Elly
THEN
“Haina would really like us to capture your ceremony tonight.” A pause. “If you’re comfortable with that.”
“I don’t think I am comfortable with that,” Grace says flatly.
“Yeah, I get that. It’s really important we get this footage though, for the film. I know how committed you are to the house, so I’m sure you understand.”
“I don’t really care about the film,” Grace says, but not unkindly – there’s a sort of blankness to her words. “And you don’t know anything about me.”
When Elly thinks about it, she doesn’t know much about Grace either.
She knows that she’s an early riser and won’t go to bed until after midnight, and only when she can’t find a single task to occupy her hands any longer.
She knows that she likes a teaspoon of honey in her tea in the morning and that she has cracked sores on her strangely shaped hands from all the kneading and scrubbing and working.
Grace’s day-to-day life, Elly could recite by rote, but of what brought her to the house in the first place, she knows far less.
They have exchanged scraps of information, now and again, made bold by the tedium of work.
Elly knows that Grace comes from Belfast. She knows that she once had a wife and doesn’t anymore.
She knows that loss carved a ravine deep into her, a space only hard work can fill.
“You said we didn’t have to be on camera,” Grace is saying, “if we didn’t want to be.”
“Of course, of course,” Siobhan says, waving a hand. “And there’s plenty we could do to obscure your identity, if that’s what you’re worried about. I just think—”
“No,” Grace interrupts. The sudden loudness of her voice makes Keiko look up from where she’s simmering stock on the range. Her eyes dart to Elly, wide.
Siobhan is shrugging. Elly wonders how many people have said no to her in her life, and how many times Siobhan has accepted that answer. “Fine. I just think it’s a bit selfish, is all.”
Elly holds her breath. She expects Grace to retaliate, but instead she’s laughing. Siobhan jumps down from the counter.
“You think it’s selfish, do you?” Grace says. “As selfish as using the stories of wounded women for your film? As selfish as invading their private, secret sanctuary and shoving cameras in their faces so that you can get your story?”
“We’re trying to celebrate Hex House,” says Siobhan. There’s a steeliness to her now. “Haina invited us here. She asked us, she asked me, to do this. I care about the house as much as you do.”
But Grace isn’t listening anymore. She’s returned to her dough, and she starts to hum to herself as if Siobhan isn’t even there. Siobhan holds both of her palms up in exaggerated surrender and backs her way out of the kitchen door.
“Back to work, Elly,” Grace says without looking up.
Elly hadn’t realised she’d been staring.
Now, she reaches into a cupboard above her head to bring out the bananas for tonight’s dessert.
When her fingers touch the skins, she recoils.
They’ve gone black and are leaking brown mush all over the wood.
They smell putrid, as if they’ve been spoiling for a long time.
“When did these arrive?” she asks Keiko.
Frowning, Keiko puts a finger to her cheek and then her shoulder. The sign for yesterday.
* * *
In the afternoon, as Elly heads to Haina’s study for her next session, she tries to remember what she knows about the ceremony.
She’d meant to ask about it last time, but before she could, Haina had tied a belt around Elly’s neck, tightening the notches until her vision splintered.
When she removed the belt, the snowy feathers weren’t only covering Elly’s hands but her forearms, her biceps, her shoulders.
She felt as if she could hear the heartbeats of every creature within a one-mile radius.
She felt too enormous for the study. When she looked at the glass window, she knew that she’d be able to break straight through it.
Haina had seemed almost giddy, scribbling in her notebook.
“It won’t be long for you, Elly,” she’d said. “You are formidable, my angel.”
Elly hadn’t had a chance to ask what she meant before there’d been a knock at the door, Margot, waiting to start her session.
Now, Elly knocks and enters the study, nerves fizzing in her stomach, although she can’t pin them to anything specific. Haina gestures for her to sit down. She looks tired today, more unkempt – her eyes are puffy and stray hairs are escaping her low bun.
“Last time, you said I wouldn’t need long,” Elly says, before they can begin. “Did you mean that my ceremony could be soon?”
Haina smiles. “That’s right.”
Elly looks down at her hands. “But Grace has been here for years. I’ve only been here for…
” She stops. How long has she been here?
Weeks, months? Her stomach is large now, it stops her from bending down or from sleeping very long at night, but there is no other way to tell how long has passed since the night she ran from the cottage.
“It takes some guests less time than others to truly master their hex,” says Haina. “Some women are very unusual, in that their hex has been waiting for a long time to be discovered. That’s you, my angel – you are very special. Very special indeed.”
Elly feels the words settle over her and tries to believe them. Special. Still, anxiety prickles at the underside of her skin. “And what happens?” she asks. “At the ceremony?”
Haina’s smile doesn’t dim, but it does seem to strain at the edges. “Another simple test. Nothing more. Like the First Fly, only, a little bit more difficult. It might seem strict, all these trials, but I’m sure you can appreciate that I can’t let you go until I know you’re strong enough.”
“Strong enough?”
A muscle in Haina’s jaw tenses. “Strong enough to survive. Out there.”
* * *
At dinner, Haina informs them that Grace’s ceremony will be taking place out on the lawn after sunset.
Some of the guests cheer, others touch Grace on the arm, some of them whisper, May your hex protect you.
Grace smiles back at them all, but her eyes are dark, faraway.
From the other side of the table, Siobhan glowers.
Elly eats with a frenzied excitement in her belly, keen for the light to disappear and the ceremony to start.
It won’t be long for you, Elly, Haina had said.
You are formidable. No one has ever described her in that way before.
Sweet, kind, thoughtful – never formidable.
Elly and Keiko bring dessert to the table – blackberry tarts topped with bitter lemon cream – and retake their seats.
Elly glances across the table at Theo. He’s barely spoken to her since their last interview, when she took his hand in hers and he pulled away.
He won’t meet her eye. It makes her feel cold, exposed.
Perhaps she’d read it all wrong – instead of desiring her in all of her size and strength, desiring her for the unknowable thing she’s becoming, maybe he fears it. Worse yet, maybe he just doesn’t care.
She’s about to say his name when there’s a loud sound: a groan that sounds like it’s coming from beneath their feet.
Then, a shrill whine, like a creature with its leg in a trap.
Suddenly, the room is filled with glass.
It hurls itself inwards, shards the size of wine bottles raining like bullets from the sky.
Elly is aware of two things happening almost simultaneously: one of those shards falling towards her face, then a strong pressure knocking her sideways, causing the edge of the table to jam into her ribs, right above her belly.
Screams puncture the air. There’s a whipping wind and a new cold in the room, uninvited and fierce.
Elly opens her eyes. There’s glass everywhere, blood everywhere, though she doesn’t know who any of it belongs to.
The screaming voices are wild, mad as wolves on the hunt.
The sound runs rings around the room. Elly’s head feels tight.
Her side is throbbing. Distantly, she thinks, The baby, the baby.
Theo is on top of her, looking down, frantically grabbing her face and holding it to the light.
“Are you hurt?” he demands, his voice like hammered metal. “Look at me, Elly. Are you hurt?”
Elly peers down at herself, at the floor, where bowls have been upturned and cutlery dropped. Her body feels numb and faraway, but it’s barely marked. The baby tumbles in her belly, pressing its elbows out against the taut skin of her abdomen. I’m here. I’m here.
“I don’t think so,” she says, struggling to get her breath.
Theo helps her to her feet. Tiny shards of smashed glass make a silvery sound as they hit the floor, dropping from the creases in their clothes.
The other guests look at each other in bewilderment, at the cuts on each other’s faces.
And then they look up. There are gaping holes in the refectory roof.
The frames which held the panes in place are warped and rusted.
Had they always been like that? The panes themselves have fallen out like teeth from loose gums, but it was almost as if they had been blown inwards by a mighty force.
As if the house were under attack. For some reason, it makes Elly think of the rotten bananas in the cupboard, the burst pipe in the bathroom.
She closes her eyes and sees skeletons sagging, wood rotting.
Haina is looking upwards, too, her eyes flashing, fists clenched at her sides.
There is something weary about her expression; a tiredness that goes beyond a lack of sleep, the kind of tiredness that reaches deep into the bones.
She starts to move around the room, checking each person, putting her fingers to their cuts, dabbing at them with the hem of her dress and staining it dark.
Most of the guests are stunned and wide-eyed, but it doesn’t seem as if anyone is too badly hurt.