Authors: Tobsha Learner
Tremble
A PLUME BOOK
TREMBLE
Born in the United Kingdom,
TOBSHA LEARNER
has also lived in the United States and Australia. She has worked extensively in stage, television, radio, and film. She lives in London.
Also by Tobsha Learner
Quiver
Madonna Mars
The Witch of Cologne
TREMBLE
Erotic Tales of the Mystical and Sinister
TOBSHA LEARNER
PLUME
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA), 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, USA
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First published in Australia by HarperCollinsPublishers Pty Limited, a member of HarperCollins
Publisher (Australia) Pty Limited Group, 2004.
First Plume Printing, 2013
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
Copyright © Tobsha Learner, 2004
All rights reserved. No part of this product may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Learner, Tobsha.
[Short stories. Selections]
Tremble : erotic tales of the mystical and sinister/Tobsha Learner.
pages cm
ISBN: 978-1-101-62736-5
1. Erotic stories. I. Title.
PR6062.E335T74 2013
823’.914—dc23
2013022585
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For J.
Contents
D
orothy leaned back against the coarse wicker chair and watched the afternoon sunlight fall across the wall of the cottage. It was the last days of spring and already she could detect the heavier fecundity of August steaming up through the soil.
She stretched out her solid but shapely legs and caught a glimpse of her reflection in a window. The face that stared back at her was pleasantly attractive. Dorothy’s most distinguishing feature was her complexion. She had classically pale Welsh skin with heavy dark eyebrows, and her eyes, ringed with thick black lashes, were somewhere between gray and blue. “The color of threatening weather,” her ex-lover used to call it. Above them, her dark hair stood up like an errant haystack. It was the face of a woman in her midthirties. Dorothy had no illusions, she knew she looked her age.
“I hope you like nettle tea,” Great-Aunt Winifred sang out. A whiff of a dank smell, not unlike horse manure, drifted out from the kitchen.
The old lady placed a steaming cup of tea in front of Dorothy and sat down, her sharp face a road map of wrinkles with two mischievous brown eyes buried below a strong brow.
“Is it medicinal?” Dorothy asked nervously, hoping for a syrupy nectar that would ease the constant heartburn she’d been plagued with ever since she’d given up the London flat, the married lover, and the secure job in the archival department of the British Museum. A job, she’d realized, that had little to offer except a state pension upon retirement.
Winifred Cecily Owen gazed critically at her great-niece. At ninety-nine years of age she found that anyone under the age of seventy irritated her. They seemed to have lost the art of self-reliance and, worse than that, the art of happiness. She was convinced they had replaced it with an insatiable need to be entertained. Winifred’s generation had been far less demanding. They were simply grateful to have the woods and the streams, the local dances at the nearby army barracks, and to repeat the life rhythms of their parents and grandparents. Why did everyone want so much these days?
The Owens had lived for over four hundred years in a tiny hamlet outside the Welsh village of Llansantffraid. The family had an uneasy relationship with the villagers, who, in all truth, had barely tolerated their outlandish behavior over the centuries.
Generations of Owen women had gloried in their spinsterhood. Every decade or so, one chosen woman would run off only to reappear
pregnant, as if blessed by an immaculate conception. And generations of local preachers, vicars, and holy men had despaired. They were outraged at the complete lack of guilt the women displayed, as if it were their right to behave in such an ungodly manner, and branded the women witches, spreading the rumor that they were worshippers of Rhiannon, Cerridwen, and Arianrhod—the three great goddesses of Cymru—and that their coven lay hidden in a cave in the foothills of North Wales. But despite the rumor, none of the clan of Gynia Mwyn was ever arrested, imprisoned, or burned at the stake and so the uneasy truce continued through the ages.
In truth it was a symbiotic relationship. The villagers needed the Owens to provide greater drama than their own petty squabbles and intrigues, while the Owens needed the anonymous sperm donations. Even Dorothy herself had never known her father.
Dorothy was the only Owen, ever, to have left the hamlet and been allowed to return. There had been one who had left before her—her mother’s cousin who had emigrated to Australia. The cousin, whose departure was seen as a betrayal, had never been spoken of since. Dorothy herself had barely been forgiven. Her great-aunt blamed the cinema. Edith, Dorothy’s mother, had been a flighty, overimaginative creature who had seen
The Wizard of Oz
at an impressionable age. Winifred was convinced that if Edith had given her daughter a Welsh name, Dorothy would never have wandered. As it was, Dorothy had fled for London at the age of sixteen and had found herself an apprenticeship at the Imperial War Museum. It had taken her another eighteen years to find her way back to Wales.
“You home for good then?” Winifred ventured, reading a fatalism in the slump of her niece’s shoulders. The girl had a body, the aunt noted, that seemed prematurely resigned to aging.
“For a while. I have an interview at Shrewsbury Castle; they’re looking for a curator for the museum.”
“The castle! That’s a terrible place! I don’t know why you would want to work for the English—a mean treacherous race who slaughtered your ancestors!”
Dorothy restrained herself from pointing out that it was the very same race that kept the village’s souvenir shop and weekend cottages thriving, preventing it from becoming yet another ghost town. Still, it was the local English weekenders with their four-wheel drives who would regularly
pull up outside Winifred’s cottage to point out the witch to their restless nose-picking kids. She watched as the nonagenarian poured the tea from a huge silver pot, hands trembling. Winifred’s long paisley dress was more reminiscent of the 1960s than of an ancient sorceress’s gown. It had probably been donated by the local thrift shop; and besides, what witch would get her food delivered by Meals on Wheels? Certainly not one with any dignity, and dignity was what her ancient relative exuded from every cell of her gnarled body. No, what Great-Aunt Winifred was suffering was the persecution every happily single woman suffers: the predictable social condemnation of her independence and childlessness. Dorothy reminded herself of what she’d learned during a university course on feminist history (with a strong Marxist slant): spinsters are a threat to patriarchy. As she grasped the china cup, she contemplated the possibility of elevating her great-aunt to the status of heroine.
“Still single?” Winifred went straight for the jugular.
Dorothy’s noble contemplation plummeted to the ground; her greataunt had an unerring capacity to sniff out anyone’s Achilles’ heel. The young woman blushed and nodded. Feminism aside, she still found it hard not to feel stigmatized by
that
word.
“Nothing to be ashamed of; we Owen women have a long history of going it alone. One day I’ll show you how. They don’t call me the Merry Spinster for nothing. Now drink your tea, it’ll make your breasts grow.”
Sipping at the scalding brew, Dorothy put the last comment down to approaching dementia. Great-Aunt Winifred was, after all, ninety-nine. It was then that she noticed the knitting bag at her aunt’s feet. A mangy sack woven from hoary greenish thread, it was almost indiscernible against the moss-covered slate that paved Winifred’s courtyard. Suddenly it jumped, as if something were trapped inside. Dorothy looked again—the fabric definitely seemed to be twitching. Was she hallucinating? Could it be the nettle tea? She glanced back at her aunt, who smiled serenely but not without a certain smug innocence. The bag jumped again, this time unmistakably.
“What’s that?” Dorothy pointed to the bag, ensuring there could be no ambiguity. Great-Aunt Winifred pursed her lips, indicating a grievous invasion of privacy.
“Harold. He’s a family heirloom—you’ll be getting one when I die. And that’s all I have to say on the matter.”
She gazed blankly up toward the sky. Faking senility, Winifred had
discovered in recent years, was an extremely useful ploy. Besides, she knew what the girl needed, even if Dorothy herself didn’t.
Meanwhile, Dorothy’s imagination took off, soaring right out of the courtyard and up over the gray slate roofs of the village. Witches have familiars. I’ll probably get to inherit some flea-bitten stray kitten, or worse still a toad, she thought. The bag twitched again.