Serial Saturday: Where the Yellow Rose Blooms by Sarah Townend, Chapter Two

Chapter Two: Marmos

The journey isn’t far, just steep and rocky underfoot. Mother and I venture slowly up the mountain to where the village’s prophet resides. 

Marmos’s place is desolate and demarcated by a semi-circle of pampas grass brush and weathered stone pillars. Each pillar is etched with incomprehensible rune arrangements and topped with a lit fire staff. I’ve never been here before, but Mother has, before she met Father.

A low chant rises and falls on air currents as we move closer to the building. Mother complains about volume, plugs her curled fingers in her ears, but to me, the music’s barely detectable. 

The front door’s wide open. Mother tells me I must go in first, must present the offerings to Marmos, will probably be taken deeper into the building without her. She follows me through a tunnel roofed with billowing silk scarves. The air is rich with incense, a floral kind. Heady. We enter a small room, warm and lit only around its edges with flickering tallow wax candles in shades of crimson and gold.

Marmos sits humming, cross-legged, buckled forwards on a red velvet rug, his head hung. He wears a kilt of linen, the rest of his large body otherwise unclothed. There’s something chelonian about this ancient man. His skin’s the most leathered I’ve ever seen. A carapace covers his shoulders and back.

He appears to be lost in thought, maybe searching for his soul in his upturned hands. A misplaced step lands my foot on something crunchy. He stops humming, glances up.

Unable to hold his gaze, I look down at my own hands, in them clutched my sack of loosenings, the bag much lighter than it should be. My heart clacks fast. I worry. Will he notice? 

He draws me in closer with one slow arm movement. No hellos, no introductions. A wild sound bursts from his mouth, a noise that forces some of the darkness of the room into a hard ball that lodges in my stomach. “It’s time,” he says. I’m unsure if this is a question or a statement but all I want to say is, no, I am not ready, it is not time before grabbing Mother’s hand and running for the exit.

Marmos grins, exposing grey, toothless gums. The sight takes my breath like the driest wine. He stands and snatches the bag from my hands and coerces me into a side room. Mother trails behind. “Wait here,” he instructs her. 

Mother’s eyes are as empty as death, twin white pearls revealing nothing. Does she not care? Can’t she come with me? I run my hands down the sides of my arms in an act of self-comfort to find no quills, no thorns. I am, I realise, for the first time truly no longer a child. 

A fire crackles in the hearth. Sweat beads collect on the nape of my neck. Here must be the heart of the house, if such a house has any heart at all. Suspended over the fire, a copper pot on a hook rocks, squeaks, as Marmos tips the contents of my bag into it, then stirs the contents with a ladle. 

As the dropped protrusions that mark my youth tumble out, in my head, I regress. I recall my own entrance into the world, green placenta vine coiled dangerously around my neck, cut free by the doula, I hear my newborn scream. 

“Your offering is short.” His deep voice echoes like a clap in a cave. Once empty, he tosses the bag on the floor and stares at me, the only sign of lightness in his eyes, the reflection of licking flames.

“I’m sorry.” My voice quivers. “Some may’ve been lost.” 

Marmos growls. “Bring the rest when it is found.” 

He lifts the kettle from its suspension, tips its bubbling contents into a bowl. Offcuts of me thicken the liquid.  

 “Sit.” I sit. “Expose your spine, the skin of your back. Curl into a ball.” I untie the fastenings at the back of my smock, push my sleeves down, and huddle over on the sticky stone floor.

He gulps down the potion then looms over me. I press my cheek flat on the ground. The hard skin on his legs ripples. Dark brown, grey, then youthful shades: orange, pink. Then, like the mysterious near-telling of the ocean earlier, unobtainable images flash, twirl in and out of focus on his transmogrifying flesh. The shifting patterns on his skin slow. I focus on his ankle, his calf. There, I see, I feel, childhood memories. 

Mother holds me, a tight bundle, in her arms, her eyes bright and clear. She smiles at my father. He is humming for her, first and last time I ever hear Father sing. Mother inspects my thighs, counts the four nubs where my thorn tips will break through when I am off the breast, searches for a fifth. Her smile drops. 

With his palms inches from my spine, Marmos pushes and pulls air, yanks invisible strings. My organs distort. I dry heave as Marmos stretches and melds my liver and lungs into new positions, all without contact, like I’m a ragdoll.

He babbles in celestial tongue the patternations on my arms and back which suggest my future while I see my history flash by in his. A curl of vomit pulses up into my mouth.

Warm currents snake up my spine as Marmos weaves the void above me. This touchless violation hurts, yet it is not a sentient pain. This can’t be the pain that leads to bliss. I have not felt an ounce of pleasure, and no man has laid a hand on me.

Marmos growls and steps away. Relief. Distance between us. “Your offering was very short.” His words cut like razors. “Stand. Dress.”

My fingers fumble as I re-tie the ribbons that held my dress closed. 

*

Steam from the remnants of the broiling potion fills the room. Candlelight dusts the steam, makes kingdoms of glowing cloud, and Marmos steps through it towards me. He stretches out his arms, becomes the shape of a lightning-struck tree, as his joints and bones crack with indecision. I cower. Even though I’m now clothed, he sees through me, into me.

Marmos’s chest of leathered skin swirls with vivid, warmer sunset shades of youth. His eyes roll back, another guttural growl, one that scares the clouds of mist away. 

The surface of my flesh ripples, sharing information with Marmos, but I can’t translate the messages my body reveals. I stare, afraid and amazed, as Marmos’s skin patterns dance, shifting in time with mine, in response.

There it is, the face.

On Marmos’s chest, an undulating image. The face of my betrothed. The man I’ll be hand-fasted to before the next new moon. The vision is like a whip to my throat. Deep-set eyes, teeth like weathered gravestones. A large nose, askew—has it been broken in several places? A silvered scar stretches from his ear to his neck. Much older than I and with nothing familiar about it, I know this is the face of my betrothed, even though I’ve never seen him before. 

The mirage slips, glitches. His eyes narrow, and a grin too big for his jaw cuts into his mandible. A cruel face.

I stagger, tripping over my own skirt as I move, and fall backwards. Marmos collapses into a heap, the colour fading from him fast, his old, hard skin returning. I get up and run out of the room, find Mother, and leave.