Chapter 1 The Apple and the Pearl #48
Hark, she thinks, the owl on silent wing in the darkness, the softly dripping mist from the yews, the crew hauling the Pearl and the rest of the set down from the Grit to stow it in the belly of the Grub.
Familiar voices of the Crew, muffled by mist. The wandering man who serves the Grit so well, tending it like a lover; the troll man who Crow brought here to fuck with everyone; the seamstress who carries the chick in her belly and the poet whose words Crow is eating.
Of all humans aboard the Grub, the crew are most beloved to the Crow.
Because isn’t that who Crow was, once upon a time?
Long ago now, perhaps a thousand years. Crow was a fixer, a dealer, a messenger, a half-this half-that, a betwixer.
Crow was behind-the-scenes, pulling strings.
Now Crow gets humans or sort-of-humans to fix for her.
Belinda to hold back Faerie with the force of her father’s blood, before that Percy Montgomery with his charming smile and quick understanding of how it was, how it had to be. Yes, the crew are most beloved.
She belches, and drains the shot glass in one gulp.
Belinda woman will come for the Pearl soon, nestle it into the engine, listen for the little hum of satisfaction from the Grub.
A gift from a Fairy Queen long since gone into the West. What were her words?
Crow would like to forget but they are engraved on her heart, her feathers, the Pearl itself if you know where to look.
We will exile you, shape-shifter, but catch the souls of the dead and you will not starve.
Starve? Fuck you, witch queen, Crow does not starve.
Crow feasts. Crow has two nests and moves her treasure from between them each night and day; Crow perches on each gate to Faerie and shits all over the railings; Crow brings the humans here to dance the old story of The Apple and the Pearl to tease the Fae bastards with what Crow has built to spite them because you don’t want a Crow for an enemy, and surely Faerie has found that out by now—
The snap of a twig, a rustle in the loam. A scuffle of black serge and Crow is in wing again, peering out into the darkness. Hoof-beats, a dim and distant thudding. She caws furiously and takes off from the caboose.
* * *
Mara knocks on Belinda’s office door. There’s no answer, she must be still in the Grit, and Mara almost goes back down the corridor and away to the cabins.
Then the carriage door opens and there’s Belinda, her clipboard poking out of her handbag, her shoulder laden with that medieval-looking sack she carts to and from the Grit each day.
She raises her eyebrows and Mara stands back to let Belinda pass and gestures to the office door.
‘Can I talk to you for a moment?’
Belinda unlocks the door to her office and shoves it open with her foot. ‘By all means.’
She sits on the chair, lets the bag sink onto that chest in the corner where it makes a merry clinking noise. Mara hovers in the doorway, unsure. Really, she could come back another day, she tells herself. Tomorrow even, there’s no rush.
But Belinda draws the chair up to her desk and steeples her fingers. Mara knows that she is out of time, it’s now, Belinda knows exactly why she’s here and what she’ll say and backing away is no longer an option. It’s over, a voice whispers in her ear. Time to go.
‘What can I do for you?’
‘I just wanted to tell you first,’ Mara’s voice is croaky, her mouth dusty dry. ‘I won’t be renewing my pledge.’
As soon as she says it, a warm spread of relief rises from her toes. She wonders if Belinda can feel it too, like a soft, fragrant wind in the room. No more aching calves. No more spooky curtain calls. No more waiting in the caboose for one-sided conversations with a bird.
‘Have you told Cecile?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Well, don’t leave it too long. She’ll want to know so she can mope.’ Belinda takes off her glasses and rubs at the indent on the bridge of her nose.
‘Remind me again of your pledge date?
‘Twenty-second of December.’
‘Your family will be pleased.’ Belinda smiles and turns her chair a little away, letting Mara know the audience is up. ‘Home for Christmas for once.’
She pauses, and for a moment Mara thinks she’ll say more. But Belinda shrugs, puts her glasses back on and reaches to her desk for a pen. She’s dismissed.
And that’s it. Mara feels that burning itch at the bridge of her nose that means she’s about to cry as she shuts Belinda’s office door behind her.
She’ll leave the Grub the morning after her last show and later that day she’ll be sitting in her mother’s living room with the gaudy Christmas tree blinking in the corner, the rest of her life stretching in front of her.
Something splinters in her heart. Sitting on her mother’s sofa in front of The Sound of Music with a bellyful of over-boiled Brussels sprouts is not where she belongs.
It’s too late to take it back. She leans her forehead on the window.
The Crow won’t have her anyway. It’ll throw her things onto the tracks, change the locks, reject her like an unwanted transplant.
Footsteps. She takes her forehead from the cool glass and brushes tears from her cheeks. Zach the lighting guy is blundering down the corridor, waving his hands at the blonde girl following him, listening intently and frowning. He ducks under a light, sees Mara and waves.
‘Hey Mara, this is my new assistant, Lara – hey, you two should get on, your names rhyme!’
Mara smiles weakly at the girl. She hates her. About to take her first pledge, the Crow listening like a lover to the particular rhythm of her heartbeat to fold her secrets into its magics.
‘Welcome,’ Mara says as she passes under Zach’s arm in the direction of the cabins. ‘Lovely to have you here.’
She walks away and lets the carriage door slam behind her.
* * *
Zach stops in front of Belinda’s office door.
He shoves his hands in his pockets, suddenly nervous.
Until this moment he’s taken it for granted that she’ll pledge, that she’s as fascinated by the show as he is and will want to stay, but now he’s not so sure.
She looks exhausted, with smudges under her eyes and wisps of blonde hair escaping from her plait.
She looks at the door thoughtfully, and Zach realises with a physical pain in his chest that he would be strangely hurt if she chooses not to pledge.
‘You know how this morning you said I could ask you anything?’ she says quietly.
Zach nods. There’s a static between them now, of the kind he knows he is liable to misinterpret. He’s done it before. He tells himself to back off. It’s her moment. ‘I also said I might not know the answer.’
She pauses for a moment, looks up at him then back at Belinda’s closed door. ‘Is it another taboo, to talk about what happens in the curtain call, like it is to talk about someone who was taken?’
Zach swallows. That isn’t what he was expecting her to ask. ‘I don’t know how to give you a yes or a no. It’s not forbidden, but people don’t usually like to talk about it. It’s kind of terrifying, I guess, to think that one day that will be you.’
He falls silent. Lara is wrestling with something, her eyes unseeing, her thumb worrying at the cuff of her jumper. He would like to make it easier on her, he would like to strip the Grit and the Grub of all their secrets, to make her feel like she can give her pledge to the Crow and not regret it.
‘I’m not sure where the dead come from and I’m fucked if I know where they’re going but the show attracts them.
’ Zach says. ‘Maybe because they want to go wherever the Pearl takes them. Sometimes you can see bits of bodies and that, which is horrible, but you learn to shut it out. Some say you can recognise the people you’ve loved.
The old LX lady, Juliet, she used to swear she saw her father go into the Pearl one night.
’ Zach pauses. ‘It sounds a little fucked up but she said it was a nice thing. She got to say one last goodbye.’
Lara nods. She’s turned away from him and the office door now, staring out of the window past his shoulder, past her reflection and out at the huddled mass of dark, silent graves.
‘Maybe it’s the other way round.’
‘What?’
‘Maybe we do the show to release the dead from wherever they are towards wherever they’re going to, and those – creatures – are the ones tagging along.’
He stares at her. ‘I don’t know if anyone’s ever thought of it like that before.’
She shrugs, and knocks on the office door.
Zach’s belly twists with longing. This is inconvenient, at best. The last time he fell in love it was with Juliet, who took him to bed a few times and then bought him a drink in the Grub one night, patted his hand and told him it was nothing personal.
I just like variety, young buck. No hard feelings, eh?
He can hear Juliet’s cackle as if she could see the way he’s looking at Lara now.
‘Come in,’ says Belinda and she gives a tired smile when she sees them. She hands Zach a piece of folded paper. ‘Zachary, please take this to Gino and ask him to display it in the usual place.’
Belinda’s gaze slides past Zach as footsteps echo in the corridor. ‘Ah, Mackenzie, good evening.’
Zach gives Mackie a mock salute as they pass each other and ducks under the light.
He tucks the piece of paper in his back pocket and heads down the corridor, towards the dining car.
Already he can smell something curried and warm and sticky, but it’s not dinner time for him, not yet.
The rest of the crew are still hauling gear from the Grit down that avenue of dead bodies walled up in stone, and that’s what he needs to be doing right now.
Not making a tit of himself mooning over a girl who won’t ever look at him twice.
* * *
Back in the office, Belinda is watching Lara over the half-moons of her glasses. She’s accompanied again by the woman sitting beside her, stitching up a hole in her goose-feather cape.