Witchcraft In The Harem

On the plane, drinking a quarter-bottle of white, I retrieved my address book from my crocodile bag, tore out a page at a time, and turned each one into a snowflake with a few painless tears. The man sitting next to me, tall with a clean suit and pale skin, brushed away the white shreds that fell on his lap with the back of his hand, and I resolved to be more like him. He didn't look anywhere but straight ahead.

'I'm Bobbie,' I said. And then I thought about the Stuff.

The Stuff was gone. Destroyed. There was no place on Earth where Becky and The Designer would not find me.

Last time I saw Becky, she was on the catwalk, left breast bared and painted yellow, skirt of razor blades clacking against her thighs. She gave her three-quarter turn and clocked me in the back row. Her eyes took in my newly shorn hair, but I couldn't tell what she thought of it from her somnambulistic stare. Then she flicked back up the catwalk and was gone.

Two hours later I had boarded this flight.

'I'm in serious trouble here,' I said to the pale man. 'Give me some words of wisdom.'

He didn't say anything. Not too surprising, considering he was being confronted by a six feet two ex-model in a red micro-mini and a see-through blouse.

'Cat got your tongue?' I asked.

He tilted his head towards me and opened his mouth, so wide that at first I thought he was going to attempt to swallow me. But he stayed like that, and behind the yellowing row of his bottom teeth was a writhing stump, like a blind worm in the darkness: all that remained of a tongue.

I had nothing and nowhere, and I needed to plant a seed. I put my hand on the back of his neck and pulled him towards me so I could kiss his open mouth; those pale soft lips were as refreshing as water on my foundation caked face. 'Take me home with you' I said, and I thought he didn't understand, but he made no comment when I followed him through the airport after we landed. I boarded the small black jet that waited for him and smiled at him throughout the seven hour flight to destination safe haven.

The plane landed on a white runway that was the only strip of land jutting out into a large green bay. I had found no place on Earth. Even I didn't know where I was.

He had a harem, of course. I was the first white woman. Nobody spoke my language, but that was fine; I've never really got on with women anyway, not even Becky. You would think being twin sisters would be enough to form a bond, but she was raised with my mother and I went to my father after the divorce. We didn't meet again for years, and when I tracked her down in Paris she introduced me to the Designer and the Stuff, and asked me to live with them, I suppose because she liked the novelty of having a double. Every man's fantasy, so they say. So sharing a man was not a new thing for me, and I was comfortable in the communal room, even if I ignored the women and they ignored me.

I would have liked a fountain, though. I've seen films with scenes in harems and there were always fountains in the centre of the room. Our room was more like a large sitting room. Lots of sofas, comfortable chairs and cushions, and a tiny kitchenette hidden behind a glass brick wall, with a microwave and a coffee machine. Food was always provided, but occasionally the girls would make strong, syrupy coffee which couldn't have done them any good. I stuck to water.

The bell was the summons to the man with no tongue. It was a brass circle with a clapper attached by a small rod, fixed above the only door. It reminded me of the bell above the blackboard that I used to watch during those long, boring afternoons in the classroom, the teacher droning on and the other pupils flicking pencils at my head; I've never been popular in group situations.

There was a code to the rings, and every woman knew their code. The others had demonstrated my code to me upon my arrival; I was three long and two short. It rang for me perhaps twice a week. I think I was too vocal for him. A Western habit I couldn't shake off.

There were windows, but not much of a view. A perfect blue sea seemed to be only yards away, and stretch on forever. The sky was always cloudless. Sometimes I wondered if we were on a huge boat, but I felt no movement. Maybe it was a tiny island, uncharted, hidden like a sequin that nestles in the ruffled bodice of a blue silk dress; a place of secrecy and beauty.

A place where laws did not exist. A place where magic and murder could bleed together.

The flavour of the moment was Fasheema. She had wedding-dress white hair and was maybe five feet tall on tiptoe. All the women walked everywhere on tiptoe, their arms swinging backwards and forwards in languid movements timed precisely to match their steps, trying so hard to look as if they weren't trying to be relaxed. It was always a competition, and Fasheema was winning it hands down. Every day, at about midday I would guess by the position of the sun through the window, she was summoned by the man with no tongue with two short rings of the bell. She would sway her way out of the harem with the languid swaying of an anemone in an undisturbed rockpool; she knew she was invincible.

Putting all those women together in one place was asking for trouble.

I knew what the looks meant, and I wasn't surprised when they gathered in the kitchen one day after Fasheema had gone forth to do her duty. I was ignored, of course, but that made it easy to watch them from my position in the far corner amongst a nest of silk cushions.

Some lifted their long skirts and from under them produced twisted papers that contained pinches of bright powder, or spindly black roots. Others slid delicate orange and yellow flowers from between their breasts, cupping their hands under the petals as if they had drawn forth their hearts for inspection. One woman with enormous hips opened her mouth and extended her tongue to allow the iridescent purple beetle upon it to be captured. It was then squashed into a smear and added to the white china bowl was used to hold the precious possessions.

The women stroked the bowl, one at a time, as it was passed between them. Each one said something, or maybe crooned would be a better word; it was more like a song that they all seemed to know, but it wasn't so much a tune as a random series of notes that filled my brain with waking dreams. I reclined on the fluffy cushions and only kept my eyes open for long enough to see them place the bowl in the microwave and set it turning on that little glass disc for a total of five of your Earth minutes.

That's something the Designer used to say. Just five of your Earth minutes, Bobbie and Becky, to try on this teaspoon hat and this Rizla blouse, and we would come down from our private cloud to let ourselves be adorned with his creations. Then, as a reward, he would give us a taste of Stuff from the drawer in his Victorian mahogany cabinet, unlocking it with that key he always kept on a ruby encrusted chain around his neck.

I never thought he'd sleep deeply enough for me to be able to take that chain from him. But it turns out that we all fall into unwakeable sleep sometimes, just as I did on those silk cushions that afternoon. I had an intense vision, filled with flowers that tickled my feet, and beetles that crawled across my face, and Becky was there, groaning in rapture, carpeted in black roots that grew over her statuesque body and into her hair. She looked as natural as a tree.

When I came around no time at all could have passed. The microwave door was open and the women were sitting on the floor in a circle a few feet away, their long skirts arranged behind them like the petals of some enormous carnivorous flower.

The china bowl was in the centre of their circle. Inside it was a mustard yellow powder, flecked with tiny green crystals. I never thought I'd see that powder again.

'Stuff!' I said.

The women raised their heads as one and stared at me. The one with the large hips flicked her hands in what I took to be a gesture of warning.

'Is this where all the Stuff gets made, then?' I asked. 'Do you make all the Stuff in the world? Is that why the man with no tongue is so rich? Who comes here to pick it up? Is it the Designer?' But, of course, they didn't understand me and I couldn't have understood their replies if they had deigned to give one.

It seemed this wasn't the last place on Earth after all.

They crowded closer together, closing in on themselves, and I could no longer see the bowl. There was nothing I could do but lie back once more, and only a few minutes later Fasheema returned from her daily appointment, swinging her arms to her private internal melody. She looked as smug as ever.

I knew what was going to happen as soon as they brought that cup of coffee to her.

They passed it to her on a silver tray, and she accepted it with an incline of her head, as if they had finally noticed how superior she was and it was her right to be served in such a manner.

It took only one swallow to do its job.

As I watched her go through the transformation that comes from overdose, I felt the pull of the Stuff upon me. I wondered how I could ever have found the willpower to destroy it, and try to escape it. As Fasheema went through the soundless transformation which leads to death, I could see the absolute ecstasy of freedom on her face, and I wanted to feel it too, even if it meant the cracking of my bones and the contortion of my skin.

By the time her heart gave out she was unrecognisable. Patches of fur vied with protruding growths of reptile skin, and around what had once been her neck was a ruff of soft pink feathers. There weren't arms and legs any more; instead there were yellowed spidering roots. Her body looked like a tuber that had just been dug up and left on the floor for weeks. The only thing that was unchanged was her hair; startling white against the mess that she had become, it splayed out on the floor like a skein of silk that had been thrown away.

The women cut the hair and stuffed it into one of the silk cushions. They diced the remains of Fasheema and threw her of the window into the waiting sea, to be taken away by the tide. They did it quickly and with no fuss. It looked as if they had done it before.

The next day, the bell went for Fasheema. Nobody moved, or even glanced at the bell. They sat as still as sculptures, practising their attitudes of blamelessness until the man with no tongue arrived and looked over them with a blank expression. He didn't seem to really see them at all, so they stopped posturing and went back to their quiet conversations in their strange language.

'Hard luck, Buster,' I said. 'She's gone. Out of the window. Away on the tide.'

Everyone stared at me. I'd be lying if I didn't admit it was nice to be the centre of attention again, if only for a moment. I've always been the woman everyone looks twice at, right from when I first sprouted breasts and legs of magnifique proportions. I'm not saying it won me many friends, but it did make me special. I hadn't realised how much I missed that.

The man with no tongue smiled. Then he made a gesture that I understood. He raised one hand, extended his index finger, and waggled it back and forth. You're a naughty minx, but I like you.

The waggle changed to a beckon, and I followed him out of the harem.

After that the bell rang three long and two short every day, and I knew I was in trouble.

It took the women three weeks of my summonings to decide they'd had enough. I returned from the man with no tongue late one afternoon, the red sunlight just crawling through the bottom corner of the window, to find them gathered in their circle, eyes cast down as if in pious contemplation. In the centre of the gathering was the silver tray, and placed upon that was one cup of syrupy black coffee.

I stepped into the circle, knelt down, and took the cup in both hands. The warmth of the coffee was soothing. I looked into the faces of the women surrounding me and felt the chill of their stares chase away that comfort.

'Bobbie?'

The last hint of daylight faded. I turned my head to the window and locked eyes with two shadows.

'We found you,' Becky said. Her hair was loose and her smile was real. She was wearing a necklace of razor blades that had the Designer's touch about it, for sure. I'd never seen her look so happy.

'Isn't she beautiful?' the Designer said. 'So beautiful it hurts.' He craned his neck to see further into the room. 'You could be this beautiful if you're prepared to give up this dump and come with us.'

'I am so bloody sorry,' I said. 'About the Stuff. About everything.'

He shrugged. 'We got more. It set us free. Free to that place inside us. Now we're staying
forever. Will you come too?'

I thought about it. There really didn't seem to be anything worth staying for: not the man who would never speak to me, or the women who wanted me gone.

'Okay,' I said. I picked up the coffee cup, drained it, and floated out through the window.

And now I really have found no place on Earth.

There are others floating nearby; I think I saw Fasheema once, curled up in a pink cloud like a well-fed cat in a padded basket. But we do not talk to the others. We don't need them. We are together.

We three who sleep amongst the stars and swim in the eternal sea. My twin, the Designer, and me.