[Editor’s note: When she learned her story would be published, this author sent us a picture to go with her story. Good idea? Bad idea? Let us know.]
I hear Mam coming long before the steel door crashes open
and pours exhaust fumes, blaring horns, and a child’s
screams down the basement stairs. As the door slams shut,
the odors and sounds are trapped inside the circular stone
room that is the womb.
The child tumbles down the masonry steps to slide
face-first across the floor. She hiccups, then screams
again as she sees me. I grin, knowing she’ll see my missing
front teeth. She scrambles backward leaving a trail of
blood smears until she’s inside one of Mam’s power rings.
She reminds me of my own arrival and my great fortune of
knocking out a baby tooth when I hit the floor. That tooth
is why I’m still alive.
Once inside either of the two power rings, a child is safe.
She can survive if she learns not to cross the inch-wide
cuts in the cobbles that define the boundaries of each
ring. It is a prisoned survival providing tutelage of all
that Mam does and is. I have guessed this is why the rings
exist, though I cannot imagine Mam creating them—they seem
more a design forced on her. Inside each ring the floor
slopes toward a five-inch drain fed by a channel worn into
the stone by water that seeps through the wall. Only now,
with four of my adult teeth woven into my growing necklace,
do I have the ability to see the wall of energy that rises
from the rings. I know Mam can see and hear me inside my
ring just as I can see and hear her, but the energy is a
boundary she can’t cross.
The glory of Mam’s teeth and hair robe sweeps aside all
lingering thought. I rejoice as the teeth’s chorus washes
over me. The teeth speak of everything they’ve experienced,
giving me a taste of the intimacy of connection I long for
above all other desires. I bend and twist in a lover’s
dance as Mam, the Uja Boneshaper, enters the womb. When
she’s absent, I grieve the loss of the teeth for then I am
truly and utterly alone.
We stand equal in height now, though I’ve no memory of when
that happened. To me, Mam rises like the buildings of my
distant memory, scraping the top of the world. Her body’s
sheathed neck to heel in the robe. Her head, bald from
frequent plucking, is scarred with cut marks, as is my own.
She spares me no notice, nor the child. Using her power she
waves the cauldron’s flames to life. She chitters at the
moisture clinging to the ceiling pipes, urging the water to
drip into the pot. Her cauldron burns on her energy.
My toes find my own ring’s edge. I shuffle back and forth
until I sway like a pendulous cobra seeking every whisper.
Mam’s robe tells me of the world above, the path of her
journey, the wresting of this child from parents so lost to
true sight that Mam flowed among them, a dark breeze, to
carry off their daughter. The robe glories in its ability
to mimic what people expect to see, its only telltale mark
a constant ripple of movement, as if the surface being
looked at is crossed by a liquid film. It is this ability
that provides the perfection of Mam’s disguise, allowing
her to invade and steal a girl right from the safety of her
bedroom. The teeth mock, belittle and betray, their stories
spoken from all sides for once, they too had been sundered
by Mam. In the time before they were freed from flesh and
silence, they had thought themselves wise and safe, their
world known and kind. My broken tooth had allowed me to
hear them from the first day I entered the womb and since
then, they’d taught me everything about Mam.
Water boils. The child whimpers. She’s not brave enough to
flee toward the stairs. Mam has taken twenty-three girls
since me, most from places I’ve never heard of. I remember
my own pulsating terror when Mam drew me under the robe,
inside the robe, disappearing me to the outside world. She
only takes females. Bright with energy. The womb is crowded
with ghosts, all stirring now as the girl’s fear summons
memories best left distant.
Weary of her noise, I chitter at her, my voice the crack
and skree of extinct predators warning her primitive back
brain that I’m hungry. Then I notice Mam has turned, her
eyes not on the child but peering through the veil at me.
Three times Mam has looked at me so directly. Once, when
she dragged me from my bed with my ponytail in her hand.
Once, when I ran out of screams and stood up in the ring to
face her. And now. Her gaze registers me as competitor
showing an interest in her prey. Around her the teeth dance
and chatter, growing louder and louder until my skull
reverberates under the impact of their sound. Instinctively
I revert to the twist and sway of the snake, directing my
consciousness to thread itself between the cords and
hammers, between the hair and teeth, slipping along the
power of her attack, but not letting it hit me fully.
When Mam stops, the child lays sprawled on the floor, blood
leaking from nose and ears. She’s dead—an unplanned
casualty of Mam’s energy assault. Mam only eats what her
hands physically kill so it’s no surprise when she summons
rats to feast on the body. But now she can’t harvest the
girl’s life force.
I step back, well within my ring’s boundary and squat,
hiding the new fear coursing through me. Using a noose I’ve
created from rat bone and sinew I continue loosening my
eyetooth. As I work, I watch the rats tear at the girl,
efficiently stripping her flesh. They are cunning and quick
which is why so many of their teeth are woven into my
necklace. By eating them and harvesting their teeth, I’ve
taken on their power. I know their language, and their
secrets. Then I think about the thought I’ve been avoiding.
The thought before Mam looked at me. I wanted to eat the
child. I’m hungry.
Mam glares at her workbench with its trough of bones
waiting to bind a new client to her power cords. I can feel
her anger at me clenching and unclenching like dark fingers
wanting to snatch me from my ring. Unfed, she’s not strong
enough to do her work and she must hunt again. Though I
watch her only through the sides of my eyes, I’m aware that
I measure her as I’ve never done.
She flicks her fingers. The cauldron’s flames die, and the
water drops go back to hanging in wait. Then she’s gone,
taking the precious robe with her. I collapse to the floor,
shaking as the reactions she must never witness thrust my
body into spasms. My survival of her second attack feels as
arbitrary as the first time, rebirthing my terror. I can’t
afford her true attention for I am certain she can destroy
me, were she to think it through. I’ve survived by being
ignored, by being nothing important, by the luck of my
tooth and the protection of the ring’s energy.
Through the night I chitter at the rats, making them eat
around the hair, cleaning out the girl’s brains without
touching her teeth. Mam’s never left a body before. I make
the rats drag the leg bones and skull inside my ring,
leaving the rest for Mam to deal with. It’s the skull I
desire most. It’s my first opportunity to create my own
cauldron. Mine won’t be iron, but bone will do. I have
human teeth to harvest, hair to weave and bones to boil. I
waste no time. Every time Mam is absent I practice the
nuances of all I’ve observed, and what the teeth have
taught me, and I wait.
Her absence is brief, just long enough for me to clean and
pile the bones against the back wall of my ring. I squat,
braiding the dead girl’s hair while her teeth hide in the
cracks under my feet.
A new girl hits the floor too hard. There is the sound of
breaking bone. I think it’s Mam’s temper so I don’t look up
as the girl’s screaming bounces around the womb. Mam
ignores her and readies the pot. I keep myself small as,
once again, the robe’s teeth flow across my consciousness,
easing me.
As I weave new teeth into my necklace the effect is
immediate. Where before I could distantly sense the power
cords radiating from Mam’s body, I now see them twisting
into tight dreadlocks. I try to send my inner sight through
the stone ceiling where they disappear, but I’m not strong
enough yet.
I weave more teeth as Mam goes for the girl, dragging her
hair first to the cauldron. Mam gums arcane words that a
mouth with teeth cannot form. I’ve long cast this sequence
to memory for I know it’s the key to Mam’s immortality; it
allows her to harvest the girl’s life force. I must remove
my own teeth to gain such power.
Her fingers tear at the girl’s throat, so strong that the
girl’s skin gives way immediately. Mam mutters as she
drinks, allowing half the blood to spill into the boiling
cauldron, vaporizing to coat everything in tiny droplets of
condensation. Everyone feeds; all her dead eat as she eats.
I tie another tooth and wrap it back to hide it beneath my
rows of rat teeth. The girl dies before Mam gums away the
flesh on her fingers and spits the bones into the pot.
Mam leaves the cauldron boiling and returns to the worn
curved stone that is her seat; it matches the workbench
that completes the circle with her in the center. She lifts
a knife, finds a bone from the trough and begins to shape
the small square pillows that will fit into the gutted
wireless keyboard that waits.
Mam shapes the world by passing talent from one person to
another. She shapes progress as she shapes bones. Humans
lust for power and fame. Men and women both bargain with
her in her shadow disguise, promising a yearly tithe and
the gift of their own body once they die. Many think to
escape this bargain as their death nears but the financial
price they’ve paid makes it easy for Mam to hire enforcers
whose sole job is to collect the client’s body at death,
along with whatever boneshaped device Mam has given them.
The man whose bones Mam now shapes is the latest in a chain
of men going back hundreds of years, each who’d possessed a
talent Mam wanted, each now jigsawed into the blended bones
of others. This man designed artificial intelligence
circuits. Mam carved his first keyboard before I arrived at
the womb. It returned, with his body. She’s found a new
client, someone desperate for success. Mam reshapes some of
the old keyboard’s pieces and fits new bones to them to
combine the talents he’d borrowed with those he’d acquired.
Mam adds other bones as well. Some human, some not. Mam’s
obsession is the evolving conversation generations of teeth
provide. She grows Master creators who whisper their
secrets into her mind until she possesses them, like a
collective mind seeking the barely imagined edge of human
creativity. I know, because my desire to join them torments
me.
In the city above I know there is a distant building with
vaults of bones dating beyond Mam’s memory to the She
before her. Though I’ve only been through the womb’s door
once, I know every inch of the building that rises above,
of the streets beyond and further out, like a cobweb laid
atop the world. The teeth chronicle the world each time Mam
ventures beyond the womb. As they chatter, I listen.
Time floats on the drag of bone on stone, days become
months. Mam cuts with steel. I shape by sanding the bones
against all the tiny imperfections of the stone floor. It’s
familiar music and our rhythm blends into a single refrain.
I know this would change in an instant should I step foot
across the protective ring in which I live.
Mam leaves with the keyboard. I shape the words to summon
flame beneath my skull cauldron. I chitter a rat out of
hiding and practice ripping his neck open with my fingers,
my mouth and mind shaping the words of life transfer. I
suck his blood, making sure to drip a few drops into my new
cauldron, to breathe in the vaporized spray. It gives me
little of the force I hunger for—rats have short lives, but
the practice carves patterns in my thoughts. I eat most of
his flesh raw, and then finish by stewing his bones. For
the first time since I arrived in the womb, I eat warm
food. I prefer the raw. Three times I do this before I hear
the approaching chatter of the robe’s teeth. An hour or
more passes before the door slams. My connection improves.
Mam dumps a bag of bones in her trough, and then sorts
them. She takes a few, then leaves and returns with more. I
file the girl’s femur into a knife by the time Mam’s
satisfied.
The teeth tell me she’s mixing cat, bird, and several
musicians together. This client is a female pianist. I
wonder how a cat can be a musician and the teeth tell me
it’s a chocolate Siamese and enormously self-centered. I
remember cats. Soft fur. Sharp teeth. But birds aren’t true
memories. I think they must flutter like insects though the
teeth tell me, No. They tell me a diva is a person utterly
absorbed with themselves and I wonder: Isn’t that a human?
I file the edge of my knife until it nicks my skin at the
slightest pressure. I rub a rat pelt down to thin leather.
I cut it in strips and sweat the skin on in layers to make
a handle. Then I’m back to wriggling the last of my upper
teeth out. It’s a molar and deep in the gum.
I use a rat-tooth-tipped knife to saw through my gum. Then
I break several of my bone tools by prying. Mam builds
piano keys. I’ve got half my lower teeth removed and
urgency tugs at me. My pain disappears under Mam’s
knife-song; my gums close even as the teeth leave them. I’m
down to my final tooth when I feel Mam slowing. Soon,
she’ll leave. Soon, she’ll hunt.
An impatient young woman waits in the world above. She’ll
pay to play Mam’s piano-key-bones and the world will call
her Diva and the cat within will snarl and bite while the
bird incessantly twitters, longing to escape. She’ll play
notes that shape how people think, directing their thoughts
along edgy paths, where some will fall while others rise to
see a new idea. That’s Mam shaping their bones without
knife or stone, growing them new from inside their own
skin.
Someday, Diva’s bones will be mine. Everything she was will
be harvested and carved into the shape of my desires. I
jerk hard on my last molar, feeling the rush of blood flood
the inside of my mouth. The last of them. Mam bags the
keys. Then she walks into my ring and grabs for my neck.
As I fight against her I realize the veil is gone. My
necklace catches against her fingers, its human teeth
rising to chatter as the necklace breaks and Mam throws it
toward the wall. In that split second of inattention I grab
my knife and run.
This isn’t my plan but I misunderstood the ring and how my
last tooth freed my power, making me the same as Mam,
something she can no longer ignore. My molar digs into my
palm as I take the stairs three at a time, hearing the
chatter telling her where I am, as if she’s now dependent
on their knowledge as I have been for so long. I can’t
waste a moment to think out this new meaning, for terror
now climbs my legs and back as I hear her thudding up the
stairs behind me.
The latch…here. My fingers scrambling over the steel.
Twist, then turn and push. A slight give. The door opens. I
jump in that last moment and feel the whoosh of displaced
air as one of her knives cuts the air where my calves
should have been. I spin and slam the door as the chatter
of the teeth escalate. I use my youth and height, forcing
the latch to drive home. Then I race through a room
furnished in dust and throw myself through a transparent
panel my mind tells me is glass. It shatters, but I’m
already running into the darkness of a street known purely
from the detail of the teeth’s description.
I slow to a stop when I feel the fade of connection telling
me that Mam is now standing still. I can hear the teeth but
with only a single tooth in my grasp, their voice is
distant. I can’t let her escape anymore than she can let
me. I turn back, following the teeth as Mam heads away from
me. The Diva and a child. I know Mam must feed soon or her
power will wane.
As I trail her, I slow. There are people—not little girls.
Some taller than I. Men. They stare. Words I’ve forgotten
the sound of scatter toward me, clicking against the back
of their teeth. I haven’t the robe’s power of disguise. I
chitter and drive them back, and then retrace my steps
until I find the shattered door. The womb is below. My
necklace, too. But I need more.
I turn, tuning now to the sounds of a world forgotten. It’s
big and open with giant walls of glass and stone. Exposed.
The girl in me fears. The She in me doesn’t. I edge into
the shadows and relax into the familiarity of the hunting
rat, allowing every tiny scent and sound to flow through
me. To my right a female. I trot toward the scent, passing
men curled up in cardboard walls. Homeless; my memory fills
the gap from the endless word trove the teeth have poured
into me. Male - useless.
Ahead. Close. A narrow crack between buildings. Alley. More
homeless. I chitter. They back away, their words
indecipherable in that moment. Female. I find her leaning
over a flaming cauldron. Trashcan. My knife in my hand, my
molar in the other. Momentum carries her backward against a
wall. She screams as I rip her throat out, my words shaping
the form of the transfer as I suck down a mouthful of
blood. I use my knife to hack away her jaw and three
handfuls of licey hair while around me the homeless close
in. The knife breaks and I toss it into the flames. I raise
my voice to chitter at them again, driving primal sounds
into their minds until panic scatters them. I run back
along my path, through the shattered glass, behind the
steel and down into the womb.
It’s Mam’s cauldron I use. Mam’s knives to cut until the
female’s teeth are loosed and woven into what’s left of my
necklace. I worry that I’ve not done the ritual correctly.
I drink the soup knowing it’s poorly done. At least, I’m
young enough not to need a real transfer yet. I hear sounds
behind the door. Men are shouting warnings. I finish my
necklace. They thud at the steel like rams against a
mountain. I send rats out through the walls, swarms and
swarms of them. The thuds stop. I eat a rat and bind its
teeth to learn the men have marked the door and boarded the
outer one. It doesn’t matter. Mam will come.
I’m sitting in the center of her worktable when the door
slams open and a child tumbles down the stairs. As I unfold
from the table, the child rises. She screams and twists,
seeking escape.
Mam steps into the womb, but it’s the absence of the
teeth’s chatter that holds me still. My fingers curl over
her knife, well sharpened in the time she’s been gone. I
want to hear the teeth. I’ve done all of this for the
teeth, yet they lay against her as silent as dirt on the
floor. Uncertainty screams in my mind. I touch my necklace,
reassuring myself that it’s still there. Why can’t I hear?
I’d heard the rat with a new tooth. My necklace, worthless?
Mam begins a series of sounds I’ve never heard before. A
hand seems to grab my brain, squeezing me back into the
terrified girl I’d been when first I tumbled to this floor.
I fight the wave of terror rising fast and hard, realizing
Mam has a way to bind me to the girl who even now screams
in futility. I tug and pull at the necklace until it’s in
my fingers. The only tooth I know that still works is my
last molar. Mam steps toward me as my fingers count the
teeth, seeking the one. The terror of the female I’d killed
enters me too as I fumble with her rotting teeth. Unclean.
Wrong. Mistake. At last, it’s there and I twist and tug
before lifting the necklace to my mouth, grabbing the tooth
with my gums to jerk it free.
Mam dives. I toss the worthless necklace at the cauldron’s
flames and spit the last tooth out in my hand as Mam’s
weight drops me to the floor. The teeth between us chatter.
This time her fingers find my throat with only skin to
break. Then I remember her knife still held in my fist. I
thrust it up through the teeth, hearing it cut hair and
sunder ancient connections. The teeth scream. My throat
tears open and the steel door slams. Hands pull Mam away,
her energy connection to the robe too weak for the robe to
manifest its disguise as men scream words over teeth and
Mam dies. One places fabric over my neck and tells me,
“…thing…okay.” The girl keeps saying, “that one, that one,
that one,” her finger jabbing at dead Mam on the floor.
I’m cuffed to a metal table, gurney, as they haul me up the
stairs, uncertain of my role in the child’s abduction. I
keep my molar clutched tight in my hand. I hear the teeth
chattering in the distance. Doctors, bright lights, bad
smells and thin knives stab my arms and strobe through my
world gone mad. People chatter at me, teeth so close yet
bound to living silence in their mouths. I pluck clusters
of words from the air. “…doesn’t know her name…charnel
house…feral?…dead woman…get psych down here…commit…no
response…meds aren’t knocking her out…keep her strapped
down… murderer?…jail…who is she?…no wound can close that
fast…” When they leave me alone I practice words, both
Mam’s and those of the outside world. The meaning of their
words settle into me. Jail. Trade one ring for another? The
isolated, silenced and acutely lonely live inside rings.
The blind and manipulated live outside rings and believe
themselves free. Then there’s Mam…and the robe.
The teeth tell me men are pulling it apart.
It’s easy to chitter a rat into cutting through my straps.
I discard the thin fabric gown, the remains of the bandage
on my neck and the thin hollow needles they’d jammed into
my arm. Then I race through the hallways, the dead rat’s
teeth in my hand…guiding me. Screams echo.
Sirens. New words collect in my mind as people on sidewalks
jump away as I run past, chittering. Louder, the clatter of
the robe summons me. A door marked with shields and
lettering I can’t read. Inside, past bellows to stop.
Screams.
I chitter, driving back the men swarming at me. Sharp
cracks of sound and sudden pain in my shoulder and thigh. I
break another glass door. Stairs down. The thunder of their
steps increase behind me as I twist and turn seeking the
door to where the teeth are trapped. A cage and another man
screaming, “Stop!”
I repeat Mam’s power words, the ones she used to summon
fear and panic during our final battle. The door shatters.
Aisles and aisles of bags and boxes. I can feel bones in
many of them. Then, a large box. I rip it open as men find
the aisle, their arms raising, metal cannons, guns,
lifting. I drop the robe of teeth over my shoulders to a
sensation of intense prickling. Bullets punch the air where
I’d been moments before. Bliss and power lend my throat
true speech. My voice blasts through the hallways, into
every corner, into every mind.
Together, we are freed.
Copyright 2007 by F. R. R. Mallory