Марни Азарелли - Strange Girls - Women in Horror Anthology

The Church had blamed my great-grandmother’s power on her blood – she had traveled across the inland sea from Aragognhy in the East to marry my great-grandfather. She was far from the only one, of course. Before the war and the Interdiction, there had been generations of travel and trade and, of course, the intermarriage and settling that goes with that between our two nations. The Rooting Out is vivid in my mother’s memory, though the worst was over before she was born, but the scars ran deep enough even in her far country manor that she speaks of it as if she was there.

For most of the girls whose mothers did this now, it was a matter of beauty and fashion and marriage prospects. Not a matter of life and death, as it still was for my little sister and I.

My grandmother was the most talented at it, though she peered painfully as she worked even with her face an inch from my head. They would not have let my grandfather live if his cousin Anri had not been killed in a rockfall the previous autumn. As it was, he was the only halfway legitimate heir – and even the Synod did not have the gall to kill the only scion of the Blood remaining.

They kept him close, though, in a cell not quite three paces across, Testing and testing him over and over until he was a broken wreck of a young man who would denounce his mother every Sabbar and Festing. And they married him to the purest vessel they could find – a virgin noble maiden given to the Daughters of Darkness at the age of three, just about to take her final vows at the age of twenty-six. I’ve seen an image of their wedding. My grandfather was so thin and frail he could barely stand in his cloth-of gold-robe, his dark eyes staring out of his tic-twisted face. My grandmother was near-albino in white silk no paler than her face, the pearl-embroidered veil draped over her hair not quite hiding the strip of dark cloth tied over her eyes to prevent her screaming in pain at the light.

She was a bad choice for them, despite all of that. They had broken my grandfather, and he remained broken; fading away after barely seven years of the weight of the Synod’s Will upon him, but after doing the vital duty of siring my father and continuing the Bloodline. But they put little weight on my grandmother, assuming that the Daughters and the dark she was raised in had broken any will in her long since. She does a very fine impression of that, I must admit; I don’t believe I’ve ever heard her speak above a whisper, and her head is always demurely bent low under her grey widow-veil. They never considered, somehow, that perhaps a soul that could survive the Daughters and the darkness might have acquired two things; a will of stone and iron, and the patience of quiet, dripping water. I have no doubt that, without her, my family would not have survived to the conception of my sister and I, let alone attained the limited freedoms we have today.

Once, when I was a tiny child, not much more than an infant, I went wandering in the Palace. My sister was badly sick with a fever, I believe; at any rate, for once no one was looking after me or for me. My wanderings carried me into the Throne Room.

I had not been there since my public presentation after my baptismal. I wandered the empty, echoing room on my little legs, fingering the cloth-of-gold drapes and gawping up at the splendor of the murals inlaid in the ceiling – toddlers are the finest riposte possible to any idea that manners are innate with breeding – and eventually curled up on the thick carpet and fell asleep behind one of the Noble’s Boxes.

I awoke to the familiar sound of my grandmother’s whisper-soft voice. Peering out from my hidey-hole, I saw my grandmother, kneeling in her accustomed place on the grey cushion at the right-hand side of the Throne. Instead of being bent low though, she was kneeling tall, looking upwards.

I was too far away to catch more than the merest snatches of what she said. And perhaps I am wrong. My grandmother is and always has been a devout woman, after all. Perhaps she was simply praying there for strength to carry the burdens life has laid on us all. It would be a fitting enough place to do so.

I do not believe so, however. I think that, some day, the Synod will regret the symbol they chose. I think they will regret having her son and her blood enthroned beneath my great-grandmother’s skeleton, bound with iron chains and thorns and her wings nailed to the arms of the iron crucifer.

I can still see my grandmother’s face turned upwards to the skull’s empty eyes, her mouth shaping words, as though it was before me this very moment. And when I think of it, I feel a bone-deep ache, and a tiny, flexing movement in my shoulder blades, as though something is fluttering and growing there beneath my skin. Waiting for its moment to burst forth.

Claire Hamilton Russellis in her thirties and lives in Glasgow, Scotland, with her partner and Staffie. A keen Live Action and tabletop role-player, she worked with marginalized populations for many years and is now involved in disability, queer, environmental and other social justice activism. Read her activism blog at www.rightdownwiththesickness.wordpress.com.

Adam couldn’t stop himself from staring.

His eyes were drawn to the girl’s blue hair, held in place by a point-up pencil. She sat in the back corner of the commuter lounge among the puffy yellow chairs, feet tucked under her legs as she read. Her too-big college sweater spattered with paint, and the girl gnawed at a growing thumb hole in the left sleeve.

Josh nudged Adam while they were stuck in line at the grab-n-go at the other end of the lounge. “I have drawing with her. You might get along.”

His roommate had to run to his next class, nearly spilling his large coffee all over himself as he tripped through the doors. But Adam had no place to be and settled in the opposite corner to watch the girl as he did his homework. Instead of writing about pre-Columbian history, he tried to come up with an excuse to talk to her. Picking up his laptop, Adam sat down in a stained chair next to her.

“I like your hair,” he said.

The girl flinched. “Oh, you surprised me. I felt like a change and bam! Blue hair,” she said with a wave of her hand. She smiled and went back to her design textbook.

Adam tugged on his shirt. “I’m Adam by the way, Josh’s roommate.”

“Josh’s great. I’m D.C.” She closed her book.

“D.C.? Like Washington D.C?” he teased, hoping he was funny.

D.C.’s nose was freckled, and Adam loved how blue her eyes were. They weren’t quite the same blue as her hair. “Is it short for something? What’s your real name?”

“Does it have to be short for something?” D.C. tilted her head away from him. She checked her phone and looked out the window that overlooked the quad. “I gotta go to class.”

“I’ll walk you there.” Adam opened the campus center’s door for her, and they walked together over the quad to the impressive gray gloom that was the Jefferson building. Adam heard it was haunted. Maintenance blew away the fallen leaves, drowning out Adam’s early conversation. D.C. was quiet as he talked about himself, his plans to be lawyer, and how obnoxious his floor-mates were. None of them understood that he actually took college seriously. D.C. nodded and smiled.

Adam waved goodbye to her at Jefferson’s stone steps. She wriggled her fingers slightly back. She must be shy, he thought. D.C.’ d be more talkative once she got to know him. There had been other girls in Adam’s life, ones who gave him the cold shoulder. But he knew that sometimes people need to be encouraged to say yes.