25 - Three Gold Rings

Leroy's face was unusually pensive. He stared out into the darkness, and Latoya put the candle in his free hand, the other still gripping his sister's shoulder.

"I know another story about rings. I heard it when I was small. We had a great auntie who took care of us, a midwife who would help women on the birthing bed, and sit up with the dying. She seemed to know everyone. They would tell her things. Sometimes, when she got into her cups late at night, she would light up a cigar and tell them to us. Because somebody needed to carry those stories. One night, she told us about the

THREE GOLD RINGS

The Thothsons came from England, just before the 20th century dawned. Their name wasn't always Thothson; maybe they didn't remember what it had been. The grandfather, old Hermes, had been a devotee of Egyptian Freemasonry. You see that pyramid in Eastside cemetery? That's where he's buried. And his sons. When they died, it was Isis Thothson, Hermes' sister, who became matriarch of the clan. Javier went his own way as soon as he came of age, managing a dry goods store, but the younger daughter, Nefertiti, she stayed with the aunt.

The Thothsons cut stone. The nicer monuments in every cemetery in Dagon's Hollow came from their chisel, and no one cared a whit whether a man or a woman held it, just as old Isis didn't care if those who paid her were white, Black, or Japanese.

"Anubis," Isis once told auntie, "weighs the heart, he does not care what color the skin was."

When old Isis lay dying, auntie and Nefertiti were there by her side. Skin frail as paper, eyes sunken in their sockets. Her hands, once so strong, were cold and hard. She was a hard woman, Isis Thothson. She had never married, never had any children of her own. Auntie had heard it told that the family had their own ideas about religion, based on old books Hermes had brought over. Copies of tablets and scrolls out of Egypt, fragments of old tombs and temples. But nobody that wasn't part of the family could say.

It wouldn't be true to say that Isis and Nefertiti loved each other. Javier had hated and feared the old woman, had left when he could. A young woman like Nefertiti had fewer options. If she'd had a husband, perhaps she might have escaped, but the young stonecutter had never turned her head to any of the young men in Dagon's Hollow, and with her broad shoulders and homely face. So they stayed on together, the niece under her aunt's thumb.

Nefertiti was the natural heir, even though Javier was two years older. But Isis had a condition.

"You must wear my rings," the old woman had said, her voice a cold, hard whisper that held no love for her grandniece at all.

It was put in the will, too, and no one wanted to contest that. So when auntie finally took a brown hand and closed those dark eyes, she watched as Nefertiti pulled back the hand-knit quilt and unbuttoned the long shift over her aunt's body.

Unlike her niece, Isis Thothson was generously endowed by the creator. Huge soft masses that sagged on either side of her breastbone, impressive for their size and shapeliness despite her age. The heavy gold rings were thick, ancient, the carvings worn. Nefertiti's pink fingers were so full of life as she pried them from the dark grey nipples compared to pale, cooling flesh of the corpse it was shocking to see. The third ring hung from the aunt's navel, a nub of flesh that stood out on her smooth stomach like a third nipple.

"They came out of Egypt," Nefertiti told auntie, when she asked. "Or so I'm told. Grandfather and Great-Aunt Isis believe that when they die, their hearts will be weighed. These rings, they say, were made by a priest long ago. They are heavy with the weight of sins accumulated through life, and when the wearer dies, they are taken off...and the heart is lighter than a feather."

We had a man who did tattoos and piercings. A young sailor called Adamson, his left lower leg a stump of wood. Proper young women didn't sit for such things, but this was a special occasion. And auntie went with her. She sat there on a stool, holding Nefertiti's hand after the young woman had unbuttoned her shirt. Her small breasts stood there, nipples pink, hanging delicately on a frame of wiry muscle.

The sailor had studied the heavy gold rings, with their odd, clever little catches.

"Real gold. Heavy. Will drag. Thick gauge," Adamson said at last. "Big needle. Going to hurt. Bleed."

"Do it," Nefertiti said.

He washed his hands first, soap and water, and asked Miss Nefertiti to wipe herself down with an **** pad. The needle was heated over a candle flame, and doused in brandy. Adamson muttered a "beggin' your pardon, miss" before he grabbed a breast, squeezed gently, and pressed the needle's point where nipple met areola.

Auntie felt the hand clench hers. Adamson was careful, his hands steady as if he was sewing a sail. He did not mind the blood that oozed down from the wound he made. The golden ring slipped into the wound easily. Closed, locked. Then Adamson moved onto the other nipple. Another apology. Another bone-crushing grip.

The navel ring didn't hurt. At least, Nefertiti gave no sign of it. In less than twenty minutes, the whole procedure was done. Adamson handed over clean rags to wipe away the blood, and small cotton bandages. Nefertiti nodded her head absently as he told her about keeping it clean, to watch out for infection. Auntie said that the weight of the rings tugged at the young breasts in a way she knew had to hurt.

Yet Nefertiti smiled. Auntie did not like that smile. It wasn't like any smile the young woman had smiled at her before.

Auntie didn't see much of Nefertiti after that. She had babies to deliver. The young woman took over the stonecutting business with energy and skill. It wasn't for a full ten months that auntie was called on again.

Nefertiti had married. The young man, a commercial traveler selling tombstones, had come in to sample her wares, and before long the nuptials had been announced. Auntie was surprised to see how motherhood had filled the young woman out—the huge swell of the stomach, the ring clearly visible through the fabric of the dress, and the enormous breasts, heavy and sagging over the distended abdomen, as big as—

"My goodness, Neffie," auntie said. "You're as big as Isis!"

Nefertiti had smiled then. Only it didn't look like her smile. Auntie would never see the young woman smile like she used to again. It was a cold smile that reminded her of a corpse on a bed, grey and waxy.

"Just so," she said, and the accent had a slight British lilt that Nefertiti Thothson had never had before. Just such an accent as Isis herself once had.

The baby was both healthy. A boy. Nefertiti named him Hermes, after his great-grandfather. Auntie said nothing about that. Said very little to Nefertiti Thothson. In truth, I think the old woman mourned the young woman she had once known. Maybe it wasn't what auntie thought or hinted; maybe Nefertiti bloomed on her own, and was closer to her aunt than anyone not in the family could know.

All auntie knew was that she heard from the lawyer that Nefertiti made a condition in her will, that her heir should wear the three rings.

Leroy sighed at that, and his exhalation snuffed the little candle with sadness.