Orphans of Chaos tcc-1

by John C. Wright

  “I have the corpse of the preacher down in my lair; he’ll have us wed within the hour. I’ll have to strangle you if’n I ever get Vanity, for she was promised to me, and I cannot have two wives, for that would be against the law.”

  Well, that was evidently the wrong thing to say. The vulture opened its beak and screamed. A loud, harsh, terrible scream.

  The temperature dropped. One second it was merely cold; the next it was numbing.

  Headmaster Boggin dropped lightly out of the sky.

  Twenty-foot-long pinions swept the air to either side of him. His long red hair was floating as if it were under water. He was bare-chested and bare-foot, wearing baggy purple pantaloons, tied off above the knee. He wore a ring on his big toe, set with a green marble stone. It made him look like a pirate, or the King of Siam.

  His wings were the same color as his hair, a bright red with brown and gold highlights. Unlike Corus, he used his wings, and was flapping them energetically.

  He landed on a rock above the cave, at a spot where I could not see him. All I could see was Grendel’s face, slack with fear and hate.

  “Hi ho! Well, now Grendel, I must say I am… very… disappointed. It seems to me that we had an agreement. Back when all this started, you swore fealty to me.”

  Grendel squinted up at him. The hate was fighting with the fear on his face.

  “My will is stronger than yours is, my dear Grendel. Do you know how I know that? Because once you swore to me that you would not do this thing you are doing now. That means your desire is imperfect. Funny things, oaths. Why, do you remember that oath, my dear Grendel? Certainly you do? Of course you do. I see that you do.”

  The hate melted away, and the fear grew. Grendel’s lip started trembling. His eyes blinked tears.

  Boggin’s voice came smoothly: “We are all one big happy family, committed… may I say devoted?… devoted to the same goal. But from time to time we are tempted, and, yes, I see how one might be tempted, to pursue some private pleasure of our own at the expense of the group. We cannot have that, Grendel, can we? Do you think we can have that?”

  Grendel fell to his knees. “Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me. I have a mother, she’s got no one but me. Please—oh please—”

  I smelled urine on him. He had wet himself.

  “Oh dear, now stop all this blubbering. It looks bad in front of the children. I will tell you what. I will let you off with a reminder. At some point during the next week or ten days—and you will not know when it is about to happen—you shall have an accident, Grendel. A bad one. You will chop your foot with a firewood axe, perhaps, or crush all your bones in your hand with a hammer. Or fall off a ladder and break your legs in three places. Or maybe you will slip while pouring the tea, and scald your crotch with a terrible, terrible third-degree burn. Something like that.

  “Now, the thing is, Grendel, oh, and you will love this part… if you do something terrible, simply terrible, to yourself first, the accident won’t happen. You see? If you can get up the nerve to poke an eye out with an awl or stick your hand into the blades of a rotary fan, then you will get to pick where the damage will land. I mean, you would rather have your left hand maimed than your right hand, wouldn’t you? You’d rather have an eye splashed with acid than a testicle, I am sure.

  “Well, think about your options, Grendel, and think about what you’ve done. We do not need to say anything more about this little incident, do we? You are sorry, very sorry, aren’t you? Yes, I thought you were. Now, run along. I will see to our Miss Windrose.”

  Grendel turned, gave me one last sad, hopeless look, and ran away.

  Immediately I began making a nasal yelling noise through the gag. My legs were suddenly tense with pain; certain sections of the rope now bit into my flesh uncomfortably; others had grown strangely slack. I started wiggling and wriggling to see if I could get out of them.

  Boggin dropped down in front of the cave mouth. He looked down at me with a strange expression.

  “Why Miss Windrose, you look quite, ah… fetching… at the moment. But I suppose it cannot be comfortable. I hope you will permit me to unlace you?”

  2.

  “Fetching” he called it. With my ankles and wrists two inches apart, my back was as arched as it could be. My elbows were pinned behind my back, practically touching. This combined to thrust my breasts out so far, that I finally knew, in that moment, how Vanity must feel at all times.

  Maybe he thought the gag cutting into my lips was cute. Men must like it when girls can’t talk back.

  I am sure that being mussed, and scared to death, and angry, somehow also added to my sex appeal. My hair had come unbound and loose during my adventures; I assume Mr. Glum did not like me wearing it braided up.

  With Mr. Glum absent, I was able to crane my neck partway into the “other” direction, and push the gag with my tongue in that direction until it turned red and got less dense. Once it was an inch or two into four-space, the scarf (or, more specifically, the shadow cast by the scarf) lost the ability to interact with matter, became permeable, passed “through” my head without sensation, and landed with a soft noise on the pine needles beneath my cheek.

  Well, I was glad the thing did not fall straight to the center of the Earth, though I was at a loss as to why it didn’t. It was my favorite scarf.

  “Thank you, but no thank you, Headmaster,” I said in an irked tone of voice. “I think I can manage better without you!”

  I turned my body a little sideways into the “blue” direction, so I was occupying a small 3-D cross-section, and the ropes seemed to turn red and recede from me in all directions. With a shimmer and a jerk I jumped to my feet, as the world flickered dark and then bright again as I passed briefly into and out of hyperspace. The world’s normal colors returned as I tilted back into full cross-section.

  The ropes slid “through” my body in a spray of red sparks and landed in a heap on the pine needles.

  With a soft thud, my boots and socks and pants and coat and blouse and bra and undies and everything else landed atop them. Suddenly, it felt very cold.

  “Oh, you’re right, Miss Windrose,” said Boggin, an unreadable expression on his face, “that is much better.”

  He cleared his throat and ostentatiously turned his back on me. He spoke without turning his head. “While you are getting dressed, please allow me to ask a question or two. I must confess to being mildly surprised at your own lack of surprise. Did someone tell you, Miss Windrose, that I had wings?”

  I have to admit that I had been relieved when Boggin, angel-like, splendid and handsome, had swept down from heaven to rescue me from Grendel Glum. Had I not been in the midst of trying to escape from his school, I would have felt more gratitude, I suppose. Boggin did not want me to be carried off and married to a man-sea monster; he did not even want me to be embarrassed.

  I was grateful; he was my white knight; my rescuer. Except…

  Except the others had all been caught by now. I was the only one left. I was the only one at liberty. If we all got caught, our chance of escape again was nearly zero. If one of us was still at large, able to move freely, learn to use her powers, to get help, to contact our parents in Chaos, then she would be able to sneak back and get the others out. Right?

  Even if she didn’t want to. Even if all she wanted to do was be a good sport, admit she had lost this round, and go slinking back to her cold bed in her locked room at night, safe and sound, in the same room she had always slept in as a child. Cold and safe. Safe in Boggin’s keeping.

  Because Victor would not want her to be a good sport about it. This was serious. This was not a cricket match. We were Indians and they were Cowboys. We were Jews and they were Nazi prison guards.

  Dr. Fell was going to do something horrible to us if we did not get away, like erase our brains. He had already done it to Quentin once.

  Even if Amelia’s body was going to stay alive, for all practical purposes, they were going to kill
me. Part of me.

  I was thinking of Victor. I was thinking of what Victor would have thought, a look of polite disbelief on his face, deepening to a never-to-be-erased disgust, when he asked, “An enemy in time of battle turns his back on you, offering you a perfect target, and you did what, again, exactly? Picked up a rock and then… what? Apologized for running away?”

  Duty. Do what you have to do.

  Think of Victor. Get angry.

  Come to think of it, what business did Boggin have anyway, turning his back on me? It was so very polite, so Victorian, so proper.

  So condescending. There are women in the military in Israel. Tough women, who do whatever they have to do to survive. No one turns their backs on them, I bet.

  I picked up a heavy rock from the cave, one about the size of a softball, used my little trick to make it heavier instead of lighter, stepped up softly behind him, and brought it swift and hard into the back of his skull. Clunk.

  There. That will show him how to treat a modern girl!

  “Ow!” he said, and he fell forward onto his knees. I suppose if I had really been trying to kill him, I would have simply inserted the rock through the fourth dimension “past” his skull and directly into the delicate tissue of his brain. Maybe I didn’t think of that at the time. Maybe I did and could not make myself do it. Maybe I wasn’t really trying to kill the angel who just saved me from Grendel.

  I ran past him. All I can say about running stark naked and barefoot through the pines in the wintertime is that it is very, very cold. Actually, I will also say that it is a very good argument for the invention of clothing. It is amazing how many sensitive places on your skin a sticky pine needle can stab you when you are running quickly between two trees.

  The world turned dreamlike for a moment, and twisted like taffy. My thoughts were confused and sleepy.

  Then everything snapped back into focus. I woke up, and the cave was directly in front of me again. Boggin was climbing to his feet, looking very annoyed. He had done some sort of space-manipulation effect, similar to what I had seen Mestor do earlier to propel himself through the water. It was the same type of energy-substance I had seen clinging to the planks of the White Ship.

  I turned to run another direction. He pursed his lips and made a sucking noise.

  A tube of vacuum, with the power of a gale-force wind, like the spout of a tornado, picked me up and yanked me toward him.

  He caught my naked body in midair with one arm, with his lips forming a little circle of painful suction on my back between my shoulder blades. His other hand was still clutching his head.

  He puffed (his breath was like the air from an open freezer) and dropped me at his feet.

  Boggin looked at his foot, and said, “Bran! Hear me! I hereby close the boundaries between this place and Myriagon.” To me he said, “Now let’s have no more nonsense, Miss Wind-rose, or I shall take that rope and truss you up again like a Christmas goose. Ow. Ouch.”

  He took his hand away from his head and stared, aghast, at the blood on his fingers. “That was really quite savage of you, Miss Windrose! I see I am going to have to be quite severe.”

  I stood there, hugging myself and shivering.

  He snapped, “Please get dressed at once. I should not like you to escape your punishment because you catch pneumonia.”

  “Turn your back,” I said, pouting, wondering how stupid he was.

  He must have been wondering the same thing, for he just crossed his arms and said, “Do not annoy me, child. I gave you an order. Be quick about it.”

  I put my back to him while I put on my bra and blouse. I glanced back to see him glaring down at me, while I tugged my panties into place, picked up my jeans and pointed my toe to step gingerly into them.

  He must have thought I was trying to show off my bottom to him, and glancing back to be coy. (Nothing could have been farther from my mind; when you are cold and scratched enough, you think about how cold and scratched you are, and that is all you think about.) He said in a cross tone of voice: “I would be more in a mood to appreciate your considerable charms had I not such an acute headache at the moment, Miss Windrose.”

  I put my coat, boots, mittens, and scarf back on, and retrieved my aviatrix cap, which I began tucking my hair under.

  He stepped forward and pulled the cap off my head. “No,” he said. “You look better with your hair down. You apparently think you are old enough to wear it that way.”

  I looked at him with something akin to hate in my eyes. “Do you get to say how I wear my hair, now?”

  He threw the cap back at me. “Touché. I concede the point. You are the mistress of your hair, Miss Windrose. You may wear it in any fashion which is appropriate for school.”

  I let the cap bounce off my folded arms and fall to the ground, untouched. Because I was angry, and because I did not care, I said, “You pick my uniform and shoes and everything else I wear. Do you want me to look prettier for you? Why don’t you just dress me up like a Barbie doll, and order me to report to your bed at night. That’s what you really want, isn’t it?”

  “Speaking for the males on the staff, I am sure that is what we all want, Miss Windrose. It may even be said to be my prerogative as your rescuer. You are, however, too young.”

  He stooped and picked up the cap. He winced when he did it; the act of stooping brought pain to his head wound. “I am sorry I made an inappropriate comment about your hair, Miss Wind-rose. Do you want your cap?”

  “Well… yes. I mean, it is rather cold.”

  “Of course. Everyone gets cold around me, sooner or later.” He watched while I donned the aviator’s cap and tucked up my hair.

  3.

  He said, “I am now going to give you a choice, Miss Windrose. I fear I cannot trust you to walk beside me back to the estate, without getting into mischief. I cannot ask you for your word of honor, because you have given and broken that to me, and I find I can no longer trust it.”

  He bent over and picked up the rope, and began drawing it into coils. I noticed he once again winced when he stooped over.

  I said softly, “What’s the choice?”

  “If we walk, I am going to tie your hands, and lead you on a string like a cow to market. This will not stop the nonsense, I am sure, but it might minimize it.”

  “What’s the other choice?”

  “I carry you. I am reluctant to offer this, because I see you have been given reason this day not to believe that all members of our establishment are above reproach, and you may feel this is an unwanted intimacy.”

  “Carry me in your arms? All the way back to school?”

  He spoke with slow and condescending tones: “Well, yes. I cannot very well carry you with my legs, now can I? And the school, I must point out, is our destination. I will not be under any need to restrain you, since you will hardly be in a position to do anything too athletic, all things considered.”

  I looked at the rope in his hand, looked at his face. “Um, Headmaster, is there something I am missing here? I don’t think I understand what…”

  “Through the air, Miss Windrose! Carry you through the air.”

  “You mean… fly?”

  My face must have lit up, because he actually smiled back at me.

  I stepped up close and put my arms around his neck. He tilted me back like a man about to deliver a kiss, or a dancer in some sensuous Spanish dance, and put one arm around my thighs, one around my waist, and swept me off my feet.

  He did it better than Quentin did it.

  He hefted me once or twice, as if trying to guess my weight. Maybe he liked the feel of me in his arms. He looked up as if scanning for something, some signal in the wind or cloud.

  Whatever it was, he seemed to find it. Boreas smiled down at me.

  “Are you ready? Snuggle close. If I pass out during the flight, all your troubles will be over, Miss Windrose.”

  He kicked the ground away.

  4.

  What is joy, except to feel
, in thought, the soaring wonder which we really feel in truth in flight?

  The snow-clad pines and leafless trees of fairy frost now fell below, as we soared up a long smooth slope of transparent air, like a glissade rising from note to note to ecstasy and triumph.

  The ground became a textured tapestry, hills were stones and trees were carpet weave. I saw the crawling table of the sea, streaked white with tiny caterpillars of foam. Low clouds appeared to rest upon the surface, illusionary islands made substantial by distance.

  I saw a glint of silver-white, a toothpick in a bathtub, a toy boat.

  There seemed to be other toy boats, blacker, blockier, and larger, around it, hemming it in, like the little metal square counters in a war game played on a board.

  The sight suddenly stung tears from my eyes, even amidst my joy of flight, because I realized I was not flying, not me, not really.

  Then fog sent a streaming arm down past us, and a fine mist fell. The fog grew thick and I donned my goggles as small waterdrops began to collect on my face.

  Then we came up from the fog bank like a dolphin leaping from the waves, but a leap that went on, up and up, and did not end. I laughed! I laughed because I had not realized (how stupid of me not to!) clouds and fogs were one and the same. Oh, I knew it intellectually, of course, but still I had somehow felt that clouds would feel strange when I passed through one. But no; they were made of the same water molecules that the ninety percent of my body was. They were not so different from me, these sky-dwellers.

  And what dwellers they were. The landscape down below had had no sun; this one did. Here were hills of alabaster, towers of white marble, high arches and cupolas of fine ivory, and rippling fields of snow. Slowly, slow as whales, these towers and vales and nodding hills of weightless white were changing to new shapes, or pacing solemnly against an aquamarine blue, icebergs of mist in a sea of atmosphere.