietly, taking in the city around me with half an eye. Fewer and fewer men could be seen on the streets of Blumwald; slowly, we had become a colony of only women.
Two passed me now, a broad-shouldered woman of middling age carrying a basket of raw fleece to be spun, and a bent-backed woman well into the twilight of her life. People crossed themselves as they passed and whispered behind cupped hands. I knew them. We all did. Frau Hässler and her daughter Frieda. Mother and sister to the last companion who had been taken fifty years before: Edgar. Oh, we knew all their names, though few dared to speak them aloud, as though mentioning them would draw the Witch down upon them. Like secret saints or the ranks of kings, a history of our curse in seven silent men. Candles were lit to them in every shrine, parcels of food left outside the Hässlers’ front door like offerings. As though their suffering could be warded against.
Frau Hässler, at ninety, moved through the world too folded in on herself to notice; Frieda saw all too well. I feared her fate like an omen: a spinster, a left-behind woman society had no use for. Grown steeped in pity and fear, she walked in quiet rage. They were marked by their loss. I thought then of my mother: I was marked too.
The Hässlers turned out of the square and a brief spatter of rain crossed the cobbles, storm clouds rolling slowly down the mountain. A prickle of unease ran through me; I closed my sketchbook and downed the last of my coffee. I would not linger.
At the palace my stepsisters descended into the entrance hall just as I was returning. From their smart hats and freshly brushed jackets it looked as though they meant to take a turn around the estate. I thought they must see me where I sat, tugging off my mud-stained boots, but deep in conversation they swept past me without acknowledgement.
I quieted the pang of humiliation and took myself to my room to tend my plants.
The sash window was open a crack and I heard Klara and Johanna’s voices drift up. Their walk had taken them around the back of the palace.
‘...can youimagineher stuck here with Mama. Perhaps she will run away and live in the woods like a wild woman. Like the Witch.’
‘It is a sad truth not all women can marry,’ said Johanna with a hand on her rounded belly.
‘Who would ever wanther.’
‘Hush, that is unkind. If she showed any affinity for the Church I would have thought her a natural for the convent.’
‘She’s too heathen for that.’
‘Klara.’
‘Sorry. What was it Mama said about a lady’s companion?’
‘I believe she has made enquiries to find a suitable placement...’
They turned the corner and I heard nothing more.
