Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (33 page)

The archduke whirls, stares at me.

“You,” he gasps, dropping to his knees.

“Yes, your grace, it is I, Maddalena Gonzales,” I say, and despite my nakedness I give a polite little curtsy.

I snatch up the baby as the archduke groans, snarls, twitches in agony, paws at the blade but cannot reach it. Blood pools beneath him. His face pales and his lips form a grimace. His hands claw the dirt. I stare at the pool of blood, where the reflection of the moon appears. He twitches once more, then is still.

I scream, as loudly as I can. I place the baby down on a soft pile of leaves. When I hear footsteps, I run. I can hear the shouts of the farmer and his wife discovering the baby, alive, and the archduke, dead. They will not be surprised to learn that the nobleman strayed to the side of the devil, I think. The whispers I took for idle gossip, for superstition, were true. It is I who was ignorant.

I return to the castle walls, make it over unseen, and dress myself once again under the lilac bush. I pull on the stifling hose, button the brocade dress. I stuff my feet back into the tiny shoes. The archduke’s second wife, so pious like my father, will protect us for now. The public’s need for blood has been sated. But we will be sold again, no doubt, now that the archduke is dead. We will be back on display somewhere, or hidden away.

We will continue to unnerve people, to remind them of the animal within. But it is not, I now know, the animal in us that we should fear.

Art by Eric Orchard

1870s
Memphis, Tennessee

Sunshine flowed through the crowd, sliding between hooters and hungry-eyed applauders. A whiskey runner with a long, toothy scar down his neck poured up servings of burning moonshine at a row of nearby tables. The harsh, fruity scent of the liquor filled Sunshine’s nose, luring her with its sweet poison.

She swayed up to the tables, lowered herself into a seat, and stretched out like a yawning cat. The runner regarded her with flat eyes. She nodded. Her hand landed softly on the thigh of the stony-faced man sitting next to her, and her lips quivered. The scent of rosewater wisped from her skin, cutting softly through the dense reek of smoke from hand-rolled cigarettes, black bodies, and day-old sweat.

“So tell me, baby, why’s yo ears so pointed like that?”

Baby took a sip from his tin cup. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told ya, so I ain’t gonna tell ya.”

His skin was black, like the dead time between new days. She reached out and traced along the curve of his ear with her finger. “They like knives. Like knives made’a skin and bone. You kin to the devil?”

“Devil don’t exist, honey.”

Sunshine pulled a pout. “C’mon, baby. Tell me somethin’. You sayin’ things like that just make me more curious.”

Baby turned to Sunshine and met her gaze. His face was angled, his chin tapered, and his eyes were thundercloud gray, full of lightning and storms. Sunshine scooted closer to him, and he smiled.

“So, you not gon’ answer my question?”

“Nope.”

“Fine then.”

“I might answer another one of your questions, though, if you promise to smile again.”

Sunshine fulfilled his request. “I ain’t seen you round here before. Where you come from?”

Baby tapped his chin, considering. “You sho’ do know how to ask the wrong questions. What am I supposed to say to that, huh?”

“Tell the truth. Shame the devil.” Sunshine took a sip, stopped, slapped her thigh. “Oh shit, he ain’t real. Forgot. ‘Scuse me.”

“Yo mouth gon’ get you in a lot of trouble. Fine, you want truth, here it go: I come from the dirt.”

“And I come from yo’ neck bone. Gimme me some mo liquor, Jerry. And you, gimme some mo’ answers.”

“I tole you, I come from the dirt and live wit’ the dirt, laugh wit’ the dirt, love the dirt and everything that come to be because of it.”

“You soundin’ like one’a them big foot country boys that just learned the world was bigger than a fool’s middle finger, baby.”

He laughed, a
boom boom
from deep in his chest that sounded like a drumbeat delivered from the top of a mountain. “Maybe so.”

Sunshine swished a swig of moonshine around in her mouth, swallowed it, and growled away the burn. “Yeah, you talkin’ like a man who’s fulla some good drink.”

“I’m sober as a stone, honey.”

Sunshine hooded her eyes and ran her tongue over her lips. The air seemed to clear. “Well, that just ain’t no good. What’s the point of sitting’ up in a place like this and not drinkin’ yo troubles down the river? Why’ont you just come on home wit’ me and tell me some mo’ stories about yo dirt, then? I might even sing you one of my special songs.”

Baby laughed again and drained his cup. “Now that don’t sound like a bad idea a’tall.”

“Ah…” Baby gasped. “Sunshine…”

“Yeah, Baby,” Sunshine growled, jerking her slick hips. Rosewater and musk hung heavy on the air. Her eyes glowed in the darkness.

“Ah–” Another jerk. A flash of dusky nipple. An umber thigh against onyx. A cresting moonbeam. “Ah –
a’lina suatha tautroga…”

“
Shit, Baby. What that mean?”

Baby’s white smile split the night. “You owe me a song, honey,” he gasped.

She claimed that night was safer, so they met after sunset. She said that the riots had brought out the evil in everyone, especially those people that already had hatred in their hearts toward folks like them. Baby had rolled his eyes. Nobody knew who he was. Still, she’d said, better to stay on the side of skin. Baby looked out over the hard faces and noticed how many hands twitched inside of pockets, how many backs bent before pieced-together shanties. He snorted at the “safety.”

A familiar itch tingled on the tips of his ears. It was time to leave, past time. He stayed anyway, standing in the lopsided shadow of an old wooden fort that still bore the stink of dying and despairing men, still wore smudged gunpowder on the gates, still muddied the dirt road before it with blood and sweat. He could hear the hoots of the men inside as they glimpsed brown thighs and were swayed by low-down song that reminded them of times before horrors.

Someone yanked on his ear, and he whipped around, growling murder. Only Sunshine was there, wearing an old housedress with faded pink flowers. Her skin and hair glowed. There was no dirt on her shoes. He removed his hat, held it to his chest. She smiled, and he forgot the stink of the outdoors, forgot the darkness.

“I ain’t think you was gonna come,” she murmured, sliding her arm into his. He looked down at his boots. They were dirty. He didn’t care.

“Why wouldn’t I come? I don’t cut and run.”

“Let’s go downtown, baby.”

“Thought it wasn’t safe there. Besides, I like the trees over here. Ain’t no trees or nothin’ really alive downtown that’s no different than what we can see here.”

“You call this livin’?”

“Bein’ in these walls y’all done made ain’t livin’ at all, but at least here there’s more dirt, more trees and such.”

“You and yo dirt. Fine then.”

They walked. Different lives unfolded a million times in the span of a few minutes. Three boys played baseball on the next street over. One boy couldn’t hit the ball and called for a change of rules. The other two yelled and screamed. Several men sat around a fire built in a low pit. The biggest of them stood backlit by flames, swinging his arms and building a tale out of yells and memories. The other men laughed as they passed a jug between them, looking around before they sipped. Ahead of them, two rickety houses made of discarded slats of wood nearly leaned on each other. Moans and creaking spilt into the street from them. Glass clattered and crashed. Someone defiled the name of God. Baby smelled blood, pulled Sunshine closer to him.

“They the same damn thing,” she whispered. He pretended not to hear.

Violence faded from the air, along with the scent of blood and donkeys. Children ran flat-footed through the dirt. A red rosebush stood in muted bloom along the edge of the street, its flowers drooping. Baby led Sunshine to the bush. He knelt before it, reached inside of the leaves.

“Watch the thorns,” she breathed.

“They won’t hurt me.” Baby grasped the stem of a flower the color of congealed blood, put it to his nose, and whispered. Beside him, Sunshine shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself.

When Baby stood, he held a bloom aflame with red and pink and orange. Gone was the rot.

“Something to be said about dirt.” He handed her the flower. “Watch the thorns.”

“You’d let ‘em hurt me?”

“Naw. But you still oughta be careful.”

Sunshine breathed in the flower’s scent. A lavender light flashed in her eyes and disappeared.

“What’s wrong?”

“My first husband died thinking that I had the devil in me, and couldn’t make chil’ren. Now I know that it was his fault, not mine.”

Baby poked his lip out and stuck his hands deep in his pockets. He knew many words, but none of them would come. His ears burned. “What happened to yo first husband? How he die?”

“I got fire in me, just like he said. He couldn’t deal wit it. My fire ate him from the inside out.” Her eyes snapped back into focus and the curl returned to her lips. Baby thought for a moment that he could see the fire licking beneath her skin. He wanted to sear the tip of his tongue.

“But you ain’t like him, is you? You ain’t gon’ die from my fire.”

“Ain’t no fire been able to kill me yet, and I been around a while.”

She put the flower back to her nose. “What’s yo real name, Baby?”

“You first.”

He smiled when she slipped his arm back into hers. Before they could take a step, she made a small noise. He looked at her. She looked back, confused. “You know what I just thought of? We gon’ need somewhere to live.”

Sunshine’s city was big in the center, with all the trappings of steel and mortar and slow rot. But the wild places lingered. They called to Baby, and he knew. He knew about the paths and straightaways because of the wild places. They were easy enough to find, dank and green and slick with pot-bellied copperheads full of field mice and baby catfish. He picked through them, mud streaking his boots and face and hands, and he didn’t care because this was
good
mud, the kind of mud that you were supposed to wear.

The sun was high when he realized that he had gone too far, so he doubled back. Mud squelched beneath his boots and his ears still itched. A copse of trees stood at angles over a large dirt clearing. Beyond the trees, Baby could see a plot of muddy, loose land where someone was trying to force beans and hard turnips. He whispered to the vegetables struggling in the mud, to the lopsided trees, to the slumbering dirt. A breeze flipped through the grasses.

Baby nodded, sat cross-legged on the ground, and began to whisper. The winds picked up and the soil stirred beneath him. His whisper became a slow chant. He closed his eyes. For once, his ears didn’t itch.

The ground rolled like boiling water. Trees popped and rent and cracked and moaned. His chant rose into song. Soil tumbled onto his head and shoulders. Something blocked the sun. Another something brushed gently against his cheek.

The house was a flat sort of yellow, with a low wooden porch that seemed to dive straight into the ground. The steps leading up to the porch rose from the earth, and the windows had no glass in them. The roof was long overlapping wooden slats covered by leaves and bark. All around the house was deep brown soil, ready for tilling and planting, and the sun shone strong, unblocked by leaves or branches. To either side of the steps, twin rosebushes bloomed.

Baby didn’t brush the dirt off of his shoulders when he left the clearing.

They named her Rana. Sunshine told Baby that it meant “rose,” but she never told him the language that the word came from.

They had called in an old midwife from the city who wore a dress the color of burlap and square-toed boots as heavy as a stonemason’s. Before she came into the house, she tossed salt on the doorstep. Baby bit his lip so hard that it nearly bled.

“No mens. Bad luck,” the midwife said, waving her hand. “You need ta go on outside.”

Rana came healthy and brown, with pink lips and shiny black hair that possessed an otherworldly sort of curl. Her ears swooped slightly upward, and when she opened her eyes, they were a little too lavender. The midwife threw more salt, and Baby threatened to throw her out.

“Y’all quit all this foolishness,” Sunshine snapped at them. She sat up tall in the bed, framed by a halo of black hair. She studied the baby, wearing an unreadable look. The air was hot and heavy. Tiny motes of dust danced in the shafts of midday sun. The midwife gathered her things quietly.

“I never wanted a child,” Sunshine said. When she looked up, she had no smile. “My husband always did, but never me. She look like you, Baby. She got your skin. Your ears too.”

“Yeah, maybe so. Look like she got yo fire, though. And yo eyes.”

The midwife covertly threw a bit of salt in the corner, prayed a quick prayer, and smudged oil that had been prayed over seven times on the doorframe. Then she left.