Chapter Text
The blood was roaring in John’s ears. It was almost loud enough to drown out the shouts and cries of the workers in the mill yard. He was watching his own trembling hand reach out towards Margaret, detached from reality as he gently brushed a stray hair from her temple to better assess the damage to her face. Blood, dripping down her porcelain skin like honey on a dipper.
He didn’t remember much after that--he had shouted back at the rioters, offering himself like a lamb to slaughter, the crowd scattering as the mounted police came clattering into the yard. Once the imminent danger of the angry mob began to dissipate, John bent down and scooped Margaret into his arms, kicking in the front door of his home to bring her safely inside.
“Mother!” he cried out. Margaret’s dead weight in his arms was causing panic to rise like bile in his throat. “Mother, please hurry!” Somewhere in the depths of the house, he could hear his mother’s footsteps rushing towards him. He brought Margaret’s limp body into the sitting room, laying her on the settee and crouching down next to her, his face only centimeters from hers.
“John, what’s happened?” his mother’s breathless voice started behind him.
“Margaret, it’s...it’s Margaret,” he said, his eyes trained on Margaret’s still face. “She was trying to protect me”--a huff of derision from Hannah--”when someone in the crowd threw a rock. It struck her, right here,” he said, his still-quivering hand reaching out to point to where the blood was still wet and bright on her left temple.
“Here, let me see,” his mother said, placing a grounding hand on his shoulder. Shakily, John stood up, finally turning to look at his mother. What he hadn’t expected was the way the blood in Hannah’s face drained away as she brought her fingertips to her mouth. “Oh, John,” she said. Her voice was sad, choked. He didn’t understand.
“Mother? What is it?”
With a hand as unsteady as his own, Hannah reached out towards John’s face and gently traced the same spot on his temple as Margaret’s wound. Her fingertips were cool against his flushed skin, the familiar pads of her fingers pushing the hair away from his temple as tears welled up in her eyes.
“Mother?”
“Come with me,” she said softly, her voice broken and sad. She took his hand, giving it a tug, but John resisted.
“Mother, Margaret is injured, we have to call for Dr. Donaldson.”
“We will,” Hannah said, tugging on his hand again. “First you must see.”
At this point, the ruckus he had caused had attracted the attention of the maids. As his mother led him away from Margaret, John looked over his shoulder and said, “Jane, call for Dr. Donaldson. Immediately.” He tried to ignore the wide-eyed look the girl gave him as she silently nodded.
With a hesitant glance down at Margaret, John reluctantly followed his mother into the main hallway of the house. An umbrella stand stood shoved against the corner of the entryway, the dying sun slatting through the facets of the window. Against the side wall was a large brass mirror, the sun reflecting off its face and nearly blinding John as he followed his mother in.
“Look,” she said, standing him in front of it. There were still spots in front of his eyes, bits of blue and black floating in nothing. He dug the heel of his hands into both sockets, willing the distraction away. When he brought them down, he could see what his mother was so fixated on.
On John’s left temple, in the same exact spot as Margaret’s wound, was a vermilion blossom. He wasn’t sure of the genus—carnation? Anemone?—but he knew what it meant. He’d kept tabs on all of the flowers that bloomed across his skin through the years.
Bright yellow roses across his kneecaps were the first ones to appear. He had been thirteen at the time, undressing himself in the privacy of his small room after working at the drapers. The moment was seared into his memory—the harsh yelp he let out as he scrambled back on the mattress, the alien color of his skin causing tears to spring to his eyes. His mother, hearing his cry, had rushed into the room. He had pointed to his knees, his voice choked as he stuttered and stumbled over his words.
“Soulmark,” was the term Hannah had used when she finally managed to calm him. “It means that there’s someone out there meant for you.”
John, always rational and curious, had stated, “What do you mean ‘meant for me’?”
“A soulmate,” Hannah had stated. “A person whose soul is bound to yours.”
“Do I know them?”
“Perhaps.” John could still remember the warmth of his mother’s hand as she had cupped one of his knobbly knees. “Perhaps not.”
“Do you have a soulmate?” was the next question that had tumbled out of John’s mouth, his eyes still fixed on the curling petals of the roses. It had been quite pretty, but John loathed it.
“I did,” his mother had replied, a sad smile on her face. She couldn’t tell her son about how the only flower now marring her skin was a shock of garish, bright red celosia across her scalp, hidden by the mass of hair she piled on top of her head everyday. A reminder of her husband’s exit from the world that only she could see, if she should choose.
“Why is it showing up now?”
“They only show up when your soulmate is injured, John. There’s a chance that yours may be younger than you—it looks to me like maybe they skinned their knees.”
From that moment, John made a note of every flower that bloomed across his skin. He wrote them down on a small notepad, hidden beneath his mattress. After the roses, there was a large chunk of time where nothing bloomed. Part of him wondered if his soulmate was gone, unsure of how these things worked, but he assumed that he’d feel the loss in some kind of way. He tried not to give life to the relief he felt when a smattering of lily of the valley blossomed around his pointer finger.
Throughout the years that followed, John’s secret notebook slowly filled with details of his soulmate’s scrapes and bruises. Once, a buttercup bled across the sole of his foot, the darkest part of the bloom near the arch. Baby’s breath often sprinkled his fingertips, and John could remember fondly smiling at the fact that they were probably injuries from needlepoint gone awry. Sometimes hydrangeas—hues of blue and purple and white—would bloom across his rib cage, the color bright and obtrusive against the stark white of his trunk. Part of him knew that it was probably bruising from a corset. Whether or not he had overheard Fanny complaining about her own bruising was his business.
Despite all of the documentation and curiosity that John held for his soulmate, the prospect of them actually existing had never actually seemed probable. They were just a specter, haunting his thoughts and possessing his skin. He never thought that he’d ever actually meet them.
“Come, John. We must get you out of sight.”
Too dumbstruck by the sight of the blood red flower on his face and the meaning it bore, John allowed himself to be led up to his chambers.