Mother's Milk

By Emily Wyeth

"...inside the simmering pot rested a primordial soup. And the soup was hungry."

There's something in the chest; something in the cave; something wrong with the soup; something sad about the doll; and something summoned from ano

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sempiternal House
• Release date: May 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9780645818901

Book preview

Mother's Milk

Stories by

Emily Wyeth

Sempiternal House

Mother's Milk

Paperback edition ISBN: 978-0-6458189-1-8

E-book edition ISBN: 978-0-6458189-0-1

Published by Sempiternal House

Copyright © 2023 by Emily Wyeth.

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organisations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Cover Artwork: 'The Bat-Woman' by Albert Joseph Penot (circa 1890)

For Nana Pam

Contents

Cecaelia’s Song

Taniwha

The Tengu Trick

Dragon Princess

Open Wide, Come Inside

Mother's Mlk

My Butchulla Woman

Satisfaction Brought It Back

Hardcore AF

God's Love

Customer Service

Alice’s Red

Dahlia's Photos

The Truth and The Tangible

About Author

Cecaelia’s Song

Captain’s log The Perseus

August 23rd, 1832.

Variable winds with dry weather in the am. Calm and thick weather in the pm.

There is a waxing moon tonight, so I know it has been less than a fortnight since we set out and away from that dreadful cove. Yet it feels an eternity.

Try as we might, we cannot seem to find our way back to it. A storm brought us there and with its clouds black as soot the stars were kept hidden from sight, leaving us no means with which to navigate or know where it was we had been swept. But I remember it was a full moon. I remember the ghostly orb peeking out from behind the clouds to reveal to me what was in that cave. As if it wanted me to see into that hollow of horror.

Still, as clearly as that sight has stayed with me, it is the sound of what we found that haunts me. It gives no peace in dreams nor does it leave me when I wake. It follows me across the sea, twisting and gnawing at my mind. I cannot escape it. No end to it … There is nothing can console me … I must put an end to it once and for all.

The men eat their supper below, fish stew they’re all sick to death of. But it seems a prudent time for me to sit down and record the events of that harrowing night while alone in the cabin. For my sake at least. It feels like a dream. At least this makes it feel real. Like I haven't lost my mind ... Like I'm doing the right thing.

It began with a storm.

The shipkiller was upon us without a lick of thunder for warning. Between the winds and waves, the ship was thrown in all manner of directions. The rapid ferocity had me believing more than once that doom was upon us. But the men are well-versed in weathering the sea’s many moods that we made it through with nary a man lost. When the storm cleared, we discovered it had led us to an unknown cove. Somewhere south of Australia, but that was all we knew. Of the three compasses onboard, none pointed in the same direction. I have never seen such a thing and cannot explain how they still show three separate headings.

I remember the moon was obscured behind the remnant clouds, but its faint light allowed us to see the carnage strewn among the rocks surrounding the cove.

Another vessel had been caught in that unnatural storm. This one was not so lucky.

Sections of the wrecked ship appeared partially intact, caught on the rocks and yet to submit to the depths, so I instructed volunteers to take a jolly and search for survivors. But the general feeling from the men was to stay away. Haunted, they called it. But there is no place on my ship for such yellow-bellied talk, so I chose three men at random to join me in the search. Reluctant, but obedient, they readied the jolly.

The crew checked over The Perseus for any storm damage while I stood starboard watching the current suck fragments of the broken hull into a cave. Transfixed by the push and pull, only vaguely aware of the men behind me, I thought I heard a voice on the air. Like a whisper of a song. It chilled me. But I was resolved to recover any survivors in the wreck, no matter how haunting the sound was.

Sometime after, I was sitting in the jolly with the men rowing us closer to that gaping hollow in the rocks. Bodies rolled and bobbed against the boat, all face down and lifeless. Waves crashed against the rocks, taking the drowned and bloated bodies with them as though dead wasn't enough, they had to be broken too. From its appearance and that of its passengers, the ship had been a convict vessel likely on its way to Port Arthur. Most of the bodies were men, with a few too small to have left their mother's side let alone their country as criminals.

As we rowed closer to the cave mouth, everything stilled and the night felt as close and unsettling as a breath on the back of my neck. Search as we might, there was no sign of life among the wreckage, only silence and the graveless. But I wasn’t ready to give up. There was still the cave to search yet.

How I wish we turned around before setting foot in that cave.

The jolly was brought up beside a flat bed of rocks where I was able to climb out easily enough. I didn’t want to risk taking the boat further into the cave, so I ordered one of the lads to stay with the jolly and keep an eye out for survivors while the rest of us searched the cave on foot.

‘Try and see if you can spot the vessel’s name so we can report it when we reach Adelaide,’ I said.

The sailor nodded.

Mr Narrington and the cabin boy, Jimmy, climbed out and followed me uneasily, holding their lanterns before them as though to ward off the ghosts of the dead. I shook my head at such foolish mysticism.

We traipsed along a ridge that led into the cave, careful not to slip on the black rocks, when we were forced to stop at a body that obstructed our path through the cavemouth. Mr Narrington assisted me in shifting it out of the way while Jimmy stood holding the lanterns for us to see. Only, as we rolled it aside and onto its back, Mr Narrington exclaimed uncharacteristically and I looked urgently at what he saw to cause such a stir in him. I beheld a great black eel burrowed inside the dead convict's mouth. At some point the creature slithered inside the man, mayhaps thinking his insides a suitable home until the current washed his body upon the rocks. The creature hissed at us as it slid deeper back inside the man's gullet, until the only sign it had ever been there was the gentle convulsions of the man's abdomen as it coiled inside him.

A shudder ran through me and the sight spooked Jimmy to the point he wanted to return to the jolly and not dare go any further. Understandably so, coming from one so young, but I needed them both in case we had to carry any survivors out. I gave him a moment to recover and just as the lad seemed to regain his courage, I heard the voice again. This time the sound was louder and unmistakable. It was a woman singing.

‘Hear that lads? Survivors,’ I said.

But they said nothing, only looked at each other doubtfully before following into the cave.

Like a riptide, the singing drew me inside, deeper and deeper until I could scarcely see a thing. I almost felt as if I were the eel and this cave the belly of an unseen creature. The song brushed at my skin and tugged at my mind in gentle, melancholic caresses. I walked with blind determination to touch the bearer of such a voice. To take hold of them as desperately as their voice did me.

The internal current was bringing more of the wreck with its corpses into the cave, littering the rocks and filling the small, dark space inside. The singing led us deeper still to where the darkness closed in and the damp chilled our bones.

Jimmy and Mr Narrington both claimed to hear nothing but the wind and waves. There was caution in their words as they asked what I heard that they could not. Perhaps they thought I heard the voice of the spirits they so desperately wanted to avoid. They suggested we turn back and not waste our time, for neither believed anyone alive would take refuge in that cold, foreboding place. But I pushed ahead and threatened to dock their pay if they didn’t follow, so we carried on.

It was despair. A wretched, woeful despair that filled her words. It was the saddest thing I ever did or ever will hear again. It was filled with such hopelessness and heartbreak it would surely have made heaven weep.

‘My name it is Maria, a merchant’s daughter fair

And I have left my parents and three thousand pounds a year.’

At the heart of the cave was a large stalagmite, surrounded by saltwater pools and bloodless bodies, and sitting atop that pillar of black stone was the source of that utterly empty voice. I could not make her out in the gloominess but saw her shadowy outline sitting there like a queen on her throne. I called out, letting her know we had come to help, but she did not answer. She merely continued singing. The very sound of anguish.

‘While up aloft in storm, from me his absence mourn.

And firmly pray, arrive the day, he is never more to roam.’

I tried to gain her attention once more by asking if she was all right, but at the same moment the clouds parted and a beam of pale moonlight shone through the caves’ eroded ceiling, illuminating the woman on the rocks. I have seen much in my years on the sea. Things most men would fall to their knees and pray for death over. But nothing, not even my wildest fantasies, could have prepared me for that sight.

The beating, broken heart of the cave seated a cecaelia woman.

From a distance, she could be mistaken for human, but her torso was skirted by splaying tentacles that writhed with minds of their own. The sudden emergence of the moon caused her skin to shift from resembling the rocky, black cave to what I can only assume was her natural pale shade as it readapted to the colours of her newly lit surroundings.

My breath caught in my chest and I felt the lads stiffen behind me. I had heard tales of such creatures, but like sirens and krakens I had passed them off as fables. Stories to scare women and keep sailors in line. Yet here she was. A cecaelia woman in the flesh.

‘My heart is pierced by Cupid

I disdain all glittering gold

There is nothing can console me

But my jolly sailor bold.’

Jimmy made a choked sound as he took in the sight of the cave floor paved with dead.

I followed his gaze but was quickly drawn to her long tentacles and the way they suckered and curled, almost tenderly, around the bodies that had been washed there. All of them lay face down and pale with mortality. Some were still linked together by chains that had bound their fates in life and now in death.

Jimmy turned and emptied his stomach on the rocks. Mr Narrington patted his back as the lad’s body shook with sobs. It was then I saw something else amidst the inky tendrils and corpses.

Two eyes sat like shining marbles on the ground as if plucked from their host. Only, with each body face down, it was impossible to guess from which they came.

The cecaelia woman’s song halted and she spoke in an equally sorrow-inducing and unnatural voice. ‘I couldn’t stop the crying … so I took them out. I will never again see my jolly sailor bold.’

Any warmth left in my body fled as a deep chill ran through me at her words. Her face held such harrowing beauty my knees fell weak as if I had looked upon the face of God and I knelt in abject worship.

In her unnatural, almost alien, features was a beauty so incomprehensibly dreadful and intense I cannot hope to do it justice by describing it. But above the smooth, flat skin where ordinarily a nose would sit were two subtle indentations in the skin, where I can only assume her eyes had at some point been.

Mr Narrington’s hand touched my shoulder, his words sounding as if spoken underwater, ‘Cap’n. We best be on our way, sir. Before the tide comes in any more and we’re trapped in this ‘ere cave with these curséd dead.’

I was transfixed by her—to her. I felt nothing but the entrenching heartache of her words. She held her arms out toward me, pleadingly. ‘Are you my jolly sailor bold? Have you found me? Have you come for me?’ she whispered, almost painfully before resuming her song.

I wanted to be. I could have been. I would have done anything to ease her pain. To silence her misery.

Unconsciously, I had taken several steps forward, drawn to her entirely. But Mr Narrington grabbed my shoulders forcefully, breaking me from whatever spell had befallen me. The sense of longing emptied out of me and was replaced with horrified dread.

The cecaelia’s song deepened then, filling my chest as her hands and tentacles begged for me to embrace her. ‘My heart is pierced by Cupid…’

Despair flooded me and I cried out in its overwhelming agony, ‘Make it stop.’

‘There is nothing can console me...’

Jimmy and Mr Narrington dragged me from the cave back to the boat. When we arrived, the sailor asked what happened. But Mr Narrington told him to get going and they threw me into the jolly where I writhed, covering my ears and begging her to be silent.

‘…my jolly sailor bold…’

The men rowed frantically back to The Perseus and the sailor again asked what happened.

‘He said he heard a voice,’ Jimmy said.

‘He didn’t hear nuth’n. Them bodies was too much for him. Get us away, Spitter. This place is cursed and I’ll spend not a minute more ‘ere,’ said Mr Narrington.

By the time we arrived, my cries turned to sobs and my sobs later turned to a quiet weeping. Jimmy stayed with me for a time but after half a night and the next full day, he couldn’t take much more