Orphans of Chaos tcc-1

by John C. Wright

  Anyone who has had a normal life would not have understood what I felt then. I was entirely fascinated and entirely repelled. I had never seen mess before. I had lived in a manor house my whole life; servants kept the place clean, and I kept my things shipshape and tidy, or else was slapped on the knuckles by Mrs. Wren’s dread meter stick. (That meter stick and the welts it raised is one reason why I will always prefer the English system to the metric.) The grounds and gardens were orderly and trimmed; everything was put away at nights.

  But this… I had not imagined that people could live this way. It looked like the den of some animal rather than a place for people.

  I wondered where in the world I was.

  In the mirror, I saw the rags on the cot move, and a brown bear poked its snout out of the fabric and rolled off the cot with a squeaking of rusty hinges and old wood.

  I gasped and turned my head. Mr. Glum was sitting on the cot, blinking stupidly. He wore a long night-shirt of dull red, patched and holed in places, and clumps of his chest hair peeked through the holes. One leg was on the floor. I saw his stump, and saw how the flesh had been folded over below his knee and stitched into a rough seam.

  “Ah, Melia,” he said. “You’ve come.”

  I tried to shrink back, but this only pressed the edge of the workbench more rudely into my bottom.

  “Come over here,” he said. “I’m in no mood to chase you. I am not to marry you, if Boggin has his way, but there is much to do which will not touch your maidenhead. Take off your shirt and get down on your knees, here.”

  The narrow door to the shed was on the far side of the cot from where I was. I started to edge toward my right, my hands still white-knuckled on the workbench, around the foot of the cot.

  He gave a hollow laugh. “Stick, I truly want you now!” He put his hand out and his crude cane, made out of a hoe staff, flipped up from the mess on the floor and into his grip. He painfully levered himself upright.

  Tottering on one leg, he thrust the cane against the boards of the narrow door behind him. “Door! Never have I wanted more that you should be locked fast, and let no fair maiden as fine as this escape my grasp.”

  I heard a heavy lock click shut, even though I could see plainly that there was no lock on the door.

  Between the edge of the wall and the foot of the workbench was a corner. I pushed myself into it as far as I could go.

  Here I was, a big and sturdy girl, tall and athletic, and there was him, short, old, and crippled. No doubt I could have pushed past him, clubbed him in the face with something, jumped over him, gotten away. If he had been a one-legged man in truth.

  But I did not think he was a one-legged man. At that moment, I was convinced he was a three-legged bear.

  Grendel cocked his head to one side, squinting. “You’re out of the collar I put you in. You look better in it. It shows the world that you’re mine. I want it, I want it, I want it back on!”

  He raised his hand and made a crook-fingered gesture toward my throat.

  In the mirror, I could see my frightened face, and I could see a little shadow beginning to circle my neck, getting harder and more substantial…

  “Ow!” shouted Grendel, doubling over, clutching one hand in the other. His cane fell to the floorboards with a loud clatter. There was a spot of blood welling up on one hand.

  At that same moment, I saw in the mirror (but not in the room) a bloodstained shadow who had stepped out from behind me, and reached across my shoulder with a spear tipped with a stingray spine, striking Grendel’s hand.

  Grendel raised his head, his eyes grown white and terrible with fear. “Either your balls or your brains must be made of hard stone, girl. What were you thinking, bringing a ghost here? A ghost!”

  He wobbled a bit on his one leg, and looked like he was about to fall.

  He must have seen the confusion on my face, for he said, “You don’t know, do you? Arthur’s Table lies not half a mile off. It marks the spot where the backstairs go down into the Dark Land. This place, this damn school, it were put here because it were so close to the spot where the path to the House of Woe comes out. Ghosts don’t walk here.”

  “Why not?” I said.

  He shook his head. “It brings the Dog.”

  Even as he said that, the wind outside the hut began to moan and howl. Two more howls joined it.

  The flames playing around the embers in the stove trembled and began to go out, one by one.

  I looked over my shoulder. There was nothing behind me but the boards of the wall, badly caulked and water-stained. To the nothing, I said, “Telegonus, run away.”

  Grendel smirked, and said, “He ain’t going to run away, that one. I seen him fighting Neptune’s men when they killt him. Fought even after he’d lost. Even after he’d died. He don’t give up. And he knows me. He knows how I got no power over you while he’s here.”

  I said, half to myself, “Ghosts are from Erichtho’s paradigm. The concept of a disembodied spirit is a dualistic concept.”

  One by one, little embers died. It grew darker in the small room.

  “He’s coming,” said Grendel. “The Dog’s boss. The Unseen One. I feel my bone marrow turning cold.”

  Grendel stooped and fell onto his cot, hugging himself with both hands. His face was slack and pale with fear. “Get out, both of you! Before He comes… ”

  More light died. More gloom grew. I could only see the silhouette of Grendel’s face now, the texture of his scruffy cheek, the stubble of his bald head, the glitter of his eyes.

  “Go! He might be here now. In the room. You, I’ll see you in the morning, little golden princess.”

  I said, “You’re the one. They need you to erase my memory. None of the other paradigms will work on me.”

  The shadowy head nodded. “That’s right. All I need do is have the spirit in me move me to it. What I want bad enough, I get.”

  The howling grew louder. Now it did not sound like wind at all, but like a hound indeed, one as large as the sky, approaching as fast as the wind.

  The last embers in the stove flared up and died. The coals glowed cherry-red a moment, then went black. The light was gone.

  The door rattled in the frame. The little hut seemed to shake.

  Then, suddenly, it all fell silent. The world seemed to hold its breath.

  In the darkness, it seemed to me as if the shed walls had shrunk to the size of a coffin. I could hear Grendel breathing; I could almost hear his heartbeat; the sounds seemed louder in the lightlessness, as if Grendel were pressed up against me.

  I only had a moment. I had to think of something to say.

  I whispered, “Grendel, darling. Poor, handsome Grendel. You cut off your foot for me… because you wanted me… let me keep the memory of how much you wanted me… ”

  “Don’t try to trick me, little bint,” he growled back. I imagined I could almost feel his breath on my cheek.

  “No trick. I am not in love with you and I never will be. I feel sorry for you, really. But… Iam flattered. You almost had me, didn’t you? I was tied up hand and foot, and gagged, and it was your hands that tied me up. I was hoisted on your shoulder with my hip pushed up against your cheek. We were alone. No one else saw it. No one else knew you had me, no one but you and me.”

  He didn’t answer. His breathing sounded loud in the gloom.

  I said, “Once I forget that day, the day you took me, who will know that it ever happened? Oh, yes, you will remember. But only you. How will you know that you didn’t just imagine it?”

  He spat, “ ‘Tis a trick. You want to make my desire weak.”

  I pushed myself away from the wall, took a step toward where I thought the cot was, and reached out with my hands.

  I touched his cheek, and felt his razor stubble, and his shoulder, and the rough fabric of his patched nightshirt.

  He jumped, startled, and grabbed my wrists with both his hands. His grip was tight, vicelike, and I could feel the leathery calluses of his hands
dig into my flesh. His hands were so hard, so large, and so ill-smelling. I wondered how soft and small and fragrant my hands felt and smelled to him.

  Oh well. Might as well go for broke. It was just words. Noises in a row. I could make myself say them.

  “I want to forget it,” I said in a low, soft voice. “I want to be able to look in your eyes tomorrow, and only see the stupid, low-class hired man I used to think you were. I don’t want you to look in my eyes and see the submission, the desire to surrender, you put there… ”

  As well get hung for a ram as hung for an ewe. Time to pull out all the stops. I promised myself I would wash my mouth out with soap, later.

  If I remembered.

  I leaned closer and whispered teasingly:

  “…You told me you wanted me to be this way. A girl who likes it rough. A helpless little slave-girl in a collar. Your collar. But I’ll have forgotten that all tomorrow. I’ll have forgotten Grendel the Bear. You’ll just be Glum, the groundskeeper. Dumb Glum. Not my master anymore. Not anything. You’ll be calling me ‘Miss’ tomorrow, and I’ll be looking down my nose at you… ”

  There was a polite knock at the door. Rap, tap.

  Grendel let go of me. There was a rustle and a thump. A whimper. From the direction of the noise, it sounded as if Grendel was trying to hide under his cot.

  A voice as cold as death said quietly. “By that Final Justice, gone on Earth but known below; by Avernus and by Asphodel; by the eternal Law of the Abode of Woe; I charge thee and compel: Open, open, in the name of Hell.”

  I had the very distinct and strange impression that no voice was actually speaking; that something like a cold energy was entering the room, and that it had an intention, dark, remorseless, severe, and pitiless. Something in the room was… changing… that cold force into words, into a little rhyme, to make it understood to me; but also to protect me from what would have happened to me if the naked radiations of that energy had gone, unfiltered, into my brain.

  It was Telegonus. He was standing between me and the door, although I could not see him. The force from behind the door was passing through him. He was letting his body act like the leaded glass that blocks dangerous and invisible wavelengths of radiation.

  The door creaked and opened. I could see the snow-patched grass, colorless beneath the starlight.

  There came a blur, and a shadow darkened. I saw the silhouette of a cloaked figure in the doorframe. His elbows were up, and he was removing a plumed helmet from his head.

  There was starlight on the snow behind him; I could see nothing of his armor or features.

  He put the helmet in the crook of one elbow, and reached out into the room toward me with his fist.

  Slowly, he rotated his fist so that it was palm upward. He opened his fingers.

  There was a glimmering light there, as if he held a star in the palm of his hand. From the miniscule flake of light, I could see that that hand was covered with a black gauntlet.

  Telegonus became opaque in front of me, and stumbled, and fell prone, like a puppet with its strings cut.

  A three-headed dog now stepped out of the shadows of the black figure’s cloak, growling and slavering.

  With one head, it bit into the flesh of Telegonus, and began to drag the corpse backward, back into the shadows of the cloak.

  The other two heads turned. One toward me, one toward the shivering cot.

  A cold voice spoke. “Not these two, my pet. Very soon, my brute, but not yet. Grendel has a place prepared him in my domain, where he shall discover how weak and temporary is the pain his crimes inflict on others, when compared to perfect and eternal pain. As for the girl, it seems she comes to me in slices. This Phaethusa, on the morrow may be gone, and only Amelia, amputated in her memory, bewildered, will remain.”

  Once again, I had the intuition or impression that Telegonus was blocking the force radiating from this being, turning unseen thoughts into words. But now I could see the little light in the palm of the gauntlet flickering, as if in pain, as the cold force passed through it. It was Telegonus. That little light was him, the real him.

  The gauntlet closed; the light was quenched.

  At that moment, I woke in my cot, back in my cell.

  4.

  That morning, with no ceremony or ado, Dr. Fell and Mestor the Atlantian, Miss Daw and Nurse Twitchett, and Headmaster Boggin came down the corridor. Behind them, I could hear the stumping tap of Grendel’s wooden leg.

  Mestor was dressed in a dark suit and buff overcoat. He had bags under his eyes and did not look well.

  I sat up in my cot with a rattle of chain. Miss Daw unlocked the bars and opened the door. She then turned and blocked the door. She said, “Headmaster, it is not proper for a girl to receive visitors clad only in her nightthings. Please take these men out of eyeshot while Sister Twitchett and I clothe Miss Windrose.”

  Boggin said jovially, “Ananias is a doctor; I am certain we can trust in his discretion. Dr. Fell, if you please? And as Miss Windrose may soon be asleep again in a few moments, there is no need to change her. Mestor and I will stay here, and check the environment for any other clues of the disturbance we had last night.”

  Mestor said, “The Wild Hunt was called by Bran; and the damned souls rode the storms, looking for one of their own.”

  Boggin touched him on the arm, and squinted, making the smallest possible shake of his head. “Let us not disturb our young guest here with news that does not concern her.”

  “Why not?” said Mestor. “The girl isn’t going to remember anything in an hour anyway.”

  I clutched the starchy blanket in front of me. “What are you going to do to me?!” I shouted. “Why am I not going to remember anything in an hour?”

  Boggin, ignoring me, said in a kind voice to Mestor, “Ah, my dear friend, not only have you frightened one of my girls here, you have evidently forgotten how much you owe me, and how much you still have to owe. I see that the full, ah, import, I am tempted to say, the full ‘pressure’ of the facts governing our new relationship together have not been made… ah… pellucid to you.”

  Saying that, without a single change of expression, he took Mestor’s hand in both his hands. Before Mestor could blink or think to turn his hand away, Boggin put both his thumbs on the other man’s pinky finger and flexed his hands, like a man snapping a wishbone to make a wish. There was a crack as Mestor’s little finger broke. Mestor screamed and fell to his knees, astonished by the sudden pain and shock.

  Miss Daw and Sister Twitchett turned away, shocked. Dr. Fell had not bothered to look up at the commotion.

  I was the only one who saw Boggin bend down to Mestor, who was sobbing, clutching his hand to his belly.

  I saw Boggin’s lips move and I caught the smallest whisper of what he said in Mestor’s ear. I was able to piece together what he was whispering.

  “And I am not sure, dear friend, I have made it clear how upset, yes, I might even say, angry, your attempt to take our dear Miss Fair to your dreary, dank city of slaves made me. The thought of that young innocent with your fingers touching her… well, it was not a pleasant image to me.”

  Boggin straightened up. He cleared his throat and said in a normal voice, “Ananias…? Could you see to this after you are done with Miss Windrose…?”

  Dr. Fell said, “Of course, Headmaster. The infirmary never runs short on business when you are around.”

  “What was that, Ananias…?”

  “Nothing, Headmaster.”

  I had jumped out of the cot at this time, and had backed up in the cell as far as the chain would allow. Dr. Fell and Sister Twitchett rather matter-of-factly closed in on either side of me, and grabbed my arms. The Sister was strong, but I could feel her grip getting unsteady as I tugged against her; Dr. Fell’s hands were like the vice grip of a machine.

  I screamed.

  “Less noise, please,” said Dr. Fell.

  I screamed to Miss Daw, “Don’t let them do this to me, Miss Daw! Please!”


  She said in a voice emotionless and remote: “The choice is not mine to make, child.” She turned and handed a small key to Grendel, who was limping in short half-hops past where she stood. He had not been maimed long enough to learn how to walk one-legged with any grace.

  She said to him, “You will have to unlock her, Grendel. None of us can work the lock.”

  He scowled at the key and snatched it gracelessly from her hand.

  I tossed my body with all my strength back and forth in the grip of Twitchett and Fell. Twitchett snorted when my flying hair slapped her in the face. I screamed and panted and arched my back and kicked with my legs.

  I saw Grendel, staring at my writhing, struggling body in fascination. His expression slipped for a moment. Instead of the normal lust he might have felt seeing a helpless and nubile girl writhing around in a torn nightshirt, something like pity flickered in his eyes. He didn’t like seeing me hurt. Maybe, in his perverted mind, he wanted me to be afraid, but he only wanted me to be afraid of him. He didn’t like seeing other people make me scream. He didn’t like seeing me imprisoned, not just then.

  Reality slipped a bit, too. One of my higher senses flickered on, like a bruised eye prying its lids open for a moment.

  I could see Dr. Fell. He looked… more flat… than the other people in the room. As if he were just made of matter, a random clockwork made of atoms, nothing else. I saw the drugs and potions he was carrying in a little case clipped to his belt. Atomic structures glistened in rows and long chains, suspended in the fluid of several hypodermics.

  Time to do something. I was not sure what. Something.

  I saw time-images overlapping the light-picture. In these images, one of the needles was destined go into my arm; one of the drugs was going to affect my nervous system.

  I bent that world-line into a knot. The controlling monad for that group of chemicals was inert, and the final causes of the atoms were deterministic, controlled entirely by Newtonian cause-and-effect. The monad tilted in the Fourth Dimension and came awake, bringing its meaning-axis to bear. Quantum uncertainty increased in the atomic mixture. No different than what I had done to restore Quentin’s memory to him. New branches and stalks erupted on the monad’s tree of possible futures. It was no longer determined and inert.