Free A Pretty Mouth by Molly Tanzer

spending which is nigh impossible for men to produce any other way.
    Good Lord, but I am hungry! It’s only natural after taking so much exercise in the night, I suppose.
     
    ***
     
    Later —Orlando was not at breakfast. Lizzie says he will not come out of his room.
     
    ***
     
    Later still— Feeling rather lonely, for neither Lizzie nor Bill seem to want much to do with me (they are holed up in the kitchen, apparently “doing what must be done” regarding the Lord Calipash’s death, though I swear I saw Bill sweep away a trick of bezique when I came into the room … but I must have imagined it, for the sanctimonious old ferret never trucks with any games at all, and certainly not cards!) I went for a walk after my meal.
    The grounds are still very lovely here, I think their being so overgrown actually adds to their savage charm. And yet … one would think such a wilderness would attract more wild creatures, but I saw no life within the twilit deeps except for a tiny, but bright red bird of a type I had never seen before. It landed on a tree and peered at me silently. I know it will sound strange, but I swear that once it was sure it held my attention, it fluttered to a close-by tree and did not move until I stepped toward it. Then it did the same thing again, and again, until it led me—by chance, surely—to the Calipash family crypt. There it landed on the pediment—and after a moment, flew inside the crypt itself. The door was ajar from Orlando’s midnight sojourn.
    The charnel smell that had clung to Orlando’s flesh last night whilst we frolicked emanated from the black interior; I found it nauseating but strangely compelling, and reached out my hand to push open the door and further investigate what lay inside the sepulcher. In I went, and once again braved the stone steps down into the crypt proper.
    It is a horrid place, the crypt, a burial-place worthy of the strange legends concocted by the locals. Grinning carven demons watch over the bodies of former Calipash lords, and from their mouths emanate awful orange and purple light, very like sunlight through filtered glass, but they shine even at night! My steps echoed on the granite floor as I peered about, revisiting that dead place where the dead dwell, thinking of the strange ghost I had thought I had seen as a child—but then I am ashamed to say my courage failed me. I fancied I heard the ghost groaning at me; looking up, I saw a shadow of a man, tall and thin—and screamed!
    “It is surely the Ghast!” I cried, and fled, nearly falling back down the moisture-slick stairs several times in my haste, but by the time the handle of the garden-door of Calipash Manor was in my hand I was laughing at myself for being such a noodle. The wind often moans when it passes over stone, does it not, and I had left the door ajar—and why, I wondered, had it not occurred to me that Orlando could have walked in front of the crypt-door? That would have cast a shadow very like the “ghost” I saw.
    If there is any real danger here at Calipash Manor, it is too much sunshine. I must be more careful of my skin—my complexion will be ruined if I continue taking morning walks. My skin is browner already, I am sure of it.
     
    ***
     
    Afternoon— Orlando did not come down to dinner. I fear I must have done him a mischief. Perhaps attempting to induce a fourth occasion took more out of him than I anticipated?
    I had a solitary, silent meal in the dining room; again, Lizzie and Bill would not allow me to dine with them. They were really rather stern with me about it.
    “We would have notions of rank preserved in this house, Chelone,” said Lizzie. “Anarchy results elseways.”
    “Yes indeed, a woman of your breeding mustn’t break bread with those such as us,” said Bill—which in anyone else I would think to be a crack about my lack of proper parentage, but not from Bill!
    Ah well. I have eaten lonelier meals.
    I wonder, though, if I didn’t work myself into