Jo Clayton: Drinker of Souls

Her chirp sounded bitter and full of rage; she was madder than he’d ever seen her, even when he turned fourteen and ran off with the housemoney to buy time with a joygirl, what was her name? He shook his head, couldn’t remember her name or what she looked like.

After a month of that, Hotea said, I am about ready to skip out even if it means I have to get off Utar-Selt, live low the rest of the year. You could take care of yourself, brother dear, though I did mean to warn you they might connect you with me if your luck went sour as mine. The nursery garden has a high wall, but there are plenty of trees backed up against that wall. On its other side is the guard walkway and a pretty steep cliff, but I am not fussing about that, I can climb as good as you, brother, and swim better, and the causeway’s near. I am thinking about going over the wall that night, or the one after, depending, when fat old Tungjii, heesh jabs me in the ass again. The Tekora’s youngest daughter disappears.

Hotea beat her fist several times on Aituatea’s shoulder, making him wince at the stinging touches. He jerked away, then clutched at his head as the sudden movement woke his hangover and started the demon in his skull pounding a maul against his temples.

Hotea laughed, the scorn in the soundless whisper raising the hairs along his spine. Fool, she said, you’ll kill yourself, you go on like this. You need a wife, that’s what, a good woman who’ll keep you in order better than I could, give you sons. You don’t want our line to die with you, do you, brother?

She shook herself, her form shivering into fragments and coming together again.

Listen, she said, you got to do something about that witch, as long as she lives I won’t rest.

She wrung her hands together, darted in agitation about the room, gradually grew calmer as the grandmother ghost patted her arm, ragged lips moving in words that were only bursts of unintelligible noise. She drifted back to hover in front of Aituatea.

The Tekora’s youngest daughter, she said, three years old and just walking, a noxious little nit who should’ve been drowned at birth. On the eve of the new moon they turn the place upside down, double the work on us. I don’t think much about it except that I’d strangle her myself if I come across her, she is wrecking my plans because she took off. Three days later they find her facedown in the nursery fountain, shriveled and bloodless like a bug sucked dry. Not drowned but dead for sure. ‘F I was scared of leaving before, well! Tekora would tear Silili brick from plank looking for me, or that’s what I’m thinking then. The other maids are as jittery as me. We are Hina in the house of the Temueng, that makes us guilty even if we do nothing, and the other bondmaids are too stupid and cowed to say boo to a butterfly. Housemaster beats us, but his heart isn’t much in it. And things go on much the same as before. On the eve of the next new moon another daughter goes and I am there to see it.

They order us bondmaids to sleep in the nursery to make sure the daughters don’t just wander off. This night is my turn. A bondmaid brings me a cup of tea. I sniff at it when she goes out. Herb tea. Anise and something else, can’t quite place it. I take the cup to the garden door and look at it but can’t see anything wrong. I sniff at it again and I start getting a touch dizzy. I throw the tea out the door and carry the cup back and put it by my pallet so it looks like I drank it. I stretch out. I’m scared to sleep but I do, up before dawn running like a slave for those bitches, I’m tired to the bone. Something wakes me. I don’t move but open my eyes a slit and keep breathing steady. A minute after that I see the Tekamin standing in the doorway, the Tekora’s new wife she is, he set her over the others and they are mad as fire about it, but what can they do? Hei-ya brother, I have to listen to a lot of bitching when I am fetching for the other wives, they don’t get a sniff of him after he brings that woman back with him from Andurya Durat. No one knows where she comes from, who her family is or her clan, even the wives are scared to ask. And there she is in that doorway, slim and dark and lovely and scaring the stiffening out of me.

She comes gliding in, touches the second youngest daughter on her face and the daughter climbs out of the bed and follows her and I know what she is then, she’s a Kadda witch, a bloodsucker.

I lay shivering on my pallet wishing I’d drunk the drugged tea, my head going round and round as I try to figure out what to do. I think of skipping out before morning and trusting I can keep hid. But I think too of the Kadda wife. I don’t want her sniffing after me; I have a feeling she can smell me out no matter where I hide. Well, brother, I raise a fuss in the morning, what else can I do? And you better believe I don’t say one thing about the Tekamin. The other daughters howl and scream and stamp their skinny feet and the old wives they go round pulling bondmaid’s hair and, throwing fits. When the Housemaster beats me again, it is just for the look of the thing, and for himself, I suppose. He is scared himself and happy to have my back to take it out on.

I keep my head down the next month, you can believe that. I try a couple times to sneak out of the handmaid’s dorm, but the damn girls aren’t sleeping sound enough and keep waking up when I move. Anyway I’m not trying too hard, not yet. The Kadda wife isn’t bothering me-except sometimes she looks at me -like she is wondering if I was really asleep that other time. I’m thinking maybe I can last out the year and get away clean and all the fetching and carrying and cleaning up don’t bother me near so much. Then the Wounded Moon starts dribbling away faster and faster till it is the eve of the new moon again and curiosity is eating at me till I can’t stand it. You told me more than once, brother, my nose would be the death of me.

Hotea giggled and the other ghosts laughed with her, a silent cacophany of titters, giggles and guffaws. Aituatea sat slumped in his chair, waiting morosely for them to stop. He wasn’t amused by a situation that meant either he had to go after a bloodsucking witch or face having an overbearing older sister at his elbow for the rest of his life.

Another girl is sleeping in the nursery this night, the Gndalau be praised for that, but I decide to sneak in there and watch what happens. I tell myself the more I know, the easier I can get away without the witch catching me. Well, it’s an argument.

Like it happens sometimes when old Tungjii gets together with Jah’takash and they wait for you to put your foot in soft shit up to your ears, everything is easy for me that night. The other bondmaids go to sleep early. Snoring. I’ve half a mind to join them, but I don’t. I make myself get out of bed. Moving about helps some, clears the fog out of my head. I sneak down to the nursery, jumping at every shadow and there are lots of those, the wind has got in the halls and is bumping the lamps about, but that is just the sort of thing you expect in big houses at night, so instead of scaring me more, it almost makes me feel like I’m at home, prowling a house with Eldest Uncle.

In the nursery the nits are sleeping heavy. The bond-maid is stretched on a pallet, snoring. She doesn’t so much as twitch when I step over her and duck under the bed of one of the dead daughters. It is close to the door into the garden and I figure if anything goes wrong I can get out that way. The door is open a crack, wedged, to let the air in and clear out the strong smell of anise. I lie there chewing my lip, thinking things will happen soon.

Sounds of wind and fountain whoop through the room; I almost can’t hear the bondmaid snoring. There is a lot of dust under the bed; no one checks there and we don’t do more than we have to, but I am sorry about that now because some of that dust gets into my nose, makes it itch like I don’t know. After a while I start getting pains jumping from my neck to between my shoulders. I stand it some minutes more, then I have to stretch and wiggle if I want to be able to walk without falling on my face. I am just about ready to crawl back to my bed, muttering curses on Tungjii and Jah’takash, when I hear a kind of humming. I stop moving, hoping the wind noise had covered the sounds I was making. I can’t tell you what the humming was like, I’ve never heard anything like it. My eyelids keep flopping down; I am fighting suddenly to k6ep awake; then more dust gets in my nose; I almost sneeze, but don’t. One good thing, the itch releases me from the witch’s spell. I ease myself toward the end of the bed and crick my neck around so I can see the door. I am hidden by the knotted fringe on the edge of the coverlet and feel pretty safe. The Kadda wife is standing in the door.