Chapter 16 #2
Next we scrub the kitchen table and the floor. Mentally I make a note to commission a new table at the earliest opportunity, but our current priority is erasing the visible signs of the carnage. Anything else will have to wait.
Throughout the telling of the tale, I can sense my mother’s emotions shifting from temporary acceptance to horror, then to grudging comprehension, then to cautious empathy.
I leave out the part about my foray into the woods.
Mama doesn’t need to know that I called aloud for the Barrow-Man by name.
It would only cause her alarm, and she has enough to grapple with.
Like me, she has to cope with the fact that my husband isn’t human.
That he isn’t from this world at all. That his true form isn’t even humanoid in shape.
It sounds insane to confess all of it aloud, and yet somehow it helps me confirm to myself what I decided last night—that no matter what shape he was born with, I will accept his chosen identity, the name and form he has selected as his own in this world.
I wish he hadn’t selected the form of a rapist and a killer, but that original body is gone now, and isn’t it best that he chose someone wicked, someone who didn’t deserve to live?
That way, the erasure of their soul and the theft of their body isn’t a tragedy—it’s a kind of justice.
My Beresford can redeem the handsome face and burly form that were once used for evil.
He can be generous with the murderous miser’s fortune, using it to spare others from deprivation, serve as a patron to local businesses and farms, and provide the people of the region with amusement and community at his dinner parties.
I tell my mother all of this, everything I’m thinking. She is quiet, speaking only to offer practical suggestions as I clean around Beresford’s unconscious body. I wipe some of the blood off him, but he needs a bath.
Eventually we roll him onto another sheet and drag him aside so we can scrub the floor where he lay. He continues sleeping, snoring faintly, but by the time we’ve finished cleaning, he’s beginning to stir.
My mother goes to the sink, rinses the rags we used, and wrings out the excess water. “I’ll take these home and launder them myself. If I can’t get the blood out, I’ll burn them.”
“Thank you.”
She and I look at each other, each holding the weight of the secrets we kept from each other.
She knows that I inadvertently rescued a shape-shifting creature, that he’s been eating the souls of unworthy locals, and that I love him despite his deceit. She understands where the creatures I’ve been summoning originated.
I know the circumstances of my birth and my father’s bargain. I know that she killed him for risking my life when I was a baby, and for planning to leave us destitute. Who am I to judge the mother who has loved me unconditionally and done terrible things to keep a roof over my head?
She always cared. My father never did.
“Thank you,” I tell her again. There’s more weight to the words this time.
She nods, a smile hovering on her lips. “What is family for?”
“Killing assholes and hiding bodies, apparently.”
Mama chuckles.
“The servants will be here any minute,” I say. “I’m going to try waking Beresford while you pack up the laundry.”
She nods and heads into the pantry to look for a bucket or a basket. I brush strands of blood-damp blue hair back from my husband’s face. Then I slap him hard.
He grimaces, his brows furrowing. I slap him again, and he blinks dazedly, his eyes bleary with sleep. “What the fuck, Sybil?” He sits up on the sheet, rubbing a hand over his face. “Where am I?”
“In the kitchen. You had quite the feast before you went to sleep.”
“Oh… shit.” He stares around in a panic, blinking twice more as he tries to comprehend what he’s seeing. “Where is…”
“The bones are under some bushes out in a field behind the house. We couldn’t take them very far, and we had no time to bury them, but they’re hidden well enough for now.”
“We?” he exclaims, just as my mother returns with a large bucket. She gives him her most motherly, reproachful look as she goes to the sink and begins loading up the bucket with bloody cloths.
“Good morning, son-in-law,” she says.
Beresford casts me a despairing glance and sees the truth on my face. “You told her.”
“Everything.”
A heavy blush colors his cheeks as he pulls the sheet more closely over his lower half and presses one hand against his stomach.
“It’s not nearly as swollen as it was,” I say. “You’re digesting him well.”
He looks away from me and scoffs bitterly. “Fuck, Sybil, I wanted to hide this part of myself from you. I didn’t want you to know any of it, much less witness it. Believe me, I realize how disgusting it is… how abhorrent I must seem to you, and now to your family…”
“Enough.” Mama sets the bucket sharply on the tiles, marches over to us, and grabs Beresford’s bearded chin with her hand, like she’s getting ready to lecture a very small boy.
“My daughter told me how you have labored to understand our world and to set yourself up in this house so you would have something to offer her. She said that you broke your own moral law by doing what you did, by making this body a permanent form, as you call it. Clearly the process was difficult for you, emotionally and physically. Yet you did it for her. Do you know how many times I have wished and prayed for a man to love me like that? I don’t want to hear any more self-loathing or self-pity.
Get your ass upstairs and wash yourself before your servants arrive.
” She releases his chin, shaking her head as she picks up the bucket.
“I’ll leave you two to sort this out. Gods help you both. ”
And she walks out of the kitchen.
Beresford stares blankly after her, then says, “I feel worse and better at the same time.”
“That’s the special power of parents.”
“Is it?”
I rise, tugging on his hand and prompting him to rise with me. Despite his hours of near-comatose sleep, he seems stiff and weary. “Don’t you have parents?”
“Every being of my kind is born from the torn shadows of another matagot,” he says.
“When one perishes, two or three more take shape from the remnants. We are briefly instructed by our own kind, then sent out on our own. Some of us live in clusters, but never in groups of more than three or four. The risk of discovery is too great.”
“You have to hide in your world, too?” I ask, frowning.
“Yes. We are hunted there. If a matagot’s identity is revealed, it is executed immediately. The hunters try to capture and burn all the fragments at the point of death so no offspring are formed.”
“That’s horrible.” I pull his arm over my shoulder. “We’re going upstairs. Lean on me if you need to. Hold up your sheet, don’t trip on it.”
We proceed to our suite, where I begin running his bath.
I leave him standing beside the tub while I go downstairs to fetch his clothes from the kitchen.
As I pick up his belt, the key ring attached to it jingles, and I glance down.
My eyes are drawn immediately to the little golden key, which once again looks pristine—not a bloodstain in sight.
Perhaps he has a way of resetting the spell.
When I return to our bedroom, I lock the door so the servants can’t disturb us. They’ll have to pick up the laundry and refresh the linens later.
Beresford is still standing right where I left him, his immense shoulders bowed.
“Remember what Mama said. No more self-loathing.” I take the sheet from him and carry it out to the bedroom.
The fireplace is big, but the flames have burned low, so I have to stoke and feed them before they’re robust enough to accept the sheet.
My nose wrinkles at the smell of burning cotton and my heart twinges at the wastefulness of it, but I remind myself that we have enough money to buy all the sheets we need.
It doesn’t mean we should be careless about our possessions; it simply means we don’t have to worry. Which is an exquisite mercy.
Bustling into the bathroom again, I order my husband to get in the tub.
He obeys meekly, and I admire the view of his beautifully rounded ass and powerful thighs as he climbs in.
He soaps up a cloth and begins washing himself listlessly.
The events of last night have stolen some of his confidence, and it hurts me to see him like this, defeated by what he has done, ashamed of what he is.
There’s one way that I might be able to cheer him up.
While he’s busy washing face and beard, I remove my clothing and step into the large bathtub with him. As I sit down between his legs, facing him, my bare skin brushes his, and he jumps with surprise.
“Ha! I startled you!” I crow, delighted. “Now we’re even.”
He wipes the soap off his face and gives me a shadow of his usual grin. “I didn’t realize it was a competition.”
“You may be scarier,” I say, taking the cloth from him and squeezing it over my breasts until they’re glossy with soapy water. “I still have a few advantages you don’t possess.”
“Sybil.” Uncertainty trembles in his deep voice. “After everything?”
I move closer to him in the bath, putting my legs over his thighs and clasping his shoulders. “This is your body now, in every sense of the word. You are the one and only Beresford. You will redeem the name, and when you are ready, you will use this form to satisfy your insatiable wife.”
His chest heaves with emotion, and I can’t help touching him, skimming my fingers over the expanse of his skin.
He’s so beautiful like this, shining wet, powerful yet docile, a subdued giant who stirs at my touch.
His arms close around me, and in the strength of their hold I sense that he’s reawakening to his own willful passion, his untamable need for me.
Delighted, I lace my arms around his neck.