Chapter Text
I aimed my Pebble – but Myself
Was all the one that fell –
Was it Goliath – was too large –
Or was myself – too small?
Emily Dickinson
In many of the tribes of south Utah, there is a prominent member known as a teller. Often someone too old or too frail to hunt or forage, they are the keeper of the tribe's history—battles won and lost, ancestors new and old. The teller of the Sidewinder clan was a woman called Lupe: born blind, she was never far from the camp, and this had left her with an uncommon capacity for stories.
Lupita, Lupita, the children would regularly clamour, Tell us our history.
For these tales were not presented as fairy stories, but lessons; warnings that the children would do well to heed. There was a house with the legs of a bird; sharp-toothed fish who would whisper of a rich kingdom underwater; a regent who turned every horse in his kingdom to sea foam. There were crows who would speak the sweet words of men, and foxes who would steal away infants as easily as they would take the food from their mouths.
On this day the sun sat hot red in the sky and the children cross-legged in the dirt, swatting at the lazy mosquitoes which buzzed around their heads.
“Tche, tche,” Lupe told the children, a command to settle, and reluctantly they quietened in anticipation of her tale. Today it was the story of the selkie—a woman of the sea—Lupe’s accent drawing the word out to sill-key.
“There once was a man who worked as a fisherman, setting out each morning to the largest splay of water you can imagine. He worked tirelessly from early in the morning until the sun had long set–in fact, he worked so diligently that he left no time to find himself a wife. The man had enough food to eat, clothes to wear, and a good house to his name. But still he was saddened, for he had no wife to cook his meals, to wash his clothes, and to share his bed in the cold nights.
“One evening, unable to sleep, the man decided to walk along the seashore, normally deserted at this time in the day. But when his feet passed over the sand dunes they froze, for his eyes had caught the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Skin painted silver in the moonlight, hair long and loose, a body lithe and bare. The man was transfixed, moving as if hypnotised, and soon he found himself in the woman's arms. For hours, they danced with the seafoam at their feet, until at last they were both sodden and shivering. Not wishing the night to end, the man asked her back to his home to allow her to warm up, and the woman gratefully agreed. With her she brought an exquisite silver coat of the richest and warmest material the man had ever seen. She hung it to dry by the fire, and as they lay together in the man's bed, a plan began to form in his mind. For you see, the man recognised the coat, and realised the woman was a selkie: a maiden of water, who relied on her sealskin to assume her true form—without it, she would be forced to remain on land.
"Early the next morning, the selkie rose and went to fetch her coat, intending to re-join her brethren in the sea. But she woke to tragedy, for while she slept, the man had taken her beautiful coat and cut it to shreds, every last scrap hidden away. Devastated, the selkie cried for three days straight, refusing food and water. But eventually, having found herself with no other choice, she agreed to marry the man, and they lived together in peace for many years.
"The selkie proved to be a good wife, and she was dutiful to the man: every day she washed and mended his clothes, fetched fresh food from the market and cooked him hearty meals. But she had a secret: each morning when her husband left to trawl the sea, she too would trawl for what had been taken from her. As the months passed, she found first one patch, then another, and another, and sewed them together until her coat was almost restored. But despite looking high and low, two pieces remained lost, and eventually she gave up in despair.
"Then, one rainy and misty morning, the man woke late. He rushed from the house as quickly as he could, eager to reach the fishing boat before it left for the day; indeed, he was in such a hurry that he didn't stop to eat breakfast, or even to put on his shoes!" At this, Lupe would make several bumbling gestures and the children would laugh, the noise high and flighty on the warm air. "On that day, the selkie went through her chores as usual, tidying the house and preparing her husband's evening meal. But, as she went to put his boots away from where they were lying in the doorway, her eyes widened in shock... for there, tucked neatly into each shoe, were the last two pieces of her coat.
"The selkie glanced to the window and to her terror realised that the sun was beginning to set: there would be little time left until her husband returned home. As swift as a bird, she took her coat from where she had hidden it under their bed, and pricked her finger bloody in her haste to affix the last two pieces. Finally, as the room descended into darkness, she held up her coat and saw it complete once more. Pressing it tight to her side, the selkie ran to the shore, wrapping the coat around her and diving into the sea just as her husband, on the deck of the fishing boat, caught sight of the scene. In desperation he too threw himself into the water, but he was too late: the selkie was long gone. Every night for the rest of his life the man would walk the shoreline, calling for his wife to return to him, but she never did."
The children would cheer and hoot, kicking their feet to celebrate the selkie's escape, before promptly calling for another story. But for all their excitement, there remained one boy who was quiet. Even at that tender age, Vulpes Inculta knew the man was a fool: any creature could be held for the rest of its life, but only if one was clever enough to keep it.
And now, having passed hours pacing the length of the apartment, he thinks not to his own failings, but to those of his wife—actions driven by sheer arrogance, hubris, stupidity in thinking herself able to outsmart him. The fury he feels is cold, sliding through his veins as snakes, and it is one which he knows he will stew on for hours—days, if necessary. This transgression, he will not forget.
***
With the dog’s breath hot on her face, Fausta lies trembling, barely daring to breathe. It is only when a man’s voice snaps at it – Aello, desine! – that the hound retreats, ears perked and eyes fixed sharp on her.
“You can come out now,” the stranger says, sounding bored. "I was told not to hurt you.”
Your husband wants to do it himself. The words are unspoken but linger between them – a silent, mutual understanding of what awaits her back in their apartment. Fausta wonders what Vulpes will do; exactly how he will punish her. She has never before been at the end of his wrath.
As she moves to pull herself from the hole, the sand grating and warm under her fingertips, she considers her approach: whether she should emerge timid and shaken, ready to cry and beg his forgiveness for a flight of insanity. Mentally she runs through her lines: I don’t know what I was thinking. The moment I left the Strip I knew it was a mistake, but I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do, where to go. I only hid when I heard the nightstalkers howling, I—
The excuses are transparent even to her own ears, but her lies have always been thin. Their life together is a farce; a silent agreement that she will play her part, and he his. Forgiveness hinges not on his faith in her, but rather on his generosity: his willingness to brush over the cracks and swallow her words one by one. But as she shifts from her temporary hide, she realises she cannot tell herself that he will be in a giving mood upon her return. Regardless, her hand has been played, and obediently she crawls out with the dirt hot against her bloodied palms, raising them to the air in a peace-making gesture as she stands.
The soldier looks tired, shadows set heavy under his eyes; sluggishly he runs a hand over his face, palm scratching over his sandy beard. When he speaks, his accent is of Vegas, and Fausta wonders how many before her he has sent to death.
“Good. If you follow me, we can make this quick and easy. I don’t think either of us want to deal with handcuffs.”
As she takes a step towards him the dog growls low and long, sun gleaming on its yellowed teeth. And suddenly, before her Fausta sees two paths – each spiralling forth to infinity. When she moves, it is thoughtless, instinctual—she turns on her heel and bolts. Her body is stiff—aching from the night spent curled into the cold ground—but she forces her legs to obey, heart thundering as she determines to put as much distance between them as this world will allow.
She played softball, in the vault; captained the girls' team all those years ago. She was stronger then, quicker, braver, but her body still remembers the steady rhythm it was trained into—feet barely touching the ground as adrenaline floods her veins.
Her first kiss was under the bleachers, hours after a game—clandestine, but scandalous just the same: all bruised knees and flushed cheeks and whisky soft on their lips. Jenny'd swiped a half-bottle from her dad's liquor cabinet, cheap amber that caught in their throats and spun their heads—liquid courage that finally, finally was enough to let them touch, fingers tangling like vines. Clumsily, they had explored one other—neophyte cartographers in the dim grey light of the playing field.
But the vault opened, and Jenny moved to California, and the girl she'd kissed had stupidly, stupidly stayed. The memory is old but it hurts all the same, and as Fausta runs she can taste the alcohol warm on her tongue, feel the burning blend in her throat and lungs as they begin to strain. She could cry, she thinks, in frustration and fear and pain. And as her legs begin to stutter, the tunic hitched high around her thighs, there is a perfect blinding moment wherein she realises that in the end, she never truly had a chance.
For she is fast, but the dog is faster. The dogs are always faster.
***
When Vulpes Inculta’s wife is returned to him, the sun has not yet peaked in the sky. Hours he has paced the thin carpet of the apartment, a headache beating dull behind his eyes—when the door sounds, he strides to it without thought. Awaiting him is Augustus, tall and stoic; next to him, the shivering and dirtied waif of his wife. With a nod Vulpes grants her entrance, and she passes lightly over the threshold, head bowed as if in penance.
To Augustus, he hands a small pile of gold coins, an agreement passing unspoken between them that this incident is to be forgotten. The soldier’s open palm is lined with callouses—the mark of a hard worker—and he nods in deference as he exits the apartment. Quiet, and discreet. The man was a good choice.
Left alone with his wife once more, Vulpes considers. Scars trace her skin as lines upon a map—marks left from the earliest days of their reunion—and even now the only hands laid upon her have been her own. So much he has shielded her from, so much ugliness he has tried to spare her: he has tried, so very hard, to give her a life without fear. But he sees, now, that it was a mistake. Spare the rod, after all.
When he approaches, she flinches, backs herself against the wall; pressing forth he wraps his hand neat around that lily-white throat—firm but gentle, a threat yet to be executed. His thumb rests on a vein, her pulse high and fluttering as the wings of a bird.
“Try that again,” he says softly, words so light they are barely there, “and I’ll have you branded.”
It is a moment before she answers, gathering herself before squaring her shoulders and looking bright into his eyes. “I’m not afraid of you.”
A bold display, but her body betrays her—pulse skipping as a stone over water. He is struck by the absurdity of the scene, the transparency of her display, and it pulls a laugh rough from his throat. A lamb bleats at a wolf.
“Oh darling,” he says lightly, leaning close enough that his face brushes hers. “I am not your enemy here.” Without warning, his hand tightens around her throat, a steady, even pressure that she flinches against. “You are disposable to me. If I tire of you—and believe me, you have worn my patience thin—you’ll be thrown to the wolves. Death would be a reprieve.”
When he draws back, body resting light against hers, the face that meets him is pale and fearful.
“Do you need me to elaborate?” he asks, and she shakes her head. Swiftly he withdraws, and without the weight of his hand at her throat she almost collapses to the floor. Any courage left to her has long since been dispelled, and he is almost disappointed at the ease of subduing her.
“Go and wash,” he says quietly, stepping back.
Fausta moves to leave, but his hand on her arm stops her. Vulpes looks for a moment, considers, before cracking a hand hard across her face. The force sends her reeling, hand flying instinctively to her reddened mouth.
“That,” he says softly, dispassionately, “is for taking my uniform.”
***
With the sand scrubbed from her skin, Fausta has little idea of what to do with herself. The bedroom—in much the same state as she left it only the night before—offers few distractions: while she knows, really, that time will not blunt her husband’s anger, she cannot bring herself to face him just yet. Instead she consoles herself with the small tasks available to her—straightening the bedsheets and taking her time in smoothing out each crease; fluffing air into each pillow until they look new. A sudden shattering comes from the other side of the door—too delicate for a plate; a glass perhaps—and Fausta freezes, eyes wide and fixed on the door handle. A minute passes in silence, then another, and gradually her heartbeat slows. With no clear threat it is as if every muscle in her body loosens at once; knees weak, she sits heavy on the bed and allows herself to fall back, eyes sliding closed. Safe in her own private darkness, she tries to focus on her breath, her heartbeat, the feeling of the comforter under her fingertips.
Lying there, she thinks about despair as if it were something she could hold in her hands, grey and warm, pliable and smooth; something she could take and turn and examine, something she could rip from her chest and shred to pieces. But such anguish digs in its claws, she knows this: a tick that buries deep and sucks its host dry; to remove it is not so easy as that. Blood-bloated and heavy, it curls in the shell of her ear, whispering. Tell me, was it worth it? The question thrumming at the back of her head, and doubtless sitting like venom on the tip of her husband’s tongue. Was it right, to slide your chips to one small square? The answer spreads through her like the sky darkening to dusk; the slow acceptance of the leg caught in the snare. Intention is irrelevant, she tells her small companion; simply, she was wrong to be caught.
Rising, she tugs at the hem of her dress, straightens the bedside table books, pulls the curtains closed against the midday sun. Before long her hands are empty once more and in upturning her palms, the puckered cuts stare back at her, lines crooked and red like ugly little mouths. The pain is an abstraction, now; her mind is elsewhere. Regardless they sting as she enters the living room; vaguely, she imagines them as opening themselves to sing. But no music greets her, no flames, no fireworks, no displays of anger or disappointment. Instead Vulpes leans by the counter, arms crossed and expression stony; silent, he gestures for her to sit.
"Here," he says flatly, placing a glass of water in front of her. "You'll be dehydrated."
For a moment she considers it, eyes flitting from his face to the unassuming drink. She wonders if it will be drugged, laced with hemlock, thorn apple, snakeroot—botanicals hand-picked to slowly rot her insides. The edge of Vulpes’ mouth twitches, and Fausta quickly sips before he can notice her hesitation.
“Are you hungry?”
Unsure of how to respond, she takes another mouthful of water to avoid answering. “Yes.”
Nodding, he turns back to the counter, cracking eggs with a methodical neatness; when he drops them to the hot pan, the sound is like the wind through riverside reeds.
When she eats he watches her, careful and silent, and while the smell alone makes the black bile in her stomach churn, she does not dare decline it. Halfway through, a piece of eggshell grinds grainy against her teeth; pondering, she runs her tongue around its sharp edges, testing its perimeter, waiting for the moment when he will look away and she can slip it to her plate. But his white-hot eyes never leave her, and eventually she has no choice but to swallow it, face blank as it scrapes down her throat.
The following hours pass in silence, Vulpes at his desk and she in silent angst, waiting for the punishment which she knows is inevitable—he is not one to forgive so easily. The purgatory is overwhelming, the trapping in her own head: Fausta picks at the skin around her fingertips until they bleed, wondering if he is simply waiting for whatever poison he has picked to enter her system, ready to tower over her as cud froths from her lips. Would he let her die, after all this? Her tell-tale heart skitters at the thought and she almost speaks, but when she opens her mouth, she can find no words within herself to address him. Instead she sits and folds and unfolds her hands, not daring even to clear her throat for fear of disturbing him.
It is an eternity before he finally moves; an arbitrary moment and he closes the ledger on his desk, stretches, stands. Wordlessly he steps to the bedroom and gestures for her to follow; a part of her screams to run again, to sprint without pause until she is free or dead, but her body moves of its own accord, bare feet light on the thin carpet, and she hovers passively in the doorway as her husband draws a chair from the balcony, angling it to the window.
“Sit,” he instructs, and she does, the low sun forcing her eyes almost closed. Behind her there is the sound of movement; she turns to see, but the moment she shifts his voice comes again, cold and firm. “Face ahead.” And she does.
Gathering her hands in her lap, nails digging into her palms, she tries to focus on the distant horizon—empty and golden. She can hear Vulpes stepping towards her, pausing a moment at her back. With an unexpected tenderness he sweeps her hair from her face, gathering it tight at the nape of her neck; before Fausta can begin to process what is happening there is a cold metallic swipe as the scissors close, and her heart drops—her head suddenly, unbearably lighter. She is frozen, unable to move, and her husband’s words seem to come from miles away, coiling tight and cold around her chest.
“Legion women wear their hair long. You have proven, yet again, that you are far from able to hold the title of one.”
Distantly she hears him leave, hears the apartment door click shut behind him, but she cannot bring herself to move, the minutes stretching long as cats in the sun. Eventually her fingers trail to meet the ragged ends of her hair: clumped and uneven, strands clutching to the sides of her face in a way they have not done in years; feeling suddenly claustrophobic, she brushes them away, realising with a start that they will not sit neat behind her shoulders as they once did.
Without the strength to look at her reflection, she stumbles to the bed and curls there, shame sitting heavy in her chest—for she knows it is not just her vanity at stake, but her reputation. Long, loose hair conveys status; it demands respect. It says, My husband is an important man. Now, already distrusted amongst the other women, she knows this will mark her as the subject of gossip for weeks to come. And no matter how much she tells herself that it is a superficial concern, that there are a thousand worse things that he could have done to her, she cannot help the hot tears stinging at her face. Another door closed. Another part of her unceremoniously stripped away.
As the sun sinks below the horizon, Fausta curls into an ochre blanket, pulling it over her head and cocooning herself in a small, soft world with only her breath for company. There, she lets herself cry—ugly, heaving sobs that will leave her eyes swollen and blotched. She is no more than a child here—a privileged, spoilt child who should be grateful for her lot—and as the apartment door slams shut once more, Fausta cannot help but think about how cruel life can be.