The Circus Infinitus - Victoria 7

by Ethan Somerville

  It took me a while to learn how to sneak up my food. Those fish had eyes on both sides of their heads. They could easily see me coming. I had to learn to hide behind mounds, clumps of grass and clouds of mud. I tried lunging and closing my mouth around the fish, but they easily avoided me. Then I tried catching them with my clawed hands. Most escaped, but a few I managed to ensnare because of my webbed fingers. I gulped down my first tiny catches. They were so small and wriggly! Delicious! But I needed more. Perhaps I could find some larger prey.

  I continued into deeper water, learning to swim close to the bottom with my hands close to my sides, undulating my body like a mermaid’s. I slid through the reeds, snapping at everything that moved. Once I caught a frog that crunched delightfully between my needle-sharp teeth. Another time I ensnared a trout with my hands. It too was a treat, and I gobbled it up bones and all. I’m becoming better at this, I thought with a surge of pleasure.

  When I finally decided to poke my head up out of the water, I realised that the sun and risen and was quite high in the sky. Had I been hunting for so long already? The pleasure I had taken at the underwater world faded as I remembered something else Crimpley had told me. I had run off into the fens without thinking, and now I had no idea where I was. The land was flat and low lying, not a single tall tree to climb in sight. Come midnight I would change again, and if I hadn’t found my way home, my new form would have to do that without any of the talents my current shape possessed.

  The sun was almost in the middle of the sky. I had no idea which way was west, the direction I had come from. Slowly I sank back into the water. I’d have to wait and see which way the sun was going. But oh, it was so hard to focus! I could feel tiny creatures moving through the water around me, and I wanted to duck my head and bite at them, feel their squirmy little bodies slid down my throat. My belly growled again.

  Why were so many of these bodies hungry? I dove and hunted a couple more times, chasing schools of minnows and tadpoles. Then I pounced on my prize; a freshwater eel several feet long. It was so fat I couldn’t eat it all, and regretfully had to leave its half-chewed remains for other scavengers.

  When I lifted my head again, the sun was low in the sky. Dear Lord, I had lost track of time again! What a seductive form this was! But I really would have to start back now. Once the sun dropped below the horizon, I would lose my bearings.

  Keeping my head above water, I turned and headed into the setting sun. At least now I was full I could concentrate better. But I couldn’t see a single thing I recognized. In all my years alive, I had never once ventured into the fens. My tenants may have known their way around, but I had never been interested in these cold, damp wastelands before. Perhaps, when I got back, I could find out if one of my locals had a map, or enough knowledge to at least give me a rough outline of the area.

  Stars began to pop out above me. At least the sky was clear. But I couldn’t find my way by those mysterious pinpricks. I had read books on navigation, but nothing had stuck into my brain. Damn it! I cursed myself. Why couldn’t I remember?

  I climbed up onto a rough hillock and scanned the area, hoping I could spot the high ground on which my family home stood. Nothing. My surroundings remained flat and swampy in all directions. I slid back into the soothing liquid. Once I saw lights dancing on the still marshy surface, and thought some locals were out doing some night fishing. But as I approached the lights skipped off and disappeared. Will o’ the wisps, I thought in disgust. Those mysterious beings had almost fooled me, and now I couldn’t remember which direction I had been heading!

  I actually swore out loud. Stupid stupid stupid! Now I understood what Crimpley had meant. This form really had been my mother’s greatest weakness, but not because of its need for water. Rather, because of its inability to think about the consequences of its actions! I figured my other supernatural forms would be able to survive out here, but what if I transformed back into my normal, albeit invisible self? An inexperienced human would quickly die of exposure! As I was a marine lifeform, I wasn’t sure how cold the water was, but I knew it was definitely too chilly for humans.

  Desperately, I tried to regain my bearings and move in the right direction. But I just couldn’t recall! And scarcely had I begun to proceed when I felt a horribly familiar tiredness overcome me. Oh no, was it midnight already? Desperately I scrambled back to the dry hillock where I’d checked my surroundings, and climbed up onto it. Miserably, dreading what I would become next, I sank down into the grass and closed my eyes.

  Chapter Seven

  I jerked awake what felt like only a few seconds later and lay still on the grass, looking up at the clear night sky. Fortunately, I didn’t feel cold, just numb, so I wasn’t human or the Mummy Amuna. The stars above formed a pattern, and I finally remembered that navigation text I had ploughed through as a child. Back then, I mightn’t have understood much of what I’d absorbed but now I recalled every word. I realised I could use the stars to find my way home.

  Slowly I sat up and lifted my hands to my head, exploring my face with my fingertips. My skin felt dry and rough, but normal. I had human features; eyes, nose, mouth, ears … and hair. Thick, wiry, tightly-curled hair that seemed to stand straight up from my head. Who was I now? I looked down at my body – yes, even this form could see in the dark – and saw a skinny, almost cadaverous naked body, my flesh the colour of snow. Sweet Jesus! What kind of creature was I?

  I looked back up at the sky again. Revelations could wait until I was home. No doubt Crimpley was beside himself, wondering what had happened to me. I slid down from the hillock into the water, moving through the liquid to the next solid piece of land. The mud dragged at my feet, but I intended to move in a perfectly straight line towards home. I was miles away and didn’t fancy being stuck out here naked come sunrise.

  This time, when I noticed moving lights on the water, I wasn’t fooled. There was a boat out there, and I could hear a voice calling; “Violet, Violet! Are you out here?”

  Crimpley had come through for me. But he was only a few hundred yards into the swamp. If I hadn’t used the stars to walk back this far, he would never have found me. “Here I am!” I called from behind some long grass. “Forgive me if I don’t jump out – I’m not decent.”

  Crimpley was seated in the boat with a burly manservant named Ryan. Ryan punted the shallow-bottomed craft over to my hiding place, and as it slid to a stop the lawyer rose to his feet, holding out a thick waterproof cloak.

  I snatched it from him, wrapped it tightly around my bony body, and scrambled into the boat. “Thank you!” I gasped.

  Crimpley peered at me in the light of the lantern dangling from the back of the boat. “You’re … that one now!” he exclaimed.

  “Which one?”

  “Your mother never had a name for her. She was always aloof and mysterious, and very clever.”

  “When I awoke and saw the stars, I immediately remembered how to navigate by them,” I explained. “I had only read that particular book once as a child and at the time I hardly understood a word, but now I can recall every page!”

  “Your brain is now working at peak efficiency. You will be able to recall every bit of knowledge you absorbed as a child and understand it. When we return to the house, there is something I must show you, something important that only you, in this body, will understand.”

  I nodded to him, and he signalled to Ryan to bring the boat home. I wondered what the surly, silent fellow was making of all this. No doubt he had seen it all before.

  “You went too far out there, didn’t you?” the lawyer asked me in a low voice as we were hurrying up to the house. Behind us, Ryan hauled the boat up onto the grass.

  “I’m sorry to say that I did. That swamp creature was quite erratic and entirely too obsessed with chasing fish and filling her stomach.”

  “Next time, stay close. You may not fortunate enough to change into the smart form.”

  “Yes, of course. Hopefully I will be better prepared.�
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  I followed him into the house, and he took me back up to my mother’s room. “She kept some clothes for this particular form. A long white dress, more like a shroud than an actual frock. I’ll leave while you find it in change.” He stepped out of the room and closed the door.

  Again with some trepidation, I turned to look at my new self in my mother’s mirror. I expected to be horrified – indeed, I could see how others would be frightened. But once again I surprised myself. I was certainly striking and not attractive, but I didn’t find myself ugly. I was tall and impressive, and I could almost see my new intelligence blazing forth from my black-ringed eyes. My skin was very pale, almost white, my cheekbones sharp wedges that threatened to pierce that almost translucent covering. My hair did indeed stand straight up, a thick, tangled mass that I knew I’d never be able to pull a comb through. Two stark white stripes shone at my temples, contrasting with its blackness. What kind of a creature was I? I seemed as undead as the Mummy, but I didn’t feel cold … just numb. I went to the wardrobe and searched for the dress Crimpley had mentioned. I soon found it; a plain white gown with a few stains on it, as though it had been splashed by something. I slipped it on over my head, covering my body, emaciated body.

  Then I called for Crimpley to come back in.

  “What did my mother call this form?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “She never had a name for it. She just called it ‘the smart one’, or ‘the genius’. But towards the end of her life, she became somewhat derisive towards it, claiming it wasn’t smart enough to free her from the curse, or even get her out of this house.”

  Truthfully, I never really knew how smart my mother actually was, so I had no idea if in my normal form I was any smarter than her. But hoped, in this new body, to possess a new insight that she’d lacked. I turned to the faithful lawyer. “Crimpley, you mentioned you had something to show me.”

  “Ah yes, of course. Direct your attention over to this wall.” He crossed to a bare patch of wall near my mother’s bed. “Do you notice anything out of the ordinary about the wood panelling here?”

  Some time in the past, during a more enthusiastic period in my mother’s life, she’d had the rooms redecorated in a baroque style, with dark, heavily carved wooden panels. Apart from the fact that most of the intricate details were heavily covered in dust and the Spider Queen’s webs, I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. But then I blinked, and the outline to a hidden doorway was revealed. I gasped. “Is that an opening?”

  Crimpley smiled. “Aye Ma’am, it is. Your mother had it installed when she redecorated about a hundred years ago. She told me about it when I became her retainer, but made me swear to secrecy. Not even the servants know about it.”

  “Have you been inside?”

  He shook his head. “She would not let me. She said it contained secrets even I could not be privy to.”

  I stared intently at the panel. It was covered with beautiful carvings of stars and planets. There didn’t appear to be any handles I could see. “How do I get this open?”

  “I have no idea. She may have put that information in her diary for you. Alas, now I fear you need to determine the key on your own.”

  I muttered a curse under my breath, quite unlike my normal demure self. I sensed a restless impatience in this form, a need to get things done, a desire not to be thwarted by the mundane needs of the normal world. Perhaps that’s why my outfit was so simple, and my hair such a mess. I simply didn’t care. “Very well, there’s nothing like a challenge to start me off.”

  “Very good, Ma’am. If you need me, I’ll be in my rooms.” He turned and left. Alone, I stared at the door with its mouldings. Perhaps there was a sequence in those seemingly random designs, some sort of story. And then, as soon as that thought had crossed my mind, I saw it; a strange tale about the Earth, moving from its geocentric position at the centre to the universe to its more rightful place as third planet from the sun.

  I pressed a finger against each Earth in the sequence, and each time there was a soft click as something disengaged. I knew my heart should have been racing with excitement, but I felt only a detached interest. At the end of the pattern there was no Earth to press, just a sun surrounded by lots of different worlds. I wasn’t even sure if it was our sun. But it fit the end of the pattern, so I touched it. There was another click, and the heavy wooden panel finally unlocked and swung inwards to reveal a set of steep stone steps leading up.

  Very clever, mother, I thought. What on Earth did you keep up here? I stepped into the little room and examined the back of the door. All the different bolts linked to a single handle that could be turned from the other side. I wondered who had manufactured such an ingenious device. No doubt whoever he was, he was long dead by now.

  I climbed up into the narrow stairwell, heading up into the attic of the manor.

  As a child I had explored this enormous roof cavity many times, searching through all the dusty artefacts from many years gone by. It had never once occurred to me that part of it had been walled off for my mother’s own exclusive use. I had simply assumed the parts I couldn’t reach belonged to the house’s extensive network of chimneys.

  Now, of course, I knew better as I crept up into the secret laboratory my mother had set up. It was quite large and roomy, but very dark and musty. There were several shutters, a large telescope set up beneath one. A long bench, lined with beakers, flasks, crucibles and jars stood against one wall, a shelf of books against another. At the far end was a fireplace with a grate, at the moment cold and dead. A sheaf of notes, tied up with strong, lay on the bench and it was the first thing I picked up in my shaking hands. I pulled the ribbon away to reveal detailed descriptions of various experiments my mother had done on the cursed necklace.

  I stared at the complex calculations, at first not understanding what she’d done. But then, as I started to read, I figured out that she’d been subjecting the gemstones to varying degrees of heat, light and pressure. Of course the thing had proven indestructible, resisting all attempts to break it. At least, all the attempts within my mother’s grasp.

  But the necklace had only occupied part of her time. I found a mummified rat, pinned to a board and cut open, a sheet of butterflies and other bugs, books of pressed flowers, and jars containing preserved specimens of animals, birds and pieces of their internal organs. There were even containers holding grotesque deformed creatures, each with its own neat label in both English and Latin. As I examined each object my own muddled recollection of that ancient language returned, crystal clear. I was far more fascinated than disgusted. My mother had also replicated her own version of the Baghdad battery and had been in the process of trying to make it work when death came for her. She had also collected containers of various different chemicals and powders.

  I began to feel I was her reincarnated as I explored the room. Everything new I discovered made me want to continue her work. Even her book collection was fascinating, containing volumes that she could never have displayed in the far more ordinary library downstairs. A hundred years earlier, some of these volumes would have gotten her burned at the stake as a witch.

  I wondered how she had managed to avoid that. Perhaps during those dark days she had lain low, relying on her loyal servants to keep her unholy presence hidden.

  There were ancient works by Plato and Aristotle, Socrates and Ptolemy, and more modern astronomical works by Copernicus, Kepler and Tycho Brahe. A tattered volume by Gallileo described what he’d seen through his amazing telescope. I found copies of Newton’s Opticks and his Principia, with many passages underlined. Then I discovered a book by someone called Giordano Bruno, called ‘the Plurality of Worlds’. Dante’s Inferno was also up here, along with Milton’s Paradise Lost. All had been very well thumbed. Jammed into the back of the Inferno was a small sheaf of papers covered with a strange runic script that I couldn’t make out – something in a strange code that I’d have to try and decipher later. Then I found a strange collecti
on of books on astrology, magic and the occult, among them works by Queen Elizabeth’s own mage, Dr Dee.

  In this form, my mother had certainly been very busy. But as I returned to her big sheaf of notes on the amulet and began to go through it in more detail, I realised that she hadn’t found the one thing she had been so desperately seeking.

  A way to escape from her curse.

  She had probably recorded more in her lost diary, but I got the impression from her notes that she was willing to try anything, and had eventually moved from scientific methods to more arcane explorations – hence that battery and the magic books.

  Unfortunately, by the time she started studying magic – she spelled it ‘Magick’ – she was aware that her own was running out. Even though in this form her find ran like a well oiled machine, her invisible human body was flagging, growing more decrepit with each passing day.

  I shivered and put the notes down, aware of a dim glow entering the room. A chink of light was shining down through edge of one of the shutters. I crossed over and unbolted it, throwing it wide to the bright afternoon. I couldn’t believe so much time had passed already. Now I didn’t need to eat, sleep or drink, the hours flew past. As I returned to the notes, I began to wish I could stay in this wonderful intelligent form forever. I loved the way my mind worked, the fact I could remember everything I had ever learned, draw foggy details from the depths of my mind and clarify them in the light of my new brilliance so they possessed new, clearer meaning.

  I may not have mastered much science, but all it took for me to learn and understand something new was to read over it once. As night fell I understood all my mother’s scientific calculations. I moved into the Magickal theorems, and realised this would be a far harder task. It seemed the Arcane Art involved learning a whole new language.