Marshsong

by Nato Thompson

  “Grab a seat, Isabella. So much to discuss. You know, as I have heard it, they are tearing up the Onion’s Den on Rue de Kaiser,” he said as he pulled out a chair for the small lady to sit upon. The barkeep handed her a glass of grape juice and she laid out her query. Isabella sat down and provided the Barrister with the thing he loved most, attention.

  “Yes, it’s beat up. It’s old. I will give you that. Do you know the building I speak of?”

  Isabella shook her head.

  “It doesn’t matter. Here is the deal. It’s an old building but not all that long ago, it was the spot to catch great opera. They would bring plays in from Brilliance and James, from Castleton to Bellspa. In a way, going to the Onion’s Den, was a way to get in touch with the rest of the world, which, let's face it, this city could certainly use. Sure, they fell on hard times but hasn’t the whole city in general? So now these bureaucrats are just in the out with the old and in with the new mode. Listen, I may be old, but I am not into old for old’s sake. You know that, Isabella. But the Onion’s Den. I heard they are clearing the ground for some mattress manufacturer or something. It’s enough to make you sick.”

  Isabella shook her head. These kinds of things bothered her as well. “It really does. I’ve never understood why certain decisions like this happen. They seem to be such clearly bad ideas.”

  The Barrister stared at her and smiled. He was lost in his thought. He laughed. “You know, I don’t think I get it either, except that most systems are the result of small opportunists that add up to bad big decisions. That much I know. But when you tear down the Onion’s Den—dear god—barkeep, another bourbon for me please! You know, maybe that will be a chapter in my next book. It’s on Barrenwood you realize. Well, kind of. It’s actually on all cities in a sense. All of them mixed in together. I have this sense there is a genre waiting for me. It is a chronicling of the rise and fall of this great city, but that rise and fall is of many cities when you think of it. I want to become an urban geography pulp writer. That is my dream.”

  The Barrister took a large sip of his newly iced bourbon and stared into the lights lost in thought over his future genre.

  Isabella took the opportunity to jump in. If she didn’t she might find herself bulldozed, like the Onion’s Den.

  “I must change the subject, dear Barrister; although, come to think of it, they are related. Last night, the reason I wrote you with such urgency, is that I witnessed a very coordinated gathering together of the lunatics of Barrenwood and loading them onto a frigate.”

  “Oh, “ said the Barrister, raising his eyebrows. “The Drunken Boat, you mean? Yes, you know what, they are related.”

  “I believe it is called Le Bateau Ivre. That is it.”

  The Barrister shifted in his seat. He had spent the last few weeks on the subject and wasn’t surprised to hear about it again.

  “There has been a lot of discussion around that in every circle. It is not a dull subject but what is your particular interest?” Bruno asked. He didn’t presume to know what she wanted.

  “I guess my most basic question is why or more specifically why now? Who would do this?” Isabella tried her best to not sound too emphatic, but her voice betrayed her.

  The Barrister chuckled and stared into Isabella’s eyes. He wanted to know what lay in there, but those two sockets were impenetrable black pools. Inside resided a nothingness that sank deep. She remained opaque in the extreme. He had heard just the slightest hints about the existence of her kind (the rumors actually spoke of a pair of twins but he kept that to himself). One could always discount the gossip of ghosts and trolls, of gnomes and ghouls, but some rumors were specific and consistent. The ones about a pair of sophisticated twins who danced between worlds and fed on cruelty came up every now and again—twins who haunted the nights of Barrenwood bringing with them strange messages from beyond.

  “I really shouldn’t try to guess the direction that you are coming at this from. If I were to answer any layman on the street the question you have asked, I could say that it was an order executed by the Department of Psychological Services, newly established by the Mayor. But I suspect this isn’t what you are asking, is it?”

  “No, no,” said Isabella, thinking how strange she must sound. “I don’t mean that. I’m interested in something a little more broad. Although, come to think of it, the small answer is the beginning of an actual answer to which I might find use. This Department of Psychological Services, how long has it been active? ”

  “The department is particularly new. They built it out at the edge of the Mortestrate where property is cheap. Just a bulldozer and some cranes and the building went up. It is part of the entire new vision for the role of the city that the Mayor has desperately reached out to. Same mindset that is bulldozing the Onion’s Den, I’m afraid. An army of opportunists, Isabella! Frankly, Big Boy Charlie probably doesn’t believe a shred of it but he is a politician after all. He bends in the breeze. I am going to assume, dare as I may, that you find the carting off of the mad the most recent example of a stupid city’s hubris and I couldn’t agree more. There are so many more examples: talk of making the roadways larger, streamlining prisons, more ordinances on health and safety. Ugh. Makes your head hurt and your stomach turn. They are very caught up in the new plans of which this is just one.

  “Funny enough, when the Department of Nutjobs opened up, you would be amazed how many people all over the city woke up convinced that they were, in fact, crazy. Madness became en vogue. It’s comical when you think about it. People in this city, particularly the bored, are ever eager to be diagnosed. They want to have a name for themselves. I know for a fact that the facility just around the corner has a waiting list of people voluntarily asking to be interned. I also know that at the new building out by the Mortestrate—I think it is called Wellington Manor—they have admitted Chelsea Revan for analysis. She was always a strange bird anyway, but as soon as these facilities opened up even the royal families were eager to get their foot in the door. I believe it was her parents that asked to have her under supervision.

  “I feel for her though. As strange as she is, I don’t think this kind of remedy is going to help. She is just a timid little thing—small and overwhelmed at the world. Anyway, her being admitted, only made it all the more fashionable to send your kids off to the shrink. Those facilities are now a strange hybrid of homeless and the well-to-do.

  “It’s a racket, don’t you think? Running those things can’t be cheap. And now they are carting the mad off onto the boats. I am not as far removed from that affair as I would like, I am afraid. You might catch me in your net of fishing if you pull it up. I know, I am a hypocritical creature, it is true. But romance often trumps politics for me these days. I happen to have a recent acquaintance that makes a good chunk of change doing the city’s dirty work by facilitating the carting off the lunatics. I don’t agree with it. Don’t get me wrong. He is a pawn in someone’s game but a handsome pawn at that. I can’t find it in my heart to hold it against him.” The Barrister smiled a bewitching smile indeed.

  “I think I might have seen your little friend, oh, just last night," Isabella said. "You are a very bad man, Bruno, I must say. I am going to be honest with you because, well, I don’t really have anyone I can turn to.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “I am clearly different.”

  “Yes, you clearly are.”

  “I don’t think or feel the way others do.”

  “I can relate, but sure, I get that.”

  “I had a hint recently there might be something like me out there in the world. I smelled it briefly last night. So there is that. This lingering suspicion that I’m not alone.”

  “We’re all alone, my dear,” said the Barrister

  “Now you sound like a friend of mine, reminding me that wanting the company of others is some sort of weakness.”

  The Barrister laughed. He found the idea amusing. He couldn’t imagine the last time he truly sat alone
with his thoughts. “Putting it that way, really makes me seem like the pot calling the kettle black. I can’t stop being around people. I wonder at times if I experienced some trauma that haunts me such that I desperately need the company of people.”

  “Age is a kind of trauma,” said Isabella.

  “So it is. But do you know anything of it, really?” The Barrister asked and he realized he had no idea how old this young or old lady was. Who was Isabella again?

  Isabella just shook the question off. “I can see it play out in people. Wisdom is a form of sadness really. It is an awareness of the tragedy blowing through the world—most succumb to its imperative, a few, find it beautifully ironic. I put you somewhere in between.”

  The Barrister gave her a hard look and then turned away. “Oh, don’t psychoanalyze me. I really don’t want my personality interpreted. I work very hard to obscure it from myself.”

  “Many do,” Isabella mumbled. She meant it. She didn’t find that part of humanity actually troubling. She imagined if she was like them, she might do the same. Her brother, on the other hand, considered this aspect of people most unforgivable.

  The Barrister recoiled at her words. He was a bit of a town celebrity and rarely did he find himself in the company of those that didn’t enjoy his every word. He reminded himself that his bristling was healthy. That is why he liked Isabella.

  He took a drink and then chuckled. “You might be right. No, you are right but enough about me. You are on the hunt for others of your ilk, is that right?”

  “In a manner of speaking. I must admit, I don’t exactly know what I mean. It is all just a hunch.”

  The Barrister looked Isabella over. He had never encountered anything remotely like her. It was no wonder that she felt alone. She was unique in a most profound way.

  “I really don’t know. In my opinion you are very much alone. I have been a guest to many a city across our lands and nary an iota of your personality have I encountered. Unless you would like me to point you toward a Montessori school. That is about the closest I could think of.”

  “Actually, children terrify me. I’ll pass.” She smiled. (It was true. They scared the socks off her.) So, no progress on this topic with the Barrister. One last try:

  “Okay, so you know nothing. Who might?”

  “Might know about others that are like you?” The Barrister smiled at such a question. “Now, I’m having fun. It is a kind of mind game you are playing here. It is like asking who in the city knows the way to heaven.”

  “Do you really think I come from heaven, Bruno?”

  “Heh heh, let's hope not or heaven is a most peculiarly cruel place.”

  Isabella laughed at that thought. The joke brought a vision of her in the clouds with drooping black wings. She liked it.

  The Barrister continued, “All I can guess is that you are asking for who knows the old secrets in this town. I can always tell you the obvious answers but I think they are the reasonable places to start as well—the oldest family and the oldest religion, that being House Revan and the School of the Divine Line. If anyone knows anything of this sort, it’s them, darlin'.”

  The Barrister gave her a wink. He had told her the most obvious thing but for Isabella it seemed to be of assistance. She stewed the idea over in her mind as though thinking about it for the first time.

  “Maybe I am from an old world after all,” she said.

  It occurred to the Barrister that perhaps this beautiful young woman didn’t know how old she was. She seemed amazingly unaware, in a sense, of who she was.

  She stared off in a daze and the silence lasted for a good while. Her mind wandered into a space that was cloudy and grey. She couldn’t quite rectify what or who she was. It bothered her but only in a vague way. In a sense, she thought, the present has always been the ultimate past and future for me. She snapped her head and came back to the world.

  “Right, wow, that really got me thinking. Thanks for that, Bruno.”

  The Barrister tried to hide his amazement of his little friend. “You are most welcome.”

  “Now, let's get to the matter that I think you could be much more helpful.”

  “Where to get the best veal?”

  “Yes, do tell. No, don’t. I have had this sense of late that something is changing in the city. Something is shaping it—not just the buildings, not just the waterways, not just the streetlights and sidewalks but the entire mentality of the city. I have this lingering suspicion that there is something amiss in Barrenwood. That the city is falling victim to an overarching assault and it, in some capacity, threatens everything I believe in.”

  “You might want some alcohol in that grape juice of yours, Isabella,” said the Barrister. He continued,“Your concerns sound very much like many of the poets I have been spending late hours with. The nostalgia for the city is heavy upon us. New winds are coming and they are blowing romance out the door, but in so doing, also making the romance all the more fleeting and present. Yes, everyone feels it changing. The growing tide of bureaucratization and ordinances mixed with this incessant demand for maximization. Words of life that stink of math. Yes, you sense it. I sense it. Anyone with any sense senses it. And yes, it is at war with us. But it is the city. One can’t resist such a thing, at least not one of my sensibilities. That might be the calling for those younger than I. Myself, I try not to hold on too tight in this life. You don’t know which direction the wind is blowing.”

  Isabella relented. She at least had some clues and this had been what she wanted. “I have summoned the Persembe sisters. They might know a thing or two.”

  The Barrister laughed. The sisters were even more renowned than he. “Oh, they will know something for sure. If you had more of an interest in sordid gossip, you would perhaps be taking greater advantage of their company. But they are from the Houses to be sure, so maybe, they know something.”

  “Okay, enough about me, Bruno. What is new in your life?” Isabella said, pretending to take an interest in the life of her friend. She hated that she was so self-absorbed. It didn’t reflect well on her in her extremely rare social situations.

  “Me? I’m a tired old drunk. Nothing is new with me. I scribble my crankiness to the paper every now and then and wait for my royalty checks to come in the mail so I can continue to have dinner and drinks. It is a really simple and perhaps even at war with that thing called the new. But don’t be bothered by inquiring about me. I am simply happy to be your humble servant, even if perhaps, I haven’t helped all that much.”

  Isabella hopped off her seat and curtsied. “It is always a pleasure to meet with you, my good sir. I am afraid you have been of enough use to me that I must follow up on something you said. In the meantime, have some dinner and drinks on the house. I will see you again I am sure.”

  The Barrister got off his seat and bowed low to Isabella. “It is my honor to serve,” he said, and Isabella whisked herself out the door. Time was ticking, she knew. And what lay in front of her was the inevitable Wellington Manor.

  Chapter 4

  Fennel flew out into the world—a bat swooshing out of a cave. He skipped and leapt across the cobblestones trying to shake his annoyance at his sister’s surreptitious behavior. The city greeted him as a black milk trash can. Every corner an opportunity to disappear into obscurity. The neon signs of pink and electric greens, advertising dim sum, and snapdragon carrousels, cast bolts of color into the absorbent shadows that dominated the cracks and creases. The air was thick as usual with the corrosive blend of coal stoves and marsh sweat. The sky was a beat up wrestler from the badlands dripping down on the town. An occasional old cart pusher would creak its way down the roadways with bushels of grey pears or golden sweet-toothed pomegranates—their eyes set back into a realm of can-do with their aged arms sinuous and strong from a lifetime of pushing. Urchins occasionally sat on squat chairs at intersections hoping to fetch a fancy shoe set to shine—their missing teeth an oracle of the brute they were to become.

 
; Fennel kicked his feet and sped along, occasionally kicking himself off the side of a brick building or leaping off a small wall. He was pure calorie exhaustion and this little trickery of his sister’s had gotten under his refined skin.

  She could have just told him about the Barrister’s visit. Did she really think him that dumb or sensitive? Always plotting. As nefarious as he imagined himself, he wasn’t much of a conniver in that way. Not for the kind of socialite comings and goings and especially not behind the back of his sister. His plots were much more grand. Operatic. She was often lost in the moribund qualities of the lay people while his eyes were focused on the grand musical called life as we know it. His own plots held a different flavor, a different texture. If Isabella sought the comfort of those like themselves (a plan naïve in the extreme), Fennel sought a plot more diabolical.

  Last night’s events had only cemented what had already been a hint of a notion before. He couldn’t stand Barrenwood and its people. Even if he had, in fact, felt wonderful tossing those sailors into the mire below, he still overall felt sickened by the antics of the city itself. Carting away the mad. It was a crime against dreaming. What a profound testament to the arrogance of humanity that they would treat their shamans with no shame.

  “And that,” said Fennel, standing on a brick wall shouting at the Cathedral Ogre looming overhead, “is that! Reap what you sow, oh Barrenwood. I merely exact justice, not fault.”

  He leapt up into the air and set out for a place he simply would not be allowed to visit if Isabella had been with him. He figured he would make lemonade with his lemons. As much as Fennel told himself that Isabella didn’t know what she was doing, he also found that without her, he didn’t know much of what he was doing either. She was his weathervane, his compass. She would lead him by the hand and he could then complain how stupid the plan was. This time she wasn’t around, and he was left to his own devices. He could visit Derrilous, but he knew that the Blue Goo wasn’t prepared yet. It was still much too early. No, he would have to kill time, and he thought to himself, so rarely do people take as seriously as I do, the notion of killing time. Let it bleed.