The Brand Ch. 15

Victria awoke that early morning from a sleep her body had ultimately imposed upon her. She threw a few logs on the coals in her hearth, washed her face, and then suited up to replenish her supply of wood. After downing a draft of cold coffee, Victria slung her Remington bolt action onto her shoulder and headed out to the wood pile. A gentle snow fell as she carried armloads to the box she kept by the front door. Victria breathed deeply of the cold air, watched the steam rise from her mouth and listened to the merciful silence of her forest. There, ambition meant nothing, money had no meaning. It was a mere tool as her axe was a tool or her paint brushes. Three loads later, she stopped. She'd heard a snap some distance into her property. Victria looked and saw. There he was again, an enormous black bear. She'd found his claw marks on one of the maples by the river bend. She composted, so she was concerned that he'd be eating from the heap one night as she innocently went out to it to dump more dinner scraps. He was two hundred yards out, scratching at another tree. Compared to the tree, Victria judged that the animal stood at least seven feet and likely weighed four hundred pounds. Victria slowly pulled the Remington from her shoulder. I could bag him from here, she thought, make a nice rug out of his ass. No. That was the old Victria. Yes, but people were like trees, rings of experience, of soul, growth in layers. No. The fire would go for a while. She'd watch him and wait, maybe let him get a meal out of her compost heap. Or, maybe not. It would depend on the bear at that point.

Suddenly a rush of black and yellow past Victria, around her left. Rifle still poised, she lifted her head. What the Hell? The creature ran, yipping. The bear turned its attention, and then dropped to all fours. The dog started barking, closing. God Spanky, you dumb ass dog. Then came a whistle, sweet, shrill and quick. The dog stopped in his tracks, slipped and tumbled in the snow. The bear didn't move. Victria didn't move. Spanky glanced back in her direction. The bear advanced two steps. Victria resettled the butt of the rifle into her shoulder and sighted the bear. Suddenly, she felt beautiful space taken up behind her, steam from the other's mouth mingling with her own breath, the smell of the other's hair perfuming the cold breeze.

"Do you have to shoot it?" Melody asked."

"Maybe not," answered Victria, "If you call your dog to you."

"Spank!" Melody shouted, "Here boy!"

The dog glanced at his mistress, turned to face the bear again, and then uttered three sharp, scolding barks.

The bear started to charge. Spanky danced forward, yipping, growling.

"Shit." Victria hissed, "Step back."

She fired. The shot rang through the woods, its echo radiating across the hills. Spanky stopped mid run, and then buried himself under the snow. The bear reared, shook its head from the stinging pain it felt along the edge of his left ear, and then bounded back into the woods. Victria slung her shot gun back over her shoulder and turned to regard Melody. She was standing, not three feet away, calm, green eyes bright, her soft face framed by her golden brown hair, her black winter coat a long, flowing regal thing obscuring the sight of her body.

"How did you find me?"

"Pam." Answered Melody, "I drove us down here from Concord. I passed by once, but when I turned back and saw that purple, green and gold mailbox sticking out of the snow, I knew this lot was yours. I parked at the bottom of your hill back there. I guess you didn't hear."

"I didn't." Victria said coolly, "So, why are you here?"

Melody stared without answering for a moment. Spanky rushed back to her, spun thrice around Victria's legs, jumped up once onto her knees and then heeled beside his mistress.

"I was hoping," she said, "you could fill the gaps in my understanding. Can we sit, and talk?"

Victria looked soberly toward the cabin. She had some reservation, some concern, but, ultimately, each was overwhelmed, rendered mute by the rapid beating of her heart. Victria gathered another load of wood, made for the cabin and Melody followed. Once inside, Victria's guest studied the cabin's interior. It was clean, quaint, simple and very homey with wide hand wrought chairs and broad cushions, which Spanky had immediately settled himself upon. There was the hearth, a fire blazing within, handsome in its stone work, a wealth of objects and artifacts upon its mantle. Melody stared at Victria's reliquary in mute disbelief as her face deeply flushed. Bordered by a variety of objects, stones, sculptures, bound sprigs of rosemary and other herbs, was centered a picture frame in which was housed Victria's pencil rendering of Melody laying naked, in rear view, on the bedroom rug, her wrists manacled to the bed frame. Centered on the stone wall above that, in a simple steel, brown enameled two by three foot frame, Victria had blown up and mounted one of the outdoor photographs, in which she had painted Melody's nude body to blend in with the background, tree bark, ground cover, leaves and open sky, posed her, and then recorded the moment for as long as eyes could see. As Melody reflected on the piece, with the same sense of wonder and pride that she'd felt the first time that year ago she'd first viewed the finished product, she realized the Francesca Woodman quality of the image: the ghost of a woman, blending in and out of the world, out of time. A sudden rush of goose bumps, pleasantly enough, chilled her beneath her warm coat. Then, the chill lingered as her eyes came upon the two dolls stood at either end of the mantle. Melody reached for the one that she understood to be hers.

"That's one of the things I do now." Victria Intoned as she leaned her rifle against the wall and kicked her boots into a corner by the door, "I meet people in town, learn about them, listen to what they have to say about themselves, and then make the doll that I think they need. When I go to give them away, some take them, maybe they keep them, maybe they throw them away and others just say no thanks, I'll pass. Because you know, I'm the new crazy recluse here in Bristol."

Melody studied the doll in her hand.

"How about you?" Victria Asked as she prepared a fresh pot of coffee, "What have you been up to?"

Melody set the doll back on the mantle, regarded the other figure, furrowed her brow and proceeded to study it too.

"I've been going to school," she said, "Over at UNH, to become a BCBA."

"Ooh, a four letter acronym. What does it stand for?"

Melody smiled slightly, regarding the living version of the doll in her hand.

"Board certified behavior analyst." She said, "I want to help people help children with autism."

Victria studied her from the kitchen.

"That's great." She said.

Their eyes locked, they searched, sustaining, until Victria looked away first.

"Tell me." Asked Melody as she took a seat beside Spanky, "I don't remember anything between last Christmas and, well, that day at Leanne's grave."

"Really?" Victria exclaimed, "None of it?"

Melody gestured to the dog that had just climbed upon her lap.

"Victria, I'd never seen this dog until that man dropped him off on my door step. Was he a gift, from you? I mean, I love him. He's just the greatest dog."

Victria stared.

"No." she said finally, "He, actually, adopted you."

Melody's serene expression gave way to distress and puzzlement. Victria's own eyes saddened. She slowly advanced into the room, and then settled into the opposite chair. Gradually, Victria unraveled the tale Melody had come to hear, adding more detail when she asked for it, answering what questions she could and faulting the supernatural when she had no other answer to give. When Victria could relate or explain no more, the two remained silent for a long while. In that time, Victria studied Melody as Melody studied the fire.

"Education," Melody intoned, "is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten."

Victria recalled the quote from one of the books Glory had loaned her. They were the words of the behavioral psychologist, B. F. Skinner. She followed Melody's gaze into the fire as her mind probed more deeply into its self and as her heart began to pound anew. He also said, she thought: "The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again."

"Does that mean," Inquired Victria suddenly, "you won't be back?"

Melody raised her gaze once more to look upon Victria's shrine."

"When I think back to what we were," she said, "I remember us as two empty people, and I succumbed totally to you and you to me. I fell in love with my captivity as much as I fell in love with you. Now, you have changed. I have changed."

Melody, her green eyes shining, turned to regard Victria.

"Do I think of you?" she continued, "Yes, always. When I am alone, it is your ghost that haunts my fantasies. It is your name I whisper in the night. It is you that rules my secret heart. But, the person I am now, I can ask to take that doll away with me, never to return, because I believe that the you that you've become would not stop me. And therein lies my dilemma."

Quietly, still holding Victria in her gaze, Melody began to weep, and said:

"I love you both, the wicked queen you were and the repentant soul you are now. ."

In the settling silence, Victria drew in a few prolonged breaths. Presently, she rose from her seat, gathered a few logs, and then heaped them upon the fire. Rising again, she stepped back toward the kitchen, beyond which was the room where she slept. Stopping, she turned, regarded Melody, and then held out her hand. Beyond the fire light, Victria was clad in shadow. Melody stared, and wept, and wondered which had made her so blind: her love, or her faith.

9

Epilogue

In a world that had advanced one step forward as it slipped two steps back, acknowledging the sanctity of all people's love while others continued to murder for the sake of philosophical expression, Victria's and Melody's union ceremony couldn't have been any more lovely in its uncommon, reverently profane, distinction. They were alone. Even Spanky would not be allowed, he having been taken by Glory and Grandmother for the night. A public ceremony would occur later. It was what Melody wanted, with all its festive trappings, legal consequences and subsequent advantages.

It was three years after the morning Melody had found Victria at her cabin, And after Melody graduated from school and secured a position in a Groton based specialized education services contracting firm, that the ceremony took place on the Eve of the anniversary of their first meeting, that bright, fateful, September day. Together, they cleared an area behind the cabin, arranged a wide circle of stones, and then forged an enormous fire. Victria had taken out the permit, had called the Bristol fire marshal out to assess the safety of what they'd contrived. Satisfied, he'd left them, stating that he'd stop by their two distant neighbors and let them know.

Together, Victria and Melody had constructed a six by six foot frame of four by fours, its base made of a narrow yet sturdy platform of three lengths of four by eights. Eye rings and thick chains had been affixed in the crooks of its four corners. Just below midway, affixed to the four by eight beam that ran down the frame's back center, was a wide belt of leather. Heating up in the fire were two irons. There would be no collaring during the ceremony.

Victria agreed to go first. In the silence of that night, they undressed together, hands over hands, skin against skin, mouths celebrating one to the other's divinity. Victria was led to the frame. Melody secured her love's wrists, her waist, and then her ankles. . Presently, she walked back to the fire. Victria looked up into the canopy of trees. Scrutinizing, she saw the fire's flames reflected in the eyes of their only witnesses, a murder of thirty or more crows, gathered along the limbs, silent, reverent, huddled shoulder to shoulder.

Melody checked the irons. The second was not yet white hot. The first, was. She withdrew it from the fire, brought it to Victria, and kissed her deeply one last time before pushing the end of the iron against Victria's outer right thigh. Melody was instructed to keep the end of the iron set for five seconds. Only then, no matter how in pain Victria seemed, she was not to let go. Then, as instructed, Melody pulled the brand away, smelled the scent of her lover's burned flesh in the air and watched the smoke rise from her wound. She then quickly returned the iron to the fire, released Victria from her bonds and carried her from the frame.

As the stars crossed the night sky, Melody found herself living a fantasy. She too, was secured. She too had given up all control, not resigned, but willfully given herself up, certain beyond certain, that she would receive her lover's brand. And so, she too felt the scorching sting of her flesh searing, and screamed in love and pain until the iron was mercifully pulled away. Later, after the healing, after their libation, in the dim light of the cabin, they caressed one another's brand, as they made love: Victria, with a seared M under Melody's gentle fingers, and Melody, the V, burned into her left thigh, still hot under Victria's loving touch.

10

"Mommy V?"

"Yes sweetie?"

It was seven years later. Melody was out, winning bread. Victria was home, having picked up their daughter from school. The substance of her fertility had been donated by an anonymous source in Rhode Island and it was Melody that had carried their child to term. She'd delivered naturally, Victria having observed and decreed that she would sooner take another brand.

"Why do I have two mommies?"

Victria and Madeline were in the studio, what was otherwise a sun room that Victria, Uncle Vance and Auntie Glory had built onto the existing cabin.

"Because mommy M and I love each other very much," Victria answered, "so much that we wanted to have someone else to love, which is you."

"Oh." The child intoned.

Madeline was laying on the floor, by one of the room's large windows, trying her hand at chalk pastels. She was a pretty girl, her hair, bright as sunshine, her complexion a soft bronze, and her eyes two deep hazel pools.

"Mommy V?"

Seated at her drafting table, Victria was also toying with the pastels, rendering her daughter with the same proficiency she rendered any other subject.

"Yes Madeline"

"Are you, the daddy mommy, my daddy mommy?"

Victria looked up at Madeline and stared, deliberating. Madeline sensed the pause, raised her head and returned the stare.

"That would be me, yes Maddie." Victria finally answered, "Do you ask because you think you should have a man daddy instead?"

Victria never minced words and she wouldn't start, just because Maddie was a child. The time was as good as any. The sooner, the better. Because, for one reason or another, Maddie would need to be brave. Maddie would need to be honest and Maddie would need to decide, to find comfort or to reject it for another idea.

"I think," Maddie said, her chalk dusted knuckles propping up her chin, "I think you make a pretty good daddy for another mommy."

"Oh, well, that's good."

Victria returned to her work, stealing happy glances at Maddie.

"I love you mommy V."

"I love you too Maddie Charpentier." Victria answered, "I love you too."