“Well,” wheezed Edna, “there are worse ways to go.”
Mrs Rafaat held Edna’s hand tight. “You’re not going anywhere, dear,” she whispered. “You’ll be fine.”
“No,” sighed the old woman. “I don’t think so.”
Dog peered down curiously from Mrs Rafaat’s side, sniffing at Edna’s blood as it pooled on the floor. Sharon wordlessly picked up all the sacrifices Sammy had stolen from the upstairs vault and circled the prone form of Edna, laying them out as she went. The slipper stuck with a faint sound of wetness to the growing pool of blood, which started seeping through it as Sharon placed it at Edna’s feet.
“I feel… cold.”
“I know,” whispered Sharon. “I’m sorry.”
“W-what are you doing?” stammered Mrs Rafaat. “She needs an ambulance, first aid…”
Edna gripped Mrs Rafaat’s hand harder, commanding silence. The hem of Mrs Rafaat’s sari was lying in the blood, a rising crimson stain spreading through the silk. “Please,” breathed Edna. “Stay with me?”
Sharon stepped back from the slowly discolouring slipper. Arms limp at her side, she declared, “This is the slipper of the old woman who has lost her way. She sneaked out of the nursing home in the middle of the night, and wandered in search of a lost love through the silent streets. Her slipper fell off on the way, but she was not afraid, for even in the darkest hours of the night she was not alone.”
“Stay with me,” repeated Edna as Mrs Rafaat made to pull away. “My lady, stay.”
Sharon didn’t know where the words were coming from, didn’t know what they meant. But as she held up each object, she knew it was true, knew it was right. “This is the child’s glove found abandoned on a spike on the fence. The parents called out for their missing infant but could not find her, but though she wandered lonely through the night, hands bitten by the cold, she was not alone. No one is alone in the city.”
“I’m not sure I… I-I-I don’t think…” stammered Mrs Rafaat.
“This is the greaseproof paper that held a piece of chicken given to a starving man as the last shop closed. He was told, ‘Come back, whenever you want, and I’ll give you what you need to live,’ and as he walked away he offered his thanks to Our Lady of 4 a.m., who had preserved him through another night.” Sharon tore up the greasy piece of chicken paper, scattering the fragments over Edna’s body. The priestess was smiling, but her pupils were widening and the blood was coming slower now, too slow, from her wound.
“This is the umbrella that blew inside out while crossing Hungerford Bridge. The woman who carried it was soaked through, her clothes clinging blackly to her skin. But in the quietest hour of the night she took her shoes off and pulled down her hair and laughed at the rain, free from the judgement of men and safe in the city that was her own.”
Dog was sitting up straight now, his ears sticking up from his head like antennae. Mrs Rafaat stared into Edna’s eyes. “I don’t think… I-I didn’t mean…” stuttered Mrs Rafaat.
“It’s all right,” breathed Edna. “It’s for the best.”
“This is the bag the beggar man carried his clothes in. Lasts a lifetime. Worn out in a week. Life passed him by, but she did not.”
Sharon laid the bag above Edna’s head and stood back. Mrs Rafaat’s clothes were sticky with blood, her hands crimson with it. She looked down at her feet, at the slow spread of the redness up her sari, then back into Edna’s eyes.
Edna Long, sometime hairdresser, beauty parlour owner, high priestess of the Friendlies, thankful congregation to Our Lady of 4 a.m., smiled at her.
“You’re in the presence of She Who Walks Beside,” murmured Sharon as Dog dipped a curious paw into the blood on the floor. “And the sacrifice has been made. Tradition says you get to make a wish.”
Edna smiled still.
“Greydawn,” she breathed, and it seemed to Sharon that the breath kept coming from the furthest depths of Edna’s lungs, rolling out between her lips, her bare-whisper sending shimmers through her blood and skin, seeming not to cease even as the last vestiges of sound passed from her body and the smile on her face faded to an empty stare, fixed up at nothing.
Dog whined–a long, slow, animal note.
Mrs Rafaat carefully laid Edna’s hand aside, folding it across the high priestess’s chest. She stood, the blood shifting beneath her feet, and turned to look at Sharon.
“Oh,” she said, and seemed surprised she’d spoken. “Oh,” she said again. “Is that what I mean?”
The blood rippled at her feet like a cup of water trembling in an earthquake. Mrs Rafaat looked down at it, curious, then back up at Sharon.
“The thing is…” she murmured as the crimson stain spread further, racing upwards faster than nature could accomplish.
“What I think I wanted to say…” And the blood passed from the sari she wore and spread over her hands, a wriggling, living thing. It stretched tendrils up and around her neck, wove itself across her face and into her hair.
“What I was trying to say all along, really…” Her fingers began to dissolve, falling away into nothingness beneath the sheath of Edna’s blood; her sari billowed around her knees and hips as the bones that had supported them shimmered down to no more than raging air.
“… was how very much I liked being me.” Lips curled into face, face dissolved into air, air contracted, twisted and shrank down, pulling the hollow shroud of the blood-soaked sari to the floor with it, and, without any more fanfare or calamity, Mrs Rafaat was gone.