Tales Before Slumber Podcast Bedtime Stories for Grownups

Darya watched the water for days. It was a game her governess taught her when she was large enough to cause a fuss. If she focused and unfocused her eyes time blurs at the edges no longer sharp enough to catch, time can slide by unnoticed. It had been the only useful thing the governess taught her. Every other lesson left them both red-faced and in a match of wills. Two tigers circling and nipping like the illustrations in her father’s books. The lesson, like most things Darya counted as learned and wise was not a lesson but a discovery. A brilliance that kept her from handing her precious mind and will over to long hours of languages she did not wish to speak and dances she had no intention of following. Still, the woman gave so much effort towards bettering her it was only right to credit her with something. Now that governess was years and a continent behind. Now there was an entire ocean in front and behind her. Now she was being tossed in the air again and this time it hardly bothered her. America. A place full of wild and untamed. There was the matter of the boarding school her uncle was taking her to. She might run off. There was even a circus where a woman performed tricks with a gun. Darya would love to do that. She found her father’s gun once. It might have been the only time he spoken with her. Though it was not so much to her as about her and not so much talking as yelling. She did not notice when he left. She sat still on the bench facing a circle window imagining a different more varied life. Something that could live up to the excitement others had when they heard of her unconventional upbringing. There were so many places. An estate in the country gave way to a townhouse in the city that blurred into an appointment so far it required a ship, trains, horses, and even much to her delight an elephant. There were even schools. Schools that admitted her thanks to her parent’s money and her uncle’s position. The other girls would clamor to her side to hear her romantic tales that shifted and glinted in new ways every time she told them. Parents dead of plagues or bangle tigers. A local village had adopted her as one of their own teaching her medicines, language, and dances that not even the most liberal dancing instructor could have dreamed. Her father who was caught stealing from the government wandered into a jungle never to return. Her mother dead from starvation, a brain fever, or even a murder plot. No one ever believes each facet combined made up the truth. Her uncle was her only family left, and he was never amused when her antics interrupted his voyages. She was with a disinterested governess her uncle hired on the continent heading towards the New World. A new place to be left until she dreams up a spectacular stunt to escape. The circus, a girl gunslinger, the Wild West, all of it so possible if she just put her feet on land. America the land of outlaws and adventure. A country she could form herself. The box was where she found it that morning. Taking its’ space in her goldfish Moby’s bowl. Darya had yet to investigate, hoping to draw the mystery far out to eat the hours of boredom with possibility. An entire hour of waves felt as though her patience was proved and her ability to resist was laudable. She plunged her fingers in to pull out a perfect replica of a pirate’s chest. It rested in the palm of her hand. The lock was ornate and each piece of wood carved and fastened. It took a sewing needle to pry the latch. A ring sized to her pinky finger. A pearl glowed set with a silver octopus tentacles that made the prongs. The new governess had the skill of stillness. Something Darya did not note until the moment she swung her door open. It was almost a vignette. An automaton waiting for a gear to turn. In the later years of her life Darya would wonder if she had heard the clicks of machinery. Darya showed her governess the ring. The governess sucked the air threw her teeth. “Best to throw that...

Bridget & Mary The twins had always been close. From the time cells divided they clung to each other and nothing would part them. They slept in one cradle, ate from one plate, and if punished they would sit facing the wall leaning head to shoulder no matter who had been the wrong doer. They had siblings. Ones who looked more or less like the girls. They would play alongside the younger ones and would give the elders a wary reverence especially after one of the boys took to braiding their hair together at night blaming the house pixies. The brothers and sisters knew they were apart from the girls. For one glaring difference, the twins had never spoken. Aside from a few hurried words from a doctor who took the families weekly meat rations nothing was said about it. The girls were without physical fault and a silent girl was not such a bad thing, was it? The doctor patted their mother’s hand with that statement. The mother had never liked the doctor before and her opinion did not improve. There was nothing to be done but to wait and see. The twins played and tumbled but no sound came from them. As with quiet things they were loved but easily overlooked. The siblings accepted the girls in the way one loves a family bible. Distantly in fact and distractedly in practice. They were not the poorest family in the village. Most of the children had not the first inclination that were without. A careful eye when visiting neighbors would show their home short on little luxuries. The wealthy neighbors closer to the town even had indoor bathing. This seemed a shame to the eldest girl of the family was in service to the big house. To lock the family's children away in a room to clean was such a waste. Her family with the exceptions of the twins bathed in the river behind the cottage. Unlike the wealthy children who howled like death had come for them, the girl’s family was never in need of cajoling or threats to bathe. In fact they raced to the water with cloth and hair streaming from them. Hip deep of clear melted snow to be splashed, to swim, and frolic was a far more entertaining way to clean oneself. The lore of the town was the clear waters brought clear thoughts and luminescent skin of the fair ones who held their castles in the high mountains. Their snow, when melted gifted those mortals who gave their gifts on new moons and said their names to brights stars. The twins were not immune to the charms of the river. They got dirty enough to need a good scrubbing. They did not bathe with their siblings. They did not even bathe with their mother who would go at the height of the moon to clean herself in the river with a single white candle. As with many families there were things a stranger would ask, but a family would accept without question. The twins did not bathe with others. They were never invited and never were asked. They would wax and wane in dirt and cleanliness. Yet another mystery in a house full of curiosities and rampaging children. When the girls decided it was time to clean their skins, they would separate from the rest. Searching behind themselves listening for cracks of twigs and feeling for the eyes of others, they would descend into the brush to the banks of the river. The twins would shrug off their skins, place them on the rock and dive in. They would float hands intertwined to keep the other from drifting far. The girls were always careful and their mother only caught them the once. They discussed it in the quiet hours of the morning when they lived across the world, when they had at last discovered their voices. Neither could figure how their mother had managed to appear in their clearing without a snap of a twig or setting off one of the many traps they had made using twine from their mother’s herb kit. On that particular day when the air changed and their hightened otter senses felt a new presence, they scrambled from the water and ducked behind the largest of the rocks and trees. The twins would usually...

Chapter 1 To be Eaten by Wolves Under a Riot of Stars There are two trees. It would be helpful if the trees in question did not look like every other perfectly normal non ceremonial tree in a vast forest, but that would have been playing fair and this forest is not and never has been playing. Lady Constantine takes a blade from her skirts drawing it across her left palm. A branch reaches out for her hand. To a less careful eye they could be old friends reunited. Two headstones rise one on either side of her skirts. She does not look at them or read their epitaphs. It is not their custom. She has broken tradition once and regretted it. Never again. Her new name will be obvious as soon as her sister sees her and her old one is worn thin. She removes her clothing. Each piece shed and discarded with only a soft echo of stars to observe. Her clothing drifts, shrouding the headstones. Her sister is waiting, as said the note from the hawk. Agitation where there should be calm sensible word. Adjectives where there should be clarity. Sentiment where instructions should be clear. Turns of phrase that could only be clarified with a visit. The blood debt was paid now she had entrance. Entrance, but not safe passage. To be eaten by wolves under an infinite sky of stars. If only she did not have to make this foolish journey into a woods that pricked at her fingertips and bled her feet. If it were possible to avert this journey Lady Constantine would lay down under an anarchy of stars and call the wolves herself. Meeting with her sister left a dread and a metallic distaste in her mouth, though that might be the penny she lay under her tongue. No matter what she wished, the box exists and her sister holds it close and closed. Nothing was in the box, if an unfathomable void was nothing. The deals we make in the end often echo what we promise and swear we would never do. At the beginnings we make very different promises. Ask for useless things and swear sillier oaths. Babes in the woods succulent, silly, and meandering in bright clothing. Shining eyes and babbling feelings. Ignorant to what they, what we, what I will do gladly before they arrive at the cottage in the woods. The Manor was many things since it appeared and presently is a boarding school for young ladies of certain abilities. Stones built themselves around a story of a box holding the void. As the manor grew into itself so did a forest and a lake hospitable to creatures who were best left behind in the margins of myths and fantasies. The woods made a modest cottage where the girl with the box preferred to reside with her two geese and a pet rabbit. The cottage far from the boarding school should not have felt the magic that preserved the structures out of time and out of place, aging, unravelling, and yellowing at the edges. Even the professors who were with her the longest remained ignorant of the boundaries and horizons of the estate. Something changed when the last parcel of books was purchased at auction by one of her less respectable sources. As she read the auction catalogue, black stars glittered in her eyes. When she arranged the call her tea turned colorless, then the cream and steam yellowed into a painting of midnight horrors. Now, now the next group of girls were expected and there were things that refused to remain buried. When the school term ended the girls who were brave enough, clever enough to solve the labyrinth ended up here at her sister’s cottage to face the ultimate test of their fortitude. The final test. The newly graduated students drank their tea and were given their book. The one that matched the shade of their skin. The book that each chapter began with a drawing of the ring they wore. The one that told their story from beginning to end. Occasionally, if the young woman was a favorite, of value, or if it was an extraordinary occasion when there was nothing better to do Lady Constantine joined these unusual book readings. If merely to...

Prologue Yellow. Unrepentant gold. A body in excess. In a fever. A book, bound in leather. It aches to be touched. Shimmying in its’ bindings. Pages shift and ruffle as if a breeze woken. A scent, supple, sticky, a sweetness of the dead. There is rot to it. A smell that draws you in while it repels. It wants you to come nearer while you fight to run. You will be all the tastier for it. If you were only brave enough you would lift the cover. What kind of leather is that you might muse. What animal could produce that transparency, that sort of sheen. Is it sweating? Moist while your throat is dry. What animal? With a revulsion you already know the answer. Could it be worth it? The weeks pouring over auction ledgers. The favors called in and begged for. To find it here. In a crowded room with a man speaking rapid fire. Pride in the chest with your bid being the highest. The order will crow. You will be the one to bring the book home. Place it on the table after having read all that would be denied to you later. A small smile you had practiced in the mirror. The one that would show your worth while your words chocked back all of what you had done with “nothings” and “all for yous”. The words that denounce your effort spoken with clarity of knowing none will believe you, and value your humility all the more. “Going once, going twice.” A bubble of disgust in your throat. The cover began to, relax. There was no other word. First when turned it was upright all crisp clean edges but now it droops at the corners. You became distracted. “Ah another bidder “ Could your slip of attention, intention have caused this calamity. You are silent struck dumb. The book straightens and preens towards the light. A slight shuffle no one would have caught it but that small shift captures you and you forget to bid. Not forget so much as loose yourself looking for pores, stray hairs, believing to have seen a face in the swirls and texture of the front cover. It is gone. Failure and humiliation grip deep in the empty claw of your chest. You replay the moment a thousand times in a second. Each time rewriting your failure or finding the fault with another. A way to explain beyond your own bumbling. It is only when you get back to the hotel that you can begin to breath. Breathe and pace. There is a note waiting for you, not at the lobby but neatly on your pillow, folded into the shape of a rabbit. Come to Lady Constantine’s Finishing and Reform School for Encouragable Young Ladies. We will gladly feed your need for knowledge. Miss Hypatia, our librarian will see you right. Bring the order. We eagerly await your presence. Yours in faith, Lady Constantine