LUNATIC

Words by Alessia Lelli

I rise at dawn to drown my figure in white fabrics, or as close a colour I can get. I haven’t washed my clothes in weeks, what with the raised brows and shared looks of apprehension at the wash-house. Instead I carry lavender in my pockets to craft a sweet smell. I plucked it from that old widower’s home, fusing it with my own garlic to expel unwanted energies. I believe burning herbs would cause further suspicion, so I pulverise and coalesce and boil and keep my concoctions discreet. I undercook my sweets out of fear that the scent of singed apples would galvanise the superstitious.

‘What superstitious folk?’ I hear our voice. ‘The commoners who saw you meandering through the muck at the witching hour?’

So, I did walk through that mire? The one with all the trolls— the wet moss sunken in then pushed out with their sleeping breaths; deep belches that spit up toads and fish. They sit in soil like grime in teeth. That beautiful green and gentle mud.

‘They said your eyes were moonlight white, and you muttered maledictions. Your robes were disgraced today too…’

I felt at the flounce of my dress, damp at my fingers and blackened with barely rinsed muck. I suppose I wandered a little last night… must they see me when my behaviour is most questionable?

‘Aren’t I as modest as the next good woman?’ I ask aloud. Aren’t my manners so proper that my peculiarity is erased? Look into my sweet brown eyes… aren’t I so conventional? I have that seeming innocence that any man would love to ensnare and tear into ribbons. And I feel those snakes slithering behind me as I trek back to my overgrown hovel. Diamond eyes with a dozen views, all of them me, distorted, demonic— of course I seem peculiar when inspected through sparkling fog, my name whispered on their hungry serpent tongues. I know my hate manifests as sweeping rashes along my skin. I know they want to see it burn. That bloody backlash. The screaming, spectacled woman paraded through the street, the torch fire spitting on me too. And so what if my magic is not like theirs? They have their God and I have mine. They feast on their roasted green gardens, and I bite straight into that fresh mare—

But I am still good. I have done very few indecent things.

‘Like the spinster on the old road? So profane… was she?’

I feel my heart lurch. ‘Directing suspicion to deter suspicion. I did nothing wrong.’

And keep it down, you thoughts. The peeking neighbours will be my doom. I bite further down. Has self-proclaimed innocence ever beaten a rope or a flame? Something malleable that moves taut, or that frays with fire. And the water is so salty I may very well float. She believes— I believe— that proof cannot be made in death. So what if they chase me? I shouldn’t be expected to give up the night. I am nocturnal. They think the moonlight makes me ill, pulling the tides and pulling the swamp to me. Why else would a woman be where the bad men like to loiter? But it is not a man that I look for. I dance with someone much greater.