Free Effigy by Alissa York

myrtle
—marvellous names for mysterious trees. There are even dogs, thick-shouldered, bristling with copper fur. To reach the cocoons they must leap to heights quadruple their own. And they will, if no one stops them.
    But this is no nightmare. The dream-Ruth is fearless. She plucks leathery wings from the vine-draped vault, crushes hissing tongues beneath her heel. She is equal to the leaping red dogs, equal to everything that comes on.
    Close to sleep now, Ruth shifts her loosely shut eyes, bringing the ghost of that engraved page clear. Such moths. Bodies like furred, truncated thumbs. Wings made lovely by brave design—primitive figures of stark, unblinking eyes.

    Thankful wakes with a start, her neck awry. She’s alone in the parlour. Night has fallen and no one has bothered to wake her—they haven’t even left her a candle. The half-worked bodice lies across her lap. She can’t fathom its colours in the gloom—black appliqué on velvet of a midnight blue. A garment her mother’s milk-and-coal colouring would have rendered lethal. One she would have judged sinful to wear.
    Thankful may not have the complexion, but there are other ways to make a dress work. She has a character firmly in mind: a French noblewoman driven by circumstance to depend upon the charity of strange men.
    In the dark, Thankful locates her last stitch, knots the thread and bites it through. The pincushion is a cool and spiny thing. She sticks the needle in deep and sets her work aside, making sure to arrange it bosom-up on the side table, where it will rankle in Mother Hammer’s eye. Rising, she finds her neck is well and truly cricked. She must carry herself with care or risk a headache. Foolish to have dropped off like that, upright in the midst of them all.
    She navigates across the parlour, arms waving like the fronds of some underwater weed. Once through to the dining room, she feels her way from chair back to chair back, pausing to turn and peer at the hunched shadow of the clock. Its face is silvery, the placement of its hands unclear. She suffers a wash of imbalance, clutches the chair at hand—the youngest boy’s place—and clings there a moment.
    Overhead, a floorboard sounds its weakness. The room directly above Thankful ought to be empty, it being the bedchamber she calls her own. It can’t be Hammer—he’s away in the city overnight. Letting go of the chair, she moves blindly into the front hall. Before her the kitchen stands in darkness. Mother Hammerabed then.
Or not
. A quarter turn, half a dozen sliding steps and the toe of Thankful’s slipper touches stair. She gropes for the banister and ascends.
    Light-footed or no, she’s not fool enough to imagine sneaking up on the first wife—there may as well be bat’s ears under that whitening hair. Still, she proceeds softly. At the round of the landing, the wall before her bristles with framed mottoes. She sets three of them askew before continuing on.
    Ruth’s door stands at the head of the stairs, then more of the first wife’s embroidered words. Thankful takes a breath and steps into the wash of weak light escaping her chamber’s open door. Backlit by a lamp, Mother Hammer rises up on her knees before the gleaming dresser. Every drawer gapes, several spilling their bright insides. Thankful pictures the front-heavy dresser toppling, crushing the first wife where she kneels.
    It’s not the first time Mother Hammer has run her big hands over Thankful’s things. God knows what she thinks she’s looking for—a length of rubber piping, perhaps. A bottle of vinegar or soapy spirits. Some pronged, indelicate device.
What does she take me for?
Thankful leans against the jamb. Let the witch snoop, watch her slink away.
    Mother Hammer keeps on about her business as though unobserved, rifling through the bottom drawer, shaking out item after item as though searching for insects in their folds. She stands with the last of these still in hand, assuming her full height