Sword and Song

by Kate Story

  “Drowned?” asks the Virgo.

  Ophelia can’t speak, she only nods.

  “You Saw it!” Nancy’s voice rings out, triumphant. “You visited the land of the unmourned!”

  Pim wraps her arms around Ophelia. “It was not right to send her there. You won’t do it again.” She has this tone with Nancy sometimes, like the star pupil challenging the teacher.

  “It’s all right, Pim. I agreed to try,” Ophelia says.

  “It was necessary, Pim.” Nancy’s voice vibrates. “Now we know: Ophelia has the ability to See! And what did she See? Crowded, she says! People have been dying in such numbers that they leave no one to Blot them.”

  “Blot?”

  “Remember.”

  “Come on, Ophelia.” Pim takes her hand. “You need to rest.”

  Ophelia hangs back, looks again to the Virgo. “There was more. A . . . a tower.”

  “Yes?” The Virgo is eager, like a drawn knife.

  “It was . . .” It was horrible, Ophelia wants to say; the word is inadequate. “At its foot there was a man with his head cut off. And there was . . . a dragon. Dying. Bleeding.”

  The Virgo, Pim, The Gor, Pest, the doctor, all let their breath out together in a sigh.

  A soft sound from the bed: the Mender is speaking, quietly; it pains her to speak. Ophelia takes her hand, leans in.

  “Nancy . . . do not force the girl. . . .”

  “We must go,” the Virgo says quickly. “We are tiring the Mender. You all go to the meeting chamber; I will join you shortly.”

  Pim leads Ophelia out, Pest clutching two of her fingers; The Gor follows. Ophelia turns in time to see Doctor Capricus and Nancy bending over the Mender on the bed. Nancy takes her hand, shaking her head; then the door swings closed.

  The walk through the castle takes time, because it is full of people. Since the tsunami, Nancy has been organizing groups of rescuers, sending them through the city to find the injured, the trapped, the grieving. She has opened the halls of the pink palace to everyone. Everyone has a place to sleep, and food, although there is all too little of it. The castle has its own spring under its foundations that has been unaffected by the ocean’s surge, so there is drinking water.

  “This place was built to withstand the earthquakes; also a siege,” Nancy told Ophelia.

  She is tireless. Ophelia has to admire her. She’s one of those people who can calm a crying baby with a touch and a smile, and she seems to remember everyone’s name. She seems to love the people, and they her.

  There was some kind of celebration, bigger than Christmas—Big Night? No, Great Night—despite the disaster, with an attempt at feasting and costumes, and parades of characters through the castle. Candles lit on every wall, every windowsill, for the dead.

  Ophelia has seen the moon go to full, and shrink again.

  The moon rises later and later in the night.

  And still, she is here.

  She has not felt the long, thrilling slide home. In fact, it is beginning to feel more real here than the city where she was born and grew up. Everything—smells, tastes, touch, the people—feel so vivid, intense and present.

  Sometimes, when night has fallen and she is drifting to sleep, finally alone, she finds herself thinking of Rowan. She brings his face to her mind’s eye. She thinks she is not remembering him properly: Are his eyes really that blue, or is she exaggerating the tilt of his cheekbones? That way he sat, bent over like a question mark? The feeling of his hand in hers?

  It’s just a memory, here, in this ruined city.

  Nancy has organized groups to clear the wreckage from the lower regions of the city. But Calabar will not soon recover from this disaster. And they know it may happen again. They are braced for it; almost daily the land shakes, just a little, enough so that you can never forget. And last night, the sky went red; the great mountain glowing with lava. People aren’t supposed to go to the lower levels of the city unless they are part of a cleaning and reconstruction detail, but of course they go, trying to find things, or the bodies of loved ones.

  But most of them are here, in the castle.

  They reach out and touch Ophelia as she passes. They say things like, You will save us, you are our Chosen. They want her to touch their babies, put her hands on their wounds. Pim and The Gor protect Ophelia from being pressed too closely; they lead her, gradually but firmly, through the people to the other side of the castle. She reaches out, touches as many outstretched hands as she can. It feels silly but it seems to make people so happy. Her pretty green dress is smeared with marks left by the people’s hands.

  At last they make their way up a long spiral staircase—climbing it makes Ophelia feel a bit sick—and come to a room with wide windows facing the sea. It is easy to see the furthest extent of the great wave from here: it has left a stain on the tiered rock of the city, and some walls lie tumbled. Beyond that, Ophelia sees the choppy water, floating debris, trees, capsized boats.

  There is a round table in the room; they all sit and wait.

  And wait.

  Pim, restless, gets up and paces in front of the window. “She keeps us hanging,” she says. Ophelia notes again Pim’s peevish tone when she speaks of, or to, the Virgo. It’s interesting; she’s never like this with anyone else.

  “The Mender needs tending,” rumbles The Gor.

  “Oh, Gordon, she never pays all that much attention to the poor woman. She’s probably taking so long to get here because she’s busy being adored by the people.”

  “You really think that’s why Nancy works as hard as she does?” Ophelia asks. “I think she genuinely cares about everyone.”

  Pim softens. “She is driven to help.” She flaps her hands in a helpless gesture. “I, on the other hand, am a constant disappointment.”

  The Gor rumbles a laugh.

  “It’s true, Gordon! She never includes me in any of the planning, never asks my opinion. She just does as she pleases.”

  Ophelia is confused. “Are you next in line to lead the Virgos, as she does?”

  “No! Of course not.” Pim’s eyes flash with anger. “My mother should explain all this to you! Why does she keep things secret? She is the master of fragmentary truths, that one.”

  “Your mother . . . ?”

  It comes to Ophelia in a rush. How has she been so blind?

  Nancy, the Virgo, is Pim’s mother.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  A Lesson In Compassion

  Ophelia feels her face flush. She hates feeling stupid.

  “Surely you knew.”

  “No,” snaps Ophelia. It is suddenly difficult to speak, for Ophelia is overcome with intense longing.

  If she could have imagined the perfect mother, it would be Nancy. Strong, capable, smart, loved, and loving.

  She could cry with the longing. And yet there’s Pim, with that perfect mother, filled with seething resentment.

  How could Ophelia have missed it? The tilt of Pim’s chin, the accusation in her voice, the defiance gleaming in her eyes—it reminds Ophelia of herself with her own mother, especially since she can see that Pim hates herself for being childish. No one drives you insane like your own mother. Ophelia misses Mary, then, with painful suddenness. Good-hearted, emotional, lonely Mary.

  If she ever gets home she will try to be nicer to her mother . . . And then the sadness surges; she will drown in this sadness . . .

  Ophelia is saved by the entrance of the doctor and Nancy. Her red veil covers her face, and she carries the Night Light, in front of her. She places it in the centre of the table, and only then does she fold back her veil.

  “Is she all right?”

  Nancy tilts her chin at her tall daughter, and a smile quirks the corner of her mouth. She doesn’t answer. She takes an empty chair directly across from Ophelia. She looks tired, as tired as Ophelia’s mother after a long week. She hooks an empty chair with one foot, drawing it closer and putting her feet up on it; she rubs her face.

  Heat shimm
ers rise from the copper lamp; it reflects all the faces around the table like a weird, orangey fun-house mirror. Ophelia can see a tracery of lines along the surface. It’s beautiful, the lamp; it draws her. She forces herself to concentrate on what Nancy is saying.

  “We must act. Too many souls are unable to transition; it will affect the balance even more negatively than the despotic actions of the Render already have.”

  “Why did you make Ophelia go to that place?” asks Pim.

  “I want to help,” Ophelia says quickly.

  “I am glad.” Nancy’s deep voice thrums with gladness, and Ophelia feels her heart expand with pleasure.

  Pim stirs, subsides.

  Everyone is silent. The room is very quiet. Everyone is looking into the eternal, mesmerizing flame of the Night Light.

  “The children, first,” says the Virgo at last. “They were the first to die.” Her voice, quiet, somehow fills the room. “Then, of course, the weak, the sick. The volcano shook, it did not stop. So much ash went into the air. Nothing could grow that year, nor the year after. There was a terrible famine. And the Render took that opportunity, seizing power in the North.”

  Everyone around the table is nodding; they know this. The history lesson is for Ophelia’s benefit.

  “Within a decade he took over the land, the best farms. He created a secret prison for dissidents. He convinced people that under his leadership, they would be safer. He demonized me; there have been several attempts on my life.”

  “Not just you. He demonized the entire south.”

  The Virgo goes on as if Pim has not spoken. “He convinced the Northerners that with so little food to go around, the halves were parasites, abominations that must be eradicated.”

  The Gor rumbles in his throat, Doctor Capricus snorts.

  “Why didn’t anyone stop him?”

  “We tried, Ophelia. We even tried to . . .” Is it Ophelia’s imagination, or does this steely woman’s voice tremble? Her steady gaze slides off to one side. “. . . assassinate him. I could see no other way.

  “But we failed. He lives, and continues to kill and imprison and oppress and starve the people.

  “And that’s what you saw in the land of the dead. Many, many children: dead of starvation, the famine that gripped the land and has been extended through the Render’s psychotic grip on power in the North. Do you know,” she says, and she stares straight into Ophelia’s eyes—those pale grey eyes, you could fall into those eyes, pale with a dark ring around the outside, reminding Ophelia of the sky of the dead place. “Do you know what happens to a person when they starve?”

  “Well, they die.”

  “Specifically?”

  Ophelia’s jaw tightens; she is being quizzed. “They burn up reserves, like body fat, and then muscle.”

  The Virgo nods. “The body turns cannibal. And eventually, the starving person becomes too weak to move or even eat. They cease to interact with the surrounding world. They become too weak to sense thirst, become dehydrated. All movements become painful: muscles atrophy, skin dries and cracks. Then disease comes in. Fungi, for example, grow under the esophagus. Swallowing is unbearably painful.”

  Ophelia feels Pest shudder. She puts her hand on his back, feeling his spine and ribs through his thin shirt.

  “After a time, the loss of body protein affects the function of important organs. The ultimate cause of death is generally cardiac arrhythmia or arrest. . . .”

  The technical terms sound strange here, in this pink granite palace, but before Ophelia can respond, Pim interrupts. “Why do you go on about this to her? Do you imagine she needs a lesson in compassion?”

  “We all need that lesson, every day. We all must understand. The children you saw, Ophelia, they had no gentle death. No final words. They died staring into the air.” The Virgo closes her eyes, her face is almost ecstatic. “Or slipping down into the dirt.”

  Pim makes a noise in her throat, but stays silent.

  The Virgo speaks again. “And of course you saw more there, too, didn’t you, Ophelia? The adults would have been the next to arrive. Many of these, like the children, ate their own bodies. But many would have died at the Render’s re-education camp, the prison, the factory farm. Tortured, overworked, beaten.” Nancy stands and walks to the window, looking out across the violated sea. She’s short, Ophelia realizes. It’s easy to forget that, she projects so much power. “Intact bodies like ours, here, bodies that worked and loved, danced and ate and slept, cried, gave birth, laughed. Whips cutting them, knives and wires inserted into them. Gouged and pricked and torn and dismembered.”

  She pauses.

  “And the halves, persecuted and hunted.”

  The room is full of silence, the silence is water and could drown you.

  “And now, all the drowned. All with no one to mourn them, no one to remember, no way to leave that place.

  “There are too many people there now.”

  “What can I do?” asks Ophelia.

  The woman smiles, it’s like sunshine. “Everything. We know now that you can go to that place. It’s because you have arrived fresh from . . . from hell.” There’s a sarcastic twist to her mouth. “We must get you while you are fresh.”

  “It’s not hell,” Ophelia says. “It’s my home.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “The North is hell,” Pest pipes up.

  “What’s that, little man?” Ophelia tousles his hair.

  “I come from the North. My family died. My sister died in the bed. I had to stay there with her because there was no place to put her. My brothers died, too. My parents and then my grandmother. They got stiff, and smelled bad.”

  “Pest came from the countryside outside Kalmar, didn’t you?” the Virgo says.

  Kalmar! Rowan’s city! The word jolts through Ophelia. It’s here, just like he said. Maybe it’s true that he used to come to Antilia. Is it possible he wasn’t playing her after all? If only they’d had more time before Ophelia got pulled in. . . . If only . . .

  Pest gabbles his words fast like he doesn’t want to get too close to them. “I heard that they would take care of you down here. Some people said it. Other people said everyone here was crazy. But everyone up there was dead. So I got on one of the Council’s fishing boats. I hid. They found me. They beat me. But they brought me here.” He looks around the table. “I got here.”

  “Along with thousands of others,” Pim nods.

  “The South has become a refuge from famine and oppression,” Nancy adds. “Isn’t that right, Gordon?”

  The Gor bares his teeth. He nods, once.

  “Why am I still in Antilia?” Ophelia has to ask. Maybe Nancy knows; of anyone here, she might know. And maybe Nancy knows if another—if Rowan—could come here, too.

  “Because Antilia needs you.” The Virgo begins to pace around the table. “The Render,” she spits the word, “has the council under his thumb. The injustice and horror they have visited upon the North—well, you have seen it. Mass starvation, oppression of nonhumans and dissidents, bigotry, hatred. And also you saw the Dragon and the Green Knight in the dead land, did you not?”

  Ophelia’s mouth dries; she cannot speak. This description of the North sounds nothing like Rowan’s. Doubt fills her again. And the horror of that Dragon and Knight . . . “Why?” she asks. “Who left them there like that?”

  Pim says in a flat voice, “He did that. The Render. He maimed them and they linger on in that dead land.”

  Nancy goes to Pim, then, placing her hand on the top of her daughter’s head. “We have taken in all of the refugees who have been able to get to us. We have given people hope. But we have not moved.

  “It is time to act!”

  Ophelia senses Pim, wound up like a spring; The Gor is half out of his seat, and the doctor bleats, once, as if he can’t help himself. Their eyes are shining, they gaze at the Virgo like she’s a goddess. “We will bring them to justice! We will bring balance back to Antilia!”

  C
hapter Forty-Five

  Figurehead

  The coliseum is full. Water has marked it more than halfway up its great walls, but it’s standing. Many people are there, and halves, too, the richly-dressed and the ragged. Children sit on the shoulders of adults; some are agile enough to have climbed the tough old vines that grow around the outer columns. Many people wear armour, metal and leather, swords and longbows and spears by their sides. The hooves of centaurs and satyrs clop on the stones, cutting through the din of voices.

  Ophelia stands with Pim and Pest on the great open floor, opposite the place she sat during the dreadful Games. There is an unlit brazier to one side.

  Doctor Capricus and The Gor approach through the crowd, and a cluster of Virgos in their black robes and red gauzy veils, like red-edged nuns.

  Nancy strides behind them, the copper Night Light as always between her palms. She doesn’t look at Pim or Ophelia. She uses the Night Light to set the brazier afire. She lowers her veil over her face, standing with her head bowed and her hands clasped, watching the flames swiftly flowering. Waiting.

  And still people come.

  The heat from the brazier shimmers, making Ophelia uncomfortably hot, but no one else seems bothered by it. Ophelia wipes her forehead and tries not to show the trepidation she feels. So many people, looking down on her!

  Finally it seems that it is time, for the Virgo raises her arms, shimmering in the heat.

  The crowd quiets.

  Ophelia feels very, very nervous.

  “My people,” Nancy says, “the time has come for action.”

  Murmurs, a few shouts of agreement.

  “The world is splitting. The balance has been upset!”

  Calls, cries. It’s like one of those Baptist prayer meetings, Ophelia thinks.

  “We will . . . The Mender has told me her plan.” Nancy’s powerful deep voice cuts through the noise, carried by the acoustics of the hall. “We will set sail for Kalmar. We will rally the townspeople there, we will bring the Render and his Council to justice!” The Gor is growling, the doctor bleats, Pim whimpers. “And then . . .” The Virgo pauses, looking around at the crowd.