Page 17 of Blood on Her Tongue
Chapter 17
She doesn’t deny it.
The thought was curiously devoid of feeling. It was like Sarah’s death all over again: soon, emotion would grab Lucy by the throat, but until it did, she was cool and calm and collected. She swallowed, then ran her tongue over her dry lips to wet them. “A lot of little things,” she said.
Not-Sarah brought her hand to her mouth and sucked at the clotting blood. “Feel free to elaborate.”
“The fact Pasja is terrified of you. Your thirst for blood. How you smell and look as if you’re decomposing. Little things you said and did that Sarah wouldn’t have, like your sudden bouts of cursing.”
“And yet it took you a while.”
“Even in the face of so many small clues, it’s not an easy thing to believe. Now, tell me: What are you, and what did you do with Sarah?”
Not-Sarah brought the pin to her mouth, then delicately licked at the blood with the tip of her tongue. It was a healthy pink again, no longer dull and coated in plaque. “I’m sure you’ve got your theories already. Why not share them with me?”
“Why would I?”
“I like to be entertained.”
Another spurt of anger. “I’m not here to entertain you! I just want my sister!” Lucy hissed.
Sarah— but she’s Not-Sarah; why do I struggle so to understand and remember this? —cocked her head and said gently, “I know. Come, tell me what you think you know, and we’ll start from there.”
Lucy licked her lips again. They were dry to the point of pain. If she were to smile now, the skin would tear. “All right. Others might have called you a changeling, but I think it’s more accurate to say you’re a kind of tick.”
Not-Sarah laughed. “A tick? Have you ever seen a tick do what I have done?”
An ugly flush crept up her throat, then pooled in the soft tissue of her cheeks. “Don’t be pedantic. I didn’t come here to talk semantics. I don’t know what to call you, but the word ‘tick’ certainly isn’t far off.”
“Darling Lucy. Don’t lose your temper. I was only teasing. Sarah used to tease you often. I’m not quite Sarah, but I’m close enough. I’m in your blood, and you are in mine.” She tried to take hold of Lucy’s hand. Lucy jerked back.
Wounded, Not-Sarah let her hand fall. She cleared her throat and said, “You aren’t far off by calling me a tick. There’s some affinity between that species and mine. We can stay alive for years without fresh sustenance simply by staying very still. When something edible comes along, we attach ourselves to our prey and drink our fill. Of course, a tick only needs a little blood. Then, pearl-like in its bloatedness, it will let go and live up to another decade off the blood it has taken into its body. My kind, once properly sated, can go without sustenance for much longer.”
“Is that what you did to the bog woman? Attached yourself to her and drank your fill? Or did you take a little bite here and there, too?”
She gave Lucy a frank stare with her remaining eye. “Funny,” she said. “Many would think you a dull little creature, friendly but quite insipid and a little slow, perhaps. They’ve got you all wrong, don’t they? You’re much brighter than you let on—and much meaner, though perhaps that’s simply because you’re unhappy, and you’re unhappy because you desire fiercely what you can’t have. You yearn and crave and want with such force, it seems to eat you up from the inside. Sarah knew, and therefore, so do I.”
Lucy looked away so Not-Sarah wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes, but, of course, the act of looking away in itself was already admitting that her words had found their mark. Did all her kind have such an uncanny way of dissecting those around them, of flaying them till nothing remained but the core of who they were? Being emotionally peeled like an orange by something that wasn’t even human yet did wear her sister’s face was not a nice feeling. But Lucy wouldn’t be defeated quite so easily, nor let the creature distract her.
“I used to have terrible temper tantrums as a child,” Lucy said, as if that would explain all of it. “I don’t think people think me very dull, just insecure or else cold and reserved. Funny you should say my feelings eat me up from the inside, though. That’s what you literally did with the bog woman, isn’t it? Ate up all her organs, leaving her an empty husk, sucked dry? I suppose you’re right; you’re not quite a tick after all. Perhaps I should’ve compared you to a spider instead.”
“Similes are rarely perfect,” Not-Sarah said lightly. “You are right, though. I did eat her organs. I wouldn’t normally—human bodies very much do need their lungs and hearts and what-have-yous to keep functioning even when I’m the one steering the ship, so to speak—but I was in a bit of a bind.”
“Because Marianne was dead?” Lucy asked.
Not-Sarah inclined her head. “Indeed. My host was dead, and I hadn’t had time to vacate the premises and find a new place to live before she and I were thrown into the bog. There my options were rather limited. I knew I could only get out and find a new host if someone dragged out Marianne’s body. Until that happened, I simply needed to survive. So I hibernated. I ate Marianne’s organs till I was filled to bursting, and then I slept. I slept for a long time.”
Lucy looked down at her hands. They had gone numb. She balled them into fists to get the blood flowing again, then asked, “How did you take possession of my sister?”
“A happy accident, that. By the time those peat cutters unearthed Marianne and me, I was weak. I hadn’t eaten nor moved for a long time. I think that, had Sarah not cut her hand on my teeth and thus given me a little of her blood to drink, I might well have died before I could have taken possession of another host. Her blood replenished me.”
How matter-of-factly she talks! Lucy thought. A chill swam up her spine. “And then you inhabited her?”
“Not straightaway. I couldn’t; that stone obstructed my way. It had to be removed, and when that was done, I had to draw her to me.”
“Draw her how?”
Not-Sarah made a slow plucking motion, as if pulling on a thread, and Lucy felt a twinge in her breastbone. “I just drew her. It’s hard to put into words but not so hard to do. When she cut her hand, a little bit of her entered me, but a little bit of me entered her, too. I drew on that bit. It helped that she was susceptible.”
“Because she had a propensity for madness?”
“Because she felt both tenderness and affinity for that leathered, broken body. The way Marianne looked after centuries in the bog, well, that’s how Sarah felt sometimes: all twisted and old and strange.”
Lucy refused to take the bait. “So you drew her.”
“Yes. I drew her and entered her, and that’s where the easy part ended and the hard part began. You see, she really did not like that I tried to make my home inside her skull. Hosts usually don’t, but she fought me with a vehemence I hadn’t expected. Of course, it didn’t help that I was weak and out of practice, nor that she was on to me. I have to give her this: she was much more cunning and tenacious than I expected. I admire her for it, really.” She smiled begrudgingly. With her face no longer slack like that of a dead woman, she was indistinguishable from any normal person.
“The treatise on ticks,” Lucy breathed.
“Indeed. She knew something was trying to take possession of her. Not a demon nor a ghost, but something of the natural world, small and tough and tangible. She also knew I was weak; merging with her made me privy to her memories and thoughts and feelings, but that connection worked the other way, too. She came up with a plan to get rid of me. She knew she couldn’t destroy me without causing herself grievous harm, so she tried to starve me out.”
I felt ravenous, but I knew somehow that it was imperative I didn’t eat, as if a headache is something you can starve into submission. Pain rose in Lucy’s throat. “Is that why you bit Arthur?”
“Yes. I needed blood and meat.”
Lucy realized she was wringing her hands again. She balled them into fists once more and pressed them hard against her thighs. “Why didn’t you just give up?”
“Giving up meant dying. I had invested too much of my energy in merging with Sarah to try and find another host, and I can’t help wanting to live. Like other creatures, I am hell-bent on surviving.” She shrugged almost apologetically.
“Why not ask Sarah to help you? Why not strike a deal?”
“I couldn’t trust her. Who was to say she wouldn’t grind me to pulp under her boot the moment I left her body? My kind is vulnerable without a host. We are small and soft, easy to kill. No, I couldn’t run the risk. I’d take control of this body, or I’d die trying.” Her mouth twisted into a bitter smile. She touched the velvet eye patch. The tips of her fingers were wrinkled and discolored like those of someone who had been dead for some days. “Of course, Sarah didn’t play fair.”
Lucy admitted, “She never could abide losing. She always did cheat when we played games as a child.”
“I know.”
“And then? After she took the pen…?”
“I was wounded. It’s a good thing I do not reside in the optic canal, or I’d have been killed. As it was, I needed time to recover. It would have been much faster if I’d had access to fresh blood and meat, but I had to make do. That’s why this body isn’t looking so good anymore, but you’ve seen and smelled that already. What that journalist wrote about me was true, you know: I could still hear and feel and smell, but I couldn’t move. I didn’t play dead nor wait till the last moment to let you know I was alive out of malice.”
Lucy looked at her sister’s hands, at the missing nails and fingers pockmarked with little wounds from where splinters had bitten deep into the flesh. “What would you have done if I hadn’t heard you scratching?”
“Lie low like I did with Marianne, I suppose.”
“Crypts aren’t very good places to find healthy live hosts.”
“Neither are bogs, and yet here we are.”
“And where is Sarah now?”
“In here,” Not-Sarah said, then tapped her temple with the pin.
Lucy felt pain shoot through her head, as if Not-Sarah had stabbed her with the pin. “Do you mean she’s inside your head, talking to you?”
“No. She died when she stabbed us. But I absorbed all her thoughts and memories and feelings right until she died, so she’s still with us, in a way.”
Lucy thought for a moment, then asked, “How am I to know this is real?”
“Do you not believe me?”
“Perhaps you’re just plain Sarah after all, and you’re playing a cruel trick on me.”
Not-Sarah gave her a small, sorrowful smile. “You don’t believe that. Sarah loved to tease, but she was never cruel.”
“Then perhaps you are sick. You truly believe you are a parasite, but that doesn’t make it so. People can believe all sorts of things when they’re mad. No one would blame you. You suffered from a fever of the brain and then catalepsy so strong that we thought you were dead and almost buried you. Anyone would come out of that a little mad.” She realized she was pleading.
Not-Sarah sighed and pricked the pin that had pierced her hand moments before through the pages of her diary. It stood crookedly. “You know, if you all hadn’t insisted on Sarah being insane, you might have noticed sooner that something was wrong. She did write you a letter telling you all about me and my intentions for her, didn’t she? Though I concede her handwriting was atrocious by that point, you must have been able to read at least some parts of it.”
That one cut Lucy deep. “Please,” she whispered, “please, Saartje, please tell me none of what you’ve just told me is true. I won’t be angry, I promise.”
Pity softened the features that starvation had thrown in such sharp relief. “Poor Lucy. You’re grasping at straws now, don’t you think? You seemed so certain when you began this confrontation. Why have you changed your mind?”
“Because I don’t want it to be true after all,” she whispered.
“You’d rather have me mad?”
“I’d rather you were like you were before.”
The emotions arrived at last. They swept over her, pummeled her. She began to shake, not with the cold shudders traveling up and down her spine that she had experienced before, but with a full-body palsy that made her teeth grind together. She couldn’t remain standing and fell to the floor, where she lay convulsing, gasping for breath. Her chest hurt as if it were being chewed on.
Why had the phrase to break a heart ever become popular? It likened this onslaught of pain to the clean break of a china cup, when in reality it was much closer to being mauled.
A thought came to her, clear and horrible: I shan’t be able to keep on living .
Through the veil of tears and agony, she felt Not-Sarah sit next to her and draw her head into her lap. She rocked her, stroked her hair, made little shushing noises.
When the horror and the grief petered out—for nothing human was final, only death, and perhaps not even that—Not-Sarah was still stroking her with cool peeling fingers.
“You poor little thing. Come, dry your tears,” she murmured. “It isn’t all bad. I don’t think you’ve been listening properly to me, and for that I don’t blame you. Let me repeat it for you now that you’re a bit calmer. When I merge with a host—I don’t really eat the brain, just parts of it—I don’t merely take over the body; I consume their memories and their emotions, too.”
When Lucy did not respond, Not-Sarah went on. “So, you see, it really is as I said before: I’m not quite Sarah because I have Marianne’s memories and some all my own, but I am really close to being her. I love you and know you just as well as Sarah did. And because I am partly Sarah, I hope you’ll be able to love me, too. Life would be quite unbearable if you couldn’t, you know.” She knitted their fingers together in much the same way Sarah had always done.
Lucy pulled her hand away. “How can you claim to be my sister when you just told me you’re a conglomeration of everyone you’ve ever eaten? How many have you devoured over the centuries? A dozen people, a hundred?”
Sarah looked both hurt and offended at this, almost as if Lucy had accused her of being a slut. “Don’t you think someone like me would think twice about merging with another precisely because it alters us so greatly? Do not think we use you up lightly. You are precious to us, and we maintain your bodies so carefully that you live decades beyond your ordinary lifespan if inhabited by us. With some flesh and blood, we can repair damage and wear and tear that would normally cripple or kill you, and then we live ordinary lives, blending in so perfectly that you would normally never know we were different from you at all.”
“How many?” Lucy persisted.
“Marianne was my first, if you must know,” Not-Sarah said rather primly. “I was inexperienced, and that made the changes I caused in Marianne particularly noticeable to her husband. Luckily, I didn’t absorb too much of her personality; we hadn’t merged fully when her husband tossed us in the bog, and once she was dead, her body was just meat to me.”
Lucy groaned softly, helplessly.
Not-Sarah touched her face, smoothing her hair from her brow. “Don’t worry, Lucy. It’s not all bad, of course. Poor, angry, unhappy Marianne with her sailor’s mouth did give me extensive practical knowledge: what mushrooms to pluck and which ones to leave, when to sow and when to reap, how to assist a sheep when lambing—that sort of thing. Not directly of use to me in my position as mistress of Zwartwater, but you never know.”
This is without a doubt the strangest conversation I’ve ever had , Lucy thought. She suddenly had the insane urge to laugh or perhaps to cry.
“Had you merged fully with my sister when she stabbed herself in the eye with that pen?” Lucy asked.
“Yes. So you see: I truly am her—or at least as much like her as is possible.”
It was too much, too soon. Lucy couldn’t think about it yet, not properly. She felt drained. This violent purging of her emotions was a relief of sorts, but it left her head aching and her eyes smarting. She sat up and rubbed them. “You took a huge risk in telling me all this. Why? Why trust me?”
“Because you are my sister, and I know you’ll help me.”
Lucy did not say that the matter of their sisterhood was still pending in her mind. Instead, she asked, “Help you how? By keeping the fact of your adultery a secret or that you are a parasite? Does Katje know?”
“In her own way, she does. She thinks I’m a kind of revenant: Sarah restored to her from the dead. Hers is a tender and romantic soul. Of course, she knows that what is dead must stay dead and that I am therefore a transgression against the laws of God, or nature, or both. There’s a price that must be paid for such a transgression, and that price must be paid in meat and blood. Every demon wants its pound of flesh and all that.”
That explained the girl’s utter reluctance to talk about Sarah’s strangeness. Anger once again took possession of Lucy; that she had been made a fool of by this creature was bad enough, but that the same had happened to a girl as brutalized and defenseless as Katje, well, that was truly vile. “And you’ve been abusing that belief, haven’t you? Having her pay this price for you.”
For the first time, Not-Sarah looked remorseful. “This you must believe: I would not have fed from her, had I the choice. Sarah was in love with her, and therefore, so am I. Any harm she suffers pains me terribly, but I’m desperate. I’ve only taken the smallest amount of blood, barely enough to sustain me, let alone heal me.”
“Heal you?”
She pulled the cap off her head, revealing her scalp riddled with bald patches, then held out her mangled hands. “Look at me, Lucy darling! I am rotting where I stand. That is why I so desperately need your help. If I don’t feed soon, I’ll die.”
That sense of unreality had returned, making everything feel thin and flat. “What, exactly, do you mean by ‘feed’?” Lucy heard herself ask.
Sarah’s tongue darted from between her lips, licking them. “I need human meat and blood, and it must be fresh, and it must be plentiful, or I won’t be able to repair the damage done to this body. Concretely, I suppose that means I must eat someone.”