Rachel Swirsky - If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love, and Other Stories

“Look,” Vare said, abandoning his pose by the mantel to approach the other men. “You’re right. Berrat will come eventually. And what will he see? His daughters, his horrors, living their semi-life with me. Two virgin girls and an ‘evil’ man. What do you imagine he’ll think?”

Lano looked like he was going to choke. “You haven’t.”

“No. But if you were Berrat, would you believe it?”

The answer didn’t assuage Lano’s disgust. “You’ll get us caught,” he repeated plaintively.

At the sound of footsteps on the stair, Vare looked up and saw Ayl, dressed in a green day gown, one hand on the railing as she stared down at the parlor.

Vare took the opportunity to move toward the door. “Gentlemen,” he said, pointing the way out.

They stood off in the entranceway, Lano and Rusk glaring at Vare while he glared back. They could all see the calculations written on each other’s faces. They knew too much about each other to be taken lightly. If one of them crossed another… With men like these and pride involved, any action could lead to mutual destruction. All three reached the same conclusion; it was safest to part on bad terms and avoid each other, for now.

A few days later, when Vare heard through other sources that Lano and Rusk had sold their belongings and left the city, he was not surprised.

He was surprised a few days after that when he woke to find that his housekeeper had also disappeared, taking the lion’s share of the larder with her. When Vare asked the girls if they’d seen anything, Delira confessed, “She was in our room last night, papa. She took out the charms, the way you do, and when we came back, she’d thrown up on the floor. She said she didn’t care about your threats, not anymore. She called you an abomination.”

Delira covered her mouth with one discreet gloved hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Whore,” Vare muttered, meaning the housekeeper. He’d kept his servants bound to him for years with threats detailing the charms in his possession. With the right charm under his tongue, he’d find the escaped harridan, wherever she’d tried to run.

He would—but perhaps after he took the girls to dinner. They ate roasted chicken and drank white wine. Afterward, they listened to a violinist by the river. On the way home, Delira fell asleep with her head on his shoulder. Life was too pleasant for Vare to bother with an old, menial shrew.

In the morning, Delira led the way down the stairs, Ayl trailing behind. “Papa,” she said.

Vare looked up from his perch on the loveseat. He set down his brandy among the scattered glasses on the table, all used and filthy, much like the rest of the house now that the whore of a servant had fled.

“Yes, child?” Vare asked.

“We heard someone talking about our father,” Delira said, descending to the floor.

“About me?”

“About Berrat,” said Ayl.

“That maniac,” Vare said. “That devil.”

“They said he was a good man,” Delira continued. “A man of the church.”

Vare pulled her into his lap. She sat like a girl half her age, smiling innocently. Ayl waited silently behind them, her fingers on the edge of the loveseat, digging into the velvet.

“This is something you should learn,” Vare said. “Some men put on a good front for the world, but they’re evil in their hearts.”

Delira nodded. “Just so,” she said, as if she’d had more than a few scant months’ experience in the world.

A noise called Vare’s attention up to Ayl. Typically fidgety and bored, she’d begun to pull the charm from her mouth. For a moment, she flickered into corpse-form. Jagged bone fragments jutted like teeth through her dry, shrunken skin.

Delira screamed. She swung her arms around Vare’s neck, clinging for safety. He pushed her roughly aside as he reached for Ayl, shoving the charm back into her mouth.

Ayl was back, frowning at Vare’s harsh treatment. She moved out of his reach. “That hurt.”

“Never do that,” Vare said. “You hear me?”

Delira’s gaze dropped to the floor. She rubbed her arm where he’d pushed her. “Yes, papa,” she said.

Ayl said nothing. Vare chose to ignore her.

It was night when they came to him, all warm hands and loose, white gowns. Eyes shone in the near-dark, Ayl’s green and Delira’s grey. Fingertips ran up Vare’s spine. He felt his skin heating. His girls. That which had been a whispering breeze began to howl. His girls.

“You shouldn’t,” he said, pushing them away. He meant it. He did not want them to be like that.

With only candlelight behind her, Ayl looked paler than she did during the day, and even more slight. The fingers that reached across Vare’s chest—his girls—were as narrow as sticks.

Ayl’s fingertips brushed against Delira’s mouth. Her lips parted, red and wide—his girls!—and Ayl reached inside.

“Stop!” shouted Vare, but it was too late, Ayl’s fingers had already slipped under Delira’s tongue, already withdrawn the charm. It glinted between Ayl’s fingers, polished with Delira’s spittle. Ayl smiled as Delira shrank into corpse-form. The dead girl didn’t smell any longer, was too dry and brittle for that. Her flesh had withered away, exposing the white branches of her skeleton, which lay over Vare’s lap like a strange blanket. Through his clothing, he could feel the contours of her vertebrae, her pelvis, her femurs. Her skull lay against his shoulder, empty nose nestled against his collar.

Despite the nettles creeping along Vare’s skin, it felt good, it felt right, holding his girl, his girl as she was, bare and bleached and defenseless.

Ayl stared down with hard, green eyes. “Why?” Vare asked.

“She wasn’t brave enough,” Ayl answered, charm still shining in her palm.

She was on Vare before he could react, her fingers prying open his jaws, her unnaturally strong body pinning him in place even as he flailed, her dead hand impervious to the pain of his biting as she lifted his tongue and thrust the metal beneath it.

Sweet like cinnamon. Stinging. And then a strange shift. A malformation.

He wasn’t himself anymore, didn’t even remember what himself was. Memories gone, he sat slack, a blank figure, waiting for someone to tell him what to do.

The skinny girl in front of him took his hand. “Come on,” she said, handing him a coat. “Button up.”

He stood. Bones scattered to the floor.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“To our father,” the girl said, pulling him forward. “To Berrat.”