She is come from walking on the bottom of the sea. There the tiny eyeless and the footless walked with she. Ran with she the finned and flattened, sailed with she the lungless; swayed with she the fantom grasses, lantern fishes, wolf eels. To the north bathed viperfish, who did not even see she; to the south flew goblin sharks, who did not even eat she. Toed a wolf eel, thumbed a skate, fingered the sucker of a cockeyed squid.
And back again, on waking, to the concrete bed.
Like the cell of any hive.
“Here’s your tray,” says the day guard, who has six fingers on her off hand. Hyperdactylia is a sign of the visionary. “And you got a letter.”
On white paper, in pencil:
Dear Ginny,
Everything will be all right. I’m feeding the animals. And I took care of the other thing. I hope you like this kind of chocolate.
C.
So polite, Cotter. “I’m going to put it in now, okay?” he said, the first time they had sex. Polite till the cows come home. In, and in, and in. Her scabbard hurt after.
She had been curious to try. They did it five times, on four different days, on a blanket on the floor of Cotter’s parents’ basement, until she decided she didn’t want to do it anymore.
Cotter was sad but still walked her home from school, and they didn’t talk much, sometimes not at all. Her scabbard stopped hurting. They listened to the scroof and bap of their shoes on the sidewalk. The tsunami siren went off so loud the mender fell to her knees—“Will we drown?” She hated to swim, was frightened of sharks. “No, it’s just a test,” he said, and crouched to hug her.
Cotter was not her future husband, even though, back then, he sort of wanted to be. Scottish virgins used to douse charred peat with cow piss and hang it in their doorways, and whatever color the piss-moss was, next morning, would equal the color of their future husbands’ hair.
Has Mattie Matilda solved her problem by now? Or is the little fish still inside?
“The letter says chocolate,” she tells the guard.
“You’re not allowed to have the chocolate.”
“But it was sent to me.”
“You’re in jail, Stretch. Nothing here is yours.”
“At least tell me what kind it was?” she yells at the guard’s back.
The other guards are eating the chocolate, she knows. Smearing it all over their faces.
They took away her Aristotle’s lanterns too. Her neckcloth.
“If we go to trial, it will help if you look as mainstream as you can,” said the lawyer. “Studies have shown that juries are influenced by grooming and attire.”
Her grooming won’t change one inch of itself. She won’t let him bring her any department-store clothes. Her aunt yells from the freezer: Show those fuckshits how Percivals do! The mender has been refusing the instant mashed potato and pork nuggets; she eats her own nails and the brickling skin around them. The lawyer has promised to bring better food. He said, “I’ll have you out by Christmas.”
Christmas, her favorite criminal. Stockings are hanged, trees chopped, geese shot, children threatened with coal.
Christmas is next week.
Medical malpractice: who’ll believe forest weirdo over school principal? Naturally that prick became a principal—plenty of little ones to boss around. Wasn’t enough for him to boss Lola. “You divorce me at your age, you’ll never get another man, it’s just numbers, babe, you’re at the wrong end of the numbers,” she told the mender he’d said.
They think the mender harmed her grievously. Think she waved her broom at the moon and saved her own menstrual blood in a cat skull and dipped a live toad in the blood and tore off one of the toad’s legs and stuffed it into Lola’s butthole.
Nobody knows why the dead man’s fingers—poisonous to ships’ hulls and oysters and fishermen’s paychecks—have come back to Newville. Nobody knows, so they’ve decided that it’s the mender’s fault. She hexed the seaweed. Called it to shore with her special weed-hexing whistle. And her reason? What reason, bitches?
Some things are true; some are not.
That Lola fell down the stairs, hard.
That she fell down so hard her brain swelled up.
That she fell down because she drank a “potion.”
That the “potion” she drank before falling down was directly responsible for the falling down.
That the providing of the “potion” counts as medical malpractice.
That the newspaper headline says POTION COMMOTION.
That the oil she gave Lola was for calming her scar.
That the oil was topical, not meant to be swallowed.
That, even if swallowed, elderflower, lemon, lavender, and fenugreek don’t make people fall down.
That nobody will believe forest weirdo over school principal.
“Percival!”—a guard through the screen box. “Get dressed. Your lawyer’s here.”
The lawyer wears a suit, like last time. As if to make himself more real. As if, in a suit, he will appear forceful and real and not the plump weird trembler he is. Among humans, the mender prefers the weird and the trembling, so she likes him.
From his briefcase he produces two boxes of licorice nibs. “As requested.”
The mender breaks one open. Crams her mouth thick with the black taste, holds the box out to him.
“Mmh. I don’t eat those.” He pulls out a bottle of hand sanitizer and squirts a palmful. “So your friend Cotter’s been checking on the animals and says everyone is fine.”
“Did he make sure the goats aren’t going up to the trail?”
The lawyer nods. Scratches the back of his neck. “So I’m afraid I have some tough news.”
Mattie Matilda?
Went to a term house—died?
“The prosecutor’s office has appended a charge,” says the lawyer.
“Appended?”
“Added. They’re bringing a new charge against you.”
“What charge?”
“Conspiracy to commit murder.”
Silver cold burn in her belly.
“Because fertilized eggs are now classified as persons,” he says, “intentionally destroying an embryo or fetus constitutes second-degree murder. Or, if you’re in Oregon, ‘murder’ rather than ‘aggravated murder.’”
“What did the music teacher tell you?”
“Who?”
“The—”
“Stop talking,” he barks.
She looks at him sidelong.
“Ms. Percival, it is much better if you don’t tell me whatever you were about to tell me. Understood? The charge is being added by Dolores Fivey’s attorney. Mrs. Fivey claims you consented to terminate a pregnancy of hers. Any truth to that?”
“No.”
“All right, good.” He fusses in his briefcase for a notepad and pen. “Did she ever mention being pregnant? Or that she was seeking an abortion?”
That clock never had a kernel in it.
“Lola’s lying,” says the mender.
“Why would she lie?”
“Get a doctor to look at her. Womb’s been silent.”
The lawyer looks up from his pad. “Not a talkative womb?”
He is helping her when she has no money to pay him, so she fakes a laugh. “She was never pregnant.”
“Well, she can testify that she believed she was.” He reaches under his suit sleeve to rub a forearm, then applies more hand sanitizer. “Per our last conversation, I haven’t been able to find any evidence that implicates Mr. Fivey in domestic violence. No hospital records, no police reports, no concerned friends or doctors. Zero.”
“But he snapped her finger bone,” she says, “and burned her arm and punched her in the jaw.”
“Without any corroborating evidence, we can’t present this information in court.”
I am descended from a pirate. From a pirate. I am—
“Ms. Percival, I want you to understand that conspiracy to commit murder carries a mandatory minimum prison term of ninety months.”
Seven years, six months.
“And that’s the minimum. They could add more at sentencing.”
“But I didn’t,” she says.
“I believe you,” says the lawyer. “And I’m going to make the jury believe you. But we need to go over every single detail of your acquaintance with Mrs. Fivey.”
He wants to know what Lola paid for the scar treatments. If the prosecution can prove that money or goods changed hands, then the jury might plausibly leap to believing that the money or goods were prepayment for a termination. By accepting the compensation, the mender conspired to commit murder.
“This is the narrative they’ll build for the jury,” says the lawyer. “We need to hack away at it. Anything that can throw this narrative into doubt, we’ll use.”
“I can’t remember,” says the mender. Telling about the sex would make it worse. The world’s oldest method of payment.
In seven years and six months the chickens and goats will be dead, Malky will have forgotten her, and the powderpost beetles will have eaten the roof clean off.