Stray Bats Read online

  Without me, this stuff would never spiral downward out of the rafters, answering the summons she issues between her more mundane mutterings. Sooty, stringy, smelling of foulness and flowers—I resettle my front paws, no longer dozing.

  Now she moves smoothly, speaks clearly. I blink and look away. My job is to sit apart, so that she may surrender herself at the centre, chanting from the coalescing cloud the names of all the gods in all the hills around.

  Emplotment

  I’m making a charm against my neighbour—I’m sorry, I can’t think about much else!

  Over the fence I see her. She thinks she can fix things—like all those vulnerable clothes to the line!

  Her gate clangs, and if I’m quick I can catch her leaving. By the swing of her skirt and bag I can tell how sure she is (too sure) of her luck holding. Then she drives off and I’m bereft, though it’s true I work better without her around, tracking my movements.

  I’ve got it in for my neighbour. She doesn’t know, and I’m not going to tell her!

  I steal her mail—sometimes for days! I put it back in the box all softened with handling, stained and impregnated with different fluids, you don’t want to know.

  I’ve planted my herbs in a special way. They’re starting to form a malignant sign that will enervate her through her kitchen window.

  (I wish we still had a milkman. Then I could inoculate her against other people’s kindness through the bottle left at her door. (Milk is her favourite drink. I’ve seen her putting it away, pouring herself giant glasses, strengthening her bones.))

  She has no idea—she can’t have! She’s got nothing against me. Some days I don’t even know why I’m doing this.

  I threw out the “surplus” tomatoes she gave me. I could swear there was an odour about them.

  Some bird has made off with every single blue peg from my clothesline.

  That mouse I found (by its smell) between the fence and the garage wall? It looked to have been stuck with pins at some point. Some kind of insect?

  She’s got nothing against me. She can’t have, not yet! Not until my own charm’s fully worked, surely? Can she?

  Hag-Hunter

  When he first came to us, we had no idea. Stepping into the pulpit, scanning all corners before he opened his mouth, speaking with such cold passion that we hardly took a breath. His bodily strength, his unhandsome face and shorn head, but above all his rough voice—these were as spells on us, living as we did on our scraps of land, poverty staring down our doors, picking her moment.

  I can’t recall who put it about. Mary Little told me, I know that, and she’d overheard her mum and William’s mum, but who’d told them, I never knew. I never cared to. I never needed to—we all knew, in our humming bones, that it was true. And no one would ever ask him. No one would ever go eye to eye with him about this. He might have been hag himself, our fear flashed so quickly from them to him, as if their deaths meant nothing, relieved us of nothing.

  And once we knew, there was no escaping them. At the back of the church and high in the choir, titter-and-rustling among us at market, jostling at town meetings and around the board at wedding and christening feasts, bent, ragged, black as crows—everywhere he went they came too. Bright-eyed shufflers, grandmothers edged with venom and spittle, giving off a tomcat stink, they crowded among us, and none could say if it were him or us they were watching, or whether they hated him or had his back.

  Flight School

  That’s my mother, up in the storm’s face on her narrow impossible steed, looking for friends old enough to remember with her.

  When I was tiny, but knew to hang on, she took me on a flight to all her past haunts. Between hill- and cloudscape we flew, the wind in our teeth. We came back hail-bruised, stiff with cold, our heads full of significant stones, waterfalls scarving upward, caverns fusty with burnt makings, blast-marks blurred by forest.

  Later when I had gained my shape somewhat, she danced with me around the bonfire, my hands overflowing smoke, my dress of shadows torn just so, into a fate uneasy as a cyclone’s eye. And there she blessed me and let me go.

  These are still the frightening days of upsurge, drop, and clenched-teeth save, as mother, daughter, and destiny dive and climb dramatic skies, skirt and side-wind, baulk and wobble, grip with fists and abdomen, far and near. And if we catch each other’s eye, we never hold it.

  The Axe

  Another girl brought home the axe. She limped toward me along the beach. I let myself believe that everything about my daughter could be changed just so by injury. Until her hair flashed red, was not a woollen cap, was not my daughter’s darkness. I felt the blow to me then, to my face, to my heart.

  She had cleaned the blade, but left the handle bloodied. Even in death, she said, she gripped it hard, there and there both hands. She turned it and I watched, this little I had left.

  She died by axe herself? I asked. It seemed important.

  By spear, she said, run through the heart. It was moments only.

  Truly?

  Her gaze stayed steady. I was next to her. I saw.

  She made me tea, deft as any house-woman with her killing hands. And she told me the full tale, so that the death could play out to me, whenever I wanted, whenever I didn’t want: small figures in the pattern of a battle that mattered to someone more powerful than me, the taking of a hill, the defence of some keep full of frightened villagers.

  She was a fine sight on the field, said this girl, and it made her smile. She was a whirling flame.

  And I remembered her crouched naked at the sea’s edge, her starfish hands discovering sand, how it can be solid one moment and soup the next, how it clings and then dries and falls away. Her whole small being was intent on that moment, and neither of us knew or cared what was to come.

  Win

  Argh, this foul day! He loves me, the fool. All my little birds are coming home to roost, coughed down from the sky’s scummed lung.

  The clouds gather as I commanded them, endless charcoal hulls. Sailors made faceless by the fog sweep deck-swill over the side, sliming the streets with ice. The trees rattle their stick instruments, their stiff remaining hairs.

  It’s all coming back to me, how to hurt, how to make him think this is real right up to the last minute.

  I press my cheek to the window. The cold throbs in the bone. The sleet taps and slides.

  Foxwife

  Farmhouse, moonlight. The vixen sets her spell. The goodwife slinks from her bed, unthinking beyond that smell, beyond the relief of four paws and the loft of a long brush tail behind.

  Through the cracked-open door—farmyard, moonlight. The co-conspirator, delicate shadow, sniffing then bowing in greeting.

  Chickens nearby, feathered jokes along a rail. All asleep under the spell, hooded by the henhouse roof. But first comes play, as when they were kits, rolling and running. Fox-smell, fox-charm, the old body new again, finely furred, all muscle, the face all pointed attention. Scents flood in, the many flavours of the wintry night, of star and moth, earth and fungus, corpse and sister, frog and scuttling mouthful. Of the meal to come, of the fun.

  When they are friends again, the lock on the henhouse door is no bar—after all, she fastened it herself. They insinuate themselves in; pollard and ammonia, chicken-snore and feather-mite scratch. Then her sister has already started, and the pillow-fight begins, pillows with spines in, satisfying to snap. A pillow-fight with a vengeance—all those months of tramping about, all that lumbering reasoning and rule-following, burst apart in white, spray red, give up their power with a single cluck or shriek, clouds brought to earth and scattered willy-nilly, every woman of them.

  Farmhouse, dawn-light. The goodwife wakes to the gentle, heavy sounds of the cows assembling at the field gate for milking. The farmer reaches for his boots, his back curving over in the dark. The air is clear of spell and sisterhoo
d, but there’s blood at the back of her throat, a feather caught in her teeth. And she thinks with a sinking heart of the pen full of downed clouds, and all the money she has thrown away.

  Being Summoned

  Use the portal in the chook-pen if you like, or—look, I know you’ve got your own ways. Far be it from me etc. I’ve set wards at all points to put the shiver through me of your arrival, but of course you could bypass those at any time.

  In winter, sun or moonlight falls straight through the trees. If I’m watching I may see your shape up there, quite far off through the finer branches. Resolving into what, something winged? Under rain or cloud I may remain quite unaware of your approach, until you assemble on the doorstep, more than shadow, less and more than a person.

  In summer every cicada will stop shrieking, and the shock in all the leaves at once will make me lift my head from my unimportant task.

  I don’t mind when you come; I’ve packed what little I’ll need. Just one question, though: will I have time to make a sending to my children? If not, never mind. For long enough they’ve seen me go about, speech-stones in my ear and under my tongue. They know how ready I am.

  Spirit Girl

  Spirit girl walks too smoothly for this churned-up yard, intent on what she wants from you. She speaks with a poorly synchronised mouth, her voice burred, mostly emotion, forming proper words only in your mind.

  She terrifies you, it’s obvious: she can swallow all your pleas, all your objections, unhinging her jaw to fit around them, deforming her neck and chest until they are gulped and gone.

  Passing through locked doors is nothing to one who can devour all that.

  Her flesh is rudimentary, see-through, a whim, but inside it her emotions are packed tight, her intentions hard core.

  Spirit girl clamps you with her cool damp legs; leaves snail-shine along your bones and a hitch in your voice.

  She goes after others—men and women, old and young—though when you meet them you shake each other off without a word.

  Her gliding step chills you, every time.

  She has her project, she has her route through the night, through the city.

  Oh, finish and be gone soon, spirit girl!

  Dragon Bride

  The dragon’s bride took off all ten nightgowns.

  Taking turns, her husband stripped down too, one skin after another. Thicker and softer fell his flesh, and bloodier; louder and louder did he cry with every peeling layer. The boudoir stank worse than a slaughter-house.

  The bride grew slenderer and more shapely with each removal; the dragon grew blunter, softer edged, less frightening and more abject. He was hardly more than jellied meat when she took to him with the lye and the brush. The last layer and the appalling noise she wore off him with her scrubbing.

  He was insensible. Shepherd’s girl, she carried him to the bath of milk and laid him there, and sang to him as she rinsed away the pain.

  He finally stood before her handsome and whole. She backed away from the bath admiring, poised to remove the last stained night-dress.

  But No, he said, one moment more! And he dug his fingers into his waist, and tore the flesh from his handsome human bones.

  Stop! she cried.

  You will see me as I am! he replied through what mouth he had left.

  And he went on stripping away layers, until there was no more prince of him than there was dragon. There was not even gnome, not even iron-banded, twitching heart.

  The bride had never been one for weeping. Alone at the centre of the silent palace, she took up the finest, the freshest and the fiercest of the skins. She put it on and it clung, forming itself around her and adding layers to her within. She opened her dragon throat and poured out fire and everything wooden and woven began to burn.

  When the roof fell in she leaped free and flew, shedding shards of flame, Somewhere in the mountains stood an empty dragon house. She would find it, and begin her own legend there.

  Wyrm-Witch

  She is only small, for her work is small. Perhaps she is as big as your thumbnail.

  She finds full sun to stand in, and lifts her hands high. Each finger gleams with a garnet ring. Beside her runs the river, and on its vastness creatures skate and set and ride. None come near her.

  Her skin glows brighter, to catch the eye of those new-hatched dragons as yet too young to sting with their own heat. By turns bold and uncertain, not yet trusting to their eyes’ messages, they feel almost nothing beyond newborn confusion, nakedness and terror. They might be tempted out of the hovering din to pause a moment, free from all dangers and enemies, in her red arms.

  Ingratitude

  They are coming for you, old mother. Sodden John unparked his arse and traipsed all the way up from the alehouse to tell me. Their fields are alive with the beggars, and they say you are cooking them up.

  Oh, do they?

  So are you? He has never known how to take me, that boy, loyal though he be.

  If I weren’t, would it turn them back your saying so?

  Perhaps if I spoke it strong enough, he says, doubt through his voice like rotting string.

  I thank him and send him off. I build up my fire, right there where he stood at my door. I set my biggest pot on top, fill it from the well, to and fro. The wind knocks the flames about, but there’s enough of them to start the water rumbling.

  In my barn I lift a corner of hay and catch three mice, shake them dead and into the pot they go, with a bit of wind dragged down to sink them. Shouts are traveling to me from the valley now, and the clangs of sticks on kettles.

  Making mice—is that the most they can pin on me?

  When they can see me from the bottom of the hill, I kick off my boots, undress down to my shift. They start up hallooing, and a few begin to run. I go to my dung pile and roll there right comprehensively. When I stand again, all mucked up, I see how that’s slowed them. They are a wonderful orderly phalanx now, shouting and stamping in step, taking as long as they can to reach me.

  Making mice. I spit to one side. What am I, thirteen?

  I pull up the three-leg stool from by the door, nearly into the fire. I step up on it, hands on slimy hips, watching those heroes come. All I have done. All I have deflected, over the years. All the weather I’ve brought and tempered. Well, they can go hang now. I’ll show them how mice are made.

  There has always been a pinch there where townish people would put a gate. They see nothing, only feel a need to crowd together. I laugh at them through the steam, over the bouncing water.

  I dive in. There’s a flash of pain and then we’re rolling off the fire, pouring down the path. A moment swirling at their boots and horny feet and then we are mice among mice, the shouting gone to squeaks, their feet to pinkest claws.

  I roll to a stop and sit up clean, my shift dry, my hair soft in the wind, while all around me they stream away.

  Interlacing

  Remember when I did my first harming?

  I’d told you beforehand. I had everything in my pack.

  It smells like death, I said, and you laughed and watched as I chanted up to that cow and, gathering all I had, breathed the words of completion into its ear.

  That was high spring; this is deep autumn. I can still feel at the back of my brain how I over-extended myself.

  Remember when I recited that spiffed-up charm for luck in love?

  What’s it like, you said, to feel such a beautiful thing come out of you?

  I blushed and didn’t tell you how I’d added the extra phrases with you in mind. But you knew, didn’t you?

  Remember when I told you how we’d change the world, once I’d passed you through the tree and woken your gift inside you? We sat on the field wall, kicking our boot-heels and singing, berries in the basket between us, the smell of death and berry-juice on our fingers.

  Kiss me, you sai
d, with your messy mouth. And add no spell to it, mind.

  Aged Caring

  Oh, for that crowded house! We couldn’t hurry through it without barking our shins on scuttle, box-edge or amphora.

  We zigzagged through, sidled between powders-cabinets, ducked hanging herb-forests, rattled skins-racks with our passing bums.

  No room for children. Our days were overfilled with measurement and recitation, our nights with sketching out tomorrows. Our house was heaped with books and makings.

  Now it’s gone, that prospect we built between us, because you, who brought the half of it, took it with you under the earth.

  I can walk straight from the washhouse, through the odourless rooms, out the front door. I can stand undisturbed on the empty road, gazing one way to the mountains, the other to the sea.

  Buff-house Review

  i would give the Metonymian Buff-House four and half stars. first of all the attendants altho they are not at all what your used to are very kind and consciencious. it is a *little* creepy that their *hands* is what they use for the exfoliation rubs but you have to admit their effective. I came out feeling soft as a newborn baby.