Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 38 by Kelly Link

Author:Kelly Link
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Small Beer Press
Published: 2018-07-22T16:47:59+00:00

Vain Beasts

A. B. Young

The unheard-breach of faith not

Feigned feeling to fill other vacancies

— Gloria Frym, Mind Over Matter

Dorian Gray forgets to pray most nights, listening instead to the cat caw on the back porch; listening with the cat for the crows to caw back. Wind whispers to the tired plaster walls, and sweat drips from the roof to the carpet of browning roses.

Dorian Gray crosses the village square on shoes that click as they lift from the cobblestones. The seamstress and her beau, with fingers curled around the edges of each other’s pockets, pause to watch him pass but don’t notice that the footsteps sound out of time. They look, instead, at the mask he wears beneath his hooded cloak. It is the taxidermied face of a fog-white wolf, fangs bared, eye cavities excavated. He walks with long, sure strides in the fading light.

He speaks to no one, but does turn to look at those who stop to watch him. The wolf mask sits slightly crooked on his face, and the long snout tilts, as if the wolf’s head is cocked. Murk glares out from where eyes should be.

When he reaches the edge of the woods, he follows a hard, worn path through the trees and to the grove of the moon goddess. An altar sits beside a shallow pool, and on it black roses float in a bowl of water.

He stops walking at the edge of the pool. The sound of his clacking footsteps continues for several seconds after.

He waits, silent, still. He waits for six minutes.

“Your vanity makes you patient,” a woman’s voice says from behind him. He starts just slightly, his intestines pressing up and out against his ribs. Then he feels a palm pressed flat on his back before the fingers curl to grope his cloak. “And you smell of blue salts. Of neem,” the voice continues, moving closer to his ear, carried on warm breath. “How odd you are, Dorian Gray.”

“You smell of cinnamon and coal,” he replies, because she does. He stays very still.

The hand moves, cloak still clutched in fingers, across his side. Around to his front. She splays her palm across his belly. His shirt is thin linen, but he can feel no warmth at all from her skin.

“You have a request for me, Dorian Gray. Speak it.”

There is a moment of quiet and her order lingers. Something smells vaguely of burning.

“Beauty,” he whispers, and her hand presses more firmly into his gut.

“Tell me, Dorian Gray,” she says, and her voice is scattered flour, settling into crevices, “are you afraid of wolves?”

“No,” he replies.

She says, “One day you will be.”

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