The Gentling Box Read online

  “Rockets and stars,” she murmured. “And after all these years.”

  It was our best time, but I, we, didn’t know it was nearly the last time we’d ever make love. Perhaps that was just as well.

  ***

  I came awake smiling, my hands instinctively seeking Mimi. I wanted to kiss the sleep from her eyes, feel her touch, her warmth. I rolled toward her but there was only the shape of her body imprinting the feather mattress, the sensation of fading heat. I heard her stirring somewhere in the caravan, the sound of a few notes hummed softly. I grinned. Mimi was a light sleeper, I would have bet my hat on the fact that she’d gotten up and decided to quietly begin straightening up the wreck inside the kitchen. But that wasn’t fair, not a bit, I thought, swinging my legs over the edge of Lenore’s pocket-bed. We’d begun healing what was between us, I didn’t want her wounded again by what she’d find, what she’d see. They’re your dirty sheets, you clean ’em, I told myself. I raked my hand through my hair, yawned, pulled on a pair of trousers, brushed the torn curtain aside, pattered out.

  She was in the bedroom. I felt a ripple of guilt, began moving toward her. Her dressing gown was tied at her waist, she was bent over, back to me, probably picking up one of Zahara’s tattered corsets, I grieved inwardly.

  “Hey let me do that,” I said, pausing on the top of the stairs.

  She straightened up, turned, and now I saw what she held in her hands. The gentling cap.

  “You didn’t do it,” she said softly.

  My eye was drawn to the circle of wood, the dangling leather straps. I swallowed uneasily. “I couldn’t.” I looked away, saw the light glinting off the metal spikes that still lay on the wooden floor.

  “When I saw the fire I thought you burned her afterwards, after you gentled her—”

  I felt my jaw tighten, didn’t answer.

  Mimi’s gaze was drawn to the window, to the smoky glow of the burning grave beyond it. She took a step nearer, and I looked through the glass too. I could make out the black triangle shape of the smoldering pile of boards; they were thinner, whittled down by the flames.

  I took hold of her arm and gave her a small shake. “What are you thinking? There’s nothing there, now—”

  “You should have done it—the sleet,” she began. “The fire’s nearly out.”

  “She’s gone! The flames were twenty feet high—”

  Mimi shook her head, looked down at the cap.

  I grabbed it from her, flung it aside. “It’s useless, I tell you there’s nothing there—”

  “I have to be sure,” she whispered, and then before I could stop her, she turned and ran from the caravan, slippers clacking over the boards.

  ***

  I grabbed a shirt, yanked on a pair of boots and raced after her. She was already at the grave when I reached her. The smell, even in the frosty morning air was sickening, and I fumbled in my pocket, found a handkerchief and held it to my mouth and nose. The center gave off a reddish glare, there were small crackling sounds, once a large pop! as a knothole exploded. The sleet had stopped but the pyre was a half-burned soggy ruin. I saw the wet brush and wood I’d heaped alongside to keep the blaze going, felt a wave of guilt.

  “She’s there; can’t you feel it?” Mimi said, squatting at the edge, one hand bracing herself to keep from tumbling in, the other wielding a long stick. She poked it through the rubble. Mist and smoke mingled, rising in a noxious cloud. Several of the charred boards gave way. I heard her gasp, looked in, felt my gorge rising up my throat.

  The fire-scarred body, on its side, was still intact. The clothes had mostly burned away, but here and there dark shreds and tatters clung to the black flesh, making the whole sight worse and reminding me that I’d set fire to a human being. I saw the skin was gone from her feet and hands; the thin black bones curled in on themselves, like the claws of a hideous bird. One skeletal foot had separated and lay at a small distance, I guessed it had fallen away when Mimi stirred the debris.

  The head was nothing more than the bloated shape of the skull; one ear was gone, the other a vague lumpish nub of seared flesh. It was like unearthing some ancient petrified mummy. The dark withered skin rippled unevenly over the bones, the face seemed more prominent under the denuded scalp. And it was her face that held me. The eyelids had been burnt away, exposing two viscous looking sockets, a runny smear on one cheek that might have been an eye. The nose was only a thin pinched-looking rill above an open mouth drawn back in the agony of a silent scream.

  I staggered backward, my stomach contracted in one long painful spasm. I bent over, clutched my belly and vomited. The smell rising on the steamy air made me sicker, helpless. I fell on my hands and knees, weakly; my jaw convulsed, I opened my lips in a wide rictus—like her, I thought, seeing the image of the burned gaping mouth—and then wave after nauseating wave rushed through me.

  After a while I was conscious of a series of movements; out of the corner of my eye I saw Mimi lift the can of kerosene, heard the liquid sloshing inside. She was going to finish the job for me, I thought, feeling bad about it, simultaneously trying to wipe my mouth and get up on my feet.

  Mimi stood on the edge of the pit holding the red can; one hand firmly clasped the handle, the other clutched the bottom. I saw her arms go back, then plunge forward in a swinging gesture. I started to call to her that it was dangerous, at the same instant a long thin stream of liquid snaked out of the spout, hung briefly in the air, splashed downward into the pit—

  There was a flash, the air went thick.

  “No!” I shouted, trying to throw my arm over my face. I saw the kerosene can leaving her hands, but slowly, too slowly. It spun a hand’s breadth away from her, she was trying to back up—

  Fire arced back along the trail. The can exploded with a huge noise. The air was heavy, hot, filled with roiling black smoke, and her clothes were suddenly alight with the fury of a torch. She was lifted screaming into the air and then thrown backward onto the ground.

  I ran toward her, shouting her name at the same instant the smoke seemed to rise above the pyre in a bubbling mass shaped like a ball. It hovered for the space of a heartbeat, then burst into a scattering of shiny black droplets. I saw what looked like the tattooed outline of a woman’s form against the gray sky. Then it darted and raced along the line of the firetrail, consuming it, homing in on my wife’s flailing arms and legs, her panicked shrieks, and arrowed straight down her throat.

  A tower of flames suddenly shot up from the center of the pit in a terrifying blast of heat, a wild concussion. I fell to the ground, deafened by the roar. A hot wind buffeted me and flame-studded debris rained down, sizzling against the wet turf.

  Through the smoke and a glaze of heat-blurred air, I saw Mimi running away in a crazy looping flight, trailing fire, her face a mask of terror. I raced after her, screaming her name over and over. The cords on my neck strained with the effort of shouting, I felt a hot stinging sensation at the back of my throat. I knew my mouth was open, and my tongue moved, yet I was aware I couldn’t hear the sound my own voice.

  ***

  I closed in on her, dived headlong to wrestle her to the ground. She collapsed under me, writhing. My heart drummed with panic. I rolled her back and forth, back and forth trying to smother the flames. Her mouth was open, she was screaming, moaning, weeping all at once. Under the layer of soot her face was red, blistered with whitish patches, her hair was a clotty, frizzled mop, half of it gone. Her legs were badly burned from the tattered robe, now smeared with damp earth. But I saw that her hands and arms had taken the worst of it and I felt something turn over inside me. One was a wet-looking runny mass, and oh sweet Christ, I wept—her nails were no more than brown crusted patches, her fingers fused into a molten clump.

  She was still thrashing, her feet tapping and bouncing against the icy turf. “Still,” I whispered, wanting to touch her, to soothe her, and not knowing if somehow I’d hurt her more. “Shhh, try and lie still.” I gripped one shoulder lightly,
trying to blink away my tears. There had been no time in my life I’d felt so utterly helpless. I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid to move her, afraid the motion would kill her. I was afraid she was dying and if I didn’t do something quickly I’d lose her.

  “Mimi, Mimi,” I said, my voice a shadowy rasp I could hardly make out amid the ringing clamor in my ears. “Please help me. Tell me what to do.”

  She wasn’t responding. I anguished inwardly, saw the hellish flames still raging in the grave, and cursed myself. My failure brought this to her, I thought. Oh Christ, dear Christ, you can’t punish her, not for my weakness. “Please,” I said again.

  I heard the sound of air being drawn in a tortuous wheeze through her chest. I knew what that meant and I closed my eyes, felt a hot pain daggering my heart: Her lungs were burned. Oh Christ, she’s not going to make it, she’s dying.

  “I love you,” I said, my voice cracking. “Don’t leave me.” I carefully squeezed her shoulder and I felt her stir; then her dark, pain-wracked eyes lifted slowly to meet mine.

  Her chest heaved, again I heard the low sound of that gritty sigh, and it filled me with such hideous sorrow, so much aching, I wished my throbbing eardrums had shattered, that I might not hear what she was suffering.

  Her eyes stayed on mine, she was trying to speak. Her jaw was clenched, her teeth tightly pressed together. Her mouth moved stiffly, opened a fraction. “In . . . ne,” she breathed.

  I looked at her, thinking she was trying to say my name, but no, that wasn’t it. Her eyes flashed at me as if she was confirming my thought.

  “In ne,” she repeated, at the same time she made a feeble motion, a slight downward tilt of her head toward her chest. She tried to lift one arm, couldn’t manage it.

  I tapped my own chest. “You, yourself.” She closed her eyes, gave a barely discernible nod. She was trying, I hoped, to tell me what could be done, what I might do to save her. “Yes, yes,” I said, putting my ear close to her lips. A hot pulsating glow radiated from her, and it made me dizzy: No one could be burned this badly and live. I shoved the thought aside. “Tell me.”

  I closed my eyes, concentrated, and this time I caught the words in the clogged rale that was more growl than voice: “In me.”

  I sat back, puzzled. There was something that told me she wasn’t talking about the fire that seared her inwardly. I felt my eyelid twitch. “In you,” I repeated, and again she gave me a faint nod.

  “What are you saying?” I felt low hysteria spiraling through me, growing. “Mimi, what are you saying?”

  “An-yeta,” she whined, her eyes moved sluggishly to indicate her chest.

  Panic seized me. “No, NO! It’s impossible!” I shot to my feet, saw the smoke fragmenting into those glassy black dots—hard and shining like thousands of tiny obsidian eyes. They spun and whirled, coalesced into the shape of a woman. I shuddered, remembering: They’d swarmed over Mimi’s face like a cloud of angry bees, then rushed down her throat.

  “It can’t be,” I said, but the words sounded like a lie falling from my lips, and I felt the truth, like a nasty snickering inside me. Joseph had been right all along: Gentling was the only way. I saw Zahara licking blood from her lips. My mind reeled. The old woman had done it a second time; her spirit found its way inside my wife.

  I looked at her lying on the ground and a mix of anger and grief trembled inside me. I clenched my fists, felt myself losing control. It flashed through me to lash out, pound her, as if somehow I could shake her loose, pry her out of my wife’s ravaged body. “Anyeta.” I spat the name.

  Mimi suddenly exhaled and went limp, her head settling toward the cradle of her shoulders. Her eyes fluttered closed with the swiftness of a shade being drawn down.

  A tremor coursed along the length of her body.

  The eyes flew open, and I saw a malicious glint sparkling in the dark irises.

  “NO!”

  I saw her lips begin to move, muttering the words of the spell. I stood mesmerized at the transformation. Like a snake rising from the fakir’s basket, it began at the feet; the burned flesh fell away, disappeared with a quick sibilant sound and was instantly replaced by skin that was whole and healed.

  Lying on her back, she wriggled and twisted against the ground, and at each undulation another part of her emerged unscathed, until at last the words poured from between the delicate lips, and the voice I heard was strong, powerful.

  “Who owns the hand of the dead can bring healing.”

  I watched, stunned, my eyes bulging. Anyeta got to her feet. The blasted robe clung to Mimi’s figure, revealing glimpses of smooth flesh. Her small hands danced up and down her body—not to cover her nakedness but to glory in it. Anyeta looked at me, and without thinking I stepped toward her, holding my hands out to touch her. She chortled, and I recoiled as if I were stung, thrust my hands behind me in confusion.

  “Mimi,” I said.

  “She’s here inside me.” Anyeta grinned, tapping her chest. “What do you want, her body or her soul?” She clutched her breasts, squeezing them together. “Don’t you want them anymore?”

  I looked away, sickened.

  She put her hands on her hips and faced me. Then she threw her head back, the long thick hair rippling down over her shoulders. Peal after riotous peal came out of her mouth. She was laughing at me, at my plight; cackling in shear deviltry because she was free.

  “You’re pathetic,” she said, and began striding across the field. I stood there, dazed, hearing her cruel laughter float back at me.

  And the sound was like the sharp jangle of glass in a windowpane that shattered and fell crashing over and over, again and again.

  I knew I would hear it always, the rest of my days.

  Part 3

  _____________________________________

  Joseph and Constantin

  Depart not—lest the grave should be,

  Like life and fear, a dark reality.

  —Shelley

  -36-

  I watched Anyeta crossing the field, my heart racing. She reached the steps of our caravan, and suddenly from a distance I saw her hands going to her head at the same time her feet slid out from under her. She crumpled to the ground, and I heard her screaming.

  “Shut up, shut up!”

  “Make me! I know what you are, I know what you did to her.” The voice, higher, went on shouting.

  I stood puzzled, watching. There was something different, I thought, and then realization welled up in me all at once. I saw Mimi struggle to her feet, then collapse onto the stairs and I began running toward her. Her face was contorted with pain.

  She was gasping for breath, small hands clutching at her chest. She shook her head, waved me off. “Run,” she panted, as a second spasm flitted over her features. “Bring Joseph.”

  She plunged her hands deep inside the thick black hair at her temples and screamed. “I can’t hold her! Oh, I can’t.” Mimi rocked back and forth. “Hurry! Get him.”

  And then before I could say a word she was flying up the steps into the caravan. The door slammed behind her, jarring the wooden frame, sending a shuddering vibration down the length of the caravan.

  Anyeta’s voice rose to a shriek. “Let me out!”

  I heard the sound of fists pounding against the door, the heavy grunts of labored breathing. And then the iron bolt clanged down, and I knew Mimi was buying herself the precious seconds she would need when Anyeta was loosed like a raging demon within her. And I ran.

  ***

  Joseph’s caravan was on the edge of a high field on the outskirts of the town. Christ, let him be there, I thought. My lungs were raw with running five kilometers, a stitch burned in my side. I raced toward it, my mind awhirl, and pounded frantically at the sidewall, shouting his name, then lurching up the rickety stairs toward the canvas flaps.

  He was standing by the table, in the act of drawing on a gray cloak. I took one look at his face and saw that he knew I hadn’t used the cap. Suddenly I was overcome w
ith anxiety. Lenore. She’d hear me, know something terrible happened. My God, was I crazy shouting that way?

  My eyes flitted over the room to look for her, at the same time I felt that subtle mesh of his thoughts with mine and he said, “Constantin has taken Lenore to the village. A street fair with mimes and jugglers.” He looked deeply into my eyes. They had known I was coming, spared my daughter the scene.

  I felt the full weight of my failure to gentle Zahara all at once. “I couldn’t do it,” I said, lowering my gaze, afraid to see the sad reproach in his.

  But he never said a word against me, only put his hand lightly on my arm. “Your daughter is safe here with us, until you can bring her home.”

  “Mimi,” I began, stealing a swift upward glance, and I broke off. I saw that his eyes were filled with anguish.

  “The sorceress has taken her,” Joseph said. “I know.” He finished fastening the cloak and began moving toward the doorway.

  It was the cloak—so much like the one I’d carried the gentling cap under—that triggered a surge of fear in me, and my hand lashed out, grabbed at the thick woolen folds. “You can’t! You’re not going to gentle her,” I screamed, strangling on the half-question.

  “No,” he said softly, shaking his head. “Come, we will see what can be done.”

  I hesitated. “Mimi’s stronger than Zahara was. The old woman—she wasn’t there—it was Mimi when I left.”

  “That strength will be her blessing and her downfall, I fear.” He passed through the worn canvas flaps, held one high for me, but I stopped.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The time has come for you to put all your trust in me, Imre,” he said.

  For a brief instant I felt my old suspicions flaring up. What was in this for the old man? Then I remembered it was Mimi herself who asked for him, and she was suffering. “All right,” I said following him down the stairs. We began walking over the wet field, the wind gusting and crying around us, and I thought of tortured souls lost, wailing.