Free Two and Twenty Dark Tales by Georgia McBride

lips. We do not touch, except in our ancient ways—and only then, under cover of darkest sleep. The living have long lost their songs, their rhymes and lullabies; and so it has fallen upon us, the damned and nameless, the foot servants of time, to keep the story ink streaming beneath their skin, even if they cannot see it anymore.
    But every now and then, a century, a day, a second, an aeon, there is one who awakens to us, one who can see our markings, and sometimes even our faces as we visit them or their loved ones, sewing our stories into flesh and bone.
    Never me. I am too swift to be seen. My etchings twist and curve along the seashore, stain the sand and stone, swirl about the bark of the telling trees—more runes than letters, sometimes. When I am called to mark a newborn on her mother’s breast, a bride or groom on their wedding eve, or an old man on his fever couch, I mark their body-stories swiftly, my needle moving with the speed and ferocity of a hundred moths’ wings. These are the only touches I have known. But they have never known me.
    But now, the Boy calls. He has seen me, as I mark his grandmother, and he searches with the desperation of one who has lost something most precious in his keep.
    I close my mind to him, bidding him away, as I know I should. But the longing to be seen is fierce, and it frightens me.
    Although the lighthouse of my presence is dark, that longing makes a tiny firefly’s glow, a spark that the Boy follows, and follows, until at last, he finds my telling tree deep in the mossy wood.
    He comes with his animals and his bow, a horn at his belt and a quiver on his back. He sings to keep the lambs calm as they pick their way through the shadows of haunted woods.
    He is beautiful and dark and I take great pleasure in his form.
    But when he sees me, the Boy’s song chokes in his throat. I feel the silencing of his music like the thrust from a knife. For a moment, I had been lost in those warm sounds. Bathed in his voice and words, I had become something other than what I was. Now, I must again remember.
    Whoever made that song-mark on him had great skill , I think. And suddenly, I am aching with jealousy at this other of my kind who has touched him, changed him, kept his people’s memories alive on and through his very body.
    “Are you real or am I dreaming?” His voice makes the leaves rustle and the buds green.
    The animals bleat and stamp but I take no heed. As if looking in a mirror, I see my own hazy face in his eyes, and the feeling makes me want to weep.
    I flee on the fog, of course. What else can I do? But I hear him calling behind me, “Maiden! Maiden!”
    I do not come back to the wood until nightfall, and only then following the footsteps of the fox and badger, keeping well to the shadows. The Boy will have gone by now, I think, gone to a fire and a home, a bed and a dinner, the comforts and rituals of the living.
    But I am wrong, for here he sits, asleep beneath my telling tree, his animals scattered far and wide like all my proprieties. If I remembered my duty, I should worry about him. Is there a mother or sister weeping for his safety? A father with a lantern even now searching for his lost boy in the darkness?
    His breast rises and falls with an easy sleep, and I can see that he is as near a Man as a Boy. His arms, even in their relaxation, are strong, and his back broad as if used to carrying the sun. Though I have not been called to mark him, I want to touch him more than I—for all my stories—can say. And for the first time in my many years, I realize there is something stronger than words, something beyond even my deft needle’s abilities to darn images and memories.
    As if hearing my desires, he opens his eyes. “You!”
    I shake my wordless head, opening and closing my lips to show him that there are no sounds for my spending.
    But he does not need them, he has enough in his own pockets for us both. “You are the one who came to my grandmother as she