and coaxed him from retirement. Her father had a price, of course—Liam and Vance—some grudge avenged. I have forgotten the details. It doesn’t matter. Our engagements were arranged.
“How did you find out?” Cecily asked when I finished speaking.
“My mother taught me to go through Father’s correspondence.” I had not expected her to be both the poison and the poisoner and I found myself studying her pale skin and black eyes for some sign that it was true. I leaned toward her unconsciously and something about her smell, sweet as rot, made me dizzy. I stepped back abruptly.
“I will make this bargain with you,” I said. It was not the bargain I had planned to make, but I tried to speak with confidence. “Kill my father and yours and you may bury your sisters in this garden. I will keep them safe for as long as I shall reign and I shall make a proclamation so that the garden remains the same when I am no more.”
She looked at me and I couldn’t tell what she was seeing. “Will you bury me here as well?”
I stammered, trying to come up with an answer. She was smarted than I had given her credit for. Of course she would be caught and slain. Men were coming now from the baronies, I was sure, to avenge the murders of her two husbands.
“I will,” I said.
She smiled shyly, but her eyes shone. “And will you tend my grave and the graves of my sisters? Will you bring us flowers and tell us stories?”
I said I would.
Cecily finished the graves for Mirabelle and for Alice. Each girl curled up at the bottom of the pits like pale sworls of fog and Cecily buried them with her hands.
I wished that she was a normal girl, that I might have taken her hand or pulled her to me to comfort her, but instead I left the garden, chased by my own cowardice.
The next day, she put on her wedding gown, long white gloves, and dressed her own hair. At the wedding, she was called Cecily, and she promised to be my good and faithful wife. And she was. The best and most faithful of all my wives.
There was a feast with many toasts, one after the next. The king’s face was red with drinking and laughter, but he would not look at me, even when he drank to my health. As a dish of almond tarts was passed, Cecily rose and lifted her own glass. She walked to where her father and the King sat together.
“I want to toast,” she said and the assembled company fell silent. It was not the normal way of things for a bride to speak.
“I would thank my father, who made me, and the King, who also had a hand in my making.” With those words, she leaned down and took her father’s face in her hands and pressed her lips to his. He struggled, but her grip was surprisingly firm. I wondered what her mouth felt like.
“Farewell father,” she said. He fell back upon his chair, choking. She laughed, not with mirth or even mockery, but something that was closer to a sob. “You crafted me so sharp, I cut even myself.”
The King looked puzzled as she turned and took his hand in hers. He must have been very drunk, now that he thought himself safe from me. Certainly he wore no gloves. He pulled his fingers free with such force that he knocked over his wine. The pinkish tide spread across the white tablecloth as he died.
They shot her, of course. The guards. Eventually she even fell.
Yes, I suppose I embellished the story in places and perhaps I was a little dramatic, but that hardly matters. What does matter is that after they shot her I had her carried out to the garden—carefully, ever so carefully—and buried beside her sisters.
From each grave bloomed a plant covered in thorns, with petals like velvet. Its flowers are quite poisonous too, but you already know that. Yes, the very plant you tried to poison me with. I knew its scent well—acrid and heavy—too well not to notice it in this golden cup you gave me, even mixed with cider.
In a few minutes the servants will come and unbind you. Surprised? Ah, well, a father ought to have a few surprises for his only son. You will make a fine King, Paul. And for myself, I will take this beautiful goblet, bring it to my lips and drink. Talking as much as I have makes one thirsty.
I have left instructions as to where I would like to be buried. No, not near your mother, as much as I was occasionally fond of her. Beside the flowers in the west garden. You know the ones.
Perhaps I should take the gag from your mouth so that you might protest your innocence, exclaim your disbelief, tell your father goodbye. But I do not think I will. I find I rather appreciate the silence.
GO HOME STRANGER
by Justin Howe
Thank you for your recent visit to our island. We hope you found everything you desired. As with all vacations, you believe your memories will fade with time. We guarantee they will not.
Maybe it is better to embrace what you have done. Embrace what you are. Respectability infects us all at times. Even now it is compelling you to forget what you sought and bury the memories, push them aside, and bury them deep.
If only it were so easy. Revelation is always hard to face, and fear is often the first response to a glimpse of our own reflection when the veneer is stripped away and ultimate objectivity stumbled upon. We do not always like what we are. Take heart. Know that what you were is no longer. Who and what you are now is simple.
You are a monster.
Do not fear this. Do not flee it. Do not believe it is punishment. Shed what you were, become what you are. A desire has been satisfied. Only it was not yours.
It was ours.
Remember the friend who first spoke of us? They spoke about our island and whispered of moonlight and the embrace of warm bodies. Their words rose from them like the scent of an orchard: inviting, promising, a heaven close enough to touch.
This friend spoke and you listened. Curiosity infected you like a virus. It grew over days and weeks, a persistent desire that intruded into all your thoughts. Palms, sand, and the rolling blue surf stretching as far as the horizon, an island getaway, exactly what you deserved. We promised succor to a wound within you never until now acknowledged. An image of moonlit beaches and bodies. Reward. Desire. Satisfaction. Weren’t these what you sought?
A jet brought you here, and as you dove beneath the waves and lazed upon the sand, you remembered your friend’s words. The visions they described. Paradise. Curiosity became fever. But had you noticed your friend’s slow decline? How they withdrew from social life until they disappeared entirely? Or did your desire overshadow your concern?
Your friend once sat where you sit now. Their thoughts mirrored yours. They too sought to forget. But they could not.
Quietly, as a lover sneaking across the sand, you approached one of the hotel’s staff.
At first they refused. They warned you away. Yet they would not tell you
You named a sum, for your kind believes truth may be purchased. They gave in, and pocketed what you gave them. They told you to be outside on the road near midnight.
Do you remember the warm breeze that rustled the palms as you stood in the dark with the resort compound behind you and the air ripe with the scent of blossoms? The toads chirped in their ponds, and your heart leapt at the cough of a jeep’s approaching engine.
Besides the driver, a taciturn native with a cataract clouding one eye, there were others. Like you, they had come from far away, following the half remembered words of a whispered conversation. Like you, they sought an end to their desires. Yet, despite all you had in common, you avoided eye contact. The jeep carried you deeper into the swamps and up into the hills to where the trees bowed overhead, their leaves bending down to brush against you like tongues. The headlamps illuminated a clearing. Your pulse quickened. Great stone steps climbed to a rock
