This is what my aunt Ruth wrote:
Yes, I am the evil sister, the one who destroyed the great work of the Januarys, the bad seed, the killer. Go ahead and think it, for I know you are in any case. I have come to accept that this is how I will always be thought of. It is unjust in you to think it without knowing me or any of us, but it is the way of things. If you are thoroughly convinced of your facts, you may as well stop reading right here and now, for you will find nothing herein other than that which would mock your certainty. I wish you well.
So, and you have chosen to continue with my tale, then? How very broadminded you are! Or perhaps you seek titillation, is that it? I'm sorry that I will no doubt have to disappoint you in the latter design, for my life has been one more of tedium than thrills, I can assure you. Things have happened, no doubt, but they were not my doing. I was in all ways more done to than doing, though I would have had it otherwise if I could.
Well, in any case, you are welcome to my story if it edifies you in any way. I have no more use for it; I am an old woman now and living only to die, it seems, an odd sort of occupation when you come to think of it, rather like building a home for the express purpose of burning it to the ground. But there you have it.
We girls were famous all hereabouts; I will not bore you with our early lives, for if you do not already know of us, the record of our deeds and abilities are copious. Could we truly heal? I assure you, we could and did. Could we bring those dead back from that state? No, we could not, that was mythology. Many were the ones who were so close to the door to the other side that we could not help them, even, nonetheless those who had already gone through it. As has been well-documented, we also chose not to help some. Our sister January made these judgments, some of which seemed quite cruel to me at the time, but often she would have come to understand that the person we were asked to heal did not themselves wish to carry on, had embraced the idea of death as one does the comfort of a soft bad when weary. These were in pain or other suffering and, to be blunt, it was pure selfishness that the family wanted them healed, and this we could not allow.
Now, as for my power to harm: this has been exaggerated mightily. Oh, I do not ask you to believe me; it's as if you asked me to believe the moon were made of cheese. Though I have no personal experience with the surface of the moon, I feel I can say with great confidence that this is not the case. Just so, though you have not experienced my powers from inside my heart nor yet as one of my victims, you still believe, don't you, that you know what I am capable of performing. Well. Still, I say what I say, which is that I had no such prodigious powers as have been attributed to me. Many and often were those I might have taken the life of if it were so, but this is no proof, for I could merely have chosen not to, except in that one case where my anger got the best of me. As the saying goes, one cannot prove a negative proposition. Though this seems to me a facile and naive statement, yet in this case it does seem to be the case. I cannot ever convince you that I cannot use my powers to kill by not killing, now can I, since you could simply say I am choosing not to!
Here is what my power was (I say was advisedly for, though I may well still possess this power, I have not since the death of my sister used it): I can cause you to believe that you are being done great harm without the doing of it. It is not more nor less than that. I point for evidence to the several well-documented cases of those I have stopped doing us an ill turn by causing them such pain; in none of them was there any actual harm done. Of course, this fact is not as often put down on paper; when I bring a grown man to his knees, he must claim some harm to safe face. But the facts are the facts; not a one of those I touched in this way limped after or suffered grievous harm to their innards or whatever. If you can find any proof to the contrary, I invite you to bring them forward.
I hesitate here for a moment. Why am I doing this? I have no need to prove to any of you who or what I am. Even when I was younger I had no such need and it is much less now that I am old. What do I care what you think? I do not. But there are those who come after us, my sister's child and his children, who may carry this burden after I am gone. It is for them and them alone I do this. Do not think for moment that I grovel at your feet for forgiveness or understanding. I am well-contented that the world owes me this obeisance and not the other way about. In any case...
What happened was this: January was 17 years old and fell in love. Nothing more complicated and nothing more normal in any other girl. All of us, though, knew in our hearts that we were called to this work and could not have the pleasures others know. The powers would be diminished if we were to divert our attention to other delights. Apart we had very weak powers, but together we could work wonders. We believed (though I know not from where) that we must all remain virgin for the power to continue.
But then there was Nathan.
I must say that if one had to do something so foolish as fall in love, Nathan would have been a better choice than most. He was well-made; tall; comely; handsome, even; with soft hands and beautiful brown eyes, a truly beautiful youth. He was a lutenist and earned a meager living that way. When we traveled about doing our work, we would often gather about us a crowd who would travel with us for their own motives, sometimes just one other person, sometimes as many as 30 or 40; I never actually stopped to take a count; Nathan was for a year or so one of these. Nathan was beautiful and talented and quite thoroughly smitten with our January and she with him. She told us that she had informed him of her inability to wed him, but he remained her devoted slave nonetheless and, gradually, bit by bit, she softened her resolve. She began to wonder aloud what we actually knew of the harm that would come of marrying, that if we remained together it would not matter, and more of such palaver. She may have even been right, I suppose; we will never know. But at the time we had taken a vow to each other and nothing could break it, so that was that, or so it seemed to me.
The rest of the story is easily told; had you never heard a word of it before you could no doubt guess: the pair eloped one night and returned after five days abroad in the world to tell us of it. No longer virgin and now wed, January positively glowed with love, but we were appalled that she would take such a risk. Well. I say we were appalled, but it more truthfully was me. Clara was too much not of this world and Sarah was soft-hearted always, so it was more my anger, my rage that was the dominant response to this betrayal. What right had she? She had broken a vow more holy than that of marriage; would she think to make a whore of herself and disgrace her marriage vows in that way? Yet she had done even worse to marry this, this...man. Oh, and I did go on; I had and still possess a tongue sharpened in hell, I admit to this. After withstanding as much of this as she could bear and seeing that I could not be assuaged, January turned away from me and began to walk away. I shouted to her not to walk away from this, that this was the defining moment of our lives and if she walked away she would never live to enjoy her love.
Oh, it was an awful thing to say, I see that now. Even then I sensed that I had stepped over a line that was invisible yet oh so palpable and not to be so carelessly breached. January turned to me in rage; I raised my hand, not as if to strike her, but in a gesture I can only describe as incantatory, my arm out, my hand flat, as if fire could spring from the fingers. I wanted to do her harm, I admit it. But I never had the chance. As she turned, her face suffused with rage, I was raising my arm and she suddenly became ashen and fell to the floor, quite dead. Clara screamed, Sarah keened, I was as silent as the grave to which our sister would soon be consigned.
For better or worse there had been a dozen or so witnesses to our encounter, so there was no putting any kind of face on it other than one of outright murder, or sororicide (an obscure word which means the killing one's sister and for which I have developed an unreasoning fondness). Yet I did no such thing. Were it to occur today it would not even be brought into question whether or not I could do so without touching her, though those who entirely disbelieve such things are possible are themselves foolish, it seems to me. But even had we been able to ascertain the cause of her death through autopsy--heart failure, aneurysm, whatever--in those more superstitious days it would have been assumed I caused these with my special powers. So it was that I was tried and convicted with unseemly haste and sentenced to 25 years in prison. The only thing that saved me from the gallows was the fact that it could not be convincingly proved that I had acted other than on impulse and therefore could not be convicted of first degree murder. But a 25 year sentence handed down to me, a mere 14-year-old girl! 25 years! Nearly twice as long as I had already lived! It seemed an eternity.
I will not speak of my days in prison; they do not bear thinking of. All manner of evil goes on there. More than a reformatory it is an incubator of vice. But this is not an original sentiment, nor one widely shared, so I shan't belabor the point. Needless to say the work of the Januarys was finished. We vowed, Sarah and I, at some point during these proceedings, that the safest course would be to eschew bearing any children into the world who might carry on our dangerous powers. I kept this vow and Sarah nearly did. I have forgiven her, and her grandson, who will receive these writings and may do with them as he wishes, has been very kind to me.
I am very old and will die soon. I do not care what becomes of me or of this story. I have done with all things of this world. You may rot in hell for all I care. But you shan't see me there.
Chapter Twelve is here.
Yes, I am the evil sister, the one who destroyed the great work of the Januarys, the bad seed, the killer. Go ahead and think it, for I know you are in any case. I have come to accept that this is how I will always be thought of. It is unjust in you to think it without knowing me or any of us, but it is the way of things. If you are thoroughly convinced of your facts, you may as well stop reading right here and now, for you will find nothing herein other than that which would mock your certainty. I wish you well.
So, and you have chosen to continue with my tale, then? How very broadminded you are! Or perhaps you seek titillation, is that it? I'm sorry that I will no doubt have to disappoint you in the latter design, for my life has been one more of tedium than thrills, I can assure you. Things have happened, no doubt, but they were not my doing. I was in all ways more done to than doing, though I would have had it otherwise if I could.
Well, in any case, you are welcome to my story if it edifies you in any way. I have no more use for it; I am an old woman now and living only to die, it seems, an odd sort of occupation when you come to think of it, rather like building a home for the express purpose of burning it to the ground. But there you have it.
We girls were famous all hereabouts; I will not bore you with our early lives, for if you do not already know of us, the record of our deeds and abilities are copious. Could we truly heal? I assure you, we could and did. Could we bring those dead back from that state? No, we could not, that was mythology. Many were the ones who were so close to the door to the other side that we could not help them, even, nonetheless those who had already gone through it. As has been well-documented, we also chose not to help some. Our sister January made these judgments, some of which seemed quite cruel to me at the time, but often she would have come to understand that the person we were asked to heal did not themselves wish to carry on, had embraced the idea of death as one does the comfort of a soft bad when weary. These were in pain or other suffering and, to be blunt, it was pure selfishness that the family wanted them healed, and this we could not allow.
Now, as for my power to harm: this has been exaggerated mightily. Oh, I do not ask you to believe me; it's as if you asked me to believe the moon were made of cheese. Though I have no personal experience with the surface of the moon, I feel I can say with great confidence that this is not the case. Just so, though you have not experienced my powers from inside my heart nor yet as one of my victims, you still believe, don't you, that you know what I am capable of performing. Well. Still, I say what I say, which is that I had no such prodigious powers as have been attributed to me. Many and often were those I might have taken the life of if it were so, but this is no proof, for I could merely have chosen not to, except in that one case where my anger got the best of me. As the saying goes, one cannot prove a negative proposition. Though this seems to me a facile and naive statement, yet in this case it does seem to be the case. I cannot ever convince you that I cannot use my powers to kill by not killing, now can I, since you could simply say I am choosing not to!
Here is what my power was (I say was advisedly for, though I may well still possess this power, I have not since the death of my sister used it): I can cause you to believe that you are being done great harm without the doing of it. It is not more nor less than that. I point for evidence to the several well-documented cases of those I have stopped doing us an ill turn by causing them such pain; in none of them was there any actual harm done. Of course, this fact is not as often put down on paper; when I bring a grown man to his knees, he must claim some harm to safe face. But the facts are the facts; not a one of those I touched in this way limped after or suffered grievous harm to their innards or whatever. If you can find any proof to the contrary, I invite you to bring them forward.
I hesitate here for a moment. Why am I doing this? I have no need to prove to any of you who or what I am. Even when I was younger I had no such need and it is much less now that I am old. What do I care what you think? I do not. But there are those who come after us, my sister's child and his children, who may carry this burden after I am gone. It is for them and them alone I do this. Do not think for moment that I grovel at your feet for forgiveness or understanding. I am well-contented that the world owes me this obeisance and not the other way about. In any case...
What happened was this: January was 17 years old and fell in love. Nothing more complicated and nothing more normal in any other girl. All of us, though, knew in our hearts that we were called to this work and could not have the pleasures others know. The powers would be diminished if we were to divert our attention to other delights. Apart we had very weak powers, but together we could work wonders. We believed (though I know not from where) that we must all remain virgin for the power to continue.
But then there was Nathan.
I must say that if one had to do something so foolish as fall in love, Nathan would have been a better choice than most. He was well-made; tall; comely; handsome, even; with soft hands and beautiful brown eyes, a truly beautiful youth. He was a lutenist and earned a meager living that way. When we traveled about doing our work, we would often gather about us a crowd who would travel with us for their own motives, sometimes just one other person, sometimes as many as 30 or 40; I never actually stopped to take a count; Nathan was for a year or so one of these. Nathan was beautiful and talented and quite thoroughly smitten with our January and she with him. She told us that she had informed him of her inability to wed him, but he remained her devoted slave nonetheless and, gradually, bit by bit, she softened her resolve. She began to wonder aloud what we actually knew of the harm that would come of marrying, that if we remained together it would not matter, and more of such palaver. She may have even been right, I suppose; we will never know. But at the time we had taken a vow to each other and nothing could break it, so that was that, or so it seemed to me.
The rest of the story is easily told; had you never heard a word of it before you could no doubt guess: the pair eloped one night and returned after five days abroad in the world to tell us of it. No longer virgin and now wed, January positively glowed with love, but we were appalled that she would take such a risk. Well. I say we were appalled, but it more truthfully was me. Clara was too much not of this world and Sarah was soft-hearted always, so it was more my anger, my rage that was the dominant response to this betrayal. What right had she? She had broken a vow more holy than that of marriage; would she think to make a whore of herself and disgrace her marriage vows in that way? Yet she had done even worse to marry this, this...man. Oh, and I did go on; I had and still possess a tongue sharpened in hell, I admit to this. After withstanding as much of this as she could bear and seeing that I could not be assuaged, January turned away from me and began to walk away. I shouted to her not to walk away from this, that this was the defining moment of our lives and if she walked away she would never live to enjoy her love.
Oh, it was an awful thing to say, I see that now. Even then I sensed that I had stepped over a line that was invisible yet oh so palpable and not to be so carelessly breached. January turned to me in rage; I raised my hand, not as if to strike her, but in a gesture I can only describe as incantatory, my arm out, my hand flat, as if fire could spring from the fingers. I wanted to do her harm, I admit it. But I never had the chance. As she turned, her face suffused with rage, I was raising my arm and she suddenly became ashen and fell to the floor, quite dead. Clara screamed, Sarah keened, I was as silent as the grave to which our sister would soon be consigned.
For better or worse there had been a dozen or so witnesses to our encounter, so there was no putting any kind of face on it other than one of outright murder, or sororicide (an obscure word which means the killing one's sister and for which I have developed an unreasoning fondness). Yet I did no such thing. Were it to occur today it would not even be brought into question whether or not I could do so without touching her, though those who entirely disbelieve such things are possible are themselves foolish, it seems to me. But even had we been able to ascertain the cause of her death through autopsy--heart failure, aneurysm, whatever--in those more superstitious days it would have been assumed I caused these with my special powers. So it was that I was tried and convicted with unseemly haste and sentenced to 25 years in prison. The only thing that saved me from the gallows was the fact that it could not be convincingly proved that I had acted other than on impulse and therefore could not be convicted of first degree murder. But a 25 year sentence handed down to me, a mere 14-year-old girl! 25 years! Nearly twice as long as I had already lived! It seemed an eternity.
I will not speak of my days in prison; they do not bear thinking of. All manner of evil goes on there. More than a reformatory it is an incubator of vice. But this is not an original sentiment, nor one widely shared, so I shan't belabor the point. Needless to say the work of the Januarys was finished. We vowed, Sarah and I, at some point during these proceedings, that the safest course would be to eschew bearing any children into the world who might carry on our dangerous powers. I kept this vow and Sarah nearly did. I have forgiven her, and her grandson, who will receive these writings and may do with them as he wishes, has been very kind to me.
I am very old and will die soon. I do not care what becomes of me or of this story. I have done with all things of this world. You may rot in hell for all I care. But you shan't see me there.
Chapter Twelve is here.
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