Black Jack Gaunt

Black Jack Gaunt dances under the full moon, and all the girls dance with him.


Out they come, from the huts and from the fields, against their better judgement and despite their parents' pleadings. 


"Don't go a-dancing with Jack!" warn their mothers, "He dances to one tune, and no good can come of it!"


But Jack's hips are limber and his bright eyes are cruel.


"Don't dance with Jack," say their fathers, "His feet are fleet, and he'll dance you all away!"


But Jack's slippery shape is alabaster beauty in the slanting moonlight, and all the girls do swoon.
 So Black Jack Gaunt makes his dance, right there outside the village in the dusty ground, and not a man with man's-blood in his veins can come out to challenge him, for that is his magic, on this night which is his alone.


Now out comes Daisy, and all around would agree that Daisy is the fairest, the straightest-standing, so tall, so slender, so fresh and tender. Out she comes to dance with Jack, and the world holds its breath. 
Jack takes her hand and spins her in the moonlight, and the plumes of dust look like dark blood at their feet.


Black Jack Gaunt, he is the very devil. He is handsome as a devil, too, for all his gauntness, for his movements pulse like life itself, and he is dressed in silken finery.


"Oh come back, girl, come back in!" calls her father, pressed up against the window of his cottage, and able to come no closer, "Jack is a stranger, and he'll make a stranger of you!"


But the roar of blood is in her ears, and Daisy does not hear.


Before long, the moon begins to fade; but Jack has made his choice, and his night is nearly done.


Away he dances, and all around him drop the girls, like puppets with slit strings, down to the ground and down into sleep, deep, deep, deep, cold and silent and still.
Away he dances, and dances Daisy with him.


When the sun comes up, Daisy's father can come out; but his girl is long away.


* * *


Black Jack Gaunt returns to his cave of brightly glittering carvings, and Daisy is in a swoon.


There are many fine things here, oh so many fine and glittering things; and each one was once a girl, just like Daisy. Now they are merely things; oh, but aren't they pretty?


Jack leads Daisy to a place by the fire and lays her gently down. He gets out his cooking pot and all his special herbs. And now he makes a soup.
Daisy smells the simmering pot, and stirs up from her sleep.


She looks around, all wide of eye, and wonders where she is.
Black Jack Gaunt reaches a long hand out into the darkness under the earth and snaps the neck of a deep-burrowing mole. He pulls it back and smiles at her and starts squeezing it into the soup.


"My dear, my lovely," he whispers to her, "tell me, what is your true name?"


But Daisy, who is sometimes wise, shakes her head and replies, "I'll not give you that for free!" and shivers in the darkness.
Jack is patient. He has played this game for many long years.


He shades his bright eyes and runs his nails through the mud, skewering seventeen fat ripe worms and stirring them into his soup.


"My dear, my lovely," he cajoles her, "tell me, what price is your true name?"


And Daisy, who is sometimes brave, runs her slender hands down her tender thighs and replies, "The price of my name is that song you sing, the one that makes us dance!" and she licks her lips in the darkness.


Jack is slow to anger, despite the girl's pride. He needs her true name; the dance alone won't do, and neither will the soup.


So he scuttles away to a corner where a pool of putrid water festers, and fishes out a stinking fish, white of eye in the darkened cave, and lobs it into the soup.


"My dear, my lovely," he purrs to her, "this is the song I sing, though no one can sing it like me!"


And with that he sings the song for her, which no one before has remembered, because on Jack's night when the moon is full, all the important things are forgotten.


And Daisy listens to the song, and locks it into her mind, and remembers it very closely.


"There, my dear, my lovely," says Jack Gaunt, and his eyes are burning cold. "Now you have heard my song. Will you not let me have your one true name?"


And Daisy, who will sometimes risk great things on narrow chances, bites her full red lip until the blood runs, and replies, "My true name is Black Jack Gaunt, and this is my cave, and that is my broth, and you are mine alone!"


Oh, how Jack does wail!


Up jumps Daisy – and singing Jack's song, she dances Jack's dance; and what can Jack do but dance too?


Daisy writhes and sways; and Jack is hers indeed.


She picks up the broth and spits into it, once, twice, and again; and now her blood is mixed in, and the broth is hers indeed.


Then, "Drink!" she commands, and of course he does; how can he do otherwise?


Jack shakes, and he howls, and he cries, and he pleads. 
But Daisy, she is very cold.


Jack shrinks as he shakes, and glows as he howls.


But Daisy, she has made her choice.


Jack is gone: in his place, a brightly gleaming carving, beautiful and thin.
And Daisy, she is Daisy no more.


* * *


Black Jack Gaunt is gone from these parts, though his story is told in the hills.


Daisy never came back; and her father, he sickened and died.


But not long after she went away, many lost girls came home. They tumbled and fumbled back from the earth, covered in mud and mildew, and not a day older than when Jack had danced them away. Some were welcomed by fathers still living. Others came home to find a hundred years had slipped by.


Now the mothers look to their sons, for Black Jack Gaunt had his dance stolen, and the woman who whispers the young men out into the moonlight is very thin and very beautiful, and no one has said 'no' to her yet.



The End


Thanks for reading!

This flash fiction is extracted from my strange fantasy novel, "Of Blood And Iron" which you can find HERE.

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