greenery and cotton bunting.
I couldn’t see far in front of my face, just the grey darkness that comes not long before dawn, and the flicker of the scarlet and purple ribbons that fluttered around the poles of the pavilion.
What kind of repertoire do you use to lure your former mistress to her death once she has become a ghoul of pestilence and plague?
I sang the songs that she had always liked: sad and angsty ballads, war songs, childish rhymes that said nothing and meant everything. Then, feeling alone and vulnerable — the others were around somewhere, but not within touch; they could have abandoned me for all I knew — I started to sing the songs that I liked best: my favourites from the Mermaid and the Vittorina Royale, comedy routines to music, character pieces.
Just as I was close to giving up, the chill air making my voice stutter and catch in my throat, I heard from across the shore the same song reflected back to me in a singing voice I hadn’t heard in years. Livilla; she had a peach of a voice, untouched and still halfway innocent. I closed my eyes, because darkness was better than the blurred lantern light, and I heard another voice, and then another. All of Tasha’s cubs, singing for her. For a few minutes, it felt like we were inside each other, all limbs of the same body, connected in a way we had almost forgotten about. Tasha was gone. We would never be held together the same way again. But right now, on this nox, we were beautiful.
She came for us. We all felt her. I could sense Livilla’s revulsion, Garnet’s guilt, Lysandor’s fear. Nothing from Ashiol; nothing but walls put up to keep the rest of us out.
I kept singing. The others fell away. I couldn’t see her; didn’t want to see what she looked like now, if she was even really here, or just spirit.
An ugly stench overwhelmed me, but I kept singing. A darkness of fear and despair swept over me and my skin started heating up. I couldn’t survive another bout of whatever illness she carried with her. The thought of losing what little eyesight I had left …
I heard the others talking, as if they were close to me, though I knew by the feel of their animor that they were on the shore, nowhere near.
Lysandor: What’s this going to do to the lake?
Garnet: Poison it, obviously.
Ashiol: It’s an ornamental fucking lake; it’s not like it’s the city reservoir.
Livilla: I can’t see him, I can’t see Poet. What will she do to him?
Garnet: I doubt somehow she’s going to join him for a duet.
I started singing again, to drown out their voices more than anything, and, after a few moments, Livilla joined me. I had missed the sound of her voice. Why hadn’t Tasha asked her to sing?
Too late to ask that question now.
The floating pavilion swayed under my feet. The creature that had once been Tasha was close. I sang harder, louder, deeper. Twelve years old and it was the performance of my fucking life.
Sight or no sight, I knew the moment she set foot into the lake. It was hard to miss. The water’s temperature dropped suddenly, fiercely. Frost ran up the poles of the pavilion and the wind-stirred ribbons froze solid.
I forgot all the words to all the songs in the world. There was nothing else. My voice faltered. In the silence that followed, I heard Livilla’s thin voice getting stronger — a sad song from the cabaret that sometimes formed part of the Mermaid Revue. It was Madalena’s favourite, she’d always sung it when she was drunk, and I didn’t even know the title because we’d called it ‘Madalena’s brandy song’. It was about wanting to be loved, wanting to be the stellar on someone else’s stage, not just another player in the chorus. Half the words weren’t words at all, but silly sounds that weren’t so silly when sung by a mournful drunk, or a demme on the shore of a lake tinged with the frost of a dead woman’s shade.
Jazz is good like that. Songs for every occasion.
Tasha, or the thing that used to be Tasha, waded deeper into the water Nothing happened. There was no scream, no cleansing. What was left of her body didn’t shatter like glass under a mallet. The water around me and the pavilion merely grew colder under my feet, and my breath fogged the air,