The Mermaid House: Part One

THE MERMAID HOUSE: 1985

IT IS A COBWEB BIRTH, the awareness of betwixt and between, the world of the children of nothing and night.

Leander Cyrus was seventeen when he came to San Francisco from a midwestern town where things had been as colorless as The Wizard of Oz before Dorothy landed in that Technicolor otherworld. He had a mother and a father, but he might as well have been an orphan, because they worked, and he was used to being on his own. He wanted to be a filmmaker, but that had been nothing but a hobby in his old town. Here, in this city not far from Hollywood, it was a possible career. His new school even encouraged it.
    It was as if the city were a cure he'd needed. He grew taller. His hair burnt to gold. His outcast love of the Seventies, reflected in his T-shirts and jeans, were acceptable in this place of sun and sea. And his mother, to make up for not being there, bought him a video camera, a sleek black Sony. His hands shook when he lifted it out of the box.
    He wasn't drawn to the glassy glamour of new San Francisco. It was the old places that fascinated him, the ones with histories: Cameron House and the Neptune Society Columbarium, abandoned buildings and creepy streets. He'd film them at dusk, when they had more character.
    He found the old neighborhood by accident, when he drove up a crooked hill street where the houses were tangled with trees he couldn't identify. The trees were twisty and dark, with heavy leaves that only allowed a bit of sunlight through. As the sun faded, orange shadows crept across a cluster of shabby Victorian houses and the street was submerged in weird light. He could hear the ocean, see it beyond some of the houses.
    An eerie disorientation made him shake his head, as if that would clear his skull.

Jack and Jill: Lily's Story

I WON'T USE YOUR NAME, BRAVE, fierce sister, because there is power in a name. (I'm even beginning to sound like them now). You've probably found my journal, so this isn't for you alone, but for others who've stumbled across Their path.
    And you know who you are, don't you?
    It began, for me, with a walk in the woods, on the day our mother died, only I hadn't known she would die. It was winter. I saw the two dead children at an old well. Their velvet clothes looked motheaten and old. They were so white, it was like they hadn't any blood. When they looked at me, their eyes were like polished silver. And they were barefoot, in the snow. They were so serious about the dolls they were playing with. The dolls were just sticks wrapped in gauze, with small, porcelain faces glued on top. I don't know what made me recite the nursery rhyme. It wasn't anything dad had taught us, though you'd think, with him being an expert in folklore, he'd have known about Them and warned us.
    "Jack and Jill went up a hill, to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill--"
    One of the kids stood up and looked at me. He was my age -- I was thirteen -- and he wore a red velvet suit patched with mold. He was holding an old Halloween mask, a plastic rabbit face. His skin wasn't an albino's white...it was like snow. I wanted to run when he said, "You shouldn't talk about them like that."
    I said, rude, because I was scared, "Talk about who?"
    "Jacks and Jills." The girl frowned. She wore green velvet and a necklace of beetles made of tarnished pewter. "Dead people stuffed with flowers."
    The sun faded then, and their eyes glowed. I could see the veins in their skin -- it was like looking at our mom's creepy, ball-jointed dolls come to life. And it suddenly got colder than winter, a chill you find in basements, in stone places. I backed away, whispered, "What are you?"
    "We could have been Jacks and Jills. We're only dead things now."
    And I heard you calling me. And I ran. I ran away from them. I ran out of that dark place.
    And a couple of years later, in a different city, I stumbled back into it.
    Do you remember Leander? The boy I loved? He isn't what we thought he was...

(Illustration: Arthur Rackham)

The Ballad of Maude Clare: End

SO, MY SISTER, you will sit and read this with your Jack and you'll believe things will be different, that this story of an isolated girl descending into the shadowy, bloody Otherworld of Faery isn't like yours.
    You'll look up at the boy leaning in the doorway, that dark hair shadowing his face that belongs to another century, a striking face, a human one. You'll ache for Maude Clare, who loved a Jack that couldn't love back. And you'll say, to your Jack, "Why did you give this to me?"
    He'll sit beside you, hands knotted between his knees, his fragrance of green things, of earth and smoke, making your heart race. His fingers, when they fold over yours, will be cold with antique rings, and scarred. He'll say, "I wanted you to know what could happen."
    "You think I don't know? You think I'm easily tricked?"
    "You're only seventeen."
    "Did Maude Clare die?"
    "The rabbit-headed man was an urban legend, there. Maude Clare's body was found beneath the yew. The Tiamats were a lawless clan, the children of the Dragon. The Mongoose family, who were humans with Fata blood, alerted higher powers -- now there are no more Tiamats. As for him, that Jack...well, he was the bones and dust found near the yew..."
    You'll look down at the book's black cover with its silver etching of a girl's face. You'll touch the name of the author on one yellowed page-- Ethan Mongoose -- trace the date it was published -- 1977. And your Jack will say, "He wrote it ten years later...for the two girls the Tiamats murdered."
    You'll look up at the Jack you've invited into your home, your heart, and you'll say what I hoped you would not, "This'll be different. Because you're different. And I will be a thing with teeth."
                                                                 The End

Author's Note: In Egyptian mythology, there is Dendera, or Wepuat, a rabbit-headed god who is sometimes taken for Osiris, the god of the dead. There is Nana Bozho, the Great Hare, a trickster in Native American folklore. The Aztecs had Ometotchtli, a god of fertility and celebration. And then there is the rabbit-man consort of Ostara, the Germanic goddes of Spring. Life and death and tricks. And how much of him is in our world now?

The Ballad of Maude Clare: Part Ten

THE MASKED CREATURES GATHERED around the monstrous yew didn't move as Sarah Morgan gently pulled away from Maude. No one cried out. No one spoke.
    Ruby Tiamat slid forward, the train of her gown slithering. "We knew you would come. Our braveheart."
    Cold breathed across Maude's skin. She stepped back. Her legs felt boneless.
    Sarah Morgan was as white and luminous as the others. Her gown was wet. Ghost light flickered in her black hair that was tangled with water lilies and a glittering dragonfly. Her eyes were the opal hue of a dead thing's.
    Jack spoke softly, "You cannot save her, Maude."
    "She drowned." Ruby looked at the youth with the plaited red hair. "Because she made Tauren angry."
    Maude whispered, "She can't be..."
    Ruby Tiamat leaned against Jack, wrapped her fingers around his, around the handle of the scythe. Her black gown blossomed with a serpentine pattern of red.
    "If you don't do this, Maude Clare." Ruby cupped Jack's face in one hand. "He will become dust. He bleeds for you. Sluagh don't bleed unless they truly love. Would you forsake him?"
    "Maude," Jack's voice tore. "Don't--"
    "You need a willing sacrifice." Maude clutched at the yew and didn't look at the boy who had betrayed her. She felt as if her heart was being squeezed into her throat. She wanted to strike out, to scream. She said, "I'm not willing."
    Ruby tilted her head. Flames glinted in her eyes. "We are rebels. We are the Dark Court. We are the children of the Dragon. And Jack, my soldier, died quite some time ago, didn't you, my love? You will die, Maude Clare, because you love him."
    "And Love," the pale-haired boy with the hobbyhorse stepped forward, "like words, can be sword and shield."
    Ruby turned on the boy, teeth bared. "I should have known not to invite one of the Monasty. Bloody trickster--"
    Maude breathed the words to Shelley's poem, "'Nothing in the world is single--'"
    "'--then hear thy chosen own too late'." Jack whispered, "'his heart most worthy of thy hate.' My sword past your shield, Maude. I am almost flesh and blood. The words work for me as well."
    "Jack." She didn't believe in her own death. She held out a hand, spoke to the fragments of the boy he had been. "Come with me."
    His eyes were filmed with ghost light. As he stepped forward, the golden scythe glinted.She imagined its sting against her throat, the blood flooding her mouth, her lungs, the terrible pain--
    He leaned close and whispered in her ear, "There is one here who can save you..."
    The scythe flashed.
    Cold flooded her. She heard a buzzing sound, as if every molecule in the air sang. She heard a voice, her name, beneath the cries of the Tiamats. She didn't want to open her eyes. There was that awful sound again...kh...kh...kh...
    It was coming from her.
    Darkness rose up in the form of a rabbit-headed figure and the world hazed into a landscape of twilit black trees blossoming with crimson tulips, a giant moon silhouetting an ivory tower filled with books and lamplight.
    Come, the tall boy removed the rabbit mask, revealing ruby eyes and long black hair. He held a hand toward her. 'Tho they have taken thy life, they shall not receive power from thy death. Not on my land.
    She gripped his hand. The pain faded as she breathed. Her heart beat again. Life, an alien, vibrant life, pulsed through her. The world looked more vivid. The air tasted of gasoline and clover, iron and magnolias.
    She was not a sluagh, a dead thing...she was one of them.
    As Azrael Umare gently led her away, she looked back over her shoulder, saw flailing shadows with vicious silver eyes and the copper-haired corpse of a once-beautiful boy at the foot of the yew.
    She thought of another boy, with wheat-gold hair and worried eyes. Ethan Mongoose...
    Hand in hand with the darkness that had saved her, she walked away from a world that was no longer hers.

                                                                           the end

The Ballad of Maude Clare: Part Nine

ONCE UPON A TIME, SPIRITS lived in the groves, the grottos, the caves. Now, all they have are the Between places -- abandoned buildings, bridges, wells. That is where they are allowed. And most of them, the nomads  and outlaws who live among us, are at war with us.

    Ethan Mongoose knew what they were. He gave her silver jewelry and a Celtic cross. The cross, he said, represented the pact between the kings and queens of their kind and humanity -- two worlds, intersecting.
    "Stay away from Jack Tiamat, Maude. Some of them don't mean to cause harm,but their physical essence -- it messes with our minds, a bad trip. And he's dangerous."
    "I don't believe you. Jack is not a...a spirit pretending to be human." But some small, secret fragment in her brain sent a twist of unease through her.
    Ethan's voice was low, as if he didn't want to be overheard, "My family is old. There've been encounters. They seek out the fragile, the lost."
    She wanted to ask more, but he quietly told her he had to go home. Before he left, he murmured, "They steal people."

    They steal people.
    Maude didn't wear the silver or the cross when she biked to the field as the sun was setting. Jack wouldn't hurt her. He was human. If the Tiamats were Other, he must be their prisoner.
    As she reached the field, she found Jack sitting on the low wall. In a soldier's coat and jeans and a black sweater, he was gazing down at his hands.
    She walked her bike over and stood before him. His sleek looks made her feel small and grubby. As the last of the light caressed his face, she reached out and placed one hand over his heart.
    She felt nothing. Where life should have pulsed, there was only a frightening stillness. She dropped her hand and went as cold as if the blood had drained from her.
    He looked at her, said, "Go home, Maude."
    She twisted her hands together so he wouldn't see them trembling. "Jack."
    "There is nothing you can do for me."
    She saw headlights on the road. Jack looked at her, his eyes black. "Go."
    She stepped back. "What is going to happen to you?"
    "Maude..."
    At least a dozen cars were pulling up on the dirt road. Doors opened and the beautiful people emerged. Eerily quiet, wearing pretty metal masks and moving with a grace that frightened her, they walked toward the giant yew that roofed the oldest part of the cemetery.
    "Stay here." Jack moved toward the luminous-skinned creatures while Maude remained very still in the wall's shadow.
    A girl in a tulle gown, lilies crowning her dark hair, ran toward Jack, calling his name. He caught her hands, bent his head, murmured in her ear. She twirled as she led him toward the yew. Maude realized that the girl was the dark-haired ballerina from the photograph in the field, the one who had disappeared seven years ago. Her name was Sarah Morgan. She was what Ethan Mongoose had lost.
    They prey on the lost, the fragile.
    Ruby Tiamat was moving toward the yew, her green gown billowing. She didn't wear a mask. In one jeweled hand, she held a golden scythe. Sarah Morgan stood with her back against the yew, her chin lifted, her arms above her head. A masked boy, his red hair in long plaits, twined her wrists with green vines.
    Ruby Tiamat, her face gorgeous as a leopard's, handed the scythe to Jack.
    Maude drew back, pushing a hand against her mouth to silence a cry as Jack accepted the scythe and turned to Sarah Morgan, who gazed at him with an adoration that was terrifying. Maude saw the ghost light silver Jack's eyes.
    The world tilted. She hadn't known him after all.
    Then she was racing across the field, without silver, without defenses, and she was tearing away the greenery that held Sarah Morgan. No one tried to stop her as she grabbed the girl's hand. "Run!"
***


(Illustration: Arthur Rackham)