A prick and he clutched his swollen hand. Nothing bled. He stared at his flesh, thankful for the mud’s smoothness.
Thankful that his blood stayed where it should be.
Dmitri glanced up at the rising sun. The cold of the world burdened Russia, but she controlled it. His nation’s strength knew no bounds.
He looked down at his hand. This burden would not kill him. He was Russian and he’d control what that peasant did to him. He’d keep it in his fingers, make it obey. Dmitri would carry this burden, because he could. He would not die before his next birthday. He had the strength needed to be the Emperor.
He stumbled to his car. The Tsar would not send him to the Prussian front. Or worse, banish him to the decadent west of Europe. Nicholas would see the truth. They’d clasp shoulders.
Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov would now and forever do his best for the Tsar’s family. For Russia. Because Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov could be Tsar.
***
Read more about Dmitri in the Fate ~ Fire ~ Shifter ~ Dragon series:
Prolusio
Games of Fate
Conpulsio
Flux of Skin
For more info, visit sixtalonsign.com.
As a child, Kris took down a pack of hungry wolves with only a hardcover copy of The Dragonriders of Pern and a sharpened toothbrush. That fateful day set her on a path traversing many storytelling worlds—dabbles in film and comic books, time as a talent agent and a textbook photo coordinator, and a foray into nonfiction. But she craved narrative and a richly-textured world of Fates, Shifters, and Dragons—and unexpected, true love.
Kris lives in Minnesota with her husband, two daughters, Handsome Cat, and an entire menagerie of suburban wildlife bent on destroying her house. That battered-but-true copy of Dragonriders? She found it yesterday. It’s time to pay a visit to the woodpeckers.
***
THE HIEROPHANT
On the Shoulders of Muses
By Jessica McHugh
The bell chimes, and Rico drops his sandwich.
“Every damn time,” he grumbles, sighing at his lunch before he switches on the transceiver. “Bridge here. Go ahead, Dispatch.”
He hasn’t eaten a meal in fifty years. Although he doesn’t derive energy from food anymore, he still enjoys tasting it, chewing it, even the faint memories of when something worked in his interest. His work for others is monumentally more important, but that fact no longer satisfies him. A bite of turkey wouldn’t change that, but the treat could lessen his melancholy for a day or two.
“New kid’s here. Want me to send him in?” Dispatch asks.
“Can it wait until I’ve eaten?”
Dead air. Whispers.
Rico leans in to the speaker, his bones aching. A resounding “no” barrels into his ear, and painful static crackles through his brain. He uncoils the terminal cord from his ear, twisting the pin in the canal and blowing on the other end. His mind fuzzes over for a few moments before clearing with a squeak. He sits down at the terminal and switches on the teleporter.
“Go ahead, Dispatch. You’re clear to transmit.”
The teleporter’s silver platform blinks as a huddled figure materializes, shivering. Rico tosses him a blue jumpsuit, but the young boy is too blind to catch it. He squints, rubbing his silver eyes in panic. Rico knows he resembled this boy once, but he can’t remember looking so young, or his eyes being so faint. Not that the memory matters. Unlike the thousands of creatures whose stories he collects and delivers across the Spectrum, Rico’s memories will die with him.
He helps the boy stand and slides a pair of goggles onto his face.
“Give your eyes a decade to darken,” he says. “After a while, you’ll forget the light in the Bridge ever pained you—until you deliver this speech to someone else.”
After zipping his suit, the boy extends his hand. “I’m pleased to meet you. Balar, of Jupiter5,” he says.
“Jupiter5, you say. Quite a ritzy piece of the Spectrum. Did you train for this, or are you a blood-muse?” The boy clenches his jaw, and Rico apologizes. “That was rude of me to ask. All that matters is you’re here. My name is Rico, and I’ll be your trainer.”
“Thanks,” Balar says, his gaze traveling around the circular chamber. The lights of the terminal are reflected in his goggles, reds and blues and whites flashing beneath the two concave screens covering more than half of the Bridge. “Can you really see every world on these?”
“Every version of every world in the Spectrum.”
“You must love this job.”
“It’s more than a job. The Bridge, the Graveyard, the millions of minds I visit every day—it’s my life, and it’s exhausting.”
“You don’t look too worse for wear.”
“I’ll take your word for it. I haven’t seen my reflection in almost a thousand years.”
Spotting Rico’s sandwich, Balar shudders. The bread is dark green, the meat inside crusty and shrunken.
“You’re not going to eat that, are you?”
“Not anymore, which means I’ll have to wait another fifty years to file a meal request. The window for organic freshness on the Bridge is tiny. Time passes differently here, hence your jumpsuit and goggles. They will protect you for the few years it takes for your body to adjust.”
The bell chimes again.
“Spec just called,” Dispatch says. “We’ve got a live one. Earth7-1587 to Earth2-2013.”
“Live one?” Balar asks.
“He says that all the time, don’t ask me why. I think millennia of working Dispatch has driven him a little nuts.”
“I heard that.”
“He means we have a story to transmit. Dead guy, live idea.”
“It’s a woman, actually,” says Dispatch.
Rico ignores the comment. “He also likes to waste time. All we need from him is the origin planet and destination planet,” Rico says to Balar.
“And your explanation does what, create time?”
“I’m training someone, Dispatch.”
The speaker murmurs. “Not to talk back, I hope.”
“You guys have a weird relationship,” Balar says.
Rico and Dispatch answer together, “Anything to pass the time.”
The bell chimes again, and Rico groans. “I get it, I get it. Thank you. We’ll take it from here.”
The caption “Earth7-1587” appears on the left screen and “Earth2-2013” on the right. Balar gasps in awe, and Rico chuckles. He’s aware it’s the first time he’s laughed in ages. The new kid’s excitement kindles some of his old verve, but sorrow remains strongest. Like Rico’s verve, Balar’s awe won’t survive the centuries. Balar himself might not even last.
Most new recruits drop out after the first delivery to their home world. Standing in the past has a way of making one look to the future. When faced with a future of hard work with little reward, it’s easy to run.
Unless there’s nothing to run back to. Those are the ones who wind up like Rico, with a heavy case of Muse’s Malaise.
Rico can’t imagine Balar is anything like him. Having grown up in Jupiter5, one of the richest worlds in the Spectrum, he’s the very definition of a flight risk. But Rico has learned to keep his mouth shut about such things. A man must discover his aversions in his own time.
Rico unwinds his cord and plugs into the terminal. The left screen zooms in on a pale planet with ice spreading across land and sea. It’s small and dense, surrounded by a thin, frozen shell.
“What is that place?”
“Earth, Version 7. Time, 1587 AD,” Rico replies. “The origin planet can be from any universe in the Spectrum, during any time in its existence, but deliveries can only be made to worlds in their present time. The past provides the stories. The present, the storytellers.”
“How do you decide who deserves to tell a story?”
“I don’t decide anything. Spec notifies Dispatch, and Dispatch notifies me. It’s fairly common practice, Balar. If you want to dig
into Spec’s motivations, maybe you should apply to become a god instead of a muse.”
“No way. I don’t want that kind of responsibility.”
“We have our fair share, believe me. Some take it more seriously than others, though.”
“Like you?” he asks. “I thought muses didn’t work longer than five centuries, but I heard you’ve been working for ten. Are you a blood-muse?”
“Now who’s being rude?” Rico snaps.
He’s not ashamed of his heritage. Embracing it was better than the alternative. An orphan from Earth33, he came into the world alone and remained so until he came of age. Many blood-muses turn from their fate. There are better lives, with better payoff, but after learning what he was, Rico saw no reason to fight it. The mere prospect of leaving the filthy streets of Constantinople was better than anything else he’d encountered there.
Rico presses the entry button on the terminal, and the left screen bulges into the room. Elongating to a tunnel, it spirals open for the muse and his trainee.
“We’re going in there?” Balar asks as a frigid breeze rushes out from the opening.
“You’ll be safe, I promise. Until you get a terminal cord, your suit will allow you to enter the Graveyard and travel between worlds.”
“After we’ve done the job, do you mind if I take it for a spin by myself?”
“A spin would be the most you could do. Suit or not, traveling without me could earn you a place on the other side of the Graveyard, with a very short story to tell.”
Balar’s eyes widen. “You're joking.”
“Not at all,” Rico smiles, and pulls the trainee into the tunnel.
The wind blasts them as they push through. Balar’s suit frosts over, and Rico grumbles, “Damn Earth7” as he flicks the icicles from his cord, but the chill is less abrasive upon their exit. The passage opens into an ivory flatland. There are no animals, no plant life, only millions of small onyx pools stretching as far as the eye can see.
“Where are we?”
“The Earth7 Graveyard. Each of these pools represents a sentient being whose has lived between the beginning of time and 1587. There are significantly more plots in this version of Earth because it happens to exist in an eternal Ice Age. But the person we’re looking for didn’t freeze to death. She was beheaded for allegedly conspiring to kill her cousin, the Queen of England.”
“Did she really do it?”
“That’s not our question to ask or answer. It’s our job to deliver the story, with all of its possibilities, to the proper artist. In this case, someone who lives on Earth2.”
Rico scans row after row of black plots until he sees a blue pool winking in the distance. He heads toward it, and Balar holds onto his cord as he marches behind.
“Here she is,” he says, gazing into the azure pool. “Everything Mary is, everything she did or said on Earth7 exists in this plot.”
“You mean her plot is in this plot?” Balar snorts.
“You’re new, so I’ll forgive that archaic quip,” Rico says. “Anyway, it’s inaccurate.”
He removes a syringe, uncapping it as he kneels beside the pool. Piercing the surface, he draws up the shimmering liquid.
“This,” he says to Balar, “is fact plus possibility. Mary Stuart, residing on Earth7, was accused of treason. She was imprisoned and executed. She was born and died in an eternal winter, the blood of her beheading freezing before it could hit the ground. Those are facts. There are more, but few compared to the spaces between. Those spaces are the realms of possibility, to be filled and filed and fit into any shape the artist wishes.”
“And it’s different every time?”
“Usually, though there are exceptions. Some minds can only stretch so far and will settle on similar storylines.”
“It sounds confusing.”
“This is the easy part, kid.”
The pool fades back to black, and the field is uniform again. When Rico was Balar’s age, the sight broke his heart. He knew he would be back for more collections soon, but he hated the moment when he’d look out upon a Graveyard lacking stories to tell.
He doesn’t feel that way anymore, especially on a busy day when the fields don’t darken. It doesn’t happen often, but complicated deliveries cause their fair share of delays, and missions can pile up.
“The job of a muse is twofold: deliver inspiration, and protect the artist,” Rico tells him. “Except for sleepwalkers, safeguarding a slumbering artist isn’t difficult, but if they’re flying a plane, or scuba diving, or performing a high-wire act, they’ll require closer attention. Inspiration can be a dangerous thing, Balar. It can strike all at once, or it can appear in the periphery, a glimmer awakening other glimmers that eventually become solid ideas. But no matter how it comes, inspiration is always a distraction. You must prevent it from becoming a fatal one.”
“Have you ever lost an artist?”
Rico answers with silence, his head bowed, and turns back to the tunnel. Dozens of sad memories bloom as he walks back to the Bridge, but he forces them to disappear with the Graveyard. Back in the Bridge, “Earth2-2013” fades from the right screen, zooming in on the planet, greener than Earth7. The image enlarges until the screen focuses on a window into a cluttered room.
Then, there’s a girl. The laptop beside her is open, but the word processor is blank, the cursor blinking like a sleepless tease. But the girl dozes, hunched over at a desk with her head resting on folded arms. With a sigh, Rico thanks Spec for an easy delivery.
He plugs in to the right side of the terminal, presses a button, and the screen bulges again. The tunnel stretches out to meet him and Balar, who smiles when a summer breeze eases from the entrance. The destination is brighter than any Graveyard, but it’s nearly as silent. The only sound comes from the oscillating fan in the corner of the teenage girl’s bedroom, and the fluttering posters of baby-faced boys with side-swept hair.
Whispering, Balar asks, “What now?”
“You don’t have to be quiet. She can’t see or hear us.” Rico removes the syringe from his pocket. “And she can’t feel this.” He injects the blue liquid into the girl’s neck, saying, “Watch, Balar. Tell me what you see.”
Rico pushes the plunger, and inspiration rushes in.
“I see it, bright blue in her veins,” Balar says. “It’s charging down her arms and up to her brain.”
“Put your hand on her shoulder.”
Balar obeys, gasping when he makes contact. “She’s flying through cotton candy clouds. How is that possible?”
“You’re looking into her dream. Keep watching.”
“She’s shivering now. The clouds have turned to ice, and she’s floating toward the courtyard of a frozen castle. There are hundreds of people there, wrapped in filthy fur. They cheer as she lands, but not for her. There’s something happening ahead of them, something exciting.”
Rico smiles, remembering the thrill of the first time he watched inspiration seep into someone’s dream. He wonders if he looked like Balar, with a smile testing the limits of his cheeks.
“The crowd is chanting. It gets louder as she gets closer to the front. ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your treason grow?’ She’s singing along and clapping,” Balar says. “There’s a queen nearby. Her face is white as snow and her hair red as fire, but the girl ignores her. She wants to get to the front. She can’t see what’s up there yet, but I can. I see a man in a black mask holding an axe. He’s standing next to a blood-drenched block of wood. There’s a body on the ground beside it, but I can’t tell whose it is. I can’t see the head.”
“Nor will you,” Rico says, unclamping Balar’s hand from the girl’s shoulder. “It’s her story now. Let’s leave her alone to explore it.”
Balar pouts his lip, pleading, but Rico shakes his head. “You have to let go. Even when you deliver inspiration to a dangerous place, you can only take artists so far. Keep them inspired, keep them safe, but know you are nothing to them.”
“But she’s going to wake up and write a story, isn’t she? Won’t she wonder where it came from?”
“Maybe, but she’ll never guess right. Artists stand on the shoulders of muses to see the expanse of their imaginations, but they can’t see far enough to be grateful for our stability. We don’t exist to them, Balar. Our memories do not survive death. Our own stories will never be told.”
Rico exhales, feeling his age. “It’s time to get back to the Bridge.”
Holding onto Rico’s cord, Balar follows the muse out through the tunnel. Once they’re back in the chamber, Rico reaches out to unplug his cord from the terminal, but it’s not there. Not in the terminal, not in his ear.
“What’s going on? Where is it?” he asks frantically.
“You don’t need it anymore,” Balar replies. “You have done well, Rico. For thousands of years you have given the living world reasons to create, and in turn, reason to live. I am proud of you for all you’ve done, but it’s time for you to rest.”
Balar removes his goggles. His eyes have changed, become deeper.
Rico has never seen those eyes before, but he knows them in an instant. He sinks to his knees, tears welling as he whispers, “Spec?”
Balar’s hand is warm against Rico’s face, but Spec’s words are warmer.
“I know your lifelong loneliness, child. I’ve seen your malaise and how you’ve set it aside to inspire joy in others. Because of that, I will not let you fade.”
“But that’s the fate of blood-muses. We don’t go to a Graveyard. We fade from the Spectrum’s memory.”
The screen fills with the image of Earth2. As Rico watches in awe, it zooms in on North America, America, Maryland, Frederick County, Taney Avenue, a townhouse, and a cluttered study.
“For your service, for your sacrifices, your memory will endure. With the entire Spectrum as my witness, your stories will be told. And she,” he says, pointing to a woman with curly hair, scrawling in a notebook, “will be your storyteller.”
Weariness hits Rico like a sledgehammer, and Balar helps him lie down. From the beginning of his lonely life to this moment, Rico felt the weight of responsibility. There had been moments of pleasure, but none comparing to the sensation of a slowing pulse. His life will end, but Spec’s gift grants him the chance to live better ones. The facts of his existence won’t change, but the spaces between are endless now. For the first time, he knows the weightlessness—and joy—of possibility.
Allegories of the Tarot Page 5
