We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from But Not Too Bold, a new fantasy novella by Hache Pueyo, out from Tordotcom Publishing on February 11th.
The old keeper of the keys is dead, and the creature who ate her is the volatile Lady of the Capricious House—Anatema, an enormous humanoid spider with a taste for laudanum and human brides.
Dália, the old keeper’s protégée, must take up her duties, locking and unlocking the little drawers in which Anatema keeps her memories. And if she can unravel the crime that led to her predecessor’s execution, Dália might just be able to survive long enough to grow into her new role.
But there’s a gaping hole in Dália’s plan that she refuses to see: Anatema cannot resist a beautiful woman, and she eventually devours every single bride that crosses her path.
1
The old keeper of the keys was dead, but no one heard her muffled scream, her crushed bones, or the iron keys that fell on the floor, clinking and clanking. In fact, they only knew she was gone when a note arrived to the second floor, delivered by the empty elevator:
HIRE A NEW KEEPER OF THE KEYS; URGENT; BEFORE DAWN.
The maid that found the typewritten letter—the owner of the house could not handle a pen, but her long fingers moved comfortably on typewriter keys—nearly fainted. Asking for a new employee was as good as a death certificate. Everyone knew that.
It was then that they had to call Dália at ten in the morning, after removing all the belongings of the deceased from the house. When she unlocked Ms. Matilde’s bedroom, Dália expected to find the former keeper of the keys, but there were only empty wardrobes and a bed whose covers and pillows had been plucked until only the bare mattress
remained. Even the colorful beads that Matilde hung from the headboard had been scoured from the room, like she had never existed in the first place.
Only two familiar faces remained: a tarantula in a tank and the majordomo, a brooding man known as Lionel.
“I did not expect to promote you under such circumstances,” started Lionel, looking defeated with his elbows on his thighs, a ghost sitting on the velvet armchair. Lionel had not shaved from one day to the other, and his brown hair fell on his face like a curtain clawed by a cat. “But she didn’t give us a choice. Time to go to the third floor, Dália.”
Had she been any other employee, those words would have felt like a slap, but she was Dália, only Dália, who had been trained her entire life to assume this role. Swallow your fear, she had learned with Matilde. You must learn to avoid being seen. At the age of eight, when Matilde took her to the third floor for the first time, her mentor instructed her to cover her nose with a perfumed handkerchief as she walked on the carpet smelling like carrion, and smiled proudly when Dália did not throw up.
“What happened?”
“What do you think?” Lionel left the embellished envelope on the bed and stood up. His spider, a cobalt blue tarantula, observed Dália from her owner’s pointy shoulder. “She was devoured, like everyone else. It’s true that she rarely eats her keepers, but… It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Anatema requires a replacement right away.”
Dália looked at the tank. The Brazilian black was still immobile in her cage, partially covered by leaves. She imagined her next to her own pet tarantula, a Chilean rose: one tank over the other, or side by side, under the window.
“When do I start?”
The preparations took a good deal of the day. It was not uncommon, not in the Capricious House, to have all the employees rearranging schedules and rooms after someone’s death, but usually, it was one of the brides and, sometimes, one of the maids who worked on the third floor.
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But Not Too Bold
The eccentric house had been commissioned by Anatema herself; she even brought the renowned architect Arnau Torroella i Fajó, one of the most important names of Catalan Modernisme with Gaudí, Montaner, and Cadafalch, to realize a most ambitious construction. A neo-Gothic palazzo with Germanic inspiration, a flat facade with graffito, crowned by a stepped Flemish pediment adorned by ornate tiles and macabre creatures, gargoyle-like.
The interior had three floors and an ample attic, all of them as richly decorated as the exterior. Stained glass in every window; a music room covered in tapestries; two enormous kitchens with tiled floors; a fireplace of sculpted stone so large that an entire troop could march out of it; colorful chandeliers, cabinets, wallpapers; and comfortable bedrooms for every single employee of the house.
The intention was clear: the house had to reflect its mistress.
The Capricious House, or Casa Caprichosa, as Torroella i Fajó named it, became a regional landmark, partially hidden by the large field of poppies that surrounded it. It was near many villages, and everyone knew that the person who lived there was as wealthy as she was solitary, but they were partially wrong in their assessments.
The owner was not a person. And she was not solitary— she was hiding.
By the end of the afternoon, Dália was ready and standing in front of the elevator on the second floor. The elevator was another peculiar construction, with a gate made of copper and wrought iron, a secondary folding door made of varnished mahogany, a half-length mirror, a Persian rug on the floor, and levers under the buttons. Nothing was allowed to be ordinary in the Capricious House.
Dália crossed the double doors.
“Remember,” warned Lionel, even though she already knew what he would say. “Never mispronounce her name. Ah-nah-teh-mah, and you must say it very clearly, not Anathema. Don’t look at her face. Don’t contradict her. Don’t…”
“Lionel,” Dália interrupted. “I’m ready.”
The man was as white as a sheet of paper. He took an indigo ribbon from his pocket, one she recognized as Matilde’s, and gave it to her.
“For your hair,” said Lionel. The two of them wore the same standard suit that every other employee of the upper floors wore. The difference was that his uniform had a turquoise cravat, representing the second story, while the indigo of the ribbon represented the third. After he spoke, Lionel gave her a compact bottle, which Dália left in the pocket of her jacket. “Anatema’s favorite.”
After the doors closed, the elevator began to ascend slowly, and Dália turned to look at the mirror. She untied her old turquoise ribbon and wrapped the new one around her curls, arranging them on the back of her neck with a simple bow. Two strands fell on her face, as black as her eyes and the rest of her clothes.
Outside, the spiral staircase coiled around the elevator glass panes, revealing the mint-colored walls of the third floor, with its golden peacocks and blooming branches.
With a jolt, the elevator stopped, and the iron gate opened with a clunk. The corridor carpet had a saying embroidered on it:
BE BOLD, BE BOLD
The highest floor—save for the attic, accessed only by Anatema and her brides—was even more ostentatious than those below. It had the same Art Nouveau decoration as the rest of the house, but with gilded handrails, crystal china cabinets, endless shelves filled with books, and, of course, tarantulas.
Dália crouched to take one of the spiders in her hands, leaving her on the stairs. Beyond its immoderate architecture, the Capricious House had two peculiarities: the poppies of all colors that kept growing even after being harvested, and the tarantulas that appeared everywhere. It was all so excessive that it became an issue, and the employees had to be creative to deal with the circumstances.
With the poppies, they brewed teas, arranged flowers, envisioned gastronomic decorations, and prepared morphine for the sick; they also smoked opium, sold paregoric elixirs, and produced laudanum. The latter was consumed by the owner in colossal amounts. To deal with the tarantula plague, they cooked the spiders or kept them as pets. They had the dalmatians for hunting, the chickens and goats for eggs and milk, and the spiders in tanks, their loyal companions day after day.
Dália walked slowly. She knew the third floor like the palm of her hand. Matilde taught her every corner and crevice before she could even dream of going upstairs, just like she taught her what each key was for and how to distinguish one from another. She could see them when she closed her eyes: a brass mortise key, slightly crooked, three Yale keys, almost identical except for discreet lines on their thin sides, a key made of pure gold…
Dália stopped in front of the closed door of the library, where the phrase she found in front of the elevator continued in front of every room:
BE BOLD, BUT NOT TOO BOLD
She knocked.
KEEPER OF THE KEYS?
Dália winced at the sound. The voice was at the same time a whisper and a booming echo, and the entire corridor shuddered with her.
“Madam?”
The double doors swung open.
At first glance, there was no one inside. The library was in complete disarray: disorganized papers were scattered across the desk, and the heavy wooden doors had crumpled part of the thick, red rug. The shelves had ancient and recent tomes in varying states of repair, some of them coverless and coming apart at the seams. A brown tarantula walked between her legs and fled to the corridor.
Dália looked up.
The owner of the house observed her from a cove in the ceiling, and there was no other word to describe her except gigantic. In fact, she was so big that, if she stretched all eight articulated limbs, the space of the library would not be sufficient for her, and Dália doubted the corridor would be, either. Her legs folded like a spider’s, ending in three funneled fingers, thirty centimeters each, and her thin body reminded Dália—if only in outline—of a horribly narrow and tall woman. Though in reality, she suspected that the body was divided into two arachnid tagmata.
Anatema blinked from her lower lid upward; even the slightest, most commonplace action was unnatural when she did it. The movement brought Dália’s attention to Anatema’s face, the only part of her that was vaguely human. An oval shape, a nose plastered on the skull, two eyes of the deepest ink blue, a nictitating membrane, and lips with lines like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
Lips which, Dália knew, unfolded like the lie they were to reveal the true mouth underneath, starting from the nostrils and continuing down to the end of the esophagus, displaying powerful chelicerae where her jaw should have been, and several rows of sharp fangs that went from her gums to her throat.
Anatema blinked again, and her neck, thicker than Dália’s entire body, extended until her face was in front of Dália’s. Nose to nose, she asked:
WHAT IS YOUR NAME, KEEPER OF THE KEYS?
Dália almost tumbled down to the rug. Anatema’s voice was an animal’s screech, barely comprehensible, and fury dripped from it like saliva from a tongue. Close up, Dália could see that her human face was a mask, nothing but the aggressive mimicry of an arthropod searching for prey.
She lowered her eyes. “Dália, madam.”
Anatema curved her neck, considering. Her face was still, but the lines that hid her mouth moved almost imperceptibly.
DO YOU KNOW WHY YOU ARE HERE?
“Ms. Matilde passed away, and you requested my services.”
Dália understood, under such a close inspection, why the brides that came from time to time always fled after finally seeing their suitor. It was a terrible sight indeed, but a hypnotic one as well. Her silvery skin, bedecked with minuscule scales, glimmered even in the half-light produced by the curtains, and it acquired shades of blue as it continued down her trachea. The velvet robe, indigo colored and tied carelessly around her waist, covered her four upper limbs and her torso, and her long hair, also part of the mimicry, was straight, black, and gray.
Anatema widened her mouth. The skin unglued from her face like the petals of a flower, revealing complex sequences of fangs, teeth, pincers, and a turquoise tongue so long that she wrapped it around Dália’s neck to bring her closer.
“The old keeper of the keys was a thief.” Her voice now came directly from her windpipe. Dália did not dare to move. Anatema took the flask of laudanum that Lionel had given Dália from the pocket of her jacket and hid it inside her own robes. “Are you one, too?”
“I swear I am not.” Dália was immobile, a statue like so many others in the house. She was not afraid. All the employees knew they could die for any given mishap, but they also knew how to calm their mistress down. “What did Ms. Matilde steal from you?”
Anatema used one of her back legs to reach the heavy bunch of keys from the desk. She dropped it into Dália’s hands, who noticed one she had never seen before: a tiny little key, made of copper, stained with still-red blood.
“Come to the treasury and you will see.”
What Anatema called a treasury was the tall wall in front of the elevator, with hundreds of little marquetry doors, drawer over drawer like an endless cabinet. THE KEY, said Anatema, unlocking the rolling ladder as her voice reverberated inside Dália, who climbed the steps toward the door with inlaid marble she was pointing at.
The redness on the key would not go away, no matter how many times she tried to remove the blood with her nail—and it was the one she had to use to unlock the little door so the drawer would reveal itself, unfurling elegantly.
Inside was a miniature house, containing a tiny bed with crumpled covers, a narrow oven with a kettle that never ceased to whistle, a pot of poppies, a recently opened letter, a window with a view to the garden. It had everything, except an equally small person inhabiting it.
Dália understood the problem right away. Matilde had shown her the interior of the drawers on different occasions, and all of them had similar miniatures, woven by Anatema herself. The miniatures moved like they were real, and represented a memory of every bride and maid she had ever devoured. This one lacked the doll representing the deceased.
“That’s not all,” said Anatema behind her. The creature reminded her of a specter, her hair trickling over Dália’s shoulders, her cold breath brushing against the skin of her neck. “After eating her, I reconsidered. She might not have been the thief. Maybe it was someone who knew where the keys were. That’s why I called you. I want to know who robbed me.”
Dália locked the drawer carefully and descended the ladder.
“How are we going to discover that?”
“We will spend the night in the library, just you and I, little one,” Anatema announced. “The door will be closed, and if there is no theft, I will assume the keeper of the keys was innocent, and I will eat you, her apprentice, instead. If there is another theft, I will assume both of you are innocent, and we will need to find the real culprit.”
Dália glanced at the stairway out of the corner of her dark eyes. In front of the steps leading to the attic was the last part of the warning:
LEST THAT YOUR HEART’S BLOOD
SHOULD RUN COLD
2
Matilde selected Dália from a group of children brought to the house by local orphanages. The future keeper of the keys, she had announced proudly, while the others were taken by launderers and cooks and maids. None of them ever moved up from the first floor, even after fifteen years passed. Matilde took her by the hand as they went up the stairs, smiling when the girl gawked at the golden handrails and sculpted arches. It’s just like having a granddaughter.
Older employees mentored orphans and raised abandoned newborns to pass their knowledge to younger generations. It was part of the rules of the house: those who worked there, lived there, and would die there, one day. Usually, only people who had nowhere else to go chose such a life, but some of the employees provided for entire families with their substantial wages. They rarely mingled with the villagers nearby, and outsiders recognized them for their prideful stances, dark uniforms, and blue ribbons or cravats, expecting them to be as conceited and distant as they looked and acted.
What is she like? Dália had asked when Matilde tucked her into bed that very first night. Madam is an Archaic One. Matilde offered in response an enigmatic smile. There are very few of them nowadays.
She remembered imagining a very old woman with a crinkled face, white hair, and sunken eyes. Once, many Archaic Ones roamed the land, Matilde had continued, her voice lulling her to sleep. A long, long time ago… Matilde herself was old, wasn’t she? She was well past her sixth decade, but her earthy skin only had two deep lines, and her dark gray hair grew in thick short curls. Only her hands, marked with freckles and bulbous veins, gave away her age.
It doesn’t matter what she is, Matilde had caressed Dália’s face, gently closing her eyes. What matters is that you’re here.
Is it Ms. Matilde?” Dália asked in a whisper.
Anatema nodded, her fake face concentrated and still.
They had been locked in the library for hours. It was late in the night, and Dália had to turn on the electric lamps, since the darkness didn’t bother Anatema and she could go on for hours without thinking of light. The owner of the house had been weaving a doll with a familiar look: an elderly woman with a stout body and curly hair, wearing a black suit and an indigo ribbon instead of a tie.
Dália sat by her side to watch her weave. Her stomach growled, reminding her of the time, and Anatema spoke again:
EAT
One of her limbs stretched toward the other desk to remove the crystal lid off a candy jar, grabbing a handful of Turkish delight. Her long fingers stopped centimeters away from Dália’s mouth.
“Are you going to create a drawer for Ms. Matilde?”
Dália chose a rosewater candy covered in sugar. “Do you regret eating her?”
Anatema snaked her head closer. Her eyes revealed nothing, as neutral as her closed mouth.
SHE WAS A GOOD KEEPER OF THE KEYS
Dália took another Turkish delight, closing her eyes after swallowing a particularly sweet bit. She supposed she could not expect reasonable explanations from Archaic Ones.
“Is it her bedroom?”
Anatema stopped weaving. One of her arms bent unnaturally behind her back, and she typed a letter. The paper flew, folded, and inserted itself inside a beautiful envelope, disappearing under the door.
MATILDE NEVER TOLD ME ANYTHING
Dália wiped the sugar off her fingers with a napkin. She was frighteningly calm at the possibility of facing death. Maybe because Matilde had prepared her for the idea that they could be eaten at any time, maybe because Matilde herself had met the same fate, as if that was the immutable future of every keeper of the keys.
“I could have delivered the letter to Lionel myself, if you wanted.”
NO
YOU STAY HERE
The last words felt like they had been hammered into her chest. Dália knew Anatema had already made up her mind because of the content of the letter, but she failed to understand her fury.
“Of course, madam.”
The softness of Dália’s answer seemed to calm her down. Anatema looked at her with curiosity, surrounding her with the extending neck, a blue boa constrictor with a human mask.
DO YOU KNOW HOW I MAKE THE MEMORIES?
“The miniatures?” Dália removed a black strand from her own forehead, taking a deep breath to relax her stiff shoulders.
MEMORIES
She shook her head. Dark circles stained her face as the hours passed, and sometimes her eyelids faltered, closing for a few seconds before opening again. Two slices of silver skin unfolded from Anatema’s jaw, and part of her mouth opened:
“All the memories I have woven were made out of stories. Extracts of happiness shared by my brides, fragments of my workers’ lives, any detail that makes you little creatures what you are.” Matilde’s miniature spun above Anatema’s hand, and the tiny bunch of keys the doll was holding clinked. “This is why I cannot forgive the thief for stealing the memory of my last bride from me.”
The last bride had been a girl who lasted three full weeks, more than most, in addition to the many months she had come to the house as a visitor during the courtship. Dália didn’t remember her face very well; she only remembered her beautiful dresses and the poppy bouquets she had in her arms whenever she left.
She had been preoccupied with Matilde, who was not acting like herself at the time. The fatigue, Dália supposed, was caused by age; Anatema’s whims and desires must have worn her down over time.
“Did Matilde tell you any story?”
“Never,” said Anatema with her real voice. “She claimed to only need her job. So be it, then. She will keep working in her memory, if that’s what she liked most.”
Dália looked at the miniature forming on the table. It was part of the third floor, with its mint carpet and walls. It even had the painted peacocks, the golden handrails, and the little wooden doors of the treasury.
“She didn’t tell me much, either,” confessed Dália while a pistachio Turkish delight melted on her tongue. “I think Ms. Matilde lived only for work.”
Anatema made a thoughtful sound. In her hands, the silk web turned into architecture and furniture, bringing everything to life while she pulled and twisted the translucent threads.
“I still don’t understand. That one memory, in particular…” Anatema’s hair fell over the miniature, black and silver spreading around the fake green floor. “I don’t know why anyone would be interested in it. My treasures are only valuable to me.”
“Archaic art is very rare, madam,” suggested Dália. “It might have been for money.”
“It might,” Anatema repeated, and her voice grew shrill and distorted as she said the two words over and over again. “Isn’t it suspicious that you even considered that? I wonder what’s crossing your head right now. If you’re trying to find a way to avoid your fate…”
“I would never dare.” Dália cracked her neck, finding a more comfortable position on the leather chair. “All my life is here, in the Capricious House. I don’t dream of the outside. I only want to keep your keys; that’s all that matters for me.”
Anatema left the miniature on the desk, and the doll marched across the tiny representation of the corridor.
“We’ll see what happens after dawn, but I hope you’re being sincere.”
Dália observed in silence as the owner of the house finished the memory. Her body ached with hunger and fatigue, but she had learned to control both things. Never say no to Anatema, Matilde had taught her. I never met such a capricious woman. Sometimes, Dália took small naps, lulled by the soft sound of the cuckoo clock’s pendulum.
She stood up with a jump when the automated bird left its home to announce the time: six o’clock.
“Time to discover the truth,” said Anatema.
Dália rubbed her eyes and fixed her ribbon. Time to die, her mind corrected, but she only nodded quietly.
“Any last words?” The creature left her work aside and straightened her back, her thin torso growing until her head reached the ceiling. Her upper arms fell to her sides like a human being, but the other limbs were on the floor like the spider she was. “I always enjoy giving some time to a person before eating them. Some like to speak. Others pray. If you’d like privacy to cry, I can wait for you outside.”
Dália tidied her black suit and dragged the chair back to its place.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Is that your last wish?” Anatema looked amused, curling her neck until her face was almost upside down. “You want to satisfy your curiosity? Be my guest.”
“Why do you eat all your brides?” Dália asked. What a waste of my last minutes of life, she thought, feeling like an insect paralyzed by the strong venom of a predator. Still, she raised her chin to face Anatema. “I’ve always wanted to know.”
“Why?” Anatema repeated the question, more to herself than to Dália. “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? I hate being seen.”
Excerpted from But Not Too Bold, copyright © 2024 by Hache Pueyo.
