window shutter has blown open. Gusts of wind howl through the room, lifting papers, toppling books. I can scarcely see, but who could light a candle in this maelstrom?
As if in answer, lightning flashes once more, and then again. A volume lies open on Father’s desk. Its pages tremble in the moving air, begging me to read them.
I lay a hand on the open page. As I do, the wind ceases and the night goes silent and still. In this otherworldly calm I can finally light a candle to read by. The page is written in my father’s hand, although his familiar neat script is slanted pell-mell and blotted, as if he wrote in a terrible rush, or as if his thoughts had become tinged with madness…
…my life’s work is lost, utterly lost, or so it seems. I think of all that I sacrificed to gain this knowledge, so painstakingly recorded in my diary. What compelled that misbegotten freak to seize the record of my work and flee? As if he had any need for it! Someday I will pay him back, I swear it – I will find him, wherever he hides, and reclaim what is mine.
So much suffering, for naught! So many lives sacrificed! Even yours, my darling, my Elizabeth… but how was I to know that the child in your womb would weaken you so severely? You were never the same after the birth; it was as if all your strength was used to nourish the child, at your own expense. Poor Jessamine. She scarcely remembers you. She would never suspect how I think of you hourly, write you these letters every night, and above all, continue our work…
She has grown so like you it startles me. Would you be proud to know how well she endured my treatments, Elizabeth? She suffered, yes, but survived greater doses than I ever dared give you.
It occurs to me now: Perhaps her physiology has some special tolerance for the dark substances, since she was first exposed while still in your womb… this may be a topic for further study.
Here is all the proof I need.
My father poisoned my mother. She let him do it, it seems. She was a willing part of his “work,” even as I grew within her belly. Still, he bears full blame for her death.
And my illness was no strong fever, my recovery no miracle cure wrought by the skills of Thomas Luxton. My father poisoned me, and harbours not one speck of remorse for doing so.
And Weed – Weed is alive. Somewhere. And my father will kill him someday, if he can. If I do not stop him first, that is.
Truth, terrible truth! It is like an ancient curse, from which there is no escape. The truth will drive one mad. Yet without it, how can one make sense of life’s madness?
Do you like the task I set you, lovely?
I do. For now I know who I am.
I am Jessamine Luxton. Poison ran in my veins before I was born.
I know how to cure. And I know how to kill.
I have tried for so long to be good, but there is no need to fight my destiny anymore.
I am my father’s daughter, after all.
A STAND OF HEMLOCK water dropwort grows in a sturdy group near the edge of a stream, deep in the old forest of Northumberland. The plants have straight, thick, hollow stems, topped with lacy flowers. One of their fleshy roots would kill me, if I were fool enough to eat it.
“Such delicious roots,” the plant hums. “Sweet and rich and filling, Master Weed. Are you sure you do not want a taste?”
“Have you any shame?” I roll to my side on this soggy bed of moss. “Look at you. Your leaves masquerade as parsley. Your stalks as celery. Your roots as parsnip. How many men have you killed with your trickery?”
“Not just men. Women. Children. Cattle, too.” The lace-caps of blooms flutter, all innocence. “You seem angry, fleshbody. Perhaps living in the forest does not suit you after all.”
I shift my position, trying to find a dry spot. After a night of wild storms, everything is wet: the ground, the trees, the rocks. Mushrooms sprout in every crevice. Some of them, too, are killers, but they know better than to boast about it.
“It is not the forest that irks me. It is your pride in your own wickedness. You gain nothing from killing. You take no nourishment from your prey, as the hawks and foxes do. Yet you do it with enjoyment.”
“We act as it is in our nature to act. Just as you do, Human Who Hears.”
This is what they call me in the forest. The fleshbody. The Human Who Hears. Even here I am made to feel like a freak.
“After all, you too, have killed,” the dropwort adds. “And there was no nourishment involved. Was there?”
I do not answer. For yes, I have killed. Shamefully I have taken innocent life. And I would kill again, right now, if I had the means.
My victims would be two in number: Thomas Luxton, father of my beloved Jessamine. And Oleander, the Prince of Poisons.
It is for Jessamine’s sake alone that I stay away.
Of its own will, my hand strays to the book of evil I carry with me day and night. Thomas Luxton’s book of poisons. It is wrapped safe and dry in a square of oilcloth I stole from a farm wife’s washing line.
Every day I swear I will burn it. It is like that wicked garden of his: something unnatural that should never have been created. But I cannot bring myself to do it. It is the one link I have to the past – to all that was stolen from me. To happiness. To Jessamine.
“Answer, fleshbody. Do not ignore, like an ordinary half-sensed human. We know you can hear us.”
“Yes, I can.” I rake pebbles into my hand with my fingers and toss them one by one against a large out-cropping of rock. They bounce off the stone, narrowly missing my delicate, deadly accuser. “Alone among my kind, I can hear you. But that does not mean I am interested in what you have to say.”
The notched leaves flare in outrage. I feel pleasure at their hurt. This is the sort of creature I have become. Bitter. Angry. With too little respect for others, and far too much pity for myself.
I rise to leave. It makes the plants angry that I can do that. Walk away.
“Listen to the fleshbody,” the dropwort retorts. “A mere seventeen turns of the seasons on this ancient earth of ours, and yet he dismisses us. What is your answer, coward? Have you killed, or have you not killed?”
Through a canopy of alder leaves I glance up at the sky. It is grey, and thick with clouds. I half expect to see a shadow in the shape of wings, blotting out what little light is left. A gash of nothingness inked across the heavens.
“Yes. I have,” I snarl. “We are killers both. Do not make me prove it.”
With the poison diary under my arm, I turn and run.
“What do you hope to find in the forest, fleshbody? She is not here, you know!”
I plug my ears and run faster, deeper into the woods.
Jessamine
