Dreadful Skin by Cherie Priest Page A

Through the north shores of Africa, and down to the jungles there, she walked in my wake.
    I would lose her sometimes for weeks and think that I had lost her for good, only to have her find me again on the far side of an ocean—as if she’d never lost my scent at all.
    For a long time she only watched. She wanted to learn, I imagine. She watched to see what I touched, and what I shunned. She observed me closely, as closely as she could come. I know what she was doing—she was stalking me. I know it when I see it. I know how the patterns work, and how the dance is stepped.
    She was a clever little thing, but she was not dangerous to me. I was stronger. I was faster, and I was clever too. I would not give her any upper hand, because I did not need to.
    From time to time I would think, “Perhaps I should speak with her.” It wouldn’t be hard. I could stop, and turn around, and there she would be—if I waited for her. I could sit her down and we could share a pot of tea. I would explain, “I know why you feel the way you do—I understand why you stalk and follow and chase. But I want you to understand, I am leaving now. I don’t want to harm anyone, and I don’t wish to be harmed. But I am what I am, and I’ll do what I must. See? I’m looking to minimize this awful trial. I want to flee. I’m leaving to seek the wisdom of the savages, or maybe to kill them all. But better there, than here. Better a few, than many. Can’t you see, I’m doing my best?”
    I would prepare these words for her. I would write them down and line them up. I would consider leaving her notes, and then I would do so—never knowing if she’d find them or read them at all.
    After Morocco, I thought I’d lost her for good.
    And then I saw her on the Mary Byrd , and I knew that the game had changed. She wasn’t following anymore. She was predicting. She was making me come to her, and that meant she was ready to strike.

X.
    I took the kitchen knife and I held it like my mama showed me, ready to stab and cut if I had to. I was ready to hurt a man, or anything else that came my way.
    I lived enough in thirty-five years to have seen and heard a lot of things good, bad, and otherwise. But I never heard nothing at all like that yowling yell the night we were anchored for the storm. The closest I could think to call it was to say, “It was an animal in pain,” but if you asked me what kind of animal I couldn’t have told you.
    Whatever it was, it was big. Nothing small can make a noise like that.
    And to think, that fool-headed gambling man tried to tell me it was the mud drums—as if I never rode on a boat before.
    I didn’t know what was making that noise, but whatever it was, it was mad and it was big. And I didn’t want to meet it with nothing but my cheeks in my hands. It was coming from upstairs, I thought. Up on the hurricane deck, or maybe from one of the middle-deck cabins.
    Just as I thought I had a good handle on it—just as I thought I could pinpoint it if I held still long enough and held my ears right—it stopped.
    And there was nothing but the rain, and I was standing in it, holding that big kitchen knife. I stood there stupid, getting soaked to the bone. It wasn’t cold; it was all right to be wet. But the wind was whipping up too, grabbing my apron and tugging it hard. The wind pulled at my scarf and untied it half a knot at a time. I used the hand that wasn’t holding the knife to hold my hair down.
    I stared up at the sky and saw nothing. I listened to the night around me, but I heard just the rain and sometimes, the thunder cracking high and hard—rattling the windows and making the deck boards shudder.
    I thought about the captain and wondered if I shouldn’t get to him and ask what was going on, but then I remembered he had a bottle of wine and I thought better of it. I’d said I was going after the cook, anyway. I’d go after the cook.
    I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I sure didn’t like it.
    The cook