See Me (2)

1

I dreamed many dreams in the cage. This was my first dream:

On the night I am born, my father takes me in his arms and shows me the moon. ‘Can you see?’ he asks me. ‘Can you see?’

The moon is a round yellow cheese on a blue silken tablecloth. The salt shaker has overturned and spilled its shimmering crystals all across the sky.

‘Can you see?’ and his voice is a pigeon’s coo, soft because he loves me.

I can see his face, the moon behind it; a face creased with laughter lines, black eyes under black brows, white smile. But it’s not me reflected in his eyes, for I have a twin brother and I am only a face on a milk carton.

TWO

It was raining. Morley’s hair was plastered against his forehead, and when he wiped his nose on his wrist a stream of raindrops dribbled down his sleeve.

‘You’re wet,’ I said.

‘I know.’

Quennel came dashing out of the inn and yelled at Morley to get the cart inside the stable you idiot before the hybrid drowns. Morely went to Shallie’s head and pulled the cart around and we lurched into the inn’s stable. It was warm and dry inside, and smelled wonderfully of straw and horses.

I sneezed, and Quennel unlocked the cage door and hauled me out, looping the chain around his wrist. ‘No messing about,’ he warned.

‘Your wish—’ I sneezed again. ‘—your wish is my command...’

‘...but be careful what you wish for, yeah, I know.’

I sneezed and the sneeze turned into a coughing fit that left me dizzy and breathless. Quennel picked me up and even though I struggled, carried me inside the inn. The sudden light and noise of the taproom made my head ring and I muffled a sneeze against Quennel’s shoulder.

We’d got a room at the top of the inn, up two flights of stairs—Quennel carrying me, Morley carrying the two packs. Morley would have to lug the trunk up as well, as Quennel didn’t trust anyone not to sneak a peek inside at the props, my spare costume and face paint.

The room was small and chilly, but the whitewashed walls were spotless, and the bed was neatly made with a blue and white striped blanket and fat mattress that creaked when Morley dropped the packs down on it. I wriggled until Quennel put me down, and I made a dash for the pillows, the chain clunking on the floor behind me. ‘Two!’ I exclaimed. ‘Two pillows, one for me and one for Master.’

Morley squeaked indignantly. ‘What about me? Quennel?’

Quennel sat down on the bed and prodded the mattress. ‘Get a grip, Morley.’

I hugged the pillow against me and simpered at Morley over the top. ‘I’ll fight you for it.’

‘No.’ He sighed and turned back to the door. ‘I’ll go get the trunk.’

‘Hurry up,’ Quennel called after him. ‘Landlord wants a performance this evening as part payment.’

I sighed.

‘Shut it.’ Quennel shoved the packs onto the floor and sat down on the bed. He wagged his finger at me. ‘Raven?’

‘Yes Master.’ I sneezed.

‘Stop sneezing.’

I wiped my nose on the back of my wrist and sat down on the floor, pulling the pillow into my lap and pressing it against my face. In the feathery, musty darkness, I could hear the bed strings whimper as Quennel shifted his weight on the mattress, the impatient huff of his breath. The blood beating in my ears, the scrape of the chain against the floorboards. The voices of people downstairs, drinking and laughing and talking together. The rain outside worrying the earth into mud. The shift and stir of the horses in the stable, Shallie telling her neighbour in the next stall about how she’d gone lame with a stone in her shoe a few weeks ago. And beyond all that, the murmur of wolves in the forest.

Quennel yanked the pillow away and shook it. ‘Stop wiping your nose on my pillow.’

I pressed my wrist over my nose and tried not to sneeze but the sneeze resented being squashed and exploded out with a burst of coughing and breathlessness. Quennel walloped me on the back, but I still shook with spasms. When I could breathe again, I crawled on hands and feet to the window and pulled myself up. The world outside was grey with rain, the trees black and twisted. Like weeping widows, I thought, and sniffed.

The chill coming from the window panes made me shiver, but I wrapped my arms around myself and closed my eyes and stayed like that for the rest of the day. Morley came back with the trunk, Quennel sat on the bed and scowled and complained about what a god-awful world it was and why couldn’t anything go right, first the cart axle breaking and the magistrates and their stupid laws and now the bloody weather and he’d bet our last penny that the hybrid was coming down with bloody pneumonia.

‘’snot my fault,’ I croaked, dabbing at my streaming nose.

‘Maybe she shouldn’t dance tonight,’ Morley said.

Quennel snorted. ‘Fine. We’ll just starve so the hybrid can stay in bed. If she can stand, she can perform.’

‘I can’t stand,’ I said. ‘I am a puppet without strings. I am paw print without a paw, a feather with no wing, non regrette rien, non je ne regrette rien...’

Quennel took off his boot and threw it at my head. I ducked, hissed, and huddled down against the wall. My head was throbbing and my ears felt plugged by giant fingers, muting the world into an indistinct murmur. Snot dribbled in a steady stream from my nose, but I couldn’t sniff it up fast enough. I dozed fitfully, but by the time evening came, I felt terrible.

Quennel pulled me away from the wall and lifted me to my feet. ‘Come on. You need to get ready now.’

I swayed on my feet and moaned. ‘Nnngg.’

‘Come on, Raven, it’s six o’clock!’

‘Nnngg.’

‘All right then, I’ll get you ready.’ He grabbed at the collar of my dress and tried to yank it up, but I twisted away, overbalanced and toppled over like a bowling pin.

‘I’ll do it,’ I mumbled.

‘Well do it quickly.’ He opened the trunk and began taking out my costume and face paints.

Dizzily, I collected together the tight brown leather jerkin and short fringed breeches that made up my costume, retreated behind the bed and managed to get dressed. My fingers felt fat and clumsy, and it took three tries to fasten the laces on my jerkin. I crawled back to Quennel and he sat me on the bed and began tying the bands of black feathers around my wrists and ankles. Normally I would have jerked away from his touch, but my head felt stuffed to the ears with cotton wool, as though it were about to fall off my shoulders.

Something cold dabbed my face and I flinched. Quennel was mixing paint in a small pot.

‘I’ll do it,’ I croaked.

‘Idiot.’ He swiped the brush across my forehead and then down my nose. ‘You never do it right anyway.’

‘Do too do it right.’

‘You just make a mess. Close.’

I closed my eyes and shivered. Black on my eyelids and under my eyes. Reddish-brown streaked across my forehead. Vivid thin streaks of bright blue across my cheeks. My face for the show, my freak-face. Come ladies and gentlemen, come and see the Raven, the freak, the hybrid, come and see, come and see. The paint was cold, but it dried quickly, and only when I smiled did I feel it cracking uncomfortably against my skin.

* * *

They’d pushed several of the high tables together in the taproom to make a rough kind of stage near the fireplace. The room smelled of smoke and beer and armpits. Morley sat down and started to tune his fiddle, and Quennel told the landlord to douse the lamps.

‘What for?’ the landlord demanded. ‘No one’ll be able to see anything.’

Quennel smiled and began lighting the candles. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll see everything.’ 

There was a bit of grumbling at the darkness when the lamps went out, but Quennel stuck the candles all around the stage of tables. The flames burned white, then flickered blue, and everyone shut up. Quennel grinned at the landlord and hoisted me up onto the tables.

As soon as my feet touched the wood, I knew something was wrong. The tables creaked, and I could feel them shift beneath my feet, squirming under my weight, sliding away from me like soapy fish. When I took a step forward, my heel slipped and my toes felt numb. The chain was a cruel gripping hand around my ankle, tripping me up at every step, the links ringing against the wood. I felt dizzy. Something was wrong, something was happening but I didn’t know what and no one would listen.

Quennel was launching into his spiel: a hybrid found deep in the woods nursing with two bear cubs, she ran with the wolves and hunted with the hawks and learned all their secrets, now she dances for you the wild dances learned from the forest gods, don’t get too close or she may not be so tame. At this point he held up a candle and I was meant to make a sudden lunge forward so the light would reflect off my eyes, but my foot slipped and I sneezed, almost catching my hair alight in the candle flame.

Instead of giving its usual appreciative ‘ooh’, the audience rocked with laughter, and someone at the back called out, ‘Watch out or she’ll kill you with her sneezes!’

Quennel made a furious gesture, and as Morley screeched a long wail on his fiddle, he bent and blew out the candles. Morley released another screech, and the candles flared into life again, blue and white, and spitting sparks that hissed up and fizzled on the floor.

The room was silent now, and Morley began to play, a lithe, creeping tune full of high flicks and lilts.

‘She is not tame,’ Quennel said quietly, and I began to dance.

It was a dance that Quennel had made me learn, a quick, spinning dance of little, twisting steps. Left and right and right, over the loop of chain and back again, left and right and spin. I was meant to twirl twice but I couldn’t manage it. My head rang, beaten by noise and smoke, the fiddle a tortuous punishment in my stuffed-up ears. The candles flickered and swam and my eyes watered until I couldn’t see anything and the room became a noisy dream very far away. A dream that didn’t mean anything until my feet slid out from under me and I fell on hands and knees. The tables groaned, the floor beneath groaned, and the candles roared. Quennel tried to drag me up, but the tables whimpered and with a choking squeal, collapsed in a cloud of dust and splinters.

I hit the floor hard, yelped, then shrieked as boards clattered down around me. Something cracked my leg, and I squealed, then curled up around my pain as the dust flew up my nose. The room was laughing, Quennel shouting; I could see his feet through a gap between one board and the next. His boots looked furious.

‘Raven!’ His boots scraped back as he crouched down and I saw his face in the gap.

‘Don’t eat me,’ I coughed.

‘Raven, you alright?’

‘My leg hurts.’

‘Don’t move, I’ll get these off you. Stupid bloody landlord...’

I saw the landlord’s shoes, indignant in scuffed brown leather. ‘Oh right, fine, very good that is. What about my tables?’

Quennel bounced up and from the sound of it, seemed to have grabbed him by the collar. ‘Your tables almost killed my hybrid! Look at her!’

‘I am looking and all I can see is your mess!’

‘It’s your tables on my hybrid—’

I tried to move, but pain ripped along my leg and I fell back. The dust jumped up and attacked my nose so I sneezed and sneezed and sneezed.