The Singular & Extraordinary Tale of Mirror & Goliath: From the Peculiar Adventures of John Lovehart, Esq., Volume 1 (Notebooks of John Loveheart, E) (14 page)

A
unt Eva
– as lazy as a cat, as beautiful as fire roses, as mad as the buzzing of bees – began her story. A mile outside Appledoor was a huge field, lush with wild grasses, with a solitary tree. A tree that had been hit by lightning and was black as charcoal and fifty feet high. If you placed your hands on it, it felt warm. Like apple pie from the oven. And it smelt. It smelt of syrup and of blood. When Aunt Eva and mother were little girls they would come and visit the tree and play in its branches. They would cast spells by its roots and make wishes in its secret holes. It never spoke to them. It just listened and watched. Aunt Eva said she would leave secret messages for her sister, and sometimes gifts. Once she hung a jade hairpin from its branches, a dangling gift on a pink ribbon.

On the summer of their eighteenth birthdays, my father arrived into the village selling soap, and wooed my mother with his crooked charming smile and perfumed words. He stayed clear of Aunt Eva. He was frightened of her, thought she was a witch. He thought of her as one of those women too beautiful for men. Only the gods would touch her. My mother took my father to show him the lightning tree. He had no interest in such things. He held her hand by the roots of that tree, promised her a thousand things and then fucked her. It was over quickly. He left in the morning, soap samples jiggering in his bag.

But Aunt Eva had done something. She had carved an image of him out of the tree. She had dug in the earth where he had cum by the roots and smeared it over the doll. And she had chanted under a red moon and hung him from the tree. While my mother wept, pregnant with me, Eva was enforcing revenge. And the gods listened to her.

He was made impotent and diseased. And Aunt Eva laughed. And the gods laughed. And my mother wept.

A few years later, to return himself to full health my father, a born salesman, struck a deal with a demon. In exchange for sex. And today, Aunt Eva reminded me, was the day of collection.

We walked out of the village, hand in hand. Aunt Eva’s hair as red as fire, my own pale, and in comparison, uninteresting. Through the fields, lush with wildflowers, bordered with ancient woodlands. It was sizzling hot, scissor hot. As hot as Eva’s hair. The weather for devils to play in. The sky was heart pink, the air smelt of cinnamon cakes, so sweet and hot. It was as though I was falling under a spell.

“Tell me about this man who is coming to collect me, Auntie,” I said. And she turned to me and replied, “He is the Lord of the Underworld. He lives in a palace of clocks. He has an obsession with time and with ladybirds.”

“How do you know all this?”

“The gods talk to me in dreams. Tell me things I shouldn’t know.”

“Why does he like ladybirds?”

“I was told by my mother when I was a little girl that ladybirds are little witches. Maybe that’s why he likes to collect them.”

And we walked into the field where the lightning tree stood amidst an ocean of bursting poppies, little flames burning through the grasses, thousands and thousands of them. We walked through them, as though we were walking through fire, our hands brushing their soft heads, all that red and black, like ladybirds. The colour of the underworld. The tree had a door on it. It was a portal. We sat and waited by the roots in the field of fire flowers. Flowers like bloodstains on a bedsheet.

“Will it hurt?” I said.

“Only the first time,” Aunt Eva replied.

The door opened and out he stepped. A small man, dark haired, black spectacles with a waistcoat covered in tiny ladybirds. He was ugly to me and I was much taller than him. I felt repulsion. He reminded me of dead things: rotten fungi, withered nettles and tripe. He was sticking in my throat and he was enjoying seeing me sickened. He approached us, soft footed, admiring the view of poppies.

“Pomegranate. How lovely to meet you at last. You are not beautiful, but that really doesn’t matter,” and he smiled, sourly.

Aunt Eva spoke. “Will you make a deal with me to save her from this?”

The Lord of the Underworld examined her carefully. “You are a ladybird,” and he circled her excitedly. I did not excite him at all. “I am afraid there are no deals to be struck. A deal was made with her father. I cannot break such a contract.”

“I will go in her place,” Aunt Eva replied.

“So tempting an offer. I would love to have you in my kingdom. In my bedchamber, ladybird. But I cannot.”

Aunt Eva approached him and placed her hand on his heart and he started to scream. She was speaking magic words. The sky broke into lightning flashes, dozens of them, electrical frenzy. I hunched by the roots of the tree, crying, terrified as my Aunt held the Lord Of the Underworld. Her hand gripping his hair in her hands. It was killing her. The gods watched on, and they didn’t know who would win.

And then he grabbed her and kissed her deeply, sucking the life from her. And she fell to the ground in the field of poppies, as though a sleeping princess. I thought, what passion he has for her. No one will ever feel like that for me. And she turned into poppies.

“Don’t worry, Pomegranate. I have put her under an enchantment, turned her into flowers. She is not dead. I could not kill something that wonderful.”

Then he took me by the hand and led me through the doorway into his world.

T
he bedchamber
of the Lord of the Underworld had ladybirds on everything. Embroidered on the pillowcases, crawling up the curtains, dancing over the mirror.

He takes me to bed. I can hear all those clocks ticking. He hurts me and then he does it again and again. Locks me in the room. He had no other use for me.

I am told I am his wife. I am the wife of the Lord of the Underworld.

The room has little paintings, which hang on the wall – each created in dark oils and each one a picture of a pomegranate. Each one a picture of me, I suppose. There must be a hundred of them. Each one beautiful and sinister. The seeds of the pomegranates are eyes; I am watched from every corner of the bedroom by his spies.

I open a little jewelled box and inside it rest a sharp letter opener, encrusted with ruby jewels.

I stab myself in the heart.

I am floating on the boat of Mr Wishbone, the boat with the little red sail. It is the red of a pomegranate. It is so peaceful, the waters gentle, the air smells of milk, such wonderful softness.

We are sailing away, we are sailing into space.

I
awoke
in the field of poppies. My Aunt had been turned into flowers and I was alone.

I ran back to Aunt Eva’s cottage. I ran as fast as I could and locked myself in. Into her bedroom, under the covers I hid. I wished I could have changed into different shapes. I wish I was magical like Aunt Eva and could fight him, but all I could do was run away. I fell asleep and dreamt I was back in the room surrounded by pictures of pomegranates. Their eyes were full of ladybirds, fat ruby shapes opening their wings. I shouted out for Aunt Eva to save me but she had turned into a goddess in a coffin made of red flowers. And the poppies were laughing, the lightning tree was laughing, the pomegranates were laughing and he was coming back for me, he was coming back to teach me a lesson.

When I woke up, the moon had risen in the sky, a silver sickle, glinting like a scimitar. I descended the staircase and into the kitchen to make a pot of tea. Dried lavender and sage hung in bunches from the window and pots of fresh mint sat by the sink, a stone frog peered at me, propping the door ajar. This was a witch’s kitchen. Why did I not inherit any magic? Moonlight drifted lazily through the room and it was then I heard the knocking at the door. I let him in. What else could I do?

He examined me like a sleepy spider and sat himself at the kitchen table, while I poured the tea. One of Aunt Eva’s fruit cakes sat like a heavy omen near the teapot.

“I am not accustomed to my wives committing suicide to escape me. That will not happen again, do you understand?”

I did not answer him.

He adjusted his spectacles. “Of course, I don’t want you to be unhappy. I know that you will be lonely in the Underworld and so I have decided to grant you six months of every year on Earth, and then you will return to me for the following six. If you disobey me again, I will break this agreement. Will you agree to this?”

I nodded my head.

“You are not overly intelligent and you are not very interesting, but you are my wife, my possession, and we must try to be civil to one another.”

“What about my Aunt Eva?” I asked.

“For the six months you spend with me in the Underworld she will remain as poppies, under my enchantment. When you return to the Earth, she will transform back. And I realize she may very well try to kill me again, which I greatly look forward to,” and he smiled slyly. He continued, “I am not overly fond of women, but I could become very attached to her. She has a spark about her.”

“Perhaps you should seek the company of men. My Aunt has some lovely gowns upstairs you could try on,” and I laughed.

He slapped me across the face so hard I fell onto the floor. “Watch your tongue.”

I stood up rather shakily. “May I get some clothes from upstairs before we leave?”

He nodded, not even bothering to look at me. I walked steadily up the staircase into Aunt Eva’s bedroom and took the shotgun from under her bed. As I walked downstairs I pointed the gun at his head. He looked genuinely surprised. I pulled the trigger and his head exploded all over the wall. “That’s for slapping me, you pile of dogshit!”

I kept hold of the shotgun and ran back out of the town into the field of poppies. Aunt Eva was standing up, her hair alive like flames, poppies still scattered over her body plopping gently to the earth. She hugged me, half in a daze.

“I shot him, Aunt Eva. I blew his head off.”

She answered, “He won’t be dead.”

“I don’t want to go back with him,” I screamed. Poppies were still attached to her hair, which was long, blood red like lava. Suddenly, through a haze of poppy heads, he appeared and seized her by the hair, twisting it in his hands. I held the shotgun up again but I couldn’t get a clear shot between the two of them. Aunt Eva shouted something out and lightning started to dance in the skies and it fell, bolt after bolt onto him. Electrified, he flew off her and I shot him again, his head exploding. His headless body fell backwards, softly, into the poppies.

“What do we do now, Aunt Eva?”

“We stuff him in the tree,” she cried, grabbing his feet. “It will hold him as a coffin.” And so we stuffed his body into the whorl of the tree and filled it with soil, and Aunt Eva bound it with a heavy charm of poppies.

We could hear him screaming in the tree: “
Bitches!
”

We left that field of poppies and went home. Aunt Eva burnt black candles and sage and charmed little bells round the cottage. She painted spiral symbols on my face and arms with ink and I fell asleep on the sofa. And we waited.

B
itches

B

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                I

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                             E

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                                    B
ITCHES

I
told
Aunt Eva about the sex. I told her everything. She was not surprised. We waited three days. We remained in the cottage. We stayed quiet. He remained imprisoned in the tree. The ink spirals on my face and arms became smudged like a child’s drawing. I was a messy picture book. Aunt Eva didn’t let my mother see me. She kept her away with pretty lies. She was too convincing. “So your Mother won’t worry,” she said and she was right, yes, she was right.

“I am frightened. What’s going to happen?”

Aunt Eva looked up, as though she was reading the marks on the ceiling, her eyes staring into something. She reminded me of a crocodile, glassy eyed, guarding the entrance to a pyramid marked with hieroglyphs. She had teeth. She replied, ‘He’s very angry. I don’t think that tree will hold him much longer.”

I was crying then. He would kill me, I knew it. And she put her arms around me, circled me with her hair which smelt of cinder and she whispered, “Do not be afraid.”

“Can you see into the future, can you see what will happen?”

“Only glimpses, Pomegranate. But I will fight for you. You have been unlucky. Your father sold you to a shit.” And we both laughed. For there was nothing else left to do but laugh. And she stroked my face with her cool hand.

“Have you ever been in love, Aunt Eva?”

“No,” she said. “But I was hurt once and I never let it happen again.”

“Tell me about it,” I asked. “If only so I can forget for a while.”

And she told me the story. She was seventeen and she had a secret. She had met a young aristocrat riding in the woods one day. She said his horse was as white as wedding dresses. She never knew his name. Sometimes she thought he never really existed, as though he were formed from her imagination, summoned on dandelion wishes: spongy fairy wings blown into the wind to stop her loneliness. He used to gallop around her, throw flowers in her hair and blow her kisses. He used to tell her he loved her, over and over. He used to play games with her, toy with her, stir her up. This happened for weeks and weeks.

One day Aunt Eva found him in the woods, playing games with another girl. And he saw Aunt Eva watching him. And he tried to smile. He tried so very hard but the look on her face was something he hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t anger or jealousy. It wasn’t sadness or heartbreak. For Aunt Eva was smiling. She was smiling the most terrible smile. Like a crocodile.

“He was a coward,” she said. “He was the most terrible coward.”

“What did you do?”

“I took my revenge,” she said quietly.

“How?”

Her words were so soft. Her teeth were so sharp. “I burnt his ancestral home to the ground. I killed his parents and his sister. I hunted him down, played games with him, toyed with him, butchered him and ate his heart.”

“Do you think that was perhaps an overreaction?” I said, stupefied.

“He cried at the end. He cried so much. The fucking coward.” She was deep in her memories. And then she looked sadly at me. “Pomegranate, listen to me. If a man hurts you – cut him down. If a man humiliates you – cut him down. If a man plays games with you – cut him down.”

“What are you going to do with my husband?”

There was a knocking at the door. Aunt Eva turned gently towards me, smiling. “Something worse.” She opened the door and my husband entered and sat himself once again at the kitchen table. I stayed where I was on the sofa.

“Let me tell you what is going to happen now, ladies,” he said with the utmost control, the teapot on the table exploding into pieces. “I am taking my ugly wife Pomegranate back to the Underworld where I will put her through a variety of experimental degradations. As for you,” he glanced at Aunt Eva, “I am going to have you put in a cage where I can watch you starve to death.”

“I would very much like to see you try, you little turd.”

He stood, screaming “I AM THE LORD OF THE UNDERWORLD AND YOU WILL DO WHAT I SAY OR I WILL TEAR YOU APART!”

The cottage shook, the walls shook, the windows exploded. Aunt Eva looked at me, “Run back to your mother, go now!”

And I ran out of the house. I could see her turn into fire. A burning goddess. A wall of flames. I ran down the path. I could see the cottage on fire, an inferno. The cottage was sinking into the earth, forming a crater as if a meteorite had struck.

I ran back to mother, who was baking bread. I had no idea what to say to her.