Aeon Eleven

by Aeon Authors

  The bed hides the burned carpet, but it does nothing for the smell. Constance will never sleep in that bed again because it would be like dancing on someone’s grave.

  She walks the nighttime streets with Bran’s address in hand, her jacket zipped to the throat, her strides long and stiff, the smell of rotten beef and sizzled flesh washed from her skin. She wonders if Bran will completely fill the hole the Underthing has left. She wonders if she’ll find other Underthings, not all of them sleeping under the bed. She wonders if she’ll have to destroy them, too.

  Or maybe, with someone like Bran, she won’t have to fight them alone. That’s what she believes as she knocks on his door.

  Illustration by Marge Simon

  The Gate

  Marge Simon

  We are the Children of the Gestalt,

  Keepers of the Gate.

  Our gate is always open

  to all those mortal,

  to all who sweat and strive,

  to needs and desires of the flesh,

  to errors compounded,

  and promises conceded,

  to mysteries unsolved.

  Come your silver ships of war—

  with wonder did we look on them,

  for defense was foreign to our ways.

  Our skies weep scarlet tapestries.

  There is blood on Father’s wings.

  Mother sews the rubies in my cap.

  Sister sings a song of courage

  as I will the gate to close.

  In the long quiet after, we know

  you won’t be going home

  to all who sweat and strive,

  to needs and desires of the flesh,

  to promises conceded,

  to mysteries unsolved.

  Brighton Bay

  Being an account of sorcery, kidnapping, and blackmail conducted by a young lady of quality in the month of October at the Brighton Bay Hotel, 1910

  by January Mortimer

  “Some years ago, while visiting a faded seaside resort, I came across a collection of Edwardian travel guides. These battered old books looked like they had seen the world—from Cornwall to the French Alps to Malay—and their original owner had annotated them in tiny, tidy handwriting. I wondered why he or she was travelling. And what kind of person circled not only names of hotels, the location of ladies’ hat makers and local train times, but also made notes on police stations and places to purchase assorted weaponry?”

  THE HOTEL POSSESSED an air of faded grandeur: of magnificence worn to tawdry pretence. Darns ill-concealed moth holes in the drapery and the dining room tables and chairs were hulking mahogany beasts. The place direly needed fresh paint and some loving attention.

  What it did not need was a forest.

  Unfortunately, there was one sprouting in the ballroom.

  “How extra-ordinary,” I said. From my seat I could see trees growing from the beeswaxed floor, their branches reaching up to vanish into the cavernous ceiling. Vines crept through the grand double doors and into the dining room, snaking and spreading and rippling with a whisper of moving greenery.

  I spread jam on my toast. “Edwin, I think they’re having a bit of a weed problem.”

  My brother snorted and unfolded the morning edition of the Times. He glanced at the front page—where headlines shouted scornfully about Lloyd George’s budget and the latest exploits of the Suffragettes—and turned to the schedules of steamers and trains.

  He said, “Pass the kippers, will you, Fiona?”

  Edwin always did lack an appreciation of the absurd.

  I passed the kippers.

  The roars of the hotel proprietor, a certain Mr. Ralph Jones, echoed in his newly-leafy hall. “Vexed! I’m not vexed, Stanley! I’m furious! And do you know why?”

  “Because your niece turned the ballroom into a greenhouse, sir?” a harangued voice asked.

  “Don’t be ridiculous! I’m furious because she didn’t turn it back!”

  Edwin tore out a square of newspaper and slipped it into his blazer pocket. “How does Australia sound? We could hop aboard a Cunard liner next Thursday.”

  I was leaving that sorry affair entirely up to him, and told him so in no few words. “And Australia is teeming with the lowest of criminals,” I concluded. “Also, Dearest Brother, if you say ’then we should feel right at home’, I shall hit you.”

  If Edwin thought we should take an extended holiday abroad, then Edwin could d--n well arrange it. I had other, far more intriguing, concerns.

  For instance, there remained a forest growing in the ballroom. In the aether it pulsed blue and grey: a heartbeat of charmwork and youthful passion.

  It tasted of tears.

  This, I thought, is not right.

  “Julia, you horrid child, clean this up!”

  “You can’t make me!”

  A young woman, maybe sixteen, bolted from the forest. She wiped tears as she ran, her hair and skirts streaming behind like pennants. The vines shuddered as she passed.

  Other diners looked up from their bacon and eggs, disapproving.

  I remembered my first spell—the portraits in Uncle’s study conjured into brief, abusive life—and the horrible emptiness when the magic faltered, broken by the bonfire’s flames. Oh yes, I understood young Julia’s reluctance to banish her forest.

  “—Worse than woman drivers and twice as dangerous,” the proprietor said to his assistant. The hired assistant, Stanley, ripped ivy from the hinges and slammed the ballroom doors.

  I pushed back my chair.

  “Don’t do it, Fi. Whatever it is you’re thinking, don’t do it.” Edwin glanced up. His hair fell in eyes red and dry from lack of sleep. “Not until we’ve safely skipped the country.”

  I patted his hand. “We are not ’skipping the country’. We are going on holiday.”

  “That is not what the magistrate will say!”

  Poor Edwin. He possessed nerves, you know. How he survived life in my company I shall never know.

  I walked through the drab breakfast room, the equally drab lobby and away. Let Edwin fret; I was going to enjoy myself.

  Behind, the trees wept leafy tears.

  Not right at all, I thought.

  It was not a good time to be on the coast. Autumnal rain blew at every opportunity, filling Brighton’s seaside air with an unfriendly chill. I strolled in the thin rain, holding my hat against the wind. Like the promenades and amusements in the city below, the hotel veranda was abandoned but for gulls and ghosts.

  Or almost abandoned. At a rusting table, two people spoke in lowered tones: one sat, her feet tucked beneath the chair and hands laced on the table; the other loomed above, too close and threateningly tall.

  In Stanley’s shadow, Julia looked china-doll frail.

  The wind carried the man’s words, “…be ashamed! Have you any idea what an ‘accident’ like that could do to your uncle’s business?”

  Julia’s hopeless anger rippled through aether like a summer storm. “I thought it was my business. Inheritance and such.” She laughed, a broken sound. “Silly me.”

  “Julia!” Stanley leaned in. From a distance, blond Stanley radiated purity in waves. He dripped virtue. Rained it.

  Closer, his expression showed the lie.

  I dropped my purse. How clumsy! The coins made a satisfying clatter on the pavement. Stanley and Julia started; the good gentleman did not look pleased to see me. He fingered a silver snuff box as other men might finger a weapon.

  “Good day, Miss Tamwell.” He nodded curtly at Julia and stalked off.

  As I picked up my coins, the wind changed, carrying the crash of surf on sand clearly through the troubled air. On the beach far below, a bright spot of red blossomed: a Punch and Judy stand with an audience of matchstick children. Punch kills Judy, you know. He beats her when she becomes too troublesome. Beats her to death and leaves her limp puppet-body lying on the stage. Such a sordid tale of murder.

  Why-oh-why did Judy never beat him back?<
br />
  I addressed Julia, “Bonjour. Je regrette, mais…Où est le—?” The girl turned a blank face towards me and I said, in English, “I beg your pardon. I mistook you for someone else. Do forgive me. May I sit?” Edwin and I had booked into the hotel as a French gentleman and his cousin; if the police came asking for siblings from Kent, none were to be found here.

  The girl brushed at her eyes with a sleeve. “Can I help you?” Power tickled my skin with feather touches. She was a young talent, just spreading her wings.

  I said, “I could not help noticing a certain disturbance….”

  Julia blanched. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t upset you, did I? I was, well, there was an aetheric accident and—”

  I held up a hand. “Mademoiselle, as accidents go, I rated it a most impressive one. And the manager of the establishment, he was angry, no?”

  I thought, You want to talk, don’t you, darling? Some b-----d has you under his thumb, and you’re dying to escape. Silly thing. She was waiting for a Prince Charming to save her.

  Prince Charmings are notorious b-----ds, too.

  Her face crumpled ever-so-slightly. “He’s my uncle. He’s always angry,” she said.

  Uncles. That explained everything. Of all the relations a solitary young woman can be saddled with, Uncles are the worst. Always. The world would be better off without them.

  I was glad mine was dead.

  I dropped my French accent. “Julia, darling, as a fellow sorceress, I would like to offer my professional assistance.” Let Edwin worry about steamers and trains. I was bored and I was angry and now I was going to enjoy myself.

  “Oh!” Julia said. “I mean—”

  I smiled. “Excellent. But first things first. A forest truly cannot stay indoors; it is most irregular and d--nedly inconvenient.”

  I took an early supper in the hotel dining room. Alone. I did not want company.

  So of course, it was my brother’s duty to appear.

  “There you are!” he said and sat at my table in a huff.

  I said, “Do you know, I believe the sea air has made you more irritable than usual. And I hadn’t thought that possible.”

  We glared at one another over the spread of shoe-leather pork and over-cooked vegetables.

  He said, “What exactly have you been doing with yourself? And don’t say shopping, because I would happen to know you’d be lying.”

  “Edwin, you have no tact, talent, nor any saving grace at all!”

  Across the room, Uncle Ralph sauntered from table to table greeting guests, a simpering smile pasted on his fat face. I lost my appetite; after the stories Julia had told me, I did not think I could abide speaking to that disgusting specimen of a man. He was a lout and a bully, and as greedy as Midas besides.

  “Where were you?”

  “Out with the Suffragettes at City Hall, chaining myself to lampposts,” I snapped. “Additionally, I robbed a bank, wrote a full confession, and had tea with the police commissioner. In short, nothing to concern you.” I folded my serviette and made to rise.

  Edwin caught my hand, his voice low and urgent. “You need to see this,” he said, and pulled out his handkerchief.

  Edwin had spent the days of our flight from Kent—as the trains rattled along the railroad until I feared my teeth would be shaken loose—sewing charms into his handkerchiefs.

  I took the square of cloth. In the aether the spell construct rang with a note of purple. He had sewn a map in blue thread, criss-crossed by wandering lines of red; a black knot marked Brighton.

  A strand of red thread shimmered and disintegrated into dust and nothing.

  “Ah,” I said.

  “The false trails we set are being unpicked.” Edwin eyed the room, as if he suspected Constabulary sorcerers hid in the drapery.

  “Are they here yet?” I pretended not to see his pallor; I felt quite sick myself.

  He shook his head, a singularly unconvincing negative.

  You will believe me when I say there are worse things than death. In our own fair England, the souls of criminal sorcerers are caged in stone for thrice-twenty years. It used to be more.

  I visited the Tower of London once. I could hear the executed dead screaming inside the walls.

  “There’s a midnight train. We should be on it.” Edwin fidgeted, eager to flee at once, to h--l with our belongings.

  “I’m not done here—”

  “Fiona, be rational!”

  “You may get on the train—by all means—but you will be by yourself!”

  Diners looked up; we winced as one and were silent.

  I took a deep breath and re-examined the red threads and charm knot-work. “We should have the better part of a week. The diversion at Southampton has them confused. Is two days too much for me to ask?”

  Yes, his face said. “Whatever you’re up to, it’s a terrible idea.”

  “Edwin—” I stopped. For all his faults, nerves and ill-temper, he cared. He would not abandon me, not even if the Constabulary were knocking at the door. I poured him a glass of wine. “I am more than capable of taking care of myself. Don’t worry your head about little old me.”

  Our suite was a cave of deep reds, gilt mirrors and the carved mahogany favoured during the reign of the late Queen. I thought the place bore amusing resemblance to an upper-class bordello, an observation that utterly mortified Edwin. He had done his best to hide his room under a strewn layer of possessions.

  I picked yesterday’s blazer off the carpet and recovered another charmed handkerchief. An invisibility construct looped across the linen and something yellow clung to a corner. I wrinkled my nose.

  “You had better be food,” I told it.

  “Fiona?” Julia called.

  She stood leaning on the balcony rail. With the hankie dangling between thumb and forefinger, I joined her, and together we watched the ebb and flow of the street. A motor car grumbled on its way, the beam of its headlamps catching on the hands and faces of pedestrians and conjuring them out of the dusk.

  “Did you see Uncle Ralph?” she asked.

  I nodded. “He resembles a certain barnyard animal, darling. Be glad you took after your father’s family.”

  I listened to the evening sounds and brooded. Should we leave? As a charmworking sorcerer, Edwin’s talent lay in hiding things, but by necessity Constabulary sorcerers excelled in exactly the opposite….

  I had taken on Julia’s cause as a lark and a distraction and just because I could. At this point, would my disappearance make so much difference to the girl?

  “How did your parents die?” I asked.

  Julia said, “There really was no way Uncle Ralph could have arranged it.”

  For shame: I had not realised I was so transparent. “Are you certain?”

  A happy couple exited the hotel towing two small children. I remembered being that small, clutching Edwin as he clung to me, and staring up at the stern, compassionate strangers and the iron-eyed man who was our uncle. “Your Mama and Papa are dead,” he told us “You shall come to live with me.”

  “It was diphtheria,” Julia said.

  Did it matter how the Tamwells had met their end? Uncle Ralph still reaped the rewards and all of Julia’s inheritance. When Julia came of age, what then? Somehow I doubted Ralph would happily relinquish his little hotel kingdom.

  Out at sea, the sun committed suicide and the dark rose out of the water like a second tide and drowned us.

  Julia said, in a small voice, “You are going to help me, aren’t you?”

  Edwin and I never had any help. Perhaps that is why we turned into such bad eggs.

  “Fiona?”

  I patted the girl’s arm. D--n common sense. “Don’t be silly! Of course I am! You’ll need a change of clothes. And a notebook…I have one somewhere.” I turned from the balcony and headed inside.

  “We’re going to arrange a kidnapping,” I explained. “Yours.”

  Dawn came as a shimmer of gold, fast smothered under a blanket of ra
in. A fog skulked in from the sea, thick and white and flowing over the shore like spilt milk. I sat in the reading room adjacent to the lobby, listening to unseen gulls crying in the mist.

  “You’re looking particularly bland this morning,” said Edwin. He sauntered in and threw himself down in the opposite chair.

  “Go away,” I murmured.

  “No.” He leaned forward, resting elbows on his knees. “There is a woman in my bedroom, dear sister.”

  “That must be a new experience.”

  “Quite, how droll of you to notice…except that she appears to be, in addition to invisible, the owner’s niece. What are you up to?”