Tales Before Slumber: Bridget & Mary

Chapter 3

Bridget & Mary

The twins had always been close. From the time cells divided they clung to each other and nothing would part them. They slept in one cradle, ate from one plate, and if punished they would sit facing the wall leaning head to shoulder no matter who had been the wrong doer. They had siblings. Ones who looked more or less like the girls. They would play alongside the younger ones and would give the elders a wary reverence especially after one of the boys took to braiding their hair together at night blaming the house pixies.

The brothers and sisters knew they were apart from the girls. For one glaring difference, the twins had never spoken. Aside from a few hurried words from a doctor who took the families weekly meat rations nothing was said about it. The girls were without physical fault and a silent girl was not such a bad thing, was it? The doctor patted their mother’s hand with that statement. The mother had never liked the doctor before and her opinion did not improve. There was nothing to be done but to wait and see. The twins played and tumbled but no sound came from them. As with quiet things they were loved but easily overlooked. The siblings accepted the girls in the way one loves a family bible. Distantly in fact and distractedly in practice.

They were not the poorest family in the village. Most of the children had not the first inclination that were even poor. A careful eye when visiting neighbors would show their home short on little luxuries. The wealthy neighbors closer to the town even had indoor bathing. This seemed a shame to the eldest girl of the family was in service to the big house. To lock the family's children away in a room to clean was such a waste. Her family with the exceptions of the twins bathed in the river behind the cottage.

Unlike the wealthy children who howled like death had come for them, the girl’s family was never in need of cajoling or threats to bathe. In fact they raced to the water with cloth and hair streaming from them. Hip deep of clear melted snow to be splashed, to swim, and frolic was a far more entertaining way to clean oneself. The lore of the town was the clear waters brought clear thoughts and luminescent skin of the fair ones who held their castles in the high mountains. Their snow, when melted gifted those mortals who gave their gifts on new moons and said their names to brights stars.

The twins were not immune to the charms of the river. They got dirty enough to need a good scrubbing. They did not bathe with their siblings. They did not even bathe with their mother who would go at the height of the moon to clean herself in the river with a single white candle. As with many families there were things a stranger would ask, but a family would accept without question. The twins did not bathe with others. They were never invited and never were asked. They would wax and wane in dirt and cleanliness. Yet another mystery in a house full of curiosities and rampaging children.

When the girls decided it was time to clean their skins, they would separate from the rest. Searching behind themselves listening for cracks of twigs and feeling for the eyes of others, they would descend into the brush to the banks of the river. The twins would shrug off their skins, place them on the rock and dive in. They would float hands intertwined to keep the other from drifting far. The girls were always careful and their mother only caught them the once.

They discussed it in the quiet hours of the morning when they lived across the world, when they had at last discovered their voices. Neither could figure how their mother had managed to appear in their clearing without a snap of a twig or setting off one of the many traps they had made using twine from their mother’s herb kit.

On that particular day when the air changed and their hightened otter senses felt a new presence, they scrambled from the water and ducked behind the largest of the rocks and trees. The twins would usually put their human skins on, covering brown fur with smooth flesh. On better freer days the girls would braid their sister’s hair until all was neat and as it should be. On better days, not this day with an interloper in the shape of their mother.

That day they had scurried back and to their mother’s feet. Two suits of skin held in both of their mother’s hands

“I worried thinking you were fairy taken but this, this is harder. There were never supposed selkies this far south, and it was their animal skins they left behind. The two of you could not be expected to do as others do.” The otters looked at each other until one held out its paw. “You will need these back won’t you?”

She waited until her daughters came back to her sitting at her heels as they did when they were babes. Two heads in one lap. Their mother braided and brushed their hair. “My mother, she used to tell me stories of my great grandmother. I had a mind she was only teasing. No, that would be a lie. There had been a truth in it. Even being a fairy story but the truth in it was honest. How could it be real? I must learn to do without you girls now.”

The girls startled, jumping back searching the other’s face for knowledge. Comforted by the other’s blank face. They kept secrets from outsiders, that was the rule. “I found these in your room. Open them.” Two river rocks that had a marking that varied only in ways the twins could see. “I do not understand how but you need to open them.” The girls traded their stones and ran their fingers three times over the swirls of the carving and the stone gave way. Two rings nestled inside. “When I saw them I knew what they were. You do not live so close to the mountains and not hear things. That is why I came. I could

not bare to find you gone. Now, you will be with others like you. You will be safe together. Oh my quiet girls think of us from time to time. Remember me. I have seen you as you are. I know you. I love you.”

As she kissed their heads and nuzzled their noses, the girls stood holding hands and walking into the river. They began to pick at the skin of their fingers loosening their flesh. “No, my girls you might need those to keep the warmth in.” Her fist was at her mouth as the girls waded further, the water swirling around their trembling knees. The one to the right waved her hand while the other leaned her head on her sister’s shoulder.

It was as simple as that. There were no instructions, but there had been no instructions on how to shed human skin and become an otter. They found their skin loose occasionally and like worrying a tooth or picking at a hangnail they peeled themselves clean at an age where everything seemed improbable and fantastic. If their skeletons could grow and change why would becoming an otter be any different?

They stood in a river and in the next moment they stood in a great hall with a proper miss standing before of them. “May I see your rings?” The girls held out their hands still joined. Polished river rock. Diamond chips studded into the gray with silver bands embedded at horizon lines. “Those are the exact marking where the stars will be. That will not mean much to you now but keep it deep. You will need it one day. I had the acquaintance of your great grandmother. She was student here at one time. Though I suppose you must have known that. The two of you will need our river as she did.” The girls nodded. “She loved it there as you will. Take care of your skins. They are hard to repair and replace here. Shall I show you to your rooms? Classes will not begin until everyone arrives and you are the first. I hope you will make the other girls welcome. They will be quite alone as I have duties that will keep me from greeting every student personally. I made you a priority as your great grandmother was who she was. I am Lady Constantine.”

She did not reach out her hand, as the twins expected, but turned away. They looked towards the photographs that gave way to paintings of smaller and smaller groups of girls. “Ladies, while you had certain handicaps in your home you will find all will be well here.” The girls looked at each other. What was a handicap when one can do what they did? “Your voices. You will find yourselves perfectly capable of speech here.” They began to open and close their mouths experimenting with breath, sounds, and tongue placement. “It will all go easier and less loudly if you give it less thought.”

They did. Short words at first. Some that pigeoned from the old language still alive in their cells and within minutes all of it tumbled, every word. Lady Constantine left the noise with a closed door on the sister’s rooms and steadied her nerves with her tea and a splash of something extra to lessen the ache in her head.

Tales Before Slumber Bedtime Podcast Chapter: Darya (Copy)

Darya watched the water for days. It was a game her governess taught her when she was large enough to cause a fuss. If she focused and unfocused her eyes time blurs at the edges no longer sharp enough to catch, time can slide by unnoticed. It had been the only useful thing the governess taught her.

Every other lesson left them both red-faced and in a match of wills. Two tigers circling and nipping like the illustrations in her father’s books. The lesson, like most things Darya counted as learned and wise was not a lesson but a discovery. A brilliance that kept her from handing her precious mind and will over to long hours of languages she did not wish to speak and dances she had no intention of following. Still, the woman gave so much effort towards bettering her it was only right to credit her with something.

Now that governess was years and a continent behind. Now there was an entire ocean in front and behind her. Now she was being tossed in the air again and this time it hardly bothered her. America. A place full of wild and untamed. There was the matter of the boarding school her uncle was taking her to.

She might run off. There was even a circus where a woman performed tricks with a gun. Darya would love to do that. She found her father’s gun once. It might have been the only time he spoken with her. Though it was not so much to her as about her and not so much talking as yelling. She did not notice when he left.

She sat still on the bench facing a circle window imagining a different more varied life. Something that could live up to the excitement others had when they heard of her unconventional upbringing. There were so many places. An estate in the country gave way to a townhouse in the city that blurred into an appointment so far it required a ship, trains, horses, and even much to her delight an elephant. There were even schools. Schools that admitted her thanks to her parent’s money and her uncle’s position.

The other girls would clamor to her side to hear her romantic tales that shifted and glinted in new ways every time she told them. Parents dead of plagues or bangle tigers. A local village had adopted her as one of their own teaching her medicines, language, and dances that not even the most liberal dancing instructor could have dreamed. Her father who was caught stealing from the government wandered into a jungle never to return. Her mother dead from starvation, a brain fever, or even a murder plot. No one ever believes each facet combined made up the truth.

Her uncle was her only family left, and he was never amused when her antics interrupted his voyages.

She was with a disinterested governess her uncle hired on the continent heading towards the New World. A new place to be left until she dreams up a spectacular stunt to escape. The circus, a girl gunslinger, the Wild West, all of it so possible if she just put her feet on land. America the land of outlaws and adventure. A country she could form herself.

The box was where she found it that morning. Taking its’ space in her goldfish Moby’s bowl. Darya had yet to investigate, hoping to draw the mystery far out to eat the hours of boredom with possibility. An entire hour of waves felt as though her patience was proved and her ability to resist was laudable. She plunged her fingers in to pull out a perfect replica of a pirate’s chest. It rested in the palm of her hand. The lock was ornate and each piece of wood carved and fastened.

It took a sewing needle to pry the latch. A ring sized to her pinky finger. A pearl glowed set with a silver octopus tentacles that made the prongs. The new governess had the skill of stillness. Something Darya did not note until the moment she swung her door open. It was almost a vignette. An automaton waiting for a gear to turn. In the later years of her life Darya would wonder if she had heard the clicks of machinery.

Darya showed her governess the ring. The governess sucked the air threw her teeth. “Best to throw that over and be a good girl at the school your blessed uncle chose for you.” Darya had no interest in anything that had the possibility of making her a good girl and placed the ring on her finger rushing off to thank her uncle.

He shook his head seeing it. “You caught someone’s attention.”

“Didn’t you give it to me?”

“Did you not would be more proper. Do you learn nothing from the women I employ?” He held her chin in his hand shaking his head but with a grin setting the edge of his mustache up “No, minnow I did not give you the ring.”

“Do you know who?”

“I know that it means you have a big change of plans.”

“Don’t I get a say?”

“A say? You said yes when you put the ring on. The ring itself is a binding contract. You will be attending your mother’s old school. I will write to the Academy in America directly and inform them that you are enrolled elsewhere. It will greatly relieve them or they might just think I threw you overboard myself.” Darya saw the clench of his jaw. He touched the ring placing his large hand over hers. “You did not know my sister well little minnow and someday we will have to have a long talk about her, but not today and not now. She was happy at school. Possible happy for the first time. I could tell by how few letters she sent. Since you are so much like her I believe you will be content there as well.”

Darya made a rush back to her rooms. The governess was gone and Darya did not think to ask what happened to her. She sat opposite the fishbowl and tried to reign her mind in. It became hard to consider the details when she let her eyes go unfocused while watching Moby swim in eternal circles around a castle that appeared at the center of his bowl. It took longer than she would ever admit to pinpoint when she was no longer rocking on a boat following gold scales that flicker and flit and when she was sitting as she had been before not a muscle moved, but the view was of a forest far below and the windowsill was not a circle of wood but a high arch of stone from a tower in a fairytale book that was read to her when she was little and she still possessed something resembling a family. Two hands grab hers, and two identical faces with differing emotions are deep into Darya’s personal space.

“Deep breaths it will take a minute. I am Bridget and this is my sister Mary. It took us days but there wasn’t anyone to tell us what was what when we got here. We know loads now.”

“What is what?”

“Silly you are at school. You’re wearing the ring. You must have said yes.” Darya nodded focusing her eyes regarding Moby as the goldfish swam, adjusting to his new world without a sign of distress. She took his example deciding to like the two girls and follow them wherever they decided she should go. It was how every adventure should start and she was more than ready for her adventure to begin.

Newest Bedtime Podcast Episode Tales Before Slumber (Copy)

Meet Darya the first student at Lady Constantine's School for Maudlin and Mischievous Young Ladies. A child flung through the continents now on a ship heading to a normal boarding school until she finds a treasure chest in her goldfish Moby's bowl.

Chapter 1: To be Eaten by Wolves Under a Riot of Stars

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Chapter 1

To be Eaten by Wolves Under a Riot of Stars

There are two trees. It would be helpful if the trees in question did not look like every other perfectly normal non ceremonial tree in a vast forest, but that would have been playing fair and this forest is not and never has been playing.

Lady Constantine takes a blade from her skirts drawing it across her left palm. A branch reaches out for her hand. To a less careful eye they could be old friends reunited.

Two headstones rise one on either side of her skirts. She does not look at them or read their epitaphs. It is not their custom. She has broken tradition once and regretted it. Never again. Her new name will be obvious as soon as her sister sees her and her old one is worn thin.

She removes her clothing. Each piece shed and discarded with only a soft echo of stars to observe. Her clothing drifts, shrouding the headstones. Her sister is waiting, as said the note from the hawk. Agitation where there should be calm sensible word. Adjectives where there should be clarity. Sentiment where instructions should be clear. Turns of phrase that could only be clarified with a visit.

The blood debt was paid now she had entrance. Entrance, but not safe passage.

To be eaten by wolves under an infinite sky of stars. If only she did not have to make this foolish journey into a woods that pricked at her fingertips and bled her feet. If it were possible to avert this journey Lady Constantine would lay down under an anarchy of stars and call the wolves herself. Meeting with her sister left a dread and a metallic distaste in her mouth, though that might be the penny she lay under her tongue. No matter what she wished, the box exists and her sister holds it close and closed. Nothing was in the box, if an unfathomable void was nothing.

The deals we make in the end often echo what we promise and swear we would never do. At the beginnings we make very different promises. Ask for useless things and swear sillier oaths. Babes in the woods succulent, silly, and meandering in bright clothing. Shining eyes and babbling feelings. Ignorant to what they, what we, what I  will do gladly before they arrive at the cottage in the woods.

The Manor was many things since it appeared and presently is a boarding school for young ladies of certain abilities. Stones built themselves around a story of a box holding the void. As the manor grew into itself so did a forest and a lake hospitable to creatures who were best left behind in the margins of myths and fantasies. The woods made a modest cottage where the girl with the box preferred to reside with her two geese and a pet rabbit. The cottage far from the boarding school should not have felt the magic that preserved the structures out of time and out of place, aging, unravelling, and yellowing at the edges.

Even the professors who were with her the longest remained ignorant of the boundaries and horizons of the estate. Something changed when the last parcel of books was purchased at auction by one of her less respectable sources. As she read the auction catalogue, black stars glittered in her eyes. When she arranged the call her tea turned colorless, then the cream and steam yellowed into a painting of midnight horrors. Now, now the next group of girls were expected and there were things that refused to remain buried.

          When the school term ended the girls who were brave enough, clever enough to solve the labyrinth ended up here at her sister’s cottage to face the ultimate test of their fortitude. The final test.  The newly graduated students drank their tea and were given their book. The one that matched the shade of their skin. The book that each chapter began with a drawing of the ring they wore. The one that told their story from beginning to end.             

            Occasionally, if the young woman was a favorite, of value, or if it was an extraordinary occasion when there was nothing better to do Lady Constantine joined these unusual book readings. If merely to observe and pretend at silly things: feeding the geese, catching up with the rabbit, and taunting the newest kittens.

After a month, a year, or a decade in the farthest region of the library the young woman’s book appeared. The volumes always leather bound with the graduate’s name engraved in gold on the spine. She never opened these books possessing a vague thought of it being forbidden, and after a few centuries even avoided searching for the books. Where her charges went, what their purpose, and outcome was not a secret and Lady Constantine wished not to know why the book was in her care again. Curiosity and imagination were her sister’s peculiarities, Lady Constantine preferred facts and plain truths if they could be discovered.

Prologue: Lady Constantine’s School for Encouragable Young Ladies

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Prologue

Yellow.

Unrepentant gold.

A body in excess. In a fever.

A book, bound in leather. It aches to be touched. Shimmying in its’ bindings. Pages shift and ruffle as if a breeze woken. A scent, supple, sticky, a sweetness of the dead. There is rot to it. A smell that draws you in while it repels. It wants you to come nearer while you fight to run. You will be all the tastier for it. If you were only brave enough you would lift the cover.

What kind of leather is that you might muse. What animal could produce that transparency, that sort of sheen. Is it sweating? Moist while your throat is dry. What animal? With a revulsion you already know the answer.

Could it be worth it? The weeks pouring over auction ledgers. The favors called in and begged for. To find it here. In a crowded room with a man speaking rapid fire. Pride in the chest with your bid being the highest. The order will crow. You will be the one to bring the book home. Place it on the table after having read all that would be denied to you later. A small smile you had practiced in the mirror. The one that would show your worth while your words chocked back all of what you had done with “nothings” and “all for yous”. The words that denounce your effort spoken with clarity of knowing none will believe you, and value your humility all the more.

“Going once, going twice.” A bubble of disgust in your throat. The cover began to, relax. There was no other word. First when turned it was upright all crisp clean edges but now it droops at the corners. You became distracted. “Ah another bidder “ Could your slip of attention, intention have caused this calamity. You are silent struck dumb. The book straightens and preens towards the light. A slight shuffle no one would have caught it but that small shift captures you and you forget to bid. Not forget so much as loose yourself looking for pores, stray hairs, believing to have seen a face in the swirls and texture of the front cover.

It is gone.

Failure and humiliation grip deep in the empty claw of your chest. You replay the moment a thousand times in a second. Each time rewriting your failure or finding the fault with another. A way to explain beyond your own bumbling.

It is only when you get back to the hotel that you can begin to breath. Breathe and pace. There is a note waiting for you, not at the lobby but neatly on your pillow, folded into the shape of a rabbit.

Come to Lady Constantine’s Finishing and Reform School for Encouragable Young Ladies. We will gladly feed your need for knowledge.

Miss Hypatia, our librarian will see you right. Bring the order. We eagerly await your presence.

Yours in faith,

Lady Constantine