The letter K

Issue three: short fiction by Dorian Wolfe

Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Marie Henneberg, 1901-1902, Art Museum Moritzburg, Halle.

You set down your broidery, which is worthless in any case. The piece on the hoop is the same one you began ten years ago, when you were still married. The brown-green-red-purple stitching on the cream wool is supposed to be a door, without a knob but with a giant keyhole, garlanded in flowers that smell of raw jungle. You lick the salty sea-breeze from your lips and curl back into the stone bench with its figures of men, maidens, and dogs at a hunt. This morning, you are awake before the maids, so you are the one to brush an errant bird-dropping to the floor. The dropping had collected in a crack running from one of the stone maidens’ hairline to her laughing jaw. You do not wonder why her skull is cracked. The castle is old. You smooth the skirts of your dressing-gown: an odd silver-blue, which your brothers dislike, especially your twin, Kit. That is why you wear it.

The rising sun casts a bloody light on the waves, a light quickly quashed by the clouds that spring, roiling, from the horizon. Your stomach curdles as you watch those clouds, even as you laugh. ‘Silly girl,’ you murmur to yourself. ‘They’re only clouds.’ You press your hands, fingers slender as they ever were, against your temples, hoping that the feeling will fade. It does not. 

The red sun, followed by the darkness, reminds you of them. Six women magically preserved in blood, like insects in smooth drops of amber. You wonder, again, what their names were, and why you care what their names were. In silent sympathy, you have given two of them the loveliest name, your own: Katherine. Beautiful, curious Katherines. You are not wrong. Perhaps you have an unnatural intuition of who they were, how they found their ends in that room of blood. 

‘Good morning, madam.’ The shrill voice comes from behind. You watch her, the maid with the pointed chin, approaching with your silver tray of honey-cakes. Her name is not Katherine, of course. It is Ruby. So white is her hair, so blue her eyes, that you have often wondered whether one of her parents was born on the silvered terraces of the moon. (Her father, of course. A moon-maiden would never have named such a child Ruby.) But you do not ask. You learned, long ago, the danger of asking. Instead, you take the tray and drop your eyes to the yellow linen napkin covering the cakes.

When she leaves, you pick up the other napkin, the one beside the cakes (blue, of course; you would not have it any other way), and dab it to your mouth. You always dry the corners of your mouth before you eat, the corners wrinkled from smiles and sorrow like those of a woman twice your age. 

A letter flutters from the napkin. The paper is heavy; it drags so, on the cobbles, that it almost screeches. Ah, there, your smile is back.

You bend and pick up the letter, pausing to retie a ribbon that has coiled into a knot at the bottom of your ribs, and sit with a sigh. You have told Ruby (perhaps too timidly, but you would never give orders) not to bring any letters but your sister’s, but she keeps bringing them, secreted in that wretched napkin. If it was from your sister, Ruby would have placed it with a rose (fresh in season, else dried) on top of the napkin, and you would have devoured your warm honey-cakes before relishing the letter, smiling at her quick wit, and a bit teary-eyed at how she seems to have forgotten. How could she forget? Perhaps she would have preferred to remember, with you; but you, spending your life fixed in that moment—never wearing a new gown, always wiping the keys—have stripped her of the burden of memory. 

You want to scan the letter quickly and return to your breakfast. You rip it open. The heavy paper seems, for a moment, to cut a slice in your finger. You gasp and stare at your finger under the sun which, now golden, rides behind a thin film of mist. You were mistaken. Your finger is unhurt. 

The letter. ‘To the Lady Katherine. Allow me to speak bluntly. Many suitors have sought your hand, and all of them you have rejected. It has been ten years, my lady, and it is unseemly for you to mourn so long for a man who murdered six wives, and would have murdered you as well.’ 

Sudden anger crackles inside you. Who is this, telling you what you already know? He cannot understand. You start to crumple the letter, but barely wrinkle it before repenting and smoothing it out.

‘Lest you think I intend only to reproach you,’ the letter continues, ‘let me say that your beauty and kindness are legendary. I realize that you may think me overbold, when you compare our bloodlines, given that you have rejected so many of higher rank. All I have to offer you is this: a quiet life, with fine stables (I know that you love horses), and two little girls in need of a mother. If my plea moves you, I beg you for a chance to speak at greater length. With the deepest respect, Lord K.’

You are intrigued; you cannot deny it. Not least by the initial ‘K.’ The two most important men in your life have been named Kit. Your mind conjures an image of the mysterious Lord K: a lanky man with hair a sandy-brown, but with a deep-black beard, tinged with blue. For a moment, you imagine racing him on horseback, the brisk wind tugging at your sleeves and swirling around your hands.

And then, you stand up, crumple the letter and hurl it to the waves. 

Seated again, you tug the napkin off the honey-cakes, and let your fingers roam their warm amber crusts, garnished with dried lavender blossoms. You take a bite. Then you pinch one of the lavender blossoms and crush it with a rustle. 

You leave the cakes there and climb the stairs to the turret you call home, claustrophobically small and careening out over the water. Panting, you twist the key and open the golden chest. You take out the painting (oil on wood), a wedding gift from your beloved, and run your thumb along its rough edges. In rich carmine and gold and royal blue, it depicts a tortured man, bloody, eyes sunken, pale, and barely open, laid on a slab of stone. Surrounding the figure are seven winged women—six to the sides, traced in outline, and one, brighter than the rest, floating above his head. That would be you, my angel. You should have realized then that something was wrong, or at least odd—but you were too in love, with the oddness of rooms spilling out diamonds and rubies and harps strung with the hair of giants. 

Your brow is furrowing. You whirl around, watch the doorway. ‘Who’s there?’ you whisper. You see no one, but the prickle creeping along your scalp denies your eyes’ reassurance.

You know.

I am here.

No matter how you lock yourself away, I will be with you. You will always return to the little gold chest, to study my likeness, while thoughts of me run through your heart with the rush of your blood.

That is why you threw Lord K’s letter into the water. And why you will do the same for the next man’s, and the next, and the next, as you have been doing for the nine years after your black-clad year of mourning. You will always have your Kit (I do not mean the bland brother who shares my name). 

Go on, walk to the balcony, place your hands on the smooth stone worn by generations after generations of fingers. Stare with me at the waves, which under the wide sky are cold and bristled and oh so blue.

Dorian Wolfe, a cat-toting spec-fic author and former concert pianist, focuses her writing on the intersection between the imaginary and...more of the imaginary. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in multiple venues, including Cosmic Horror Monthly and Utopia Science Fiction Magazine. Find out more about her stories at https://dorianwolfe.wordpress.com/dorians-stories.