Perfectly Preventable Deaths

26 Ginger

Catlin sits in the kitchen with a mug of tea. She isn’t drinking, just staring blankly into it. Her eyes are empty, the shadows underneath bruise-dark. They look like someone’s gouged them on her face with clumsy thumbs. My heart hurts looking.

‘Catlin?’ I ask.

‘What?’ she says.

‘Are you OK?’

Her face is confused. ‘No.’ She grabs her cup and holds it to her chest. She leaves the room, and I am all alone. I look up at the shining copper pots, the heavy rafters. You could hang a thing from one of those. Strings of onions or garlic, or a body. I shake my head. It’s filling up with something I don’t like.

I think of Catlin’s face, before we moved here. It was the same as mine, but brighter. Better. And now, she’s weak as well. When you move plants, sometimes they fail to thrive in their new soil. They wilt and flop, leaves dry out. Bits fall off, no fresh growth. It’s hard to watch.

I put my hands hard against my eyes and press them deep towards my brain, my skull. There is a tension welling in my head. I feel it humming like a coming swarm.

The entrance to Mamó’s house in front of me. The hard door cold on my knuckles. Three harsh times I knock. The door clicks open.

‘Madeline. Hello.’

‘I’ve come about your offer …’ I tell her. ‘I want to …’

She looks at me. I’m not wearing a jacket. It is cold.

‘Come and help me in the garden,’ she says. ‘First we’ll work and then we’ll have a talk.’

She goes out the back door to the physic garden. It’s bigger than the courtyard one. None of the herbs are labelled.

‘What’s this?’ she asks.

‘Sage?’ I venture.

‘And what’s sage for?’

I scan my brain.

‘Look at it,’ she snaps. ‘Touch it. Smell it.’

I take the sprig, give a sniff and try my best to remember what I know.

‘Um … For guidance?’ Maybe I should have said for when you’re worried your sister is in love with the wrong man. Brought it up organically, like a smooth detective.

‘Depends on the kind of sage. This one here is green. And this –’ she gestures to another plant – ‘is marshmallow. Wild garlic. Lady’s finger. Honeysuckle. Mint.’

‘We’re here for mint,’ I tell her.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I feel it.’

She says nothing, but she steps aside. I pluck eighteen separate mint leaves. Stack them one on top of the other. Roll them into a cylinder. The moon is bright. She hands me a little jar. Her dress is neat and brown and she is wearing Birkenstocks with socks. Her hair is loose. Normally she wears it braided back. It hangs down to her shoulders and it suits her. She glares at me. I twist the jar tight shut and hand it back.

She’s after me. She wants to be my boss. It is a weird dynamic, being headhunted for witchcraft by an in-law.

‘Caw,’ I hear, and turn. The raven on a branch beside her. Mamó takes a slab of juicy-looking meat out of her pocket, feeds it to him. He eats it and she murmurs things along. He’s very big. His beak is thick and cruel. This is too much witch for me. I snort. He flaps. She glares.

‘Wait in there.’ She gestures to her house.

‘What, so you can discuss things with a blackbird?’ Nervousness is making me prickly, I can feel resentment building up. Why am I here? Why do I have to do this? Why the raven?

‘Baaaaaaab is no blackbird.’

‘It’s pronounced Bob. Ugh,’ I snap.

She glares at me, I stomp towards the flat. A raven always wants to eat a carcass, and they’ll eat any carcass. Owl or fox or goat. Even human. I think of his stern beak. The downturned opening. They eat our dead.

The eyes from little lambs.

This is her pet?

Or her familiar.

The creaking rasp behind me meets Mamó’s voice. There is a music to it. I push the door. It opens slowly, like there is a force that’s pushing back. Is that a spell as well? I wonder. It’s cold inside. I poke the fire.

Beaks on carrion. Claws that grasp until the flesh gives way. The beak was black and pink inside. A little tongue. It had a little tongue. I cannot handle this. I want my life right back the way it was. I want my sister safe. My world arranged.

Mamó’s voice breaks the silence. ‘So. You’ve thought about my offer?’

‘Yes. At length.’ I swallow.

‘And what have you decided?’ Her voice is even.

God, I hate this. I’m terrified that whatever I say will be the wrong thing. That I’ll regret deciding either way. I think of her finger, pointing me back to the house. I think of Brian and his little chat. I think of Mam, quietly removing salt from floors. Knowing what I did and saying nothing. She hates the bit of me that Mamó wants.

She wants an answer. I don’t have an answer.

This place is like a tick upon a dog. It’s sucking all the certainty from me.

‘I want to know some more about Lon,’ I say.

‘What does that little rip have to do with this?’ she asks me, her voice harsh.

A little rip, I think. A tear in something. The writing I saw before, on the wall.

‘Is he dangerous?’ I ask. ‘I had this dream …’

‘What did it feel like?’ Her face is very sharp, her eyes pierce through me.

‘Warm and muggy, kind of like …’

‘Like what?’

Like I would do anything that he asked of me. That I would have to, unless I fought myself.

‘I don’t know. Strange. It wasn’t like a normal dream. I had a feeling, just like with the fox?’

‘Just like?’

‘A little different.’

She sighs, as though I am a toddler who will not eat her dinner. I feel like one; I’m getting cranky now. All these questions about my instinct. Can she not use her own?

She looks at me, and tuts. She literally tuts. I want to kick something. Her hands reach into cupboards, grabbing jars and mixing things together. She puts a little kettle on the range and turns back to me.

‘You need to tell me if that boy is dangerous. Catlin is –’

‘I do not need to do anything. I choose to ask you here. To share the things I know. In my own time.’

‘But –’

‘You have instincts, Madeline. Use them. Draw upon them.’

‘I can’t live life on instinct.’

‘No. You can’t.’

I sigh.

‘Mamó. I don’t know what I want.’

‘Your eyes are opening, Madeline,’ she tells me.

‘I always wanted things, and I still want them. To go to college. Learn. To have a life.’

‘This will be better.’ Her mouth twists. Is she smiling? ‘Not in terms of fun or anything, but if you want to help. To work and help. That’s what you’ll learn to do. It’s what I’ll teach you.’

‘I have enough,’ I say. ‘Without giving up everything, I want to hear what you have to say. To work and help at whatever it is you do for people. You’re talking about leaving behind the parts of myself that nourish me, and nourishing the ones that make me sad.’

She looks at me, and superimposed on her eyes I see Mam’s ones, the disappointment there. If she knew where I was, what I was thinking. Brian’s voice inside my head along with hers. And Catlin – if I’m off learning witchcraft, she’ll be alone more often, more and more. And Lon will leach in everywhere, around her. I want my twin to know she has a person. I want her to know that she is loved. And not the kind of love that wants to own her. The blood-thick love. The kind that doesn’t stop.

My thoughts are racing and her eyes still scan my face. I think she can see me deciding that this is all too much right now.

‘I think –’

‘But it’s a waste of talent not to –’ she begins, and I interrupt her, which is probably a stupid move, but she interrupted me first.

There are so many things I feel like I’ve been keeping in, it’s almost cleansing to just let it rip. A sort of power, in this place where everyone is constantly reminding me how little I know, how little I can do. How little what I want even matters.

‘Everyone has talents they don’t develop. I could be really good at playing ukulele, but I’ll never know. Because I could give a shit about the ukulele.’

‘What we do … isn’t the ukulele,’ she almost spits at me. I glare at her, riding the wave of my anger towards the door.

‘It is in this analogy. I am trying to explain,’ I say. ‘This. Decision. It’s twisting all the things I knew around, and that is not a sudden process. I need time. And if I don’t have that, then it’s a no. It has to be a no.’

‘Time can be a curse,’ she says. ‘I have heard you, Madeline. Now, sit. I’ll give you tea to ward off dreams.’

‘And Catlin?’ I ask.

‘I’ve been doing my best for your sister,’ Mamó tells me. ‘The tea I gave her was similar to this.’ She opens several jars and begins mixing.

‘What should I do,’ I ask, ‘to keep her safe?’

‘I don’t know that you can, Madeline,’ Mamó says me. ‘There are things in life we have to lose.’

‘What does that mean?’ I ask.

She sighs and stirs. ‘Madeline. You’ve turned down my offer, but here you are, still asking questions. There are journeys we take. And ones we don’t. If you won’t do the work, it’s not my job to educate you. Ask your stepfather about that boy. If he’s any sort of human, he’ll do something. And in the meantime, get that down your throat.’ She thrusts it at me, in a thick earthenware mug. I take a sip, and gag.

Seawater, and nettle and rose and … fennel? And little white stones, small and shaped like teeth in the bottom, underneath the sludge.

‘Drink it all down,’ she tells me. ‘It’ll sort you.’

I do. And maybe it does. I do feel calmer. Colder. Or maybe it’s the thing crossed off my list. Next step is to do something for Catlin, I reckon. Telling Oona how I feel is scarier than Lon, so I reckon I’ll save that for last.

‘Goodbye, Mamó,’ I say to her.

I try the door, but it won’t open. She calmly reaches over, turns the latch the other way, inclines her head.

‘Off with you. You know where I am, Madeline. When you need me. And you will need me.’ She says it like it is a certainty, perhaps a threat.

‘We’ll see,’ I say, and as the door clicks behind me, I hear her voice saying, ‘We will,’ behind me. She might be a wise woman, but she is also a petty one.

The raven caws, perched on a windowsill above my head. It’s holding something small inside its mouth. A shiny pebble, round and solid. I feel hairs rising on my skin. I crush the urge to reach my hand right out, and keep on walking.