His thoughts are piling up on top of each other, and each thought is hotter than the last until he feels as though he might actually be on fire, and he is surprised that his mind can be so warm and yet his flesh so cold and crawling. He looks at Chastisement again; Julien is smiling and holding the edge of the bloody razor to his lips. The child lies broken on the floor. The stuffy pig is sodden with blood.
“Alfonso!” He can’t wait any longer.
The elemental zips out of the Vortex, his tale flapping like a wind-vane.
“I cannot find her!” he says breathlessly.
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t find her,” Alfonso says. “I looked everywhere, but she’s gone. There’s nothing left.”
“That’s impossible,” Hardhands says. He reaches out to grab Alfonso, but the elemental flips away, holding on to his hat. “There is always something left—a shade of ourselves, a fragment, she’s only been dead for six months, that is not enough time for her to cross the Abyss and go on. You didn’t look hard enough.”
“I did, I did!” the elemental protests. “I did. I called and called, but she did not come.”
“You mean she is not dead?” A dim hope flickers in Hardhands’ throat.
“Neither living nor dead,” Alfonso says. “She is No-Where. She is gone.”
“That is impossible,” Hardhands says again, stubbornly. He snaps a Gramatica word at the elemental, who this time is prepared to dodge, and does.
“Not for some,” says Alfonso cunningly, poised for flight. “Not for some.”
Julien. Treacherous remorseless kindless Julien. It’s as though the top of Hardhands’ brain has been yanked off and absolute certainty poured in, and suddenly he knows, he knows. The Pontifexa had been right all along. Julien Brakespeare had killed his sister, and not content with killing Sidonia Brakespeare’s body, he had killed her spirit too, sucked up her soul. It’s a great trick and one that only a great adept can pull off, to abrogate a person so completely that it is as though she had never even existed. It is a dirty trick, the worst one in the world. Hardhands snatches again, and this time Alfonso does not flick away fast enough. He’s caught, trapped, stuck in a grip so tight that if he were real flesh he’d be squeezed into a tiny pulp, a wiggling mass of struggling goo.
The elemental gurgles and twitches—
“Bwannie!”
Holypigface. Hardhands almost drops the squirming elemental. Tiny Doom is standing in the cornmeally wreckage of his circle. How the hell had she gotten in? He always locks the door—not that it would make any difference to Paimon or the Pontifexa, but he locks it anyway, for the symbolic value of the gesture, if nothing else. He’s momentarily forgotten that she’s the Heir to Bilskinir and therefore no part of the House is closed to her.
“You are supposed to be in bed,” he says.
Tiny Doom is clutching a stuffy pink pig as big as her head, and her nightcap is dangling around her neck from its cords. Carpy teeth slice into Hardhands’ fingers, and he lets go of Alfonso with another explicitly nasty word. The elemental darts back into the seam of the Vortex and is gone.
“I had a cold dweam,” Tiny Doom says. She patters towards him, scattering the cards further with bare sandy feet, and, remembering suddenly the scattered glass, he snatches her up. She puts chubby arms around his neck and says: “A biswuit would make me warm.”
Her weight is very heavy in his arms. The pig is slightly damp from drool, but it’s nice and cuddly, too. Hardhands’ anger has evaporated into a calm dreamy feeling. His love has curdled into something equally as dreamy, but much more hard.
“Hey, I am bloody,” she says.
He jerks. “What?”
“My foot is all bleedy.”
He twists her around for inspection, and she grabs on to the dangling reins of his hair. The sole of her foot is grubby gray, except where it is smeary red.
“Oww,” she says as he pokes the spot from whence the blood wells. His fingernail scrapes and comes away with a tiny shard of glass.
“It was just a piece of glass,” he says. “You’ll live.”
“Kiss and make well,” she commands.
Hardhands doesn’t really want to kiss her grubby foot, but he doesn’t want to listen to her caterwaul either, so he obediently puckers up his lips. Her foot is warm and the blood is slightly sticky. Sweet sticky Haðraaða blood.
“Better?”
“A biswuit would make it better.” She smashes a sloppy wet kiss on his cheek.
He sighs. “You are a pain in my ass, baby. Hold your ears.”
She covers her ears obediently, dropping the pig in the process. He shuts down the Vortex with a twist of Gramatica (a shortcut he is later going to regret) and kicks the scattered cards out of his way.
“With honey, my biswuit,” Tiny Doom adds. “Gimme Pig.”
Hardhands dangles her downward; giggling, she snatches at Pig.
“Grab that pot, too.”
She grabs obediently, and he swings her aloft, takes the jar of Madam Twanky’s Fornication-Red Lip Pomade from her. Then swings her higher, to settle on his shoulders. They gallop downstairs to the kitchen and Paimon’s fifteen-mile-high buttermilk biscuits. Hardhands is ravenous and his mind is now made up.
V.
Julien is waiting by the swingset, which moves idly back and forth in the chill night breeze, creaking a little uncomfortably just like a gibbet. He is muffled in a greatcoat, his chapeau du bras pulled low over his forehead, but still he looks rather cold. Hardhands nudges Fleeter forward towards the shadow of the slide. Fleeter doesn’t care much for the bulk of the slide and wiggles a bit, but Hardhands’ thighs are firm and she settles down quickly. He slides down, and Tiny Doom, who has fallen asleep in her uncle’s muffling arms, wakes up at his movement, yawning loudly in his ear.
“Waffles?”
“Soon,” promises Hardhands.
“Ayah,” she says and puts her head back down on his shoulder. He adjusts his shawl up over her head and then ties Fleeter to the slide.
“You are late,” Julien says.
“I’m sorry. I overslept,” Hardhands says, who has not actually closed his eyes for two days. He shifts Tiny Doom’s heavy weight to his other shoulder. It’s the cold edge of morning, and the eu-calyptus trees surrounding the small lake drip with wetness. Julien’s minions cluster near the picnic tables. They are passing around a bottle of whiskey, and the general complaint that they had to get out of their warm beds to come and stand around in the fog.
Hardhands and Julien touch fists together briefly, aware of decorum, aware of the eyes of the minions.
Julien looks at the bundle in Hardhands’ arms and curls his lip. “Why did you bring the child?”
“I thought you would want to see her.”
Julien’s lip does not uncurl. “It’s too cold and damp out here. She should be home in bed.”
“Perhaps so we all should be, darling,” Hardhands says with a meaningful glance. “But sometimes necessity requires early rising.” He jiggles Little Tiny Doom and she opens her eyes reluctantly. She is not a morning person.
“Kiss your father,” Hardhands commands Cyrenacia. She wrinkles her nose, and her father follows suit. But when Hardhands leans her towards Julien, she obediently purses her lips. Her kiss leaves a little red smear on his cheek, which he wipes away distastefully with a snowy white hankie.
“Is it done?” Julien asks.
“Ayah,” Hardhands answers. “It is done.”
“I have saved you then, Banastre.” The two men walk together to the statue of the Goddess Califa. Her gleaming golden skin is slick with glittery moisture, and the dog crouching at her feet looks somewhat bedraggled and in need of a good shake. Legend has it that the Goddess Califa was born from the little lake, which is the City’s only natural body of water. This spot, then, is the most sacred place in Califa, the City’s secret center, its heart, the wellspring of its Current.
“What did you save me fro
m, Julien?”
Rather than answering, Julien fishes in his pocket. He spins a gold coin upward. It lands neatly in the Goddess’s quiver. “The Pontifexa’s whims. The patents of mediocrity. Ah, the arrows of desire,” he says, looking upward at the Archer, “and the bow of burning gold. What fun we shall have, Ban. No one will hold us now. It is hard to be patient now, when we are so close. How long shall it take, do you think?”
“Not long, not long.”
“We must remain discreet, Banastre.”
“I know.”
“That puppy is cold,” Cyrenacia says. She has made no movement to get down from Hardhands’ arms, and that is just as well as he has no desire to let her go, even if she does feel as though she weighs one hundred pounds and her knees are grinding into his hipbones.
“He’s not a real dog,” her father says. He rubs his cheek absently.
“Not now he is not,” Hardhands says. “But on the full moon, you know, he and the Goddess get down off the plinth and they hunt.”
“Bunnies?”
“No. Not bunnies. What do they hunt, Julien?”
“I have no idea, Ban. This is a story that I haven’t heard.” Julien has lit a cigarillo, and he blows a twist of smoke upward. “Do tell. If not bunnies, what?”
“Faithless lovers, of course,” Hardhands says. “Those who say that they love, but lie. Spit.” This is to Cyrenacia, not Julien. She spits into his hankie, giggling, and he rubs the rouge off her lips, then wads the hankie up and flicks it away.
Julien had turned from the statue, looking out over the lake. Now he turns back to Hardhands, just in time to see the spitting operation. He frowns.
“I would hunt bunnies,” says Cyrenacia. “What is the puppy’s name?”
“Justice,” says Hardhands. He is talking to Julien, now, not Cyrenacia.
“What do you mean?” Julien says. His voice has become a razor wire, and it could cut through glass, through steel, through bone. Hardhands does not answer him. He is smiling, and in that smile he suddenly looks remarkably like the Pontifexa, for all the difference in height, the difference in hair, the difference in sex.
Now it is Cyrenacia who is frowning, a charming little wrinkly frown that turns her lips into a little pink knot. “I would name that puppy Bouncer. I want my waffles.”
“So do I,” says Hardhands. “Come on, Tiny Doom, let’s go home. Grandmamma is waiting.”
“I love puppy,” says Tiny Doom. She waves. “Bye puppy!”
“What have you done, Banastre?” Julien says. He touches his cheek again. It has gone numb, and there is a spreading darkness slowly seeping into the edges of his vision. “What have you done?”
“Changed my mind,” Hardhands says.
So, here we have Hardhands walking away from Julien, who has sat suddenly down on the damp ground, his legs as empty as air. Hardhands is fifteen years old and his hands are still white and tender, but his conscience is now hard as bone. He’s on his way.
Afterword to “Metal More Attractive”
As the author of the only complete history of Califa, this historian can state with complete authority that this story is utter balderdash.[1] Readers who wish an accurate accounting of these events are referred to the pertinent volume of Califa in Sunshine & Shade for a more judicious rendering.[2] This story was obviously generated by the Abenfaráx propaganda machine and designed to present the House of Haðraaða in the worst possible light, thus helping to justify the usurper Florian Abenfaráx de la Carcaza.
This grubby little tale is presented as artifact only. It is true enough that both Julien Brakespeare and Banastre Haðraaða were adepts of no small accomplishment.[3] But no such plotting against the Pontifexa Georgiana IV’s life ever took place. Georgiana IV’s affection for her granddaughter and her husband is well documented, and there was never any question that Julien would not take custody of the Pontifexina upon her mother’s death. As a famed musician (a detail inexplicably omitted from this story), Julien’s touring schedule was far too onerous for a small child. Most certainly young Hardhands was not responsible for Julien Brakespeare’s untimely death. That sad event, which took place some days after Julien left the city for an engagement at the Hoot Bar in Nicashio, was attributed by the attending doctor to a surfeit of green peach confit.[4]
Oddly, the only character in this story who is well drawn is Denizen Paimon, the Butler of Bilskinir House. Several years back, this historian interviewed one of the last praterhuman revenants still residing in the Waking World, and his accounting of Denizen Paimon matches up well with this one. Clearly, Paimon was an egregore of taste and distinction.
[1] A Lady of Quality. Califa in Sunshine & Shade: A History in Ten Volumes. Inverfarigag, Elsewhere: Bilskinir Press.
[2] A Lady of Quality. Califa in Sunshine & Shade, Volume Three: Metal More Attractive (The Long Version.) Inverfarigag, Elsewhere: Bilskinir Press.
[3] Carroll, Peter J. Liber Kaos: The Psychonomicon. Privately Published, N.D. Keegan ov Admoish, Nyana. The Eschatanomicon or Rangering for Everyone. Califa: Bilskinir Press, n.d.
[4] “Violin Virtuoso Jams on Jam & is Jammed.” Califa Police Gazette, 4th of Lluvia, Año Pontifexa 112.
The Lineaments of Gratified Desire
“Abstinence sows sand all over
The ruddy limbs & flaming hair
But Desire Gratified
Plants fruit of life & beauty there.”
—William Blake
I: Stage Fright
Here is Hardhands up on the stage, and he’s cheery cherry, sparking fire, he’s as fast as a fox-trotter, stepping high. Sweaty blood dribbles his brow, bloody sweat stipples his torso, and behind him the Vortex buzzsaw whines, its whirling outer edge black enough to cut glass. The razor in his hand flashes like a heliograph as he motions the final Gesture of the invocation. The Eye of the Vortex flutters, but its perimeter remains firmly within the structure of Hardhands’ Will and does not expand. He ululates a Command, and the Eye begins to open, like a pupil dilating in sunlight, and from its vivid yellowness comes a glimpse of scales and horns, struggling not to be born.
Someone tugs at Hardhands’ foot. His concentration wavers. Someone yanks on the hem of his kilt. His concentration wiggles, and the Vortex wobbles slightly like a run-down top. Someone tugs on his kilt hem, and his concentration collapses completely, and so does the Vortex, sucking into itself like water down a drain. There goes the Working for which Hardhands has been preparing for the last two weeks, and there goes the Tygers of Wrath’s new drummer, and there goes their boot-kicking show.
Hardhands throws off the grasp with a hard shake, and looking down, prepares to smite. His lover is shouting upward at him, words that Hardhands can hardly hear, words he hopes he can hardly hear, words he surely did not hear a-right. The interior of the club is toweringly loud, noisy enough to make the ears bleed, but suddenly the thump of his heart, already driven hard by the strength of his magickal invocation, is louder.
Relais, pale as paper, repeats the shout. This time there is no mistaking what he says, much as Hardhands would like to mistake it, much as he would like to hear something else, something sweet and charming, something like: you are the prettiest thing ever born, or the Goddess grants wishes in your name, or they are killing themselves in the streets because the show is sold right out. Alas, Relais is shouting nothing quite so sweet.
“What do you mean you cannot find Tiny Doom?” Handhands shouts back. He looks wildly around the congested club, but it’s dark and there are so many of them, and most of them have huge big hair and huger bigger boots. A tiny purple girl-child and her stuffy pink pig have no hope in this throng; they’d be trampled under foot in a second. That is exactly what Hardhands had told the Pontifexa earlier that day; no babysitter, he, other business, other pleasures, no time to take care of small children, not on this night of all nights: the Tygers of Wrath’s biggest show of the year. Find someone else.
Well, talkers are no good doers, they say,
and talking had done no good, all the yapping growling barking howling in the world had not changed the Pontifexa’s mind: it’s Paimon’s night off, darling, and she’ll be safe with you, Banastre, I can trust my heir with no one else, my sweet boy, do your teeny grandmamma this small favor and how happy I shall be, and here, kiss-kiss, I must run, I’m late, have a wonderful evening, good luck with the show, be careful with your invocation, cheerie-bye my darling.
And now see:
Hardhands roars: “I told you to keep an eye on her, Relais!”
He had, too; he couldn’t exactly watch over Tiny Doom (so called because she is the first in stature and the second in fate) while he was invoking the drummer, and with no drummer, there’s no show (no show, damn it!), and anyway if he’s learned anything as the grandson of the Pontifexa of Califa, it’s how to delegate.
Relais shouts back garbled defense. His eyes are whirling pie-plates. He doesn’t mention that he stopped at the bar on his way to break the news and that there he downed four Choronzon Delights (hold the delight, double the Choronzon) before screwing up the courage to face his lover’s ire. He doesn’t mention that he can’t exactly remember the last time he saw Little Tiny Doom except that he thinks it might have been about the time when she said that she had to visit El Casa de Peepee (oh cute) and he’d taken her as far as the door to the loo, which she had insisted haughtily she could do alone, and then he’d been standing outside, and gotten distracted by Arsinoë Fyrdraaca, who’d sauntered by, wrapped around the most gorgeous angel with rippling red wings, and then they’d gone to get a drink, and then another drink, and then when Relais remembered that Tiny Doom and Pig were still in the potty and pushed his way back through the crush, Tiny Doom and Pig were not still in the potty anymore.
Prophecies, Libels & Dreams Page 8
