Killing Violets by Tanith Lee (android pdf ebook reader txt) 📕

a year of passage, quite like others she had known, yet different. She was the rain; she came, apocryphal, among the European cities, and in Prague, she beheld the clock with statues, and could not see it, only the rain she had brought with her, dropping down so sadly, from her eyes.

For, without the sorcerous protection of Margot and the Great Love, Anna was beset by winged demons of mystery and dislocation. And by the internal prison of loss.

Such agony was hard as iron, obdurate. She would have feared and fled it, if she had known.

But by that time, it was too late.

In a continent blacker than night, nightmared with beating pinions, she meandered. Like splinters of a mirror, some lights, some segmented scenes, coming and going, she and they, and everything.

Europe was so cold in winter. (Cellars, damp, snow, steel winds.)

And in spring, Europe was a hyacinth, her cities towered with blue. (Men. Flight. Men.)

At last there was a city and a river, and everything had gone. Wandering on the shore, she had a dream of food. Her willingness was to do or become anything, if only she might eat.

This tyranny of her flesh. She had denied her body. It had wanted other things to fill it up. Love. The child. Delight.

Instead she had already made up her mind to sell herself for one meal, gorging and slavering, cramming the void within, (where once her womb had waited like a rose, now withered hard and small), until she had made herself sick.

Chapter Nine: The Tea Ceremony

“Bet you know,” said Lilith throatily, “someone that can make me a star.”

She had said this as they lay spent in the grass of the Basulte park. And now later, again, in the room of three narrow beds, the third of which was empty.

They were drunk on ginny lemonade, and the sabbat. They had crawled under their separate covers, shivering with weariness, and spite.

“Yes,” said Anna. “I do know someone who might.”

This was too sweeping, she thought. She added, lying lightly, “He’s only in the offices, but he knows people. Oh, he’ll like you.”

“Never mind that. Will he do me good?”

“I’m sure he will, Lily. You can twist him round your finger.”

“Or,” said Lilith Izzard, “we could go to Paris. That’d be better.”

“Mm, yes,” said Anna. “But London first. London’s best.”

She imagined, going to Paris with Lilith, Lilith clinging to her like an envenomed vine, demanding, bullying, pinching, mocking, teasing, playing unpleasant jokes. And then, when nothing ‘good’ came of it, no sleek producer in a shining car, to coil Lily in mink and pearls, then Lily turning on her, yellow eyes blazing with vitriol.

“They uz their old tea tumorra.”

“What?”

“Them.” She meant the Basultes, the Family. “They has it all agether.”

Anna recalled, Raoul, the Basulte men, didn’t usually join in the feminine tea-times.

“They do it once a month,” said Lilith. She yawned, viciously. “Some old tradition of the granddad. All of them. In the saloon. They don’t call any of us back, serve themselves, toast buns on the fire, gollocky daft things, like kits. Be ready just after four, and we’ll slip off. I’ll have the car by the gate.”

Oh Christ. The car. The gate.

“Mm,” said Anna, sleepily, heart racing.

“That Raoul, though,” murmured Lilith, “he’s going to be that angry. Both of us, gone.”

Anna lay listening to Lilith sleep.

He had said, only tonight, I won’t let you go. I’d kill you.

Fury moved in her, very deep, a shark in shadows of water.

Why had she come here? Why had she gone anywhere?

She seemed to drift, anchorless and unable to steer, on endless ocean empty of land.

There had been mirages. But no one signalled to her, or answered her cries – her whispers. And she also, had none to answer to.

Down in Hell, the kitchen, they used a special kettle for the monthly tea. And into it went the water, and then came one of the footmen, chosen perhaps by lot, grinning and bursting, voluminously to piss.

“It’ll do ’em good, that.”

The iced cakes would be full of raisins and squashed flies. The great cakes had been cursed, as ever. Bread and butter and God knew what.

When the teapot stood ready, Anna said to the cook, “Can I have my turn?”

“You do, girl,” said Mrs Ox.

And the kitchen watched as Anna took off the teapot’s bone china lid, put her hands on the rim, and gathered herself and spat deep down among the carefully selected teas and boiling, urinated water.

A few of the maids laughed. This was nothing so enormous.

Shielded by her body, and her curved hand, the small bottle had let go two thirds of its contents. But they hadn’t seen. At least, none of them commented upon it. And now the bottle was slipped back into the pocket of her blue, lace-trimmed apron. She had managed to restopper it, too. There was one third left.

All across Europe, Anna had kept the medicine bottle. In case, as Árpád had said, she too ‘couldn’t go on with it.’ She had sat with the bottle sometimes, considering, if she was ready to die yet. No reply came to her. So, she kept it anyway. She had paid for the bottle, after all. Hadn’t she?

Only a small teaspoon was necessary – there was much more than that in the teapot. And some left over, too.

A footman and two maids went away with the ritual tea.

For these brief moments Anna was greater than all of them, godlike, knowing this thing which only she could know.

It was raining.

Anna sat in a corner of the kitchen, on a wooden chair, like the waif in the story, Cinderella. She wondered what she really felt. The godlike cognisance had evaporated.

How long would it take them to die, the six Basultes? (The mouse had curled up happily in its straw.) But this dose was so much stronger, perhaps.

The maids and footmen had returned about ten minutes ago. They did not ever wait on this tea. They had nothing to report.

Suppose Raoul after