Part of an ongoing Tale from The Squid and Teapot by Martin Pearson.
Almost two weeks had passed since Rhys Cranham, the Night-Soil Man, had brought Marigold Burleigh to the door of The Squid and Teapot. Rhys had discovered her body upon the Gydynap Hills, cast down like a broken and discarded toy. Thinking her dead, and therefore unheeding of his noxious odour, he carried her into the town; Rhys had no wish to leave the her as fodder for whatever night-creature might chance by. He knocked on Doc Willoughby’s door but it was apparent that the curmudgeonly physician had no such sensibilities. The Doc had refused to lift a finger to help Rhys, but brusquely told him that the girl was dead and therefore beyond help, before slamming the door in his face. Miss Calder, the ghostly administrator of The Pallid Rock Orphanage, however, disagreed. She assured the Night-Soil Man that there was still a spark of life flickering within Marigold – and who could be a better arbiter of judging the fine line between life and death than one who had passed over it herself? She advised that Rhys should take the young woman immediately to The Squid, where she could be properly cared for.
Although Marigold had regained consciousness within a few hours, it had taken a week or more for her to be well enough to leave the confines of the inn, and even then all memory of her past life evaded her. When she first appeared on Hopeless she had told islanders that she was a nurse, but in truth, she knew nothing about nursing, for the words had not been hers, but those of the dark entity who had possessed her.
Those who have followed these tales will recall that Trickster had been making trouble on Hopeless for quite some time. Previously, using Linus Pinfarthing as his ‘meat-suit’, he had caused death, misery and mayhem before his downfall had put a stop to things for a while. Later, taking on the form of an innocent-looking white hare, he had been thwarted by the unlikeliest of heroes, a raiding-band of spoonwalkers, who had driven him into the sea. However, Trickster was determined, if nothing else, and this rejection only served to encourage him in his mission to spread as much mischief as possible throughout the island of Hopeless. The unfortunate white hare soon perished in the cold Atlantic but Trickster found other meat-suits, or, more properly, fish-suits and fowl-suits; bodies which lasted long enough to take him to the mainland… and that is where he spied the pretty girl wandering along the seashore.
Marigold Burleigh, if indeed that was ever her name, had little idea that the sudden strange sensations gripping both her mind and body had anything to do with Arctic Tern that had plummeted from the sky, to lie dead at her feet. It took only a matter of seconds for all memory of her old life to slip away forever, and for the creature that was Trickster to become her puppet-master.
I will leave you, the reader, to imagine how Marigold might have persuaded the captain of the scruffy Down Easter to take her aboard. Trickster had no scruples, and whatever indignities his attractive young meat-suit may have suffered in order for him to achieve his aims, were neither here nor there, as far as he was concerned. Similarly, the way in which the captain and crew of the Down Easter perished troubled him not at all. It is sufficient to say that by the time the small craft beached on the shores of Hopeless, having miraculously avoided floundering upon any of its treacherous rocks and hidden reefs, Marigold was the only survivor. All this, of course, was hidden from Marigold, who later assumed that she was suffering from temporary amnesia.
Ariadne Middlestreet was the first to notice Marigold’s change of character. Before the episode on the Gydynaps she had appeared confident to the point of arrogance, but now she had become withdrawn and given to wandering around the island, as if searching for something. Even those who have lived on Hopeless for all of their lives would be fearful to do this, but Marigold seemed to see no danger. Ariadne tried to alert her to the hazards that lurked around every bend, but to no avail.
“She’ll be fine,” said Philomena Bucket, reassuringly. “I’m always out and about at all hours of the day and night, and no harm has befallen me.”
“Yet!” said Ariadne, pointedly. “Although, I sometimes think you lead a charmed life, Philomena.”
The barmaid coughed awkwardly. It was unlikely that a truer word had ever been spoken in innocence. Philomena was well aware of the strange abilities she had inherited from her ancestors, but had never shared this secret, not even with her closest friends.
“I’ll ask Rhys to keep an eye on her if he sees her wandering around at night,” she promised, not realising that this is exactly what the Night-Soil Man did whenever he spotted Philomena herself walking the hills after dark.
Over the centuries – millennia, even – few have survived possession by the Trickster. Linus Pinfarthing lasted for a short while, but only by regularly drinking himself into a stupor, a strategy which eventually killed him. Marigold, on the other hand, survived because she had appeared to be physically weaker than she actually was. Now that Trickster had left her, taking with him all recollection of her past life, a gnawing ache was left; an ache to know who she really was, where she had come from and if she had any family. Unaware that Hopeless held no answers for her, Marigold resolved to not rest until the truth was uncovered.
“What can possibly go wrong?” she wondered.
To be continued…
