Caliban in the Fine Dark Woods | Emma Rose Darcy
Caliban in the Fine Dark Woods by Emma Rose Darcy was the First Place Winner of the 2024 Murrumbidgee Short Story Competition in the Open Category.
Alexander Fairchild received his invitation to the New Years Ball at the Collodi Manor with barely enough time to responde sil vous plait. It left no time to think, to consider the strangeness of the host, and to weigh it against the unlikelihood of his choice as guest. Fairchild was new in town, and although he was a handsome bachelor with rising social standing, he was so far down the ladder that the piece of paper in his hand had to be a mistake. It had to be.
And yet. It was so tempting to say yes.
The Collodi Manor was the dark mystery that held itself aloof on the windswept moors beyond the walls of the city, but were their fates and their fashions not as intertwined now as they were when the old Signore was alive? The current Lord may have kept the place locked tight, but it seemed he had a man for everything. A man still has needs, if he wishes to continue to eat, to make money, have clothes upon his back.
And so although no one had laid eyes on Signore Collodi, as such, he had accounts everywhere. He bought fabric. He had hounds. For the ball, it was said he had first choice of meat from the butcher, although he did not partake of flesh himself.
The key to infiltrating any mysterious house was through its washerwomen. There are things no household can do without and all houses, high and low, must wash sooner or later. Collodi was no different. With only a small amount of asking around Fairchild found the women Collodi employed to wash his clothes and linens, but no financial inducement could be made to get them to talk. The master had his reasons, they shook their handkerchiefed heads, and avoided his eyes. There had been no mistake.
And yet. Fairchild felt as if there was a mark on his back. There was muttering wherever he went. It seemed the news of his invitation preceded him wherever he went. He was at once shunned and yet drawn into circles he could only have dreamed of before. They wanted to judge him in person, let him feel the weight of their disappointment. Everyone wanted to see the invitation, written in the magnificent calligraphy. It was almost stolen, twice.
“I have been waiting to see inside that grand house since I was a child,” The Judge sighed wistful, over lunch. “I cannot understand how it is that you have been chosen. The Signore always chose children you know, for the Christmas Ball. When he died, and the Manor was closed, we always assumed that was the end of it. Who even knew there was a son?”
“Well.” The Chief of Police scoffed, his bread roll sopping soup up to his knuckles, “He says he is the Signore's son, but can he prove it?”
Uncomfortable in a new suit of clothes made specially for the ball, Fairchild allowed himself to be delivered to the Collodi Manor on the Eve of the New Year. It struck him that there were no other carriages to be seen moving in any direction outside of the city walls, and his own left immediately once he alighted. He felt abandoned. The gate was already closed. Where were the other guests?
“Mr Fairchild.”
Fairchild turned to see a man around his own age, if not handsome then striking, standing by the grand doors. He was stern, with very severe posture, but his face had a look that suggested its natural configuration was more gentle. Perhaps even playful. He was fighting his true disposition, Fairchild thought, with every fibre of his being to appear intimidating. Contradictions abound, while his features were fine, if not necessarily pleasing, his nose was short and brutish. Perhaps it had even been broken, and healed wrong, and yet it was the best thing about him.
“Signore Collodi?”
“Thank you for arriving on time, I have much to show you tonight.”
“Is it,” Fairchild gave an embarrassed laughed, “Is it just me?”
“It is, sir.”
“May I ask why?”
“I wish it.” Collodi's tone brooked no argument.
“Then, how can I argue?”
Fairchild followed Collodi into the Manor with baited breath. It was a beautiful old house, and he
could see why so many of the grand old folk of the city had wished their entire lives to see inside. He wished he could have come during the day to have had more benefit of the gardens and paths outside, but for that night inside was enough. More than enough. Honeyed light, velvet drapes, the stone floor beneath his feet. It was all too soft, too dewey, at once too vibrant and glistening.
As Collodi lead him through rooms warm and redolent of brandy and nuts and ginger and his nose felt dizzy. His ears were seduced by a quartet playing music that teased and delighted. It was maddening, he felt he had heard this music before but could not think of where. The more he chased the memory the more elusive it was. When he mentioned it to Collodi, the other man was obviously pleased, but did not answer.
There were other guests, but they weren't anyone Fairchild knew from his limited forays into society. He hadn't seen them in any of the smoking rooms, dance halls, luncheons or meeting rooms. He doubted any of these people existed in real life, they were the stuff of dreams. They were those who lived in fantasy. They must be fae. Elves. Secret, beguiling, sensual folk. All ages, from children to nymphs to the elderly. Both genders. They watched him move among them with eyes full of merriment, yes, but also something hungry. Perhaps this was Collodi's secret, why he avoided the City. How could the mundane ever hold his attention if this was the company he was accustomed to?
Dinner was an exquisite affair, one dish after another, each so delicate and complex poor Fairchild was lost. The plates swam and blended before him, a fragrant and toothsome hypnosis. The music played on. His wine glass was always full.
He had no hope of keeping up with the laughter and conversation around him. It sounded at times like the buzzing of bees, the nattering of birds. On occasion one beautiful face or another would turn to him and ask him some question or another and he wouldn't know how to answer. It would be so different to the usual questions he was asked. At social gatherings people always asked about his health, or business. He had never been asked what colour the sky was when he woke in the morning. Or what his earliest memory was. What he dreamed of the night before. What flowers grew outside his house.
Particularly bewitching, at his elbow, was a creature who between each course would brush the side of her hand against his, or flutter her eyelashes at him out of the corner of her eye and smile as she listened to him murmur in her ear.
“What do I call you?”
“Floria,” she replied. She did not ask his name.
Across the table from him, he watched a gentleman not much older than himself mistake the small vase of flowers for his drink, and when the flowers fell on his plate and fell among the spare parts of his meal he ate them too and never seemed to notice the difference. When Fairchild tried to attract his notice to alarm him, he only smiled politely and went back to eating.
At the head of the table, Collodi nursed a glass and tapped his fork against his plate. He seemed impatient and barely ate, if at all. Whenever Fairchild met his eye, he smiled. It was a peculiar thing, because it was this that made him handsome, and human, and allowed Fairchild to relax again.
After dinner there was dancing. Fairchild had always been proud of his abilities but it seemed in this arena he was out of his depth. He did not know a single step, and floundered among these luminous strangers. They tittered behind pale hands, but they were patient and eager to teach him. Nevertheless it was after only a few turns that he eagerly took a seat on a bench and rested.
He saw a girlchild snatch a glass of champagne from the hand of an elegant doyenne, and rushed to intercede. From almost twice her height, he took the glass and struggled to conceal his smile at her shriek.
“I think this may be too strong a drink for you.” He said, and returned the glass to the dame.
The girl scowled at him, “I am older than her.”
He watched them walk away from him in conversation, his intrusion already forgotten, and could not make sense of it.
Always, Collodi watched him, enigmatic but stopping short of openly hostile. Fairchild felt that there was something his host wanted of him, that he had not yet provided. He did not know
what it was.
“Signore, have I done something to offend you?”
“No.”
“Is there something you wish for me to do for you? Some business function I may perform in the city?”
“None.”
Fairchild nodded, pretending to be deep in thought for the most part because at this point he was quite drunk. He wanted only to know why he was there, and was not artful enough to dissimulate. “Why did you invite me tonight?”
“All in good time.”
The dancing stopped all at once, with no sign that Fairchild noticed, to count down the New Year. There arose an enormous cheer. Fairchild had a drink in his hand. He looked around for Floria, because he fancied he might kiss her. But everyone had fallen silent. Everyone had become very still. They were frozen in place as if they had been enchanted.
Everyone but himself, and Signore Collodi.
Fairchild moved between the bodies of those who only moments ago he had been laughing with, dancing. They had been lively then, spirited. Now, he saw that they were wooden. He could see the grain in the wood under their make up. When he lifted their hands to the light, he could see the extraordinarily fine grooves in the joints. They were puppets.
“Marionettes.” Collodi said, from behind him. “All of them.”
“You made them, Signore?”
“They are my life's work.” There was something in his tone, some secret grief, that Fairchild could not understand. It sounded too bitter for something he had devoted a lifetime to.
“You are a true master.” Fairchild tried to find the right words to convey his awe. “I am only a layman, I have no craft, but they are beautiful. Truly. From the moment I arrived tonight I was struck, I could not believe that I was among regular people. I thought your guests must be fair folk.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Collodi recoiled as if he had been struck.
“You asked me why I brought you here tonight.”
“Signore?”
“You wanted to know why you're here. I wanted... My father- No. The Signore. His family were potters by trade but after me he came here and took up carpentry. He would bring children from the town, it was only a town then, and show them the toys he had made just before Christmas. It was clever, they would know what to look for in the stores, you see. But it was always a wonderful party. After he died, and it was just me, I wanted to see if I could do it too. Create something so lifelike I could fool someone into thinking my work was real. A living person. As you can see the work has consumed me. That is why you are here tonight. But I have failed. You were not fooled. I don't have it in me, the spark.”
“I was fooled, I did think they were alive.”
“You said it yourself, you never thought for a moment they were human.”
“I have nothing to compare it to,” Fairchild insisted, “I have never seen your father's work.”
Collodi laughed, gave his strange secret smile. “No? You don't think so? I have failed, Mr Fairchild. But this was a wonderful party nonetheless, thank you. Take one, please. Whichever you like. To remember.”
“Floria?” Fairchild asked.
“The Flower Girl?” Collodi dismissed him with an irritated wave, already turning away. “Yes, yes, whichever you wish. Your carriage is already here waiting for you. You can go when you're ready. I won't see you again. Go.”
Fairchild took Floria, carrying her in his arms like a new bride, through the manor. Now dark, now quiet as a tomb. Bereft of music and light, full of bodies as still as statues, Fairchild shivered to think of Collodi alone in such a place. Already of such a strange temperament, what could happen to him now?
At home, Floria was an eerie, corpse like statuette which only served to depress Fairchild further, until a curious happenstance revived them both. A window he usually kept closed because it
faced directly out onto the street was open because the maid had spilled something cleaning and the noxious chemical smell was still airing. A flower cart parked outside was a welcome spray of colour, and from where he had posed her, Floria came slowly but surely to life.
“Tulips!” She gasped.
“Floria!” Fairchild dropped the book he was reading. He watched her stumble to her feet as she moved to the window, her skin flushing to life. She was still dressed for the ball, and the ensuing days were an embarrassing and difficult to explain whirlwind of petticoats and dresses and shoes and flowers. Vases and bowls and armloads of flowers. They were her passion, and as he watched her arrange them and stroke them, smelling them and put them in her hair and sometimes his, Fairchild chewed his nails and thought.
“Floria?”
“Yes, Andrew?”
“Do you remember the Signore's papa?”
“Papa made me.”
“No, I mean his father.”
“Papa is not the Signore. The Signore made Papa. And then Papa made all of us.” Floria recited, the very model of patience. She screwed up her nose as she urged the flowers where she wanted them to go. “You know, when you asked me my name I almost said Daffodil. Isn't that silly? It's a beautiful flower but it's no fit name for a lady.”
Fairchild gave her a paternal kiss to the top of her head as he left her to her work. He returned on his own to the Collodi Manor and found the gate unlocked. The place had an abandoned air, the gardens already growing wild and the windows clouding over.
He found Collodi in an armchair in front of a fireplace that had burned out, surrounded by his marionettes still in their party dress. The fire had been supposed to catch, Fairchild could see how it had been supposed to go, but something had gone wrong. The fire had gone out instead and the manor still stood. They had all grown dusty and Fairchild felt an overwhelming sorrow for these
merry creatures he had known for just one night. Did they all have passions like Floria? Had he listened to them all could he had woken them, or was it simply that Collodi had put more effort into some than others?
He knelt in front of Collodi and regarded the face which, in the firelight the night of the ball had seemed so proud, which had tried to look cruel, but now in sleep looked curiously innocent. A face at once ugly and beautiful. One hand had fallen slack against the arm rest of his chair and the fingers were open, as if beckoning. Fairchild reached out and touched them. He was reverting back to wood slower than the others, and Fairchild supposed that he had been flesh much longer. He wondered how old Collodi really was. What his life had been like. He wished he had asked more questions. But then, would this strange man have answered them? Fairchild guessed not.
“Don't give up, there are other passions. Living is not in mastery but in discovery.” What other passions that might be, he could not imagine. He could no more see someone as brooding as Collodi taking up painting or walking as mountain climbing. But he could not stand to think of him sitting alone in this cold room forevermore, forgotten. He and Floria would be something he had never had before, a family. There was a first time for everything.
And then, against his fingertips, the barest twitch. Life.
