Published 'Skeleton Girls' 1995
The Skeleton Girls asked for the story to be dedicated to Lynda, and so it was.
Evidently, she did not know how beautiful she was, because she kept making excuses about her appearance: inner as well as outer. I did not understand why she was known as Queen Shadow, since there was nothing shadowy about her at the time. The complexion was tantamount to translucent, eyes as bright as the brightest eyes amongst my party, a ploughshare nose, cheeks dimpled to the jawbone, chin prominent in beauty's scheme and, to finish the face, a mouth as kissable as my own. The rest of her body, by comparison, was a secondary matter. Yet, perhaps I thus try to demean her curves, because they were more tantalising than my own. Indeed, whilst I prided myself on an unmatchable beauty, she veritably put me in the shade, if not the shadows.
We had arrived in Queen Shadow’s castle en route for my own arranged marriage to a Prince. I had long since grown tired of the endless gull-cries, beetling cliffs, surfing crags and mermaids bleating each to each. The trek along those precarious paths from my father’s castle was an ordeal, difficult even for those practised in grappling with air and earth. And, of course, accompanying me were many men of cunning, of muscle and of both. My ladies-in-waiting were often found flirting and received the edge of my tongue for their pains, when they should have been combing my tresses with their fingers, packing my face with masking cream, dressing, undressing, dressing and undressing me. The weather was not cold, yet its sprayspit ensured we dressed well.
We knew, naturally, that his party's first port of call was bound to be at Queen Shadow's. All chosen brides at least passed that way. To travel inland, one needed to negotiate the spiralling cliff paths, until reaching the Organ Gorge--so named because it stopped the sea-curdled surges in their tracks with varieties of musical wheezing. The caves peppering the Gorge, like pits in cheese, were valves--unlike such narrow apertures which the sea scoured out, making no noise, except perhaps a mock mermaid's cooing for an impossible penetrating love.
In any event, I digress far from my point. A feminine weakness, no doubt. My story really concerns Queen Shadow and one of my ladies-in-waiting. Yet, have I forgotten to mention Clementine? Her rank entails that she should, by rights, remain non-descript. Yet since it was she, not me, who fell in with Queen Shadow, it behoves me to fill in a few details about her. Not that there is much to say. Ordinary, but pretty. The masculine minders paid her as much attention as they did to the rest, no more, no less, which says more than my pen can ever do. To my eyes, Clementine's special quality was her mind. I overheard her talk of matters that my father had said should not worry pretty little heads. About politics. About economics. About philosophy. About nothing. Yes, nothing. She was able to digress far better than I could. She entered realms of pure nothingness, pure dark or pure light, where logic inevitably took one if pursued far enough. She was able to debate the pros and cons of anything--and anything embraced nothing as well as something.
How Clementine first became intimate with the Shadow Queen, during our relatively short stay at the castle, will have to remain a mystery, since I’ve asked and asked, cajoled, pulled rank, but Clementine will not divulge the essence of their first private encounter. I suspect, however, that it concerned ghosts. Yet the particular ghost in question had become nebulous. That was my fault for storing up journal entries over months and months, without actually writing them down as and when they happened: fixing the facts, as it were. Good girls always do their journals last thing at night, before memory misfires.
Suffice it to say, Queen Shadow soon became troubled by a spirit, a dream, a demon, a pair of wings without a body, call it what one might. Clementine had been temporarily seconded by my entourage to the castle. Such domestic details were never my prerogative. Whatever the case, Queen Shadow must have taken a shine to Clementine, and vice versa--a reflection of its replica, if I’m not too much mistaken (or confused). The troubling spirit evolved as if their love was its catalyst--a word the I’ve learned from my new chemistry tutor. Indeed, it is wonderful that I can now employ words which were far from my vocabulary at the time.
Well, how shall I put it, Queen Shadow and Clementine made forays together into untenable precincts of the castle: places about which most of the servants had forgotten, whilst those who did remember to clean them either pretended they had later forgotten or actually remained there pretending to be lost forever until they died and became the sculptural bone-structures that gave such places their atmosphere. The ghost was not the residue of one of such servants. The ghost was indeed more real than a mermaid, albeit less real than me.
After several nights of sensuous dalliance, the two women discovered there were no no-go areas as far as their bodies went. So, as they tired of such heavy petting, they eventually vowed to lay the ghost. They ventured with mere shade-drenched waxflames into those weird forgotten realms, stalking a flapping-cum-clicking which, from time to time, emitted a squawk. There was nothing to see, other than what they imagined they saw. It was daytime outside the castle, but that was difficult to believe when in the context of such benighted areas, despite catching the distant surge and screech--even the heady stench of swagged fucus redolently seeping through the porous walls--and the wheezing notes of an engorged God neither woman believed or believed in.
"We're following a bat, Madam, not a ghost," chirped up Clementine, with a cut-off giggle. She was evidently humouring Queen Shadow.
"If it's a bat, Clementine, then it's just as likely to be a seagull's lost cry or a mermaid's lonely tail-flick swabbing down the kitchen floors." The Queen's voice was deeper here than in the boudoir.
Clementine squinted at her Mistress and thought she was more frightening than any possible ghost or ghoulie: all shadow now and next to no face. Could this have been the beautiful sharp-nosed creature with whom Clementine had spent hours at the cost of love?
To think I was to end up with a mere man. Clementine, albeit a simple servant, had been tutored in passions I was never really to know. Still, I relished the power of jealousy, a passion I guarded even more jealously than the passion itself. Yet, the act of being dressed and undressed ad infinitum could never compensate for what I missed. Made my heart sink.
But, journals are not solely for self-satisfaction. I need to describe what really happened to Clementine and Queen Shadow during that moment when both realised the actual nature of the ghost. But I was not privy to it. All I know is that they eventually emerged following a trail of red stains into the more functional areas of the castle, each carrying one half of a pair of crinkled wings, rather like hardened lung-tripe. Then, tea and memories.
I could not believe the prattling gossip of the other ladies-in-waiting regarding the truth of the matter--that Clementine and Queen Shadow had allowed their love for each other to get out of hand in the darkness, inadvertently performing a rather cack-handed mutual surgery beyond the lower erogenous zones.
I shall draw a veil over the other loose-tongued rumours which were even more outlandish. So, in short, when all the women in my entourage had confirmed that their own bodily tides had mercifully ebbed and when the seas proper had settled from the steep paths, all of us (including a dewy-eyed Clementine) resumed the hike towards my erstwhile-to-be husband ... where I discovered widows are no better and no worse than shadows, when all is said and done. Still, I have my own shuttling ghosts to keep me company. Angel-wings, they are. The widowmaker’s wings, however, were clipped and shed, even before the leathery pod of his body in between was discarded.
At least, the castle here is land-locked: gives a certain peace of mind and the potential of blank journal pages. Clementine has the nicest combing fingers of them all and the sweetest organ stops. I can hear her coming, now, to teach the art of nothing, each to each. Then, tea and mermaids.
