EXCOLO

"I can endure my own despair but not another's hope."
William Walsh

Early hours of Tuesday

I said I would not wear this body again. But in the end there was no shell better, not for this.

My booted feet make no sound as I walk through the woods. I smell him out, faint trace of blood. Once I would have felt him. Even after we broke with each other, there was a thin thread like hair caught in my throat. And now -

I find the place. She has taken his body. Her power is all over this glade, stink like a cat that has rubbed itself everywhere. She has taken his body and his blood, but in the grass there are a few places that have not been licked clean by animals. I sit down, and I press my hands into the damp grass.

"Everyone leaves you."

"I think the manner of your betrayal will be much more subtle than either of us have thought."

"I would court you for a thousand years."

"I will.إبليس. Love."

It is not enough, it is not nearly enough, and these fine boned fingers dig through the grass, dig into the soil, feel for where his blood soaked, each drop. In the town something has happened, something great, and I do not care. I shove these hands into the earth. "I've missed this shape. Its beauty, and its spite. I didn't realise that." My nails split, and there is blood. There is always blood, I told him that.

I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.

(If I could)
(If I)
(If)

you were

I smooth the earth back, and I wipe my hands, my nails, until they are clean. My eyes are dry. I have no quality of mercy. I cannot regret. I cannot.

There is no answer when I call his name, none at all.

There should have been a sacrifice. His body was not beautiful enough for this. So I build a fire, and I burn Brant in it. There should have been a youth.

The pain is no more terrible than anything else, and when it is done I scatter the ashes.

Over the forest, day breaks.

[closed]

Saturday lunchtime, the marketplace

FAUSTUS. Now tell me what saith Lucifer, thy lord?

MEPHIST. That I shall wait on Faustus whilst he lives,
So he will buy my service with his soul.

It is the kind of spring day that has men walking with their hands in their pockets, smiles on their faces, a day when women go out to buy bread and come home with flowers alongside the loaves. It is the perfect day to sow seeds of misery; I will be like a fly in new milk, spreading corruption. And so the old man Uri, last seen just before Valentine's Day, comes back along the abbey road with a pack on his back, humming as he goes.

I take up a stall at the market after an exchange of coins, and I lay out my wares on a clean white cloth, small bottles like jewels, potions the rich tones of green-gold and scarlet and purple and the soft hues of lavender and sunset pink. A handwritten sign is attached to the front of the stall that reads, in a steady sloping hand, MAKE ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE. I sit down on the stool behind my stall.

"Masters, mistresses, young misses, I deal in dreams. No more afternoons long and dreary. Pass an idle hour walking through the warmth of an orchard, the taste of apple between your teeth! Lie down tonight with the company of she you most desire! Spend a day as fresh faced as you were in your youth! All your wishes can come true, for a limited time. Side effects there are none, and satisfaction is guaranteed."

That the satisfaction is yours is not, of course.

[Open]

Early hours of Saturday, March 13th

Be careful what you wish for; you may receive it.

Derek Granger. He's missing. Find him for me please? He was helping me out around the house.

This item on Wanda's list is one I have not filled, and she made the request several days ago. But I have provided her, like a dutiful husband, with everything for which she has asked - foods she has craved, clothes, a cradle for the child - and I think I deserve to have a little fun.

Westin Sagert was gracious about my request. He understands that without me he would not have been able to undertake this work, and so he gives up this sample readily enough. I praised his work, of course, and really, he does have a viciously inventive mind. I quite enjoy it.

I look down at the man. His jaw is wired shut, so there should be no problem with him giving up Westin's name. His body is quite different now to how it once looked. I could turn him back, but what is the fun in that? I have ensured that all of his wounds are closed, that nothing will leak or break, and I have sedated him, mainly so I can place him in a large gift box. It is printed with roses. Wanda does like those.

I leave the box in the Dormouse. The notecard reads To Wanda: as requested. Item in condition in which it was found. I wonder if seeing its contents will induce labour. It is nearly time, anyway.

[closed]

There are no foolish questions, and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions.

Thursday, early evening

Some weeks ago I would have said I would rather never see Zann again, given she was a witness to the disgusting depths of my humiliation, but after my strange evening with Syl I have found myself curious to see Zann. Has she learned who was the boy she met? Would she know me again after that?

I put on the Caldwell body, for there is something about it I find useful, its ambiguity, its pallor, its sharp-edged sorrow. I dress it in a crumpled old tweed jacket, two sizes too big and made for a man, over a white shirt and grey trousers - clothes all expensive once, but now well worn. And then I go to the carnival as the light dips down into a grey-pink sunset, watery light dying into the dark.

I glimpse her as I enter the carnival. I will not approach her at once; instead I estimate the direction in which she will walk, and find a place in the path. L'Heure Verte is virtually empty. I order absinthe and wait.

[open to Zann]

February 18th, evening

She had been a gloomy boy, in love with death, ... as boys are; and then she had been amorous and florid; and then she had been sprightly and satirical; and sometimes she had tried prose and sometimes she had tried drama. Yet through all these changes she had remained, she reflected, fundamentally the same.
Virginia Woolf, Orlando

After I burned Tezcatlipoca's note, I put off the Brant body and I let myself be as air. But as I unfolded, so did my sorrow; I burned as ozone, sharp tang through me on and on like lightning before it becomes lightning, the possibility of storm. There was no relief from it, and as I rippled out ever further I thought perhaps I would circle the earth and then drown it in one great storm, drown and burn it. But even if I could do it, I found the thought gave me no satisfaction, no relief from this void. There is nothing inside me but this howl, and there is no relief in screaming it. I have remembered everything all too well since I regained what I am, and that last conversation with Tezcatlipoca only confirmed it. I would I could be truly nothing, like the empty body I made, the child Esther, a hollow vessel. I put her on, but it does not soothe me. And so I make a new body, one with no memories, no past, nothing etched into its flesh to make it respond to this or that. No love for pain that I gave the fibres of Kent's body, no sweet corruption curled into the bones like Danika. Tabula rasa, this body is as much as I can make it. Androgynous, but in this case a woman, if such things matter. Tall for a woman but not tall for a man, a body that passes for either in the mannish clothes I give it. This body I will let feel my griefs as it can. Sorrow is better contained in the narrow margins of human flesh, and it will help me bear it. I will get it drunk, and I will let as much of me fall into nothing as I can.

I go to the bar of the tavern and order a glass of whisky, then ask for a tab to be opened. "What name, sir?" says Thomas, then glances at me again and blushes, not sure whether he has made a mistake. I look back at him, half-smiling.

"Caldwell," I say. "My name is Caldwell. Leave the bottle." And I remember another night that started like this, wearing the roadweary bones of Kent and drinking, and Tezcatlipoca's jealousy and mine, and Lilith's face pressed up against me with laughter and malice. I swallow down half the glass, and the warmth of the alcohol blooms brightly in my chest.

It is a start.

[OPEN]

“The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.”
- Shakespeare

Monday lunchtime, near the sheriff's office, on Main Street

This has proved almost too easy. The clouds are rolling in, air heavy with the promise of rain, and I stand in my Danika body wearing an old coat with the collar turned up against the cold, jacket short enough to show a few inches of a tidy, worn work dress and a calflength of wool stocking. My shoes wear the signs of good, honest farm labour, and my blonde hair is frizzing round my face in the damp air. I look very distressed.

"Did - was there really a man arrested for... for beating on a girl?" I say to an old woman gossiping with her friend on the street. My fingers flutter together anxiously.

"Oh yes," she says, "it's a horrible thing. They think also he did in a girl as worked at - well, the brothel, my dear," she says, lowering her voice over that salacious detail, eyes gleaming with prurient interest. "They think he chopped her up."

"Oh," I say, and I faint very neatly to the ground. It's not long before I have half a dozen people round me - offering water, saying they will take me to the Dormouse, fussing with my coat collar to let me breathe.

"I should've said something," I say, and I burst into tears. That gets me sat down on a bench, an old woman's arm around my shoulders, and a very handsome young man crouched at my feet. "I should - "

"What is is, dear? Do you know something about what happened to those girls?"

I shake my head tightly.

"I know - I know - him," I say quietly. "He - We went out a couple of times, and he was - he was real nice to me, and -" The old woman gives me a handkerchief. "You know, I ain't really dated much," I say, shamefaced, "cos my momma's sick a bunch and I'm busy out on the farm, and he just - he was real nice, and when he -" I turn my face away, and I can feel the vibrating tension from the boy at my feet, his desire to be a hero. "He - I thought it was my fault," I say, and then there is a furious chatter rising from the little crowd, and the conversation spreads in ripples.

"Some carnie's been carving up our girls," one man says fiercely. And there is discussion of me and of Melania - ah, yes, that explains some of what I saw in her - and how we're hard working girls, salt of the earth girls, and who is this monster and why hasn't he been strung up? What the hell is wrong with this town that a murderer and molester can be caught redhanded and he's cosseted in jail? And did you hear that he attacked that nice Mrs Beddau (I wonder if at any other time Glass has been described as nice) when she went to visit him in prison? He should be put in the old stocks in town. People would show him how they felt, alright. They'd show him very clearly indeed.

I manage a brave, trembling smile for the boy at my feet, and he springs up, ready for something, anything, if it will make me look at him like that again. And I nestle in against the arm of the old woman as the crowd grows larger and voices grow louder, and I wait for the storm to break.

[OPEN]