The Emperor of all Things

by Paul Witcover

  ‘I know what I saw,’ I insisted. ‘You know it, too – I can tell. Why are you lying?’

  He sighed again. ‘Must I call Herr Doppler and Adolpheus to hold you down? Drink, Herr Gray. It’s for your own good.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ I said. ‘Earlier you were about to warn me of something. What was it?’

  The doctor hesitated before replying, as if debating how much to tell me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last, ‘but it is too late. Now, drink up. Don’t worry – it’s merely a sedative, something to help you sleep. When you wake up, all your questions will be answered, I promise.’

  I shook my head, drawing back from the glass he thrust at me. ‘No,’ I cried. ‘Too late for what? Keep it away – I said no!’

  ‘Doctor, let me talk to him.’ It was Corinna. I was so glad to see her that I nearly sobbed with relief. She was the only one in this madhouse of a town that I could trust.

  Dr Immelman straightened at her words. ‘Very well, Fraülein.’ He set the glass on the bedside table and stepped back, motioning for her to approach me.

  ‘I should like to speak to Herr Gray alone,’ she clarified.

  ‘Why, that’s …’ Whatever he was about to say, he thought better of it. ‘Of course.’ He crossed the room to retrieve his black bag. Then, bowing to each of us in turn, he left the room. ‘I shall be outside if you need me.’

  ‘Please close the door, Herr Doctor.’

  He did so without objection.

  ‘What is going on, Corinna?’ I asked. I had so many questions, I scarcely knew where to begin. ‘Your father’s book … The automatons … All of it. What is happening to me?’

  ‘Shh,’ she said as she came forward and sat on the edge of the bed, reaching out to brush back a lock of my hair. The touch of her fingers on my brow accomplished what mere words could not, and I felt at once stirred to my depths and yet soothed in my soul. ‘Drink the doctor’s potion first, Michael, and I will sit with you and tell you all you wish to know.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ I admitted to her. ‘Afraid that I will never wake up.’

  ‘You will wake,’ she assured me. ‘I swear it. Now, please, for my sake.’ And she picked up the glass and held it out to me.

  I met her gaze, searching for any hint of deception, but I saw only caring and concern. I took the glass, and it felt to me that I was binding myself to her by the action, or rather the trust behind it, as if we two were plighting our troth in a ceremony that needed no other witnesses but ourselves, a ceremony more significant than anything we had already shared. I saw, or seemed to see, an answering knowledge in her eyes. And so I drank the potion. I tasted nothing but water – though the water of Märchen was anything but ordinary. So swift was the spread of lethargy through my limbs that I would have dropped the glass had she not plucked it from my hand.

  ‘Now ask your questions,’ she said.

  It was difficult to focus my thoughts, much less speak them aloud. But I persevered. ‘The automatons, Corinna. How is that I saw myself there? And why did you not wish to tell anyone what we had seen? Why did you make up that story about a kiss?’

  ‘Why, would you not like a kiss from me?’ she answered coyly.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘but—’

  ‘Then you shall have it,’ she said and, before I could say another word, pressed her lips to mine. Despite the lassitude instilled by the doctor’s potion, I responded. That her father or Frau Hubner might enter the room at any time and discover us did not cross my mind. But even as I sought to deepen the kiss, opening my lips to coax the same from her, she pulled away.

  ‘That was nice,’ she said. ‘I could feel your heart beating so fast, like a hummingbird!’

  But to me my heartbeat seemed rather like a clock in need of winding, or like the cogwheel slowing on the cover of Herr Doppler’s book as whatever energy had powered its turning ebbed away. I felt myself slipping under. I did not think even another kiss from Corinna could keep me awake. I struggled to speak. ‘Tell me about the clock, the automatons.’

  She frowned but then answered. ‘It is some wizardry of Herr Wachter’s,’ she said. ‘The figures are always the same, modelled after the townsfolk. Except today. Today you appeared among them. A stranger. That has never happened before. There is something special about you, Michael. The clock has chosen you.’

  I understood her words, but the sense behind them was as far beyond my comprehension as the script in Herr Doppler’s book. ‘Chosen? How? And for what?’

  ‘For me,’ she said, blushing most becomingly. ‘We are to be husband and wife.’

  I confess I did not follow the logic. Yet there was nothing more I could say; the potion had done its work, and even as she bent to give me another kiss, I felt myself falling away from her as if the mattress had yawned open beneath me. Before her lips reached mine, darkness closed over my eyes.

  ‘I will come back later tonight.’ Her voice threaded out of the black. ‘When you are awake again. I will show you …’

  Her words were lost as I slipped completely under.

  I was awakened by the sound of a closing door. I sat up, alert in an instant, the effects of Dr Immelman’s draught utterly spent. The lamp had gone out, and the only light in the room was a soft glow from the stove, a reddish nimbus like the heart of a dying coal. It illuminated nothing beyond itself, clinging to its source as if for warmth, for the temperature in the room had plunged while I slept. Behind me, I heard the rattle of sleet against the windowpane.

  ‘Who is there?’ I whispered. ‘Corinna, is it you?’

  There came a dry rasping, as of something heavy being dragged across the floor. At that sound, the memory of the dream that had ravished me on my first night in Märchen, when Corinna had crept into my room and stolen my tool kit, flooded over me. I recalled the eldritch glow that had pervaded everything like some radiant property of cold, remembered the inhuman beauty of the woman who had stood before me like some aloof yet hungry goddess made of metal and jewels, demanding a tribute I could not deny. I began to tremble, afraid that the dream was playing itself out in real life … yet also half desiring it.

  Then the pungent odour of fresh-baked bread rolled over me, as if an oven door had been opened, and I knew who my visitor was.

  ‘Inge,’ I said.

  And from the darkness, near enough to touch, a whisper: ‘Shh.’

  As had happened before, her scent proved stimulating, a force of nature beyond my control, and my little soldier had already sprung to attention when I felt her settle onto the bed, which groaned at the weight of her. I reached out, intending to push her away, but my hand sank as if into a mass of dough. She was naked. Her skin did not just envelop my hand but seemed to absorb it. She moaned at my touch as if she had long desired it. When I tried to pull my hand back, she fixed my wrist in a grip of iron and moved my hand over her body in a forceful parody of a caress.

  In the darkness, the extent of her was impossible to gauge. She was the darkness, darkness incarnate and concentrated, hungry and hot beneath my fingers, as if she were burning with fever. And that fever spread to me. Infected me. Whereas at first it had been a kind of disbelieving horror that stilled my voice, now it was passion that robbed me of speech. I was panting like an animal, straining towards her with mindless need. And she reciprocated. Her hands tore at my clothing, freeing me, and then she – there is no other word for it – engulfed me. I had a moment’s anxiety for my injured foot, but I felt no pain as the soft and fragrant immensity of her came down over me, and then all thought was extinguished.

  It was as if I had entered a dense and surging sea. I rose and plunged, tumbled and spun, caught in fleshy currents that flexed and slid and oozed around me like the coils of a serpent intent not to squeeze the breath from me but rather to stroke me to heights of pleasure beyond all enduring, pleasure too great for a human body to contain. I had a sense that she was not just ravishing me but also, at the same time, giving birth to me, to a new me, as if I
were a lump of dough and she an expert baker whose hands were kneading me, whose embrace was baking me.

  All the while, I was spilling without cease. There was no holding back, yet neither did I spend myself. My energies looped back on themselves, feeding on their own expiration. I felt as if every last drop of vitality was being wrung out of me, that, when Inge released me, I would be as desiccated as the victim of a spider, a shrivelled, bloodless husk. But I didn’t care. I welcomed that fate. I desired above everything to lay my spark on the altar of her divine corpulence, to light a candle there, even if I had to snuff myself out to do it.

  And perhaps I would have done just that had not the door slammed open with a bang that not only penetrated but popped the bubble of our congress. An eerie blue light flooded the room, and Inge drew back with a hiss, releasing me. I lay there, spent and gasping, whatever glamour had gripped me broken. Looking up, I beheld a monster. A creature with the head and torso of a woman but the lower body of a serpent. It was those coils, lying loose around me now, not scaled but fleshy, glistening with the mingled fluids of our exertions, that had embraced me; it was those coils, twined about her torso, that had given Inge the appearance of such fantastic stoutness, for in reality – reality! – she was, from the waist up, as perfect a vision of femininity as any man could desire.

  Now her eyes were fixed on the door, and on the figure that stood there: Corinna, returned as she had promised. But it was also the woman from my dream, the frozen succubus that had melted before me into a frightened girl. She was not frightened now. Anger flashed in her quartz-green eyes.

  I had thought the room cold already, but now it turned positively frigid. Ice bloomed on every surface. I felt it on my lips, my tongue, deep in my lungs; I watched it precipitate out of the air with every exhalation, a sparkling condensation of fear. I could not move; could not cry out; could only shiver and watch the confrontation playing out before me. Yet even then, struck mute as I was with terror, I felt again an insatiable demand, and my body, though bereft of strength and desire, responded like some collapsed beast of burden lashed erect, so that I was once more as hard as marble and trembling on the edge of climax; it was only the fact that the attention of the two women – if women they were – was on each other and not on me that kept me from tumbling over.

  For long seconds they took each other’s measure, the temperature meanwhile continuing to plunge, until it had passed the lowest register of my sensibilities and entered into some realm beyond cold, like the very heart of hell. Inge was sheathed in ice; it covered her like a second skin, a skin of glass, a diamond prison. Corinna might have been carved out of stone. Not a word was spoken by either of them.

  Then Inge flexed her coils. The prison shattered, and she was free. Free and moving swift as lightning towards Corinna, who shot forward to meet her. They came together in the centre of the room and grappled there like two wrestlers, straining one against the other, wordless and intent, their eyes locked as fiercely as their limbs.

  My ears rang from the thunder of their collision, the force of which shook the building like an earthquake. Yet even so I heard the bells in the clock tower begin to chime, as if the shock had reached all the way to the town square. It was no tuneful chorus such as I had heard before but a riotous caterwauling, strident and clamorous, a noise of panic, of alarm.

  The women appeared not to notice, intent on each other. They seemed well matched. Neither could gain the upper hand; their bodies – Inge naked, Corinna clothed – trembled with the choked violence of their efforts, which sent tremors like aftershocks through the room. The floor creaked; the walls cracked; chips of plaster and ice dropped from the ceiling. It felt as if the inn was about to come crashing down around my ears, yet I couldn’t stir.

  Then not just the room but the whole earth heaved beneath me. The women raised their heads sharply, seeming to listen with every fibre of their beings. And the earth heaved again. And again. If a mountain could walk, I remember thinking, this is what it would feel like.

  ‘You fool,’ hissed Inge. ‘You’ve awakened him!’

  ‘It’s your fault,’ Corinna shot back.

  But it was clear that their mutual hatred was dwarfed by their fear of whatever was coming. With an angry cry, Inge pulled free of Corinna’s grasp. She could have struck then, yet she did not, and not from mercy – with a flick of her tail, she propelled herself past Corinna and out of the door, leaving the two of us alone.

  ‘Hurry,’ Corinna said, turning to me. ‘Follow me if you want to live.’

  At her words, my paralysis fell away. I fumbled at my disordered clothing. My heart was pounding, my mouth dry.

  ‘Hurry,’ she said again.

  ‘I can’t,’ I told her, gesturing helplessly. ‘My foot.’

  With a look of exasperation, she crossed to the bed and, taking hold of my arm, pulled me to my feet. I had an impression of immense strength, as if she could have not just lifted me but thrown me for a hundred yards. Despite everything, her touch, rough as it was, brought me to climax again; there was no pleasure in it, just an involuntary spasm, a reflex that wrung my insides like a cold fist clenching. I groaned, and she glanced down with annoyance, as if I were a favoured pet that had reminded her I was only an animal after all. But perhaps she was equally annoyed at herself, for in the next second I felt a diminution of her presence, a dwindling, as if she had willed herself to become something less than she had been, than she really was. At that, I went as limp as a wet noodle and would have fallen had she not supported me with her arm. This time her touch had no untoward effect. And yet I marvelled, even in the midst of my terror, because I was standing. There was not so much as a twinge of pain from my bandaged foot. It felt as strong, as well, as ever. ‘How—’

  ‘This is no time for questions,’ she interrupted. ‘Or answers. Come – we must flee. Death approaches.’

  And indeed, the gargantuan footsteps had not stilled in all this time, nor had the tintinnabulation of the bells. Corinna was pulling me towards the door. I paused only to snatch my tool kit. Then I followed her.

  13

  The Productions of Time

  HAND IN HAND , we fled the hearth and home. Though Corinna’s touch had lost its uncanny power over me, a chilly blue light continued to radiate from her, a reminder – were any needed! – that she was more than just the simple girl I had known, or thought I had known.

  The inn appeared empty, abandoned. There was no sign of Inge, for which I was glad enough, and Hesta was gone from her customary place beside the fire, or what was left of it: glowing embers in a bed of ash. As we hurried through the common room, a flicker of movement behind the bar drew my attention; the door of the cuckoo clock stood open, and the tiny dragon whose appearance had so delighted me on previous occasions was flitting around the clock face in excitement or distress. It came at me without warning, its wings beating about my head and shoulders, its hot breath scalding my neck, burning my hair. I cried out, swatting one-handed at the flames as the infernal creature harried me with the crazed persistence of a mother bird defending its nest.

  Then we were outside, in the network of covered passageways that had turned the snow-blanketed town into a maze. The dragon did not follow. I could feel that my scalp and neck had been burned, though how badly I did not know.

  ‘This way,’ Corinna said and ran off before I could say a word.

  I hurried after her. The lamps of the passageways had all gone out, and the only light came from Corinna; it illuminated our immediate surroundings but no more than that. The result was that I had soon lost my bearings. All the while, the bells of the clock tower rang out in disarray, and the ground shook with the measured tread of whatever enormity was approaching. It seemed that we were rushing straight towards it.

  ‘Corinna,’ I gasped, reaching out to grab hold of her shoulder. ‘Please, talk to me. I feel as though I’ve gone mad – or the world has!’

  She shrugged me off but slowed enough for me to come alongside h
er. She addressed me as we loped onwards. ‘Haven’t you realized that you are no longer in your world?’

  I could make no coherent reply to this.

  ‘Märchen,’ she continued, ‘is like a town that straddles the border between two countries. You crossed from one into the other.’

  ‘Crossed … how?’ I asked.

  ‘Through the tower clock. It is the gate – one of the last gates.’

  ‘But I never entered the clock,’ I protested. ‘My foot was caught!’

  ‘You had already passed through,’ she told me. ‘Adolpheus didn’t find you lying unconscious in the snow all those weeks ago. He knocked you out and carried you across the threshold, from your world into this one.’

  ‘But why? Why me? Why … everything?’

  She shook her head. ‘So many questions! There is no time to explain, and even if there were, you would not understand. But we had need of you, and so you were brought here.’

  ‘Like Dr Immelman?’ I asked, remembering the doctor’s warnings.

  ‘His name is not Immelman,’ she said. ‘Nor is he a doctor. He is, or was, the very man you have been searching for – Herr Wachter.’

  Now I was more confused than ever. ‘You were to be his replacement,’ she said. ‘But now that can never be.’

  ‘Because of Inge?’ I asked.

  ‘No – though she should have left you alone. But she has always been a glutton, unable to control her appetites. And you are so very tempting – all of your kind. You are a drug to us, Michael. You must know that. You are a sickness that we crave; you give us, for a short while, the only thing we lack: a taste of mortality. Of time.’

  ‘Who … what are you?’

  ‘We have many names in your world. Some call us the Fair Folk. To others we are djinn, demons, angels. Gods. But these are mere words – human words for something as far beyond human words as beyond humanity itself. As to what we call ourselves, you lack the language to express it. We are old and fierce and forever.’