The fabric merchant knew not to ask questions.
Especially, when someone asks for black curtains, and that someone was an herbalist who seems like a humble peddler with a shop.
The tacit rule of mourning in 1700s’ Fullgreens dictated that people who cannot give proper burials are allowed to mourn by putting on black curtains.
So people wouldn’t go to black curtain drawn windows, because they know that the house lost its special someone, even if there wasn’t a funeral. Also, that way store owners could close theirs for a day without having to be beleaguered by prodding questions and demands for explanations.
As Ulda wasn’t born of Man but born under shadow like every hulder is, it was unthinkable to ask a priest to allow access to the burial grounds.
Meanwhile, Gale was making curtains with the roll of black cotton and sewing tools sprawled on the island table in the apothecary with his apprentice. Michaela turned her head and saw Octavia sitting on a chair in front of Ulda’s nude body that lied on the living room sofa. Karl was leaning on the wall behind her, his head bowed and hands in his trouser pockets as he silently smoked a pipe. Gale was working with her with a pipe in his mouth.
An oblivious observer might think that the woman was asleep, but at a closer look, her naval region reveals a deep slash, the cause of her untimely death. While Ulda’s hair was kept in a long sideway braid with clovers intertwined like tiny stars, Octavia’s was disheveled as she hung her head down. Her hand was twirling a clover that didn’t make it to her cornsilk hair. The white flower earned brown bruises by her hands that mushed it into pulp.
The black cloth imported from England not only entirely covered the table, but the remaining roll dropped with a soft thud to the wooden floor, stopping at the tip of Karl’s foot. Without making any sign of approach, Karl was already in the apothecary, looking down pensively at the swarthy fabric Gale and Michaela unfurled all over the table.
After a moment, Karl finally asked the question he’s been postponing out of its dreadful premonition,
“Did you…see what it was?”
Gale rested his left hand that was holding a pair of scissors and clenched his fist, looking hard into the dark cotton. Michaela who was holding a white chalk had to wait until Gale was going to give her instructions. Gale pulled back his pipe, stared at it for a while, and finally facing Karl, he made a slow nod.
“So…it is what we thought it was.” Karl whispered, casting a quick, tentative glance down at Michaela, his eyes with a glint of distrust. She could even register the slight tremor in his long fingers that held the pipe to his thin set lips.
Squinting his eyes as if he felt some tightness in his chest, Karl tapped his hand on Gale’s shoulder. Michaela soon understood that he wanted a minute alone with Gale so she stood up and went to Octavia’s side. As she adapted to her human body, she has lost her hearing capacities as a rabbit so she could ensure a respectful distance. Theodore was there too, emotionally occupied with the death of someone who for a brief time showed ample affection.
Noticeably more relaxed, Karl sat where Michaela used to sit and whispered,
“Peachwood. But who could have known the secret unless they already had information about us? It just isn’t possible.”
Gale shook his head slowly,
“Peachwood itself is a well known natural talisman in East Asia, especially known to be effective against “six-tailed foxes” that can turn into women and feast on men’s livers. I don’t know who the killer is, but he is definitely well versed in such things.”
Chills ran down Karl and Gale’s spine due to the worst possibility of someone preying on their likes.
“His quick eye for Ulda’s identity and his swift reaction, the ready availability of the peachwood knife–all of these must have been calculated.”
“Octave’s place is in the region contingent to the main ports. Also none of us had prior knowledge of the periphery of the forest where Ulda was murdered. They could’ve ventured too far without knowing where they were, and someone who came from Scandinavia could have passed by and…” At the end of his surmising, he found himself hopelessly lost.
He knew that what Karl said was true–how could this all be just coincidence?
“This is so strange. First, Oct…” Gale stole a surreptitious glance at his sister who was too sick with grief, “…got a beautiful mansion that happened to be close enough to the various ports scattered across the East coastline. Earlier, she told me how she was able to get the place at that price through ‘personal connections,’ a human friend in the English high society who gave in a good word but who doesn’t know her true self.”
Then Karl said, “And then there was a dense forest that resisted being captured into a depiction of a map, an ideal environment for an assassin to infiltrate without the fear of drawing attention as a trespasser.”
“Now that the opportunity has been presented, let me say this one thing.”
Octavia’s low voice turned their heads toward her direction. She was standing in the borderline between the living room and the apothecary, her hands holding the folded dark green checkered shawl Ulda borrowed right before her death.
“I won’t let the one get away with murdering Ulda. We all know that her death implies that rest of us can be in danger. But for now…just for now, let’s just think of Ulda. We all need to say good bye to her soon and,” she paused, her eyes looking down at the shawl, “I don’t know what to do with this. It belongs to your apprentice, but I don’t know if she will be okay with still wearing this ill foreboding thing.”
“I will take care of it. I won’t wear it, but…I will get it away from your sight. I don’t want to see this either.”
“Thank you, Michaela. I would be very obliged, if you take this away.”
Gale didn’t forget to tell her “Just be sure to not go too far,” when she held Theodore in her arms.
She held Theodore and the shawl separately, wanting to keep him away from this ominous object. Then as she left the apothecary, she happened to see Gale standing up to gently hold his sobbing sister, his eyes shut tight.
It was already dusk, the setting sun turning the sky bright red, a sight Michaela herself wasn’t familiar with. The sight of wispy clouds was the only thing that proved that the vermillion sky was the sky she has always known. The shadows also made the trees look awfully dark, accentuating the jagged silhouette of the branches that clawed at the red sky.
“Mom, you’re walking in the center!”
As if she just noticed what Theodore said, she simply stated “Oh, yes. I am.”
Theodore smiled a little as she held him tight to her chest, “We used to always walk in the sidelines. Walking this way lets me see how big the street is. I like it.”
His cheerfulness added a softness to her features, and she closed her eyes, holding Theodore’s forehead close to the bottom of her chin. Soon she opened her eyes and looked at the shawl.
“I said I will take care of this, but I don’t know how. Gale told me to not go too far.”
“Could you try burying it somewhere?”
Michaela nodded, as she kept walking.
“Let’s find a good spot to bury this. I don’t want them to even accidentally see the reminder of her death.”
She was almost nearing the end of the Fullgreens’ main street that split into two separate routes for people coming from different ports–mainly New York and Jamestown, she heard. The main street loses its cobble stone and altar but she preferred the soil road engraved by feet and wheels and serenaded by trees.
“Which one are you going to choose?”
Michaela stared at both ways signaled with a wood beam with arrows then she said, “The one from Jamestown. Octavia lives in Rotun Hill, and that is in the direction to New York. We should try to get this far away.”
“Mom, I think I hear a brook!”
“Really?”
Theodore slipped from her arm as soon as she crouched down, and he pranced toward the direction he hears. He was undoubtedly excited by the sight of dandelions and grass.
“Slow down, Theodore!”
Before she had no difficulty pursuing him, but now she felt her frame too cumbersome and her gait too clumsy to race with him. She almost fell over a thick branch someone must have took down with a machete or a saw blade, while Theodore was as nimble as ever.
‘He’s healthy though. I’m glad,’ she thought.
Soon they saw a running brook that was a good walk away from the road to Jamestown. Although the brook wasn’t as expansive as a river, the speed of the current was fierce , and both of them were so impressed that they stood in awe, not daring to approach the depths. The brook was the only thing that wasn’t either black and red in this landscape. At the far opposite of the brook was a dense forest that looked swarthy dark. The space between the trees’ canopy showed the scarlet hue of the sky.
A good amount of time and labor can create a wooden bridge between the distance between the two shores, and she wondered if the brook was deep enough for someone tall enough to cross.
“Mom, do you remember Aunt Ulda’s story? About how she came here?”
She looked down at Theodore who was standing on his hind legs, looking into the running rapids.
“Yes. She said that she set sail on her back like a log over a large body of water. Much larger than any bank or river we’ve seen.”
“Do you think…she will like it if we drift the shawl away?”
“Instead of burying it?”
“Ye-yeah. I mean, before she died, she wanted to go to all kinds of places. But now she is dead, she can’t. But, even if she can’t, this could!”
She looked down at the folded shawl. It didn’t take long for both her and Theodore to know that Ulda was a free spirit. To be so free as to be able to sail the seas without inhibition but to die at a stranger’s strike and be buried in a foreign land seemed too tragic for someone like her. Perhaps if there was such thing as a soul, she can vicariously travel the depths of the sea or waft in the gust of summer through this simple act of letting go.
“Alright” was all she said as she let the shawl slip between her fingers and fall into the brook, the cold water darkening the color. The dark green checkers undulated along the ripples, and the fabric was swept by the current, and she could only hope that it would travel as far as Ulda would have liked.
She quickly turned her back from the brook and held Theodore in both arms.
“We should head soon. It is turning dark.”
The truth is that during summer, the days are long and bright, but she was just making an excuse.
As she took quick, hasty steps away in the direction to Fullgreens, she didn’t see a man with dark hair who was hiding behind the bushes in the opposite side of the bank, watching her every movement.
Hulder Tales 