The Welkin Sisters
by Kyla Ion
The Welkin sisters did not come out right. There was something wrong with them, something twisted. They were wound together so tightly, that their bodies were indistinguishable from each other. From their pores leaked a substance other than plasma and blood, something grey and putrid that revealed their unnatural heritage. The doctors fell over themselves when they saw the two. The nurses teared up from the smell and out of fear, eventually vomiting in the corner.
Unprofessional, the Welkin mother would later pronounce the situation to be, the whole thing was unprofessional. It was, but it was also justified. The Welkin sisters were born monsters, and stayed that way even when they grew and learned how to fool others by settling into human faces and bodies.
Bodies that did not like to stay put, bodies that itched for more.
They were named Mag and Babs, perfect children despite the fact that they were only half human, perfect despite the fact that they could turn their hands into claws and their spines into wings.
“Do you think we’re odd?” Mag asked her sister one day. This would be a recurring question. It was asked for the first time when both girls were six, on Christmas Eve, while they played chess by the fireplace.
“Well,” Babs said, “No, I don’t think we are. We’re not like Mum, but that doesn’t make us odd.”
“What would?”
“If we were more like Dad, I suppose.”
“I would not like that,” Mag said, moving her Knight. With one hand, Babs reached over to the plate of cookies beside them and shoved two into her mouth, crumbs slipping from her lips.
“No, I would not either,” she said, her voice muffled, moving her Queen. She then smiled, a big toothy grin that was covered in chocolate grime and mush, her bright eyes flying from the board to her sister. “Checkmate.”
The Welkin father was not to be discussed. Not a whisper. Not a word. Not a thought. It was not made common knowledge that the girls’ father was a shifter. That their father was a creature made from earth, sky, and shadow. That he, she, it, was untethered to the laws of the earth. That it could wear any face it chose, it could be anything.
And that it was deranged.
Unlike Mag and Babs, who still maintained their humanity, their father was made of great ability and no substance. It was forever cursed to hunt for a purpose that fulfilled a hundred bodies, and it would never succeed.
So, to entertain a life with little meaning, it wore a pretty face and lured in flies with honey.
Sometimes, it killed the humans that fell prey to it, and sometimes it did worse.
Sometimes, it made its quarry fall in love.
It wore the body and clothes of a dashing man the night he had met the Welkin mother. Despite its nature, it had enjoyed her company, and had stuck around longer than usual. He left after she had revealed her pregnancy, finally bored of the woman who would die for it.
Mag and Babs grew up without a father, and surrounded by people who pretended they never had one.
“He’s real isn’t he?” Mag asked Babs quietly. They were in the guest room of their grandparents’ home. Neither were comfortable with the situation. Their grandparents were the type to smile when taking pictures and sneer when there was no one looking. The sisters knew their grandparents hated what they were. What they could do.
What it meant.
And their mother wanted the girls to live with these people for a week.
“It. Mag. It, not he. And of course it’s real. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t real,” Babs pointed out.
“I want to go home, Babs,” Mag whined, collapsing on the bed and pushing her face into the pillow. Babs nodded, brushing a hand down Mag’s back.
“Ok.”
The next day, during dinner, Babs casually wondered aloud “Do you think dad will ever come back and teach me how to turn into a man-eating spider?” Their grandfather collapsed out of fear right at the table. Their grandmother turned white as a sheet.
And the Welkin mother came to pick up the Welkin children the next morning.
But it was understandable that the Welkin mother wanted to separate her children from the demon who had sired them. That she taught her daughters to stay human, to hide their fangs and manes. That she pretended she didn’t notice when she came home to a puma watching TV or a snake curling in Babs’ bed. When years had passed and the father of her children never returned, the Welkin mother felt nothing but relief. The shifter was gone; her daughters had adjusted.
And so the boundaries were set, the restrictions were made, and the rules were established. Babs and Mag were never to, under any circumstance, think of their father.
So, obviously, they spoke of the shifter constantly.
At fifteen, when Babs and Mag came home from school, there was a stranger in front of their door. A sleek, thin woman with long fingers and a delicate composition. Mag grabbed her sister’s hand, stopping Babs from taking another step. Babs narrowed their eyes at the woman, Mag wrinkled her nose. For there was something off about the lady in front of their house, something that made their stomachs coil. A wrongness. Something similar to the anomaly they felt in themselves. She smiled at them, a smile with lips that seemed to stretch outside the barriers of her cheeks, and was made out of inhuman teeth. Mag growled, Babs felt the hairs at the back of her neck rise. For the lady at their door was not a lady at all.
“You must be the children,” her voice was warbled, a messy hiss not of this world. Just at the sound of it, Mag shifted. Her skin stretched like an elastic band, pulling and reassembling, skin morphing into hide, eyes turning from blue to gold. She grew fur and sharp teeth in the middle of the street. The lady only blinked. And the new lioness growled when the woman took a step closer.
Babs petted Mag’s head.
It was always like this, Babs was calm when Mag was rage. Mag was gentle when Babs was harsh. Even when choosing other bodies, Mag liked warm-blooded beasts while Babs chose scales. Together, they were all.
“What are you doing here?” Babs asked, keeping her voice calm. She knew who she was facing, and she refused to be afraid of her own flesh and blood.
Their father shrugged at the question.
“I wanted to see the tiny ‘me’s.” The lady that was their father kept her grin, “I wanted to see the two of you.” She cocked her head taking another step despite the roar of her daughter.
“We did not want to see you, Dad.” The word felt odd on Babs’ tongue, felt chalky and wrong when aimed at the creature in front of her. Dad was an arbitrary name to call It. The thing that had conceived them was more than that and It was much less. A shifter may have great power, but a father was a confidant. A father meant protection, a father meant love. Babs called it that, they referred to it as that, out of necessity, out of a lack of something better. It had never chosen a name for itself, it wasn’t confined to a certain shape.
Their father nodded.
“Right, well, I want charge over one of you,” she said. “I understand that I can’t have both, that’s fair, but if there’s two I want one. I told your mother that from the beginning. You can remind her.” With that the lady made one last little smile and turned into a gust of wind. The second she left, the front door opened, and the girls’ mother ushered them inside, her eyes wide.
“Inside, both of you, now.” Mag prowled in, turning back into a girl the second she crossed the doorway. She was shaking as she ran upstairs, leaving Babs alone with her mother. Babs, whose hands formed into fists and eyes narrowed to slits as she stared at her mother.
“What did it mean? What did it mean it wants one of us?” The Welkin mother took a step back, did not meet her daughter’s eyes.
Mag preferred lions and Babs preferred beetles, but Babs was always the dangerous one.
Her mother let out a shaking breath, her pale blue eyes—eyes the girls had copied—were glassy.
“There are some things I haven’t told you two.” she started. “Some things I’d hoped I would never have to.” Because shifters were fickle creatures and grew bored easily, there had been a fair chance that their father would simply forget they existed, forget the condition he had once demanded in the case of children.
It was just their luck that they’d been conceived by a stubborn one.
The Welkin father, when it had been a man, left
the night the Welkin mother told him she was pregnant. They’d been in bed; he’d made her hot chocolate. She was gripping hard on the ceramic mug, blankets wrapped up to her waist as he slipped in beside her.
“I’m pregnant,” she’d barely whispered it, and he settled into the bed as though he hadn’t heard, so she said it again, a bit louder.
“I know,” he had groaned, pushing his cheek into the pillow as he looked up at her, smiling. “I’ve sensed it for weeks.” She laughed, a choked sort of sound.
“You’ve sensed it?”
“Course, love. Now go to bed.” She never suspected, never thought anything had been off about him. The shifter had gotten so good at playing human he could have fooled himself. So she laughed again, because he’s just so ridiculous, put her hot chocolate on the night stand, and shut off the light.
She woke in the middle of the night to rustling, and turned in time to watch as the father of her children shed his skin and turned into a shadow with bright yellow eyes. The shifter turned to her, ever so slowly, and wore that same gentle, terrible, smile from earlier. Just before he vanished into the night, he said…
“If there’s two, love, one’s mine.”
They didn’t know when their father would return, when he would claim what he had demanded. Mag offered herself up the same night during dinner. Their mother had made chicken.
Babs dropped her fork.
“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s not taking you.” Mag had already steeled her resolve, had already run through the pros and cons. And if the choice was who, between her and her sister, should be stolen by a monster, it was not a difficult choice to make. Their mother’s hand twitched as she stared at her filled plate.
“There’s no point in ignoring the shifter’s request. I will go with it when it returns” Mag stated. Babs slammed her fist against the table, making it shake.
“Barbra!” their mother snapped, not looking at Mag. Babs turned to her and hissed, a forked tongue flicking out of her mouth. Their mother’s face contorted in anger.
“Barbra Welkin, go to your room. Now.” Babs pushed from the table, chair toppling over as she stood. Mag could see the scales of a viper rolling under her skin as she left. Slowly, so slowly, Mag turned to her mother, waiting for protest. They stared at each other, the kitchen clock clicking with every passing second. Finally, her mother turned to her food, eyes glazing over.
“Eat your chicken, Mag.”
Mag wasn’t surprised.
Their mother had always loved Babs more.
Upstairs, Babs was seething. She and her sister were not human. They played dress up in human bodies, but it was practically a game, nothing more. And if human sisters could not stand to be separated, then the inhuman could not survive it. The two had always been together, the two had formed a balance. As she fought the shift coiling in her blood, she tried to think. Think of a way out.
A plan hit her then, her father’s words wrapping around her mind and forcing on a solution that made Babs wonder if she truly was as odd as her father.
When Mag came up the steps, she found her sister in her room. Mag frowned, seeing the calculating look in her sister’s eye.
“What is it?” her tone was uneasy. Babs smiled.
“You know, they once thought we were monsters,” she grinned. “I think it’s time we remind them of that.” Because the sisters had been one, once. Had in their birth been made of earth, sky and shadow and had been made together. It was why the doctors staggered, why the nurses were sick.
Perhaps they had never been meant to separate. Perhaps they were made to be as much of one body as they already were of one heart. Two halves of an ugly whole.
When Babs held out her hand, fingertips already curling into a grey and dripping substance that she’d left forgotten for so long, Mag finally smiled. She finally shed the skin she’d been forced to wear, and took that hand.
The shape shifter did not come back. After all, it had made its conditions very clear.
It would only take a child if there were two.