by Kai Meyer
She’d just come to terms with this thought when the Queen said, “Shape changers.”
“You really know how to cheer a person up.”
“I knew that you would be glad to have me with you sometime.”
“In your dreams.”
“I cannot dream. Only when you dream.”
A hand seized Merle, and she was led through the door into the light, out onto a grating walkway that ran along a rock wall. On one side of the walk were doors of steel at regular intervals, on the other yawned an abyss.
The outlook was shocking in its breadth. Obviously they were on the inside of the gigantic dome they’d seen on the flight into Axis Mundi. The rock wall curved slightly as it continued upward. High over Merle its contours dissolved into reddish yellow mist. Dozens of grating ledges ran along it. Other walkways, floating unsupported over the abyss, led out into the glowing mist, where they met other walkways, crossing them or joining with them and thus forming a broad network of traversable iron tracks, innumerable miles long.
Red-gold brightness shone up from the base of the dome, many times refracted by mist, which drank the light so that its real source could not be seen. As the light illuminated the entire base of the dome, it seemed to Merle as though she were standing over a sea of lava. But she had already guessed that the solution of this riddle wasn’t so simple, for no heat came from the light. Even the mist that billowed in the dome felt rather clammy and uncomfortable. And then something else dawned on her: Although the dome consisted of rock, it had looked from the outside as if it was what was giving off the light. Therefore the brightness from the ground must be coming through the rock, yet at the same time it wasn’t strong enough to blind Merle. It was almost as if the light in the depths was illuminating the stone so that the dome itself was glowing.
It was strange. And thoroughly unreal.
Her new companions also fit right in. The shape changers—if that in fact was what they were—had made an effort to assume human forms. And the effort had succeeded. Not the form of just any human, but that of Winter—which was even more ironic, since he’d insisted that he wasn’t human at all.
However, their faces seemed plump, unfinished somehow, as if they were swollen. Their bodies were white, but they hadn’t taken the trouble to imitate the structure or form of Winter’s clothing. Also, their eyes looked as if they were painted, blind like the pupils of dead fish.
If they’d hoped to decrease some of Merle’s fear through this weird masquerade, they achieved exactly the opposite effect.
They escorted her silently along the walkways and at each crossing indicated with a wave which direction to turn. They led her crisscross over the walks, out over the glowing chasm, until they finally came to a platform situated at a junction of several walkways.
On the platform stood a small house.
It didn’t fit here. Its walls were half-timbered, and it had a steep, red-shingled roof. A weathercock rose from the pointed gable. The windows were subdivided into bull’s-eye panes, and beside the wooden door, to make the idyll perfect, someone had placed a bench, as if the inhabitant of this little house came outside from time to time to smoke a leisurely pipe. The house radiated the coziness of a fairy tale. As she came closer, Merle caught sight of a carved sign over the door: WALK IN, BRING HEART IN! Little hearts and flowers were worked around the letters, without skill, as if by the hand of a child.
One of her guards pushed her up to the door; the other stayed back at the edge of the platform. Someone opened the door from the inside, and then Merle was led in, under the sign with the inscription, which now, on second reading, gave her gooseflesh, for some unexplained reason. Wasn’t it supposed to read “bring luck in”? For a moment she had the feeling that her heart was beating a few beats faster, as if under protest, so hard that her chest hurt.
Inside the house, someone had attempted to maintain the romantic look of the outside but had woefully failed at it. To be sure, there were structural beams here, too, and even a rustic cupboard with flower inlays, but there were other objects that wouldn’t fit into the deliberate quaintness of the scenery.
The operating table, for example.
The ground floor of the Heart House consisted of a single room, which in a wondrous way appeared to be much more extensive than the outside of the house. An optical illusion, Merle decided.
“Perhaps,” said the Flowing Queen.
In the back part of the room, only scantily concealed behind a jumble of beams that stabilized the building, were various metal trays, with scoured surfaces, on which instruments were spread out, carefully arranged on black cloths and scrupulously polished. Steel flashed in the omnipresent glowing light coming in through the bull’s-eye windows.
The door closed behind Merle. She whirled around and saw who’d opened it to her. The snakes who’d been pushing the old man’s wheelchair in the herald’s hall glided toward her in a single motion and, immediately in front of her, puffed up into a pear-shaped figure at least a head taller than she was. The creature bent forward until its upper surface was only a finger’s breadth away from Merle’s nose, a shimmering mass of intertwining bodies. Finally the snake nest flowed and spread sideways and, as an ankle-high carpet, moved into the rear of the room, where it towered itself up again, this time into a pointed form like a sugarloaf. There the creature stayed and waited.
Merle wanted to turn and flee, but the shape changer barred her way. He now looked less like Winter, instead becoming something else too repugnant when Merle gave him more than a fleeting glance.
“I cannot help you,” said the Flowing Queen.
Good to hear, thought Merle.
“I am sorry.”
So am I.
“I know I brought you here, but—”
Be quiet. Please.
“Is that she?” cried a voice.
If the snakes gave an answer, Merle couldn’t hear it. But right after that the voice ordered, “Bring her down here.”
The snakes glided over to Merle again. She avoided their touch and voluntarily went to the opening in the floor out of which the voice had come. Although Merle had heard him only once before, she recognized the old man again right away.
“To me, to me,” he cried.
Merle reached the opening and climbed down a spiral staircase into a room whose floor and walls consisted of steel mesh. Light from the depths flooded through it from all sides. Through the mesh under her feet she could look into the glowing abyss, the same as on the outside, on the walkways. For the first time, she became so dizzy that she had to remain standing at the foot of the stairs, holding on tightly to the handrail.
In the center of the spiral staircase was a round disk, which could be moved to the upper floor with a block-and-tackle mechanism; the wheelchair for which it had been built was empty. Its owner was moving through the cage room underneath the house on crutches. The crutches ended in palm-sized wooden feet, wide enough not to get stuck in the wire mesh.
Wide glass cylinders, almost ten feet tall, were distributed around the walls. There were at least fifteen or twenty of them, Merle estimated. Each of the cylinders was filled with a fluid, which shimmered golden, like honey, in the light of the dome. In the fluid, caught like ancient insects in amber, floated creatures that had once been alive. None of them were human.
Merle had to force herself to turn her eyes away from the grotesque forms, but she looked at them long enough to recognize that they all had one thing in common: All displayed a deep cut—mostly in the center of the body—that was sewn with thread and crossed stitches. Operation scars. There where the chest was in humans.
Heart House, Merle thought, and shuddered.
“Look around,” the old man said, as he shifted his weight to the right and pointed with the left crutch in a trembling swing around the room that took in all the glass cylinders and creatures. “My work,” he added softly, in a whisper, as if he didn’t want to awaken the creatures in the containers.
&nb
sp; “Who are you?” asked Merle, all the while taking pains to look only at him.
“My name?” He let out a cackling laugh that seemed phony to her, and she couldn’t help wondering if he was only acting his madness. The crazy scientist, nothing but a role. But one he fancied himself in. And that was at least as unsettling as true madness.
He said nothing more, and Merle asked her question again. She noticed as she did so that he’d gotten her to speak exactly like him: He had the habit of repeating his sentences, as if first he had to make sure of the sound of it, in order to then say it again, the second time more clearly.
“Most here—at least those who can speak—just call me the surgeon,” said the old man. “Just the surgeon.”
“Are you a doctor?”
He grinned again. His whole face seemed to dislocate when he did. What she had taken for gray skin was in reality beard stubble, reaching up to beneath his eyes. “But certainly a doctor, certainly.”
He was trying to frighten her. That might mean that in truth he wasn’t so dangerous as he pretended—or also very much worse: a madman and a role-player.
“These creatures here”—Merle pointed to a cylinder without looking into it—“are they all your … patients?”
“Early examples,” he said, “from a time when my technique had not yet matured. Not matured. I’ve saved them to remind me of my mistakes. Otherwise one so easily becomes cocky, you know. So cocky.”
“Why are you showing me this?” She’d noticed that neither the shape changer nor the snakes had accompanied her down the stairs. She was alone with the old man. But somehow she couldn’t believe that he was careless. He felt very secure. And for good reason, certainly.
“I want you to have no fear of me.”
Ha-ha, she thought.
“He is playing with you,” said the Queen.
It had come to my attention.
“Then go along with it. Make the better move. Checkmate him.”
Hopefully he won’t take my Queen first.
“Very witty.”
“What do you want of me?” Merle asked the old man.
He smiled warmheartedly, and it almost looked real. “You must have patience. Patience.”
Merle made a great effort not to show her fear. If he was giving her the opportunity, she must try to find out as much as possible. “When the Lilim caught me, you ordered them to bring me here right away. But then you imprisoned me first. Why?”
He dismissed her question with a careless wave. “I had to do it.” With a grin, he added, “Had to do it.”
Instinctively, Merle looked about her, letting her eyes travel slowly over the creatures floating in the cylinders.
“No more here,” he said. “No more here.”
“Where are my friends?”
“In safety.”
“You are only saying that.”
“Nothing has happened to any of them. Although the lion fought like”—he giggled—“well, like a lion.”
“When can I see them again?”
The surgeon put his head on one side as if he really had to think about the answer. “We will wait. Patience. You will soon learn to have patience.”
“What do you want of me?” she asked a second time.
“That’s simple,” he said. “I am going to exchange your heart. For a better one. One of stone.”
“But—”
“It will go quickly,” he interrupted her. “My mistakes with these unfortunate creatures here were way back. Today that is not a problem anymore. I may be old, but I learn more with each new heart. Each heart.”
Merle’s pulse sounded so loud in her ears that she could hardly understand his words anymore. Instinctively she shrank back against the banister and held on to it tightly.
“Soon you will have forgotten everything. Forgotten everything, believe me.”
This is fun for him, Merle thought, full of loathing. That’s why he brought me down here: He wants me to see what he does. And he wants me to ask for the details.
He confirmed her fear. “Just ask, just ask! The faster your heart beats, the easier the operation is. Your heart is strong, isn’t it? So strong.”
She hesitated, then she said, “You are human, aren’t you? I mean a real … not a shape changer or something like that.”
“But certainly.”
“Do you come from above?”
“Why do you want to know that?”
She quickly sought an answer that would satisfy him and that would lead to further talk.
“I’ve been to many doctors,” she lied. “And there’s nothing I’m more afraid of than doctors in the upper world, believe me.” Perhaps it would help if he supposed she was a little naive.
“Good idea,” said the Flowing Queen.
“I was also a doctor in the upper world,” the old man declared with self-satisfaction. “In the upper world I was a doctor, just so. Many were afraid of me. That is nothing of which you need be ashamed. Not ashamed.”
“How long have you been down here?”
“Many years. So many.”
“And what brought you here?” When she saw that he was becoming suspicious, she quickly added, “I mean, were you a criminal or something like that? Did you experiment with people? Then I’d at least know why I’m so terribly frightened.”
He regarded her for a moment, then he nodded imperceptibly. “Experiments, yes. But no crime. I was a scientist. I am still a scientist. As we all are.”
“Are there more humans down here?” Merle asked the old man.
He thumped with his crutch on the floor mesh twice, three times; then he smiled. “Interrogating me, hmm? But now that’s enough. We will begin. Will begin.”
Merle took a backward step up the stairs, but her feet slipped on something soft, slippery. She lost her balance, pitched forward to avoid cracking her back on the sharp metal steps, and skidded flat on the floor. When she looked up, the snake nest was pulling together behind her; a part of it still covering the stairs like an oil film, shimmering in all the colors of the rainbow.
“No!” she cried out, sprang to her feet, and whirled to the old man. He was sick, weak, and scarcely bigger than she. She would attack him rather than let him implant a stone heart in her.
“Too late!” said the Queen.
Merle felt it at the same moment. Her legs grew cold as the seething snake carpet climbed up her, faster than she could react. In a flash a solid layer of gleaming snakes covered her legs, her trunk, kept slithering farther, up to her shoulders and from there along her arms until the cool, intertwining creature enclosed her entire body like a skintight suit. They left only Merle’s head untouched.
She tried to resist, but it was in vain. Involuntarily she moved forward, began climbing the steps. The snakes controlled her arms and legs, moving them like a puppet’s.
Merle tried to turn her head and succeeded to some degree, although her legs continued to walk up the stairs. “Stop that!” she bellowed at the surgeon, who had just lowered himself into his wheelchair. “Call off these brutes.”
The old man only smirked, turned on a switch, and was pulled up by the block and tackle in the center of the spiral staircase, slowly enough so that Merle could keep pace with him.
At the top she moved directly to the operating table, lay down flat on her back, and bellowed and cursed so plentifully that the surgeon threatened to order the snakes to crawl into her mouth. At that she fell silent and looked on helplessly at what was happening to her.
Some snakes loosed themselves from the middle of her body and disappeared to the right and left under the tabletop. Merle tried to arch herself, and the result was pitiful, hardly more than a twitch in her middle body.
Steel bands were closed over her wrists and ankles, then the rest of the snakes also withdrew, crept and slithered from the table and gathered together on the floor in the pear-shaped form of the nest.
Merle pulled and rattled on her bonds.
“Very go
od, very good,” said the surgeon. “I think we will anesthetize you first. Is your heart really beating fast enough?”
Merle screamed a whole torrent of curses at him, the worst she could think of, and after the years in the orphanage there were quite a number. She didn’t care if the snakes crawled over her face. She was indifferent to anything at all, if only this disgusting man might be struck by lightning on the spot.
The surgeon gave the snake nest a wave, and soon it began to smell unpleasant behind her head, sharp, biting, like some of the chemicals in Arcimboldo’s workshop. The anesthetic was being prepared.
The sharp smell became stronger. She turned her head, as well as she could, to look behind her, and out of the corner of her eye made out the seething of the snakes. They swelled toward her like a dark wave.
Merle’s perceptions grew muddled. Her surroundings revolved, flowed into one another.
Snakes bustled in the background.
Merle’s heart hammered in her chest.
The surgeon came closer, his face swelled, filled her field of vision, filled the world.
His flesh and that of the snakes, glowing like the colors on the palette of a painter.
His grin.
“Stop!”
The world rotated again, a world of yellow teeth and gray hair.
“Stop, I said!”
The smell grew weaker. Her surroundings changed. The face of the old man lost its distinctness, pulled back.
“Release her at once!” Not the voice of the surgeon, also not her own. Someone else.
The iron cuffs on her hands and feet snapped back, and suddenly she was free. No more chains and no more snakes holding her.
With the disappearance of the biting fog, she could see the room again. The white ceiling, the wooden beams, everything back in place.
Two voices were arguing with each other in the background. One belonged to the surgeon. The other was that of the stranger who’d saved her.
Saved?
Perhaps.
“Merle?” asked the Flowing Queen, sounding as dazed as Merle herself.
I am here, she thought, even though she felt as if someone else had taken over thinking for her. Indeed, where else would she be?
