The Oil of Other Hands

Sunday afternoon, Maya turned up with Kate's destiny wrapped in plain brown paper. It looked like an ordinary package: a rectangular box, tied with white string. A little on the heavy side, judging by how Maya cradled it in both arms and tilted back as if to balance it, leaning on the railing outside Kate's door.

"Let me in so I can put this down," she said.

Kate took a step back and swung the door open, watching helplessly as Maya clacked through it in black high-heeled boots, eyeing every old piece of furniture, every scuffed floorboard. Her perfectly brushed hair fell in a smooth, chestnut-brown sheet to her shoulders. Her grey sheath dress was, of course, entirely appropriate for someone still in mourning.

"What are you doing with that?" Kate asked, trailing behind her sister as she placed the package on the coffee table that had been their parents' when they were growing up.

"I picked it up for you," she said, making a face. "Dad left it with Mr. Townsend."

"I know." Kate had planned to drop by the lawyer's office later on, so she could pick it up after the reading of the will, after Maya had gone home. "Why were you back at Mr. Townsend's?"

Maya didn't answer. She'd made a scene at the reading, predictably disappointed by the will. There weren't any secret savings that Dad had been hiding all these years. He'd lived modestly, and died with nothing left over, like he'd said he would.

"You'll always have what you need," he'd told Kate. "That's a comfort, even if you'll never have more than that. It's our way."

Maya stared at the package. Apparently she'd looped back to the lawyer's, unable to leave things alone after she'd heard that Kate had inherited one thing. "Open it," she said.

"What?"

"I want to see what he left you."

Maya was hurt, Kate supposed, for the same old reason. Kate had always been the favorite, or at least, Dad had paid her a lot more attention. He'd had to, in order to prepare her for the duty she was bound to uphold as the youngest child. It was Beardmore family tradition, and had been for the past six hundred years.

That tradition now waited for her to unwrap it. "I don't know." She sat on the sofa and placed a hand on the package. It buzzed beneath her palm like a purring cat, or a live bee.

Maya crossed her arms. "It's the least you can do. I didn't get anything."

Kate's temper rode high in her chest. Maya had never bothered to visit her before, despite the fact that she'd had a key and a standing invitation for the past two decades. Now she watched the package with a mixture of suspicion and envy.

"Open it," she demanded.

Kate sighed. Maya's anger probably wasn't entirely her fault. The box wasn't meant to be touched by untrained hands. Even just carrying it around had probably put her on edge.

Kate went to the kitchen to fetch a pair of scissors, all too aware of the grotty cupboards and the worn, battered flooring that her landlady, a tiny elderly woman named Natasha, couldn't afford to replace. The drawer squealed as she pulled it open.

The place was a dump, but it was home. Natasha, who lived downstairs, had never once tried to raise the rent in the fifteen years that Kate had lived on the second floor. The two of them made a good team, looking after the tumbledown house together. Kate tried her best to keep the garden in good trim. Natasha had her in for tea once a week, and for tiny glasses of sherry and cake soaked in brandy at Christmas.

It was a life Maya couldn't understand.

It seemed like she didn't care: she followed Kate into the kitchen as if to hurry her up. Her anger filled the space between them until it bumped up against Kate like a giant balloon, forcing her to take a step back, scissors in hand.

"All those times Dad took you down into his workroom in the basement," Maya said, carrying on a conversation she'd started in her head. "Your little club meetings. He never told me why he hated me so much."

"He didn't hate you."

Rage puckered Maya's features. "He didn't love me like he loved you." Her lower lip trembled. She swiped a tear from the corner of her eye. She was suffering. Well. She would.

Kate knew she should kick Maya out, open the package alone, and perform the ceremony of appeasement as soon as she could. She swallowed against a lifetime of watching Maya get what she wanted in every way except one. The box was different. It was dangerous. Shutting Maya out would be for her own good.

"Can I at least see it?" Maya sniffled. "Whatever it is?"

Kate's resolve stuttered. The fat tears rolling down Maya's cheeks grabbed the last thread of her sisterly affection, and pulled it tight. "Okay." Maya wouldn't be satisfied until she got a look at what she'd missed out on. Once she did, she would probably lose interest.

Kate sat on the sofa, and waited while Maya squeezed in beside her. The package crouched like a gargoyle on the coffee table. To Maya's uninitiated eyes, it probably looked completely innocuous.

Kate slipped the scissors under the string and snipped it, then tore off the paper, revealing the wooden box beneath, as beautiful as she remembered. White oak, no hint of a gap in the dovetail joints at the corners. It shone: other hands had polished it; other lives sustained it. Kate ran her fingertips along the seam where the lid fit into the base, feeling for any hint of cold breath from within, any sense that it was failing to keep its contents safe. All was well.

Maya shifted beside her. "That's it?"

Later on, when Kate performed the appeasement, she would apologize for the insult. She pointed to the deep-cut, looping symbols that seemed to twist as her eyes traced their lines. "See these? They're very special." She pointed to the side of the box, tilting it up so Maya could see. "Dad carved this one."

She remembered watching him do it, the syllables he'd muttered so as not to disturb the magic, even as he worked to strengthen it. The way his thick fingers had held his fine carving knife. "Each mark keeps us safe," he'd said. "When it's your time, you'll make your own."

"I don't get it," Maya said. "What's the big deal?"

"It's a family heirloom." Defensiveness prickled inside Kate.

Maya didn't understand. She'd never tried to.

"What's in it? There's got to be something in there."

Kate chewed her lip, and made a decision. If Maya wanted to see so badly, then she would.

She opened the box, and revealed the bronze tablet, characters scored into its surface and blackened with charcoal.

Maya wrinkled her nose. "What language is that?"

"Latin, sort of. A lowbrow version. Whatever they were using in Bath, in England, six hundred years ago. Some grandfather of ours, great great—I don't know how many times over—made this," Kate said. "It's sort of a protection spell for the family. I don't know if there's a better way of putting it."

There was, in fact, a better way. She could have explained all of it, the sheer spite and negativity contained in the tablet's words. She didn't.

Maya reached out a hand.

Kate slammed the lid shut, stood, and picked up the box. Maya's curiosity had gone far enough. Kate's heart pounded: she'd taken a terrible risk, showing the box to Maya. Showing Maya up. Showing off. Their father wouldn't have approved.

She knelt in front of the small cupboard she used as an end table. Their mother had painted it in jaunty colors, years ago, and Kate had left it that way. She opened the cupboard door and placed the box inside, in the spot she'd reserved for it. Good enough as a place of honor.

"You're keeping it in there?" Maya asked. She stood, and watched over Kate's shoulder as she shut the cupboard door.

"Yup."

Kate ignored the implied criticism behind Maya's pout. The box would be safe there. It didn't need any special protection. It had teeth enough of its own. Besides, as their father had always said, no one in their right mind would want what was in it.

Maya balled her hands up into fists at her sides. Kate had seen dozens of her tantrums, watched how Maya always got what she wanted. Clothes, a car, college. Great job, good husband, nice house.

"You're making a big deal out of nothing," Maya finally said. "If it's an antique, you could sell it. Maybe donate it to a museum, if it's as old as you say. Seems to me like you could use the money. I would buy it from you."

The two of them stared at each other.

"Go home," Kate said. "There's nothing for you here."

Maya left without another word, slamming the door shut behind her. Kate took the box from its place, closed her eyes, and let appeasement tumble from her lips.

***

A week later, Kate came home after a long shift at the coffee shop—a new job, one she liked a lot—to find Natasha tucked into the corner of the porch swing beside her sleeping orange cat. It was early summer, one of the first balmy nights. Kate had walked home, enjoying the perfumed air as she'd thought about how sweet life was, and how she didn't need more than she had.

"Hello!" Natasha called out. "I thought you were home already."

Alarm pricked the surface of Kate's skin. "Nope. Just got here."

"Ah! I'm hearing things!" Natasha joked. "I thought you were trying on a new pair of heels. Clop clop!"

Kate's door was locked, and the apartment was just the way she'd left it: breakfast dishes still in the drying rack, her modest collection of books and plants where they should be. She went directly to the brightly-painted cabinet in the living room, and opened it: the box was gone.

Only one person had a key to her door. Only one person would want to take the box. "Oh, Maya."

Kate remembered her father's warnings, his insistence that appeasement should take place daily. "Even if you're tired or sick, darling. Even if you're so busy you don't think you can." She remembered his sturdy fingers caressing the box. "You'll always find a moment or two. If you take care of this, it will take care of you."

Kate put on the kettle for tea. While she waited for it to boil, she thought about Maya. If she'd been a different person, if she'd cared about anyone but herself, then maybe Kate would have explained. Maybe she would have tried to warn her.

***

Kate followed the disaster through Maya's social media rants, and later, the local news. Once or twice she thought about calling, but only once or twice.

She came home one night to find the box on her doorstep. Maya hadn't bothered to put it back in its proper place. It didn't matter. It was home.

She took it inside, sat on the floor in front of the cabinet, and whispered the appeasement. Then she opened it, and studied the bronze tablet, the words of the curse so vile they should never be spoken aloud.

A folded piece of paper was tucked beneath it: a note, written in a spiky version of Maya's handwriting. This is yours, obviously, it said. Keep it away from me.

Kate patted the box, and whispered, "I will." She put the note back into the box, closed the lid, and spoke the appeasement again.