I awoke in the field of poppies. My Aunt had been turned into flowers and I was alone.
I ran back to Aunt Eva’s cottage. I ran as fast as I could and locked myself in. Into her bedroom, under the covers I hid. I wished I could have changed into different shapes. I wish I was magical like Aunt Eva and could fight him, but all I could do was run away. I fell asleep and dreamt I was back in the room surrounded by pictures of pomegranates. Their eyes were full of ladybirds, fat ruby shapes opening their wings. I shouted out for Aunt Eva to save me but she had turned into a goddess in a coffin made of red flowers. And the poppies were laughing, the lightning tree was laughing, the pomegranates were laughing and he was coming back for me, he was coming back to teach me a lesson.
When I woke up, the moon had risen in the sky, a silver sickle, glinting like a scimitar. I descended the staircase and into the kitchen to make a pot of tea. Dried lavender and sage hung in bunches from the window and pots of fresh mint sat by the sink, a stone frog peered at me, propping the door ajar. This was a witch’s kitchen. Why did I not inherit any magic? Moonlight drifted lazily through the room and it was then I heard the knocking at the door. I let him in. What else could I do?
He examined me like a sleepy spider and sat himself at the kitchen table, while I poured the tea. One of Aunt Eva’s fruit cakes sat like a heavy omen near the teapot.
“I am not accustomed to my wives committing suicide to escape me. That will not happen again, do you understand?”
I did not answer him.
He adjusted his spectacles. “Of course, I don’t want you to be unhappy. I know that you will be lonely in the Underworld and so I have decided to grant you six months of every year on Earth, and then you will return to me for the following six. If you disobey me again, I will break this agreement. Will you agree to this?”
I nodded my head.
“You are not overly intelligent and you are not very interesting, but you are my wife, my possession, and we must try to be civil to one another.”
“What about my Aunt Eva?” I asked.
“For the six months you spend with me in the Underworld she will remain as poppies, under my enchantment. When you return to the Earth, she will transform back. And I realize she may very well try to kill me again, which I greatly look forward to,” and he smiled slyly. He continued, “I am not overly fond of women, but I could become very attached to her. She has a spark about her.”
“Perhaps you should seek the company of men. My Aunt has some lovely gowns upstairs you could try on,” and I laughed.
He slapped me across the face so hard I fell onto the floor. “Watch your tongue.”
I stood up rather shakily. “May I get some clothes from upstairs before we leave?”
He nodded, not even bothering to look at me. I walked steadily up the staircase into Aunt Eva’s bedroom and took the shotgun from under her bed. As I walked downstairs I pointed the gun at his head. He looked genuinely surprised. I pulled the trigger and his head exploded all over the wall. “That’s for slapping me, you pile of dogshit!”
I kept hold of the shotgun and ran back out of the town into the field of poppies. Aunt Eva was standing up, her hair alive like flames, poppies still scattered over her body plopping gently to the earth. She hugged me, half in a daze.
“I shot him, Aunt Eva. I blew his head off.”
She answered, “He won’t be dead.”
“I don’t want to go back with him,” I screamed. Poppies were still attached to her hair, which was long, blood red like lava. Suddenly, through a haze of poppy heads, he appeared and seized her by the hair, twisting it in his hands. I held the shotgun up again but I couldn’t get a clear shot between the two of them. Aunt Eva shouted something out and lightning started to dance in the skies and it fell, bolt after bolt onto him. Electrified, he flew off her and I shot him again, his head exploding. His headless body fell backwards, softly, into the poppies.
“What do we do now, Aunt Eva?”
“We stuff him in the tree,” she cried, grabbing his feet. “It will hold him as a coffin.” And so we stuffed his body into the whorl of the tree and filled it with soil, and Aunt Eva bound it with a heavy charm of poppies.
We could hear him screaming in the tree: “Bitches!”
We left that field of poppies and went home. Aunt Eva burnt black candles and sage and charmed little bells round the cottage. She painted spiral symbols on my face and arms with ink and I fell asleep on the sofa. And we waited.
Mr Fingers in the tree
Bitches
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IV: Queen of the Underworld, What Will Become of Me?