Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

“Good morning, Caroline Eve Arkwright,” he’s accustomed to say to me. I think he likes that I have three names, for no one else in the village seems to have more than one. He’s called Tom, which, I think, is an excellent name. “How are you today?”

“I’m doing very well, thank you.”

“And how many potatoes will that be? The usual number?”

“Yes, please.”

“Not one more? Aren’t you a growing girl? It seems to me that you’re growing day by day!” Tom’s always saying something like this. I can’t tell if he’s mocking me. Although I think Tom is handsome, I keep close to my heart what Nan has said about the people from the village.

“The usual number, please, just as we have agreed. No more and no less!”

“Not an apple for the way back?” This is tempting. I’ve always thought that apples look very beautiful. They come in all sorts of different colors. But I know that I must refuse.

But I don’t refuse, not yet. “Do the different colors have different tastes?”

Tom looks at me for longer than I’m used to and I find that I’m blushing. Sometimes I feel so ignorant around him and this is one of those times.

“This one,” he says at last, “tastes green . And this one? Red . Red is the best taste, don’t you think?”

“I’ve never tasted red.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Would you like to?”

Tom polishes the apple very carefully on his sleeve. Now the skin is red and gleaming. But he has a look in his eyes like perhaps he’s mocking me. Perhaps he’ll take the apple away if I ask him for it.

I can’t help myself. I take the apple from him. It feels very smooth. It is a beautiful feeling to hold that apple. I think, I can hold this but I must not eat it . Tom smiles as he watches me holding the apple and I smile at Tom. The skin of the apple reflects both of our smiles, like two crescent moons. But then Tom stops smiling and I’m left to wonder if I’ve done something wrong, if I should not have taken the apple, if he’ll take this as a sign that the contract is voided.

“My mother’ll be coming to you,” Tom says after a little while. “Will you take care of her properly? Do you promise?”

I’ve seen Tom’s mother before. Her hair is light and yellow and it drapes like silk all the way down her back. Sometimes she measures out the coffee and the sugar for me and she has never, not once, put her thumb on the scales. It makes me sad that his mother will be coming to me soon. I can see that it makes Tom sad as well. I touch his hand, very gently, in case he pulls it away but he doesn’t and so we stand like that together for some minutes.

“Thank you for the apple,” I tell him shyly. But I don’t put in my satchel. Instead I leave it on the porch of the grocer’s shop. I know now I should not have taken it. No more and no less!

But sometimes caro is no friend to Caro.

There is a large hoist at the top of the chalk cliff, which swings out over the ocean below. The supplies from the village are much too difficult to manage on the steps, and so I load them onto the platform beneath the lifting hook. Once I’ve lowered them to the house, Nan will carry them inside. Nan says that the villagers used to lower the supplies themselves once, but after Mother and Father died, they wouldn’t do it anymore. So now Nan or I must go to remind them, and since Nan can’t go anymore, it must be me. But this is good, Nan tells me, because the villagers ought to become accustomed to me. They do not suffer strangers very easily.

Nan is waiting for me at the bottom of the steps. She worries for me when I make the climb even though I’m always very careful. She has prepared coffee for me and so we sit together in the vestibulum , the largest of the chambers, where the mouth opens out toward the ocean. This is my favorite place because the noise of the waves is very soothing. Part of the cliff has fallen away on one side of the vestibulum and so the floor sticks out, smooth and gently crenellated, just like my lower lip if I’m sulking. Underneath this lip is the best place for gathering salt, though it can be got from further in the house as well, only with more difficulty. The floor isn’t very curved here. It is easier for Nan.

“The grocer’s mother will be coming to us soon,” I tell Nan.

“How do you know, Caroline?”

“Caro,” I remind her. She’s always forgetting.

“How do you know, Caro?”

“The grocer’s boy told me so.”

“Well.” And after a time: “We will greet her when she comes. Are you ready? How are your Latin declensions progressing?”

“ Optime ,” I tell her.

“Then perhaps you ought to join me when we greet her.”

I don’t like this very much but there is nothing I can say. I shall try to do my best for Tom and his mother. I shall try to greet her properly.

Several weeks pass before Tom’s mother comes to visit, which is later than I expected. It’s almost time for me to return to the village again. It’s the sound of the winch that tells me she’s coming. Outside the noise isn’t so loud but when I’m inside the house the noises become louder and louder and louder, even as the chambers become smaller and smaller and smaller. Sometimes I think that if I were to come to the end of the house then the noise would be so deafening I’d die!

I run through the chambers as quickly as I can, but carefully too, for the floors are more curved where I’ve been working. Nan keeps our library far away from the vestibulum where the salt and rain would destroy our books. As it is, they aren’t in very good condition and the oldest of them have fallen to pieces. If I had string, I’d mend them, but we don’t have very much string, so the best I can do is to wrap them in strips of my old shifts. As Nan says, waste not, want not! And if we’re to want for nothing, then we must waste nothing.

The noise of the winch echoes like a screech as I make my way through the deep passages to the outermost chamber. My feet hitting the floor make a bum, bum, bum sound. When I reach the vestibulum , Nan has already begun to remove Tom’s mother from the platform. She’s covered in a pale blue blanket but I can see the edge of her hair draped over the heartwood.

“What is the word for death?” Nan asks me.

“ Mors, mortis ,” I tell her.

“Can you conjugate it fully as a verb?” Nan unhooks the platform from the lifting hook and I help settle it down. The platform is set on wheels so it can be more easily maneuvered into the house with us.

“ Morior , which is I die , and then moriris , which is you die , and then moritur , which is she dies —”

“And if it is in the perfect tense?”

“—then it would be moriturus est , which is she has died .”

“Very good, Caroline.”

“Caro,” I remind her.

“Very good, Caro,” she says. “Now what does it mean that the grocer’s mother has died?”

This is more difficult for it goes beyond knowing the pattern of words to knowing the meaning of words. And I’ve only just begun this, but I will try. If Nan corrects me then I shall be wiser than before at any rate.

“ Mori is a word used by the ancients to indicate the passage of a creature from one state into another. It’s something like transire , which is to go across but it isn’t about movement outside or over but rather movement inside.”

I’m very proud of this description. I look at Nan very closely to see if it has satisfied her but she’s busy with maneuvering the platform onto the rails that run lengthwise down the center of every chamber.