The Courtesan

By J. V. Stanley

I was still on the cliff overlooking the crashing waves of the ocean as it licked up the body I had just thrown over it. It was a little girl of around thirteen who had washed ashore and was the last of the sisters to perish. She had become sick with pneumonia, and as much as I wanted to care for her, she was already on her deathbed...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crazy Ink
• Release date: Mar 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393187998

Book preview

The Courtesan

Chapter One

Iwas still on the cliff overlooking the crashing waves of the ocean as it licked up the body I had just thrown over it. It was a little girl of around thirteen who had washed ashore and was the last of the sisters to perish. She had become sick with pneumonia, and as much as I wanted to care for her, she was already on her deathbed.

Take me to the tree, Veronica. She choked and gagged on the phlem and mucus now filling her lungs. She was referring to the old willow tree that hung over the embankment, the one I used to tell her stories under. The gnarled roots used to be a playground for the little ones; I remembered as I carried her, laying her carefully between the crevices of the upturned roots. I sat with her while she perished, my sisters gone to the shoreline to pick wildflowers.

You can, you know, she said weakly.

I shook my head.

I know you’re hungry, and it’s the last thing I can do that is good on this godforsaken earth. At least my life would mean something, so long as you survived. Her skin was sallow and cold, the dark clouds hovering in the distance in a thickening storm.

What about the others?

Don’t tell them. I can live through you. You’re all going to make it. I just know it, and I want to be there when you do, she whispered. Her coughing turned into throaty hacks, and I could hear the collection of mucus in her lungs as she choked incessantly upon it. After a while, her hacks caused her to black out. To have her wake to this unholy nightmare would be a punishment worse than death.

I used a sharp stone to cut her jugular. She didn’t even stir. Her blood poured into my mouth and tasted like copper. It was a harsh flavor, and at first I got used to it but soon began to crave it. My sisters were still occupied near the shore at that moment, while I claimed her heart, liver, and blood from the wrists of this poor, lost soul. I could taste the salt upon her skin as I could taste it upon my own lips while I stared down at what was left of her body. Blood stained the front of my dress.

She was the last. What are we to do now? I whispered as I stared into the oncoming storm.

I had tried to drink the waters of the sea. All I’d ever tasted was salt. From my mama’s overly salted pork shanks to the coppery salt covering my lips when I’d drunk from the wrists of this poor girl, to the mist of the sea covering my chapped lips. I had swallowed the breaths of my starving sisters in abandonment, tearing at the flesh of fish with my teeth and nails as others around me had done the same. It was always the weakest who went first, so I had to prove myself to them. And now there were only three of us: Gianna, Agata, and me.

I loved to sing. It was one of my favorite things to do to help raise my spirits, and oftentimes I would take to this cliff, not for any other reason but to sing. I raised my voice to the highest cliffs and as low as the rocks below, humming a melody my mama used to sing. I loved and despised that woman, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the taste of salt from my lips even as I cried into my hands while I sang, remembering.

It wasn’t their names I remembered. It was their eyes, those poor sallow and perpetually sullen eyes. There were a few who even welcomed death as though, like this girl, they could live on through memory. Our memories. At least someone would remember them.

The sky was overcast, and I stood there yet again and imagined her body down there while I sang. I sang to her as I sang to the other girls. I sang and I sang.

Chapter Two

Venice, Italy. It was the golden age of courtesans in a world where women were more possessions than actual people. Their fate was always the same: to be enslaved, uneducated, and do their familial duty of marrying according to their station, no matter the age difference. Marriages were arranged, and it wasn’t uncommon for a fifteen-year-old girl to marry a man whose virility went by