Chapter 8 The Bleeding Grin
THE BLEEDING GRIN
THE ALTAR WAS a strange thing. Many brought offerings and wishes, laying them at the feet of statues that were different representations of the Strike.
Marnie brought Baker by it every time they went through the town to run errands, and this time they’d stopped on their way back, a basket full of fresh bread for the kitchen looped over Marnie’s arm.
“Do you remember them?” she asked. Marnie had told Baker since arriving here that she needed to learn the Strike and understand their temperaments.
Baker was surprised to discover that people had created these statues and the lore that accompanied them.
Great legends and tales followed each and every one, the Strike associated with powerful natural symbols.
Likenesses of them covered the city and were carved into the great city walls and gates that rose high and mighty around the horizon.
“Strike Kamanda is the Strike of earth and wealth.” Marnie explained, Baker eyeing the depiction of the powerful woman holding great stone buckets in each arm, each one filled to the brim with gold coins.
A thin cloth covered her muscled body, her hair wrapped into elaborate braids on her head.
Marnie walked Baker through several others from youngest to oldest, always finishing with Amiel, one of the largest among them.
“Amiel is the Strike of beasts, representing not just animals in the world, but the animal natures in all of us too. Purple eyes. The black animal you always avoid but should never run from. Amiel is the only one other than Peter that came from the North. It is said that they are centuries old, maybe older.”
Baker looked at the largest statue that represented Peter. Despite its great height and presence among the others, Marnie often skipped it.
“I suppose there isn’t much to be said of Peter,” Marnie said, adjusting the basket on her arm.
Peter was never at the Bleeding Grin. Only a couple of servants claimed to have seen him and yet their descriptions of his appearance were contradictory and created doubts.
Baker was relieved by that. Having Amiel skulk around the Grin, as rare as that was, was enough.
In comparison to Amiel’s statue of a regal, long-nosed dog holding a moon, Peter’s was a ferocious, toothy creature with multiple arms, claws like knives and a crown that burned like the sun behind him.
If Amiel was instinct, hunger, and animal nature, Peter was said to represent the opposite as godhood, judgment, a higher nature of divinity.
Baker wasn’t convinced a divine and higher nature existed.
She liked to think that no one saw Peter because he had been made up by the servants.
They gossiped often about the Strike, and it had been the people in the city who carved these statues anyway.
The slaves had their strange quirks, but the civilians, as polite and civil as they all were, seemed even stranger, feverishly creating new things and ways of worshiping the Strike, from statuettes and paintings, to new legends and rumors.
Some of the Strike liked interacting with people, and many of them enjoyed feeding on the emotions of the slaves.
They’d extract and drink them. Some did this rather harmlessly, and some slaves enjoyed the experience, even sought Strike out to offer them fear, resentment, anger, and bitterness they no longer wanted to feel.
Marnie explained that it wasn’t an encouraged practice but did not elaborate as to why.
They walked back to the Grin as Marnie rehearsed other rules to remember, returning to their room before she reminded Baker again of the most important ones.
“Don’t make eye contact with them. That’s like saying something to them. And one final rule,” Marnie said, as she lowered her voice and eased down on Jolie’s bed across from her. “Never, ever, ever, mention the Riders of Saint East.”
Baker nodded slowly. She would be fine not mentioning them.
Right now, she could hardly think about them.
It had been several weeks since Baker’s arrival, but Marnie still reviewed the lessons.
Since Baker could not speak and refused to write, Marnie seemed insistent that the only way to ensure her safety was through re-teaching, despite how much Baker nodded and suggested she knew the answers.
Jolie walked in and Marnie hopped off her bed and apologized, sitting next to Baker.
Marnie was always apologizing to Jolie for one thing or another.
Jolie always seemed brooding and sarcastic.
Baker didn’t understand why Marnie treated her so carefully.
It never seemed to make a difference with Jolie’s mood.
Jolie rolled into the bed and stared up at the ceiling as Marnie unwrapped her long red hair, and combed through it, applying homemade makeup from oil and ash.
Jolie, to Baker’s surprise, never said anything about Marnie’s new, vibrant hair color.
No one else had either. Baker was shocked, considering how absolutely stunning it was, but as those first days had turned into weeks, she began to learn that Marnie was in many ways invisible, much like Baker had been.
They were invisible together and she loved watching Marnie prepare her hair and sing in the evenings.
Baker didn’t understand how anyone could not see Marnie, and yet she was grateful to have her all to herself.
“Come on, sit,” Marnie said, patting the place beside her as Baker watched her wrap her hair up in cloth. She inspected herself in the mirror as Jolie changed clothes and left.
“This suits me, don’t you think?” Marnie asked. Baker looked at her and then the mirror before Marnie reached for Baker’s hair. “Let me do yours,” she said, combing it through before Baker could protest.
Baker sat patiently with her legs crossed in front of Marnie, watching herself in the mirror now and making comparisons to Marnie’s beauty.
Marnie continued to hum, taking a break every minute to share something about herself. “You know,” she said at one point. “I had a little niece who looked just like you. Her name was…what was it? Ella, maybe? No, that was my sister. My sister’s name was Ella.”
Baker relished the feeling of thinking that she was perhaps related to Marnie, and that became her new tale.
She spun it lavishly in her mind, and her imagination was free again.
This time, she was not a soldier under Valentine, and did not want to imagine anything about the ROSE, but she was a princess separated from her loving sister.
Marnie patted Baker’s hair once she finished it. “You look so beautiful. Let’s do our evening rounds.”
Baker imagined that they were adrift in a foreign kingdom as Marnie took her hand, guiding her through the Bleeding Grin. The Bleeding Grin was King Death’s castle, and they were its beautiful prisoners, patiently plotting their escape.
Marnie did not see the darkness in the world.
She floated through the halls, cleaning with porcelain fingers that made every subtle gesture look like the wave of a wand.
She radiated life, and Baker tottered behind in a dress two sizes too big, her hair too wild to let loose.
Even when Marnie braided it, it eventually found a way out, hundreds of tiny little strands creating a halo of frizz around her head.
Marnie demanded that Baker stay close by her side as they cleaned.
“It’s fancy this week, it looks like. Not sure what you’d call it,” Marnie remarked as they made their way over the white marble flooring.
Massive chandeliers hung from the ceiling that was higher than any ceiling Baker had ever seen.
“Next week I bet the floors will be tatami mats. My guess is that the log cabin style will rotate back soon too.” They walked into different living spaces, all of which were empty.
There was one room with a large fireplace, another with a pool for swimming, another with vaulted ceilings and rows of seats.
“Here next,” Marnie said, dusting off a window. Baker pulled her sponge from the water, ringing it out delicately over the bucket like Marnie had instructed. She had taught Baker the importance of being delicate, something Baker had never learned from Valentine.
“Come, come,” Marnie urged her and Baker began cleaning the dust from the windowsill.
Every day they did this, and after a while Baker had begun to realize that the Bleeding Grin was always the slightest bit dirty.
She’d never heard the other slaves mention it, but it seemed to be that the dirt came back overnight, as if their job in cleaning it was not a duty but a daily ritual the Grin required.
A Strike turned the corner and Baker nestled close to Marnie who continued cleaning as if no Strike were there at all.
Baker recognized Strike Halib, having learned all of their names and positions in the weeks she’d been here.
Halib was one of the newer Strike, and like many of them, perused the halls with little expressiveness.
These Strike were all well fed, and Jolie had once likened the younger Strike to sharks.
“You can swim with sharks,” she’d said once. “They are docile and relaxed when they aren’t hungry, just like any other fish. Avoid showing strong feelings, and they won’t even notice you.”
Baker had always remembered that comparison, and Jolie, though she seemed to have a heavy spirit and dark disposition, did sometimes share small nuggets of useful advice.