come not from what
we’ve chosen to consume.
My servant, my sister’s
bones and muscles, sinew, skin
weigh little more than air
and yet the crushing weight
of soldiers laughing
trousers around ankles
armor shielding them
is still upon us both.
The grand staircase
is a battlefield.
Zahra must rest
every few steps
but sitting exposed
is worse than
the throbbing pain
of constant motion.
No audience
for our descent
except another maid
huddled behind a table.
She joins us
without a word.
There are no words.
We search each nook
where Helene might hide,
find two more women
streaked with blood
and grime and horror.
Finally the kitchen
castle epicenter
source of sustenance.
The servants are at home
but I’m on foreign soil.
And still without Helene.
Betsy holds court
wielding a massive knife,
hair a wild halo, avenging angel.
The head cook tenses
at our arrival then
slumps back down
at the sight of us
half rising when
she notes my presence.
Betsy, have you seen
Lady Helene?
No, mademoiselle.
Formality, titles feel absurd
when all else has been wrenched away.
But perhaps the structure of our stations
will be a scaffolding
on which we all can cling.
I think some tea
might do us well.
The clink and clatter
as Betsy moves about
a horrible echo
of sword on sword
and barricades breached.
Breathe, remember,
her aim is tea
not carnage.
My parents who brought me
into this world
are dead.
Helene with them
in a place with no tea
or carnage.
Perhaps Philippe too
in the thought
of what lies beyond
these blood-soaked walls.
I may be the
only
one
left.
The fire blazes
tea scalds my tongue
but the chill up my spine
pays no heed.
Gathered around the table:
Zahra, shattered, faithful,
the slightest color
warming her cheeks,
grip still tight on my arm.
Betsy of the perpetual scowl
who once brained a petty thief
with a cast-iron pan
for stealing fresh baked bread.
Three more women
gathered along the way.
Two whose names
I barely know.
The third, Matilde,
old as the stones
that witnessed the slaughter
witness to my mother’s birth
now nearly blind
retained because Mother
is severe, but she is not
without a heart.
Was not.
What am I to do,
responsible for
all these women?
Motionless now
the ragged edges of the horror
reach out
snag upon my skin.
An easy target,
doe lapping at a stream
inviting the hunter’s arrow
and yet
I cannot move.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I am sprawled on the couch when Mom arrives with takeout, which is the first sign something’s off.
“Where’s Papi?”
“Hello to you too, my darling daughter.” She dumps the bags on the kitchen counter and stomps back to their bedroom.
I get up to investigate the food. When Mom wants me to know what’s wrong, I’ll know. Plus the smell of Gordito’s wafts from the bags. They have these burritos that are literally as big as a baby. The restaurant has photos on the wall of infants lying next to these monster burritos for comparison. We used to get a single burrito and split it four ways for the whole family.
Inside the bag I find three separately wrapped foil packages.
When the door slams, I wonder if Mom slipped out her bedroom window to come around and make another pissy entrance. But this time it’s Papi. Who also has takeout bags.
He doesn’t slam them on the counter like Mom, though. He stands frozen, staring at me in confusion. “Is that . . . for you?” He chin points at the three burritos I’m putting onto plates.
“For . . . all of us, I assume? Mom brought them home.”
That unfreezes him. He drops his bags on the counter and stomps off to their bedroom. There’s no way to avoid their rising voices in our tiny house. Plus, I’m kind of curious. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard them yell at each other.
Papi’s bags contain Korean. I start transferring the food to bowls.
“I said I’d get dinner!” Papi says.
“You said you wouldn’t have time to make it!”
“And that I’d pick something up!”
“You were being sarcastic!”
“Why would I be sarcastic about that?”
I whistle at Chester to follow me so he doesn’t sneak any food off the table, and we march to their bedroom. I knock on the door, but open it without waiting for a response. They both turn to me in shock.
“Jess is coming over in twenty minutes,” I inform them. “Their parents have actual reasons to scream at each other in bedrooms, given the bitter divorce and all, so they get enough of whatever this is. There is an abundant multicultural feast getting cold on the table, so whatever this is? Maybe it can wait.”
With that, I return to the table, where I start serving myself bibimbap. This could go any number of ways. We’re all sort of spelunking without a headlamp here. After a shocked silence, they both explode in laughter and I breathe a sigh of relief.
They give explanations for their short tempers over dinner, even though the real explanation is we’re all fried down to the last wire and could spark at any moment. They ask questions about Jess’s home life, and I remind them of Jess’s pronouns when they mess up. Papi ponders how to handle nonbinary pronouns in Spanish, which is so heavily gendered.
By the time Jess arrives, my parents are cleaning the kitchen together, talking about taking a salsa class at the community center.
* * *
—
“You’re so lucky.” Jess props their feet up on the railing along the back porch.
But it always does eventually.
I know what they mean, so I don’t say something snarky. I am lucky, in so many ways. I breathe in the last blooms on the neighbor’s lilac tree while Jess’s pencil scritches along a sketch pad.
“Can I see?”
“Not yet.”
Chester perks up at the sound of a siren in the distance but decides it’s not worth his while and settles back down at Jess’s feet.
When we were little, anytime we heard a siren, Nor and I used to stop whatever we were doing, no matter what, and turn to each other, clasping both hands, and say, “Fire, sickness, horror, flood, sisters always, heart and blood.”
I have no idea where it came from. Some creepy fairy tale, probably.
“Has your dad moved out yet?” I ask Jess.
Instead of answering, they hold up the sketch pad. They’ve drawn an amazingly intricate sword, the hilt engraved with curlicues and letters I can’t read, the blade somehow catching the light, even though it’s sketched in pencil.
“That’s gorgeous.”
“It’s meant to be terrifying.”
“Well, yeah. If it was pointed at my neck, it would be less gorgeous.”
On the table between us, Jess’s phone buzzes. They glance at a text, grimace. “Can I spend the night here?” When I don’t answer right away, they add, “I don’t have to if it’s weird. It just sounds like they’re still at it.”
The relief I feel at the idea of late-night whispers, a person who’d wake if I wake, rushes in so fast it floods me with guilt. Jess is not a replacement for Nor.
“Of course you can.”
I leave the notebook I’ve been holding like a shield on the table and go inside to pull out some extra blankets and arrange the hide-a-bed in the living room. I half expect Jess to follow me in and chatter up a storm while I make up a bed. But for once they stay still and quiet, alone except for Chester and the distant sirens.
Fire, sickness, horror, flood.
Once I’m done, I make hot cocoa and fill my parents in. They’re all sad, concerned faces, but at least they don’t go out to the patio to smother Jess with loving kindness.
When I get out there with two mugs of cocoa, Jess’s pencil is back to scratching away.
“Another sword?” I ask, setting the cocoa down. Then I see that they’re not drawing on their sketch pad. They’re writing in my notebook. Cocoa sloshes across the table, spattering Jess’s abandoned sketch pad as I grab Marguerite from their hands. “What the hell?!”
“What?!”
“You can’t write in someone else’s journal!”
“And you can’t pour coffee all over someone’s sketch pad!”
“That was an accident! And it’s hot cocoa!”
The ridiculousness of that distinction dampens my fury, but only a little. “This is private.”
“You’ve been asking for my help on every little thing! What kind of sword? What’s the castle layout? Clothing? Armor? Where they’d take a shit!”
I take a careful breath, notice my parents watching us from inside. “That still doesn’t make it okay for you to write in my book.”
They nod. “Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have asked. But I didn’t write; I drew.”
That doesn’t make it better. But it does make me curious. I open the notebook and flip through until I find a page that contains not only my sprawling handwriting, but also a striking medieval sword over an intricate flowered tapestry, ripped and jagged at its bottom edge. But it’s also this incredibly beautiful piece of miniature art.
I glance up. Jess watches carefully, more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen them.
“It’s beautiful.”
They let out a breath. “I was thinking about illuminated manuscripts? Do you know . . . ?”
I shake my head and sit while Jess pulls up some images on their phone. I’m looking at ornate pages from books—really old manuscripts from way before the printing press. The words look like calligraphy, but what’s notable about these pages are the intricate borders, miniature illustrations, and gorgeous letters beginning each page.
“Illuminated, because they always had some gold leaf involved,” Jess says, reaching over to scroll through and point out a favorite.
“They look religious.”
“A lot are. Originally monks made them. Like, there were monks whose whole job was making these beautiful works of art. But by Marguerite’s time, they weren’t only religious. Books became status symbols. They were superexpensive, because of all the labor.”
“And the gold leaf.”
“Right. They sort of fell out of fashion when the printing press came along. But that was after Marguerite.”
I scroll through some more of the photos. They’re absolutely stunning. I’m not really a fine-art person, but I can’t stop looking at these, all the detail, all the time poured into them. Books as status symbols, stories valued so much they were cast in gold.
“Marguerite’s story is worth illuminating,” Jess says carefully.
“Yeah. It is.”
FLAY
The crack of a twig
alerts the doe
she’s no longer
safe at the stream.
A man’s shout
propels me to my feet.
Some dive for shelter
while Betsy wields her knife;
one of the new girls
grabs a broom, I grasp
for something, anything
but this is not an armory
and there’s no time.
A man bursts through
the door; a surge of fury
sends me lunging, clawing
at his face, but Betsy
yanks me back.
Master Philippe!
My brother’s wild eyes
and his desperation are
blunt-edged reminders
our parents have been slaughtered, and—
Helene?
He barely sees me, hell-bent on
the only survivor who matters.
I haven’t . . .
I couldn’t—
My brother’s voice tears a sob
from my gut, the crescendo
of a keening wail that started
the moment the first dragon
breathed its all-consuming fire.
I never cried as a child
when he cut off my braids,
stole my sword, bested me in races.
My cry pierces his armor, brings
him to his knees as well.
I thought she’d stay alive
until I found her, blessed her
but wading through the massacre
has erased all doubt.
Helene is dead.
Philippe sees but doesn’t
the women all around us
stripped to their cores
with nothing left but horror.
He asks not after Mother, Papa;
if either lived all eyes
would turn toward them.
Helene is dead.
I don’t realize
how desperately
I long for embrace
until he reaches out
but only yanks me
to a corner.
You must take these women.
Go immediately
to the Sisters at Salette.
One day’s ride to the south.
You’ll be taken care of there.
I cannot stay in this fortress of horrors
but neither can I set out on the open road.
Both prospects terrify in equal measure.
What life awaits me in a convent?
What death awaits me in the world?
And what of you?
Me?
There’s the Philippe I know
looking at his kid sister
as tho
ugh she were ridiculous.
I’m going to find these bastards
and flay them open, end to end.
Before I can argue, he’s gone.
I’m left with the task of shepherding
these women, injured, traumatized,
into the mountains.
But
you’ll be safe there.
We aren’t safe now.
Even if the monsters don’t return
the life we knew here
has been drowned in blood.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Maybe we could do the whole thing in the traditional style. Like, use the same sort of parchment and ink and stuff. When you’re done writing.”
Since I’ve started letting Jess doodle in the margins of my draft, they have been moping about their parents a lot less. Still sleeping over at my house more than half the time, though. The second night they fell asleep in my room, and we haven’t bothered with the hide-a-bed again. Which has led to pointed questions from my parents, who fall all over themselves telling me how much they like Jess. “We want you to know you can always talk to us about stuff,” Mom said yesterday, curiosity barely concealed.
Jess’s focus on what Marguerite’s story might be when it’s finished is kind of antithetical to what I’m doing. I don’t know what it’ll be; I don’t know if it’ll ever be finished.
But I’m letting them drag me downtown to look at illuminated manuscripts.
A woman wearing everything she owns gets on the bus and slides into the seat in front of us. Jess digs around in their bag and when we’re getting off at the next stop, they hand her a ten-dollar bill.
“I thought divorce was expensive,” I say as we step onto the busy sidewalks of downtown.
They shrug. “Not as expensive as poverty in Seattle.” Looping our arms together, they pull me toward the Seattle Art Museum.
The woman on the bus has somewhere to sit, unbothered, out of the sun for a while. I’m startled by how many tents line the streets, even in this swanky part of downtown. Somehow I didn’t notice when we were here for the trial. Maybe these people, stripped to nothing in a city built on so much opulence, stay away from the courthouse because clearly justice is not in their favor.
Or maybe I didn’t notice because I was too wrapped up in my own thing.