The Girl Who Cut Her Hair Pt. 3
III
At dusk, the sky darkened and rain descended from the sun to force all the Catskills indoors. Ceaselessly it poured, a black curtain on the world.
On this night a stranger to sleep, the daughter tossed fitfully in her bed made from a seashell. She thought of her coronation. She thought of her father.
Dawn found her still awake when the rain stopped and pale blue light appeared above the gorges visible through her south-facing window. She stumbled from bed to open her said stained-glass window, her hope to summon energy from the wind. Below, a retinue of six bodyguards in velvet double-breasted uniforms busied themselves saddling wasps in the courtyard. Shouting orders was Captain Jackson, a bear of man who had campaigned with her father in Mississippi, her bodyguard since the day she sprang to life. Somehow sensing her presence, the bearded captain met her with a smile that soared above the grounds to strike her gaze with the accuracy of a cannonball.
Fondly she smiled back at him. When her handmaid arrived with a basket of cosmetics, the daughter had already begun ablutions at her vanity. “Today I must look a queen,” she stated with forthrightness to her servant. “See that you make it so.”
After applying makeup and scents, the handmaid dressed her in a black ruffled hoop skirt; a white silk shirtwaist; a jacket woven from the mercurial chrysalid of winterflies, so it changed color depending which way she turned, amber and azure, russet and vermillion; red calfskin riding gloves; black leather riding boots with heels made from scorpion tails; a high-crowned hat piled with lace and ostrich plumes, under which her voluminous hair lay momentarily muzzled in a bun the size of a grapefruit.
In the courtyard, Jackson greeted her with a bow at the waist. His soldiers took a knee. “Good morning, Your Grace,” Jackson greeted. “You look beautiful.”
“Do I look like a queen?” she asked.
“As regal as any queen I’ve seen,” he answered curtly. “When your father took his throne, he was barefoot in roughspun.”
“Perish the thought!” No one had ever told her such a preposterous thing. With Jackson at her side, she entered the stable to find her red squirrel saddled, and a pair of livery-men loading the saddlebags. Lovingly she kissed her steed on the nose and, caressing its orange fur, reveled in the touch of it, like sand through her fingers. To Jackson she said, “My father was a hero by the time he took the throne. Why would he not dress like one?”
“A hero, yes,” Jackson said with tightness in his voice, “but not a lauded one, at least not in these parts. He won the hand of the princess through completing three impossible tasks—”
“I quite like the story of Princess Francesca the Vain,” the daughter chuckled, “but you prattle, old friend. Why did my father take his crown in roughspun?”
The old soldier stood at shoulder-arms position, in honor of her father. “To show the world where he came from. To show he was a proud man of the people.”
“So he is,” she said, and almost corrected herself for speaking of him in the present tense, before deciding with impertinence to let the error stand. Queens never second-guessed their actions.
Flanked by her retinue on their fierce insect mounts, she departed through the opened portcullis, southward to the Glass Grove where affairs of state took place.
More than anything she wished for surety, trying to gather her courage as aromas of night-blooming flowers crept from the misty cedars to vex her senses. Tittering animals seemed to mock her from the brush. Into her doubt opened red wounds of resentment at her father for never teaching her statecraft, for letting her believe he would live forever, and as such she had continued her life of balls and holidays without the slightest thought for tomorrow, a sense of unpreparedness dragging through her intestines like an anchor across the ocean floor. Thankfully she had friends in court, as well as leal councilors to guide her as they had guided her father through challenges both important and mundane. Yes, she would keep her spine erect, her gaze forward. She believed her father could see her now, the wind jeweled with his spirit.
“Jackson,” she called over her shoulder for the captain, who kicked spurs into his wasp to join her side. She had to yell over the roar of its wings. “I have a question, and it might be uncomfortable,” she warned him, “but you are obliged to always tell me the truth. My whole life, you have been a leal companion, and good council.” She asked, “Why did you join my father against Princess Francesca? She was the rightful heir,” she reminded him in a sober, queenly tone. “What was it about my father that made you turn cloak?”
“A number of reasons,” he said without hesitation, though his dark eyes grew lusterless at the memory. “I was only a boy when she was promised to your father. She said, ‘I will not be sold off like a cow to every adventurer with a good story and a minstrel to sing it.’ Maybe that was true, but she shouldn’t have poisoned her father and taken the throne for herself. Or raised arms against your father, a hero of the people. She was not fit to rule, and we soldiers saw your father as the better choice. Princess,” he said in a personal tone, “you are as unalike Princess Francesca as the worm is to the eagle. You are your father’s daughter, and he the cleverest man to ever walk this earth.”
“I shall do him proud,” she replied.
Around midday she came upon beggars at the roadside. From afar they resembled a pile of rags; nearer to them, she discerned a mother and two emaciated children huddled under a hide stained in offal, the skin of their dirt-masked faces lumpish with sores. At sight of the children, sneezing and shivering from exposure to the rain, the daughter wished she had a blanket for them. All adorned their faces in mismatched jewelry, and this marked them as barbarians from one of the pillaging tribes west of the Mississippi. Curious what brought them so far north, the daughter called halt.
“I wouldn’t advise it,” said Jackson. “It’s said their eyes can curse.”
“Nonsense,” laughed the daughter, dismounting to go on foot. “I do not cower from beggars.”
Still, she approached with caution, kerchief at her nose, a silk cage to muzzle their wild smells. The beggar mother, a tall woman, yet hunched, looked old beyond her years, her face gouged in lines like cracks on old pottery. Brass rings pierced her lips, cheeks, and eyelids. Repeatedly she sniffed with congestion, then sneezed at the daughter’s feet, for which she croaked apology through scarce more than ten brown teeth.
“I ain’t mean to sneeze on m’lady,” she groveled, bowing her head many times. “Please forgive me. All I ax is coin for me and de chilluns,” and she nodded her pointed chin toward the mouse-eyed brown faces on either side of her.
“You are forgiven,” said the daughter. To show anything but charity toward her meekest subjects would reflect poorly upon her.
“Gimme coin,” said the barbarian, “and I’ma sing a song.”
That made the daughter smile. The illusion of a pretty voice was probably one of the few treasures this woman possessed. “I have no need of songs,” the daughter said with a laugh, “but please tell me how came you so far north.”
“But ya gots ta hear my song,” said the barbarian with a ghastly grin. “All born a’ woman should hear it.”
“Well, I should inform you that I was not born of woman,” replied the daughter with quickness, happy to tell the tale. “My father cut seven locks of his hair and planted them in sacred ground. My brothers and I emerged full grown from the dirt. You may have heard of my brothers. Jack the Traitor. Jack the Dolt. Jack the Irascible. Jack the Drunk. Jack the Repugnant. Jack the Lech. My father killed them all for their vices. He buried them in the deepest dungeon of his estate where their screaming ghosts are said to drive men mad. I am the sole heir.”
The barbarian shook her head and proceeded to speak to the daughter with familiarity far outside her class. “Men is allus gone be men. Why’s yo’ daddy gots to make a big deal cutting his hair off, I ax. Don’t seem no diffint dem no count rascals allus making a show a’ shooting dat spunk out dey balls, hooting and hollering like dey do. Now, I ain’t saying yo’ daddy ain’t no great man,” she ingratiatingly added. “I’m just saying dere be shit dat all men do.
“And kaze you gave me a tale, it be fittin’ I give you one. I’ma sing you de song after and if’n you like mebbe you kin pay a bit more, if m’lady be kind as she pritty. Out on de plains me and my ol’ man was de greatest hunters in our tribe. We used to go out hunting de wild stagecoaches and come back with two or three every time. And I cuss the day! I cuss de day we done heard dere be dat black unicorn in dem hills. We chased dat black rascal sebben days ‘n sebben nights till we catch dat sumbitch havin’ a drink at the river. And I cuss dat no-good so-called husband! He gots dat sumbitch dead in his sights and what he do? He cain’t pull the trigger. ‘Too beautiful,’ he says. My mama allus said don’t marry no man who go running in the moonlight, and Lawd! I wish I listened! I was ready to do in dat black unicorn m’ damn self kaze I don’t give a damn what kinda beast you is. But it was dat moment a’ hesitatin’ the unicorn cussed us. We come back cussed and got run out de tribe.”
The daughter shuddered to hear such a tragic story. Truth be told, between the barbarians and the unicorn, she preferred the ugly people take punishment rather than a majestic beast.
“I don’t approve of hunting beautiful creatures,” she scolded.
The barbarian shook her head vehemently. “Damn that unicorn! It’s kaze you fancy folk never met a real one you kin say shit like that.”
“Why did you come up north?” asked the daughter, losing her patience.
“Apocalypse.” The woman gazed westward, pain in her yellow eyes. “Big Tom Stormcrown. The twister. He been ravaging up and down de plains. Wiped out our whole tribe, did he. We’s all that’s left kaze we was cast out.” She choked on her words. “Death, he is.”
Another shudder stole through the daughter, and, after fishing from her pocketbook a handful of dollar bills, dropped them in front of the beggars, and the eager children snatched them from the air before they could hit the mud. But the woman persisted, “What about my song? You still ain’t heard my song.”
The daughter looked back to her retinue, each one of them wary, unsettled, eager to depart.
“Fine,” said the daughter.
Without another word, the barbarian dropped the hide from her shoulders. What the daughter saw made her gasp with fright: instead of breasts the woman had a fully exposed ribcage encased in a rind of skin. Inside her yellowing bone grew lilacs and daffodils, and, where her heart should have been, a handsome parrot feathered in emerald and ruby.
“My husband,” the barbarian said bitterly. “De unicorn’s cuss.”
Her husband sang for the daughter. Like birds themselves, the two children tweeted along. Spoken in the sun-loving language of flying things, the song fell over the daughter like a shroud. A song for the drowned, the burned, the hanged. A song for her fathers and brothers. When the parrot sang his last note, the daughter shivered, cold to the bone.
“I would much like it,” she snarled, “if you taught your husband to sing a sweeter song,” and hastened back to her mount.
From the crest of the hill she gazed across the valley at the Crystal Palace, seat of government. The buttresses, the covered walkways bridging towers, the wyvern nests high in the rookeries, the marble statues built many times the height of a person, the sprawling grounds that continued to the end of sight, all these familiar pieces filled her with awe to think she would make her home there. On her descent along the dirt road into the town of Saugertes she played with the idea of moving the capital to Niagara, a fitting next chapter in the story of her family, itself an outlaw tale to rival The Writ of Lord High John de Conquer in fabled pomp. At the foot of the hill, her retinue descended and crossed a steel suspension bridge over the Hudson into the fishing village. Shoemakers, modistes, linen-drapers, printers, and assorted professionals scattered about her wasp on their hurried errands, each pausing to bow before her. Even rogues, or at least those committed enough to find themselves committing roguish affairs in the daytime, did her honor with a raising of her hook hands, or a peg-legged bow. The princess acknowledged her civilians with a wave. Around her, peddlers sold marvels and mysteries from their stands. In steepled towers metallurgists, shaman, and alchemists molded wonders. A boy heralded news from a soapbox: “The dread pirate Mohan sinks another steamer on the Mississippi! —A plague of toads falls upon Greenville! —The messiah of Asheville has been transubstantiated!” Peasants flocked to laud her with flowers for their new queen.
Distaste and dread rose in her to witness, displayed prominent in shop windows, hung around the necks of peasants, the queer geometry popularly known as The Cross. Some time ago the Order of Preacher-pimps came to New York from the south, and had been welcomed by her father, a man who, remembering his own wandering days, fashioned himself a friend to the lost. Once, the daughter had accompanied him to a tent revival along the Hudson where, with a full audience of peasants before them, the preacher-pimps screamed contradictory nonsense about a god who both loved his followers and subjected them to eternal damnation. A god who, unlike every other deity, refused to show himself, even as a sign of dominance. To top off this execrable display, the well-tailored preacher-pimps asked their audience to throw hard-earned money on a plate so that the preacher-pimps could build a supposed worship house.
On their ride back to the Crystal Palace, the daughter had made her feelings known. “It’s a con job.”
“I know,” said her father, the king. “Game recognize game. But it keeps the people happy, and happy peasants are peaceful peasants. Did you hear them singing?” he laughed. “My, my, what a show.”
Mercifully the road out of town led her away from the upstarts, those whose growing power she knew must be curtailed once she took her throne. Her retinue continued along the shore of the Hudson as it bent like a beckoning finger. Fishermen on the sapphire waters, standing in rowboats, swung their nets to snatch fish floating through the air. Near the lighthouse, Jackson guided the coterie off the road and into the pines, a dirt road scarce wide enough for two wasps to ride abreast, the mud rough going for her travel-weary squirrel. To ease its burden, the daughter, disregarding the objections from her chivalrous soldiers, dismounted to guide it by the reins. As her father went barefoot to his coronation, there seemed honor in tracking mud across the Glass Grove floor as she crossed the great amphitheater to kneel before the Minister of Realness. Glass trees rose around her, their translucent trunks striated with black veins, the movement of birds tinkling in their upper branches, the wind rattling like a thousand last breaths. Sunlight refracted tree to tree, coloring the air wistful blue. Lilies spoke in their whispering dialect. She was staring through the thinning trunks at the sapphire-hued hall, her throat dry, a tremble in her breath, when a smell of burning meat struck her delicate nose.
“They started the barbecue without me?” she said in affront.
“Council meetings are often times of frivolity,” Jackson said in a low, disquieted voice. “It is possible they grew overzealous. They rarely started without your father, but he was always first to the pit. If this offends you”—he paused to lock his weary gaze on hers—“it I best to let them know soon, and loudly.”
At that instant a tumult of voices reached her ears. Boastful words shimmered like the mating call of so many full-grown peacocks.
“I slew the Neryon Cyclops!”
“This tail belonged to the Sphinx of Jacksonville!”
“The Sword of the Gunsmith!”
Scarred voices. Hairy voices. Unsettled by such grisly talk, the princess took a deep breath. At that time of day when the sun ebbed bluest with solar tides, she entered the Glass Grove.