by James Dorr
“Frightened, I followed, Rhodrar’s corpse on my back. Stammering, I explained … ”
Here she fell silent a moment. Sobbing. The curator motioned for us to bring more wine. A stronger wine this time.
He offered her some to drink.
“Thank you,” she finally said. “You understand me. It pains me to recollect.
“Nevertheless, I must tell you my story. I told him why I had come—about my husband. How I could pay richly to have Rhodrar back again.
“Back with me, living.
“This time his voice gentled. ‘It is not so easy,’ he said, ‘to bring lovers back. That is, the soul entire—not just the moving force. That latter we can restore practically with just the snap of a finger, to form what you New Cityers call, sometimes, le zombi.’
“He spoke in the formal French.
“But he continued: ‘That is not what you wish, I think, but I will do one thing now to halt the corpse’s rot. That will be easy too. But, for the other ….’
“‘Oui, seigneur?’ I prompted. I spoke in the French as well.
“‘For the other, the true soul, that will be much harder. But you must realize that even we Necromancers know what love is. How it must be fulfilled.
“‘And so there may be a way—’”
Here she fell sobbing again, while we tried to help the curator to comfort her. Finally, she nodded.
“This ‘way,’” the curator said, “might it have something to do with two nights ago. That is, before this one. In the south, we saw a light, one high up in the sky. We saw it rising.”
She nodded once more. “Yes. Illuminated with corpse-gas searchlights, so those on the ground could see. We in the New City are not the only ones who can project light beams. But also in hopes that a soul might be beckoned.
“Instead of what did come … ”
“We saw it rise higher,” the curator said, “beyond the ground’s light beams. Still glowing, however, as if with its own lights.
“But then a blackness.”
“Yes,” she answered. “What you saw were its running lights, that which the Necromancer and I had built. And something else as well. It was a flying thing—souls, you see, mostly inhabit the air. They are not ground-bound, as we are. Therefore, to seek one, or so the Necromancer explained to me, we must fly too. Or, at least, rise up to it.
“So he had ghouls under his command build a keel, as if to make a boat. But on this keel he had built a great framework, of hoops and circles, from the wing-bones of huge birds, both lightweight and strong and stiff. These he had bound with wires, twisted, thin metal to form a netting, within which he placed skin bags—huge, too, and air-tight.
“Ballonnets, he called them, speaking the formal French. Trapped thus within the wires.
“With river-reeds, dried and tough, he had his ghouls weave baskets, two of them, each large enough to hold a man. Or, rather, one for a man and a woman—this to be in the front, containing Rhodrar and me. While in back, one with him, from which hung ropes to a device above the keel which he would steer with.
“Below this one, also, he had constructed a clockwork machine, but with screw-blades instead of hands. This to give power, to move through the air with. Or so he explained to me. And, between the baskets—connecting them, as it were—a kind of catwalk with a weight attached to it, that could be slid back and forth. For ‘trim control,’ he said.
“I did not know these words. Even in French: Direger? Equilibrage? Not the way he used them—although I would, later.
“As, on that night you cite—two nights ago, you say? I have lost track of time. Anyway, on that night, one of oppressive heat, of still, heavy air but with rumblings to north and east, he ordered his ghoul-helpers to bring up great pipes to these frame-enclosed air-tight sacks. He had me place Rhodrar’s corpse in the fore-basket, and climb in myself with it.
“He had corpse-gas pumped into these ballonnets, or so he called out to me, himself in the back-basket.
“The frame strained above us, bone-hooped and coppery. While ghouls, below us now, clutched ropes to keep us down. Unhooking, now, the pipes–
“I nearly lost my soul!
“The ghouls had released us. We shot in the air, the pinpricks of lights below—these were the searchlights! The great river which divides the Tombs from New City, it seemed just a stream now. New City itself, drifting from us to the north, even though our clockwork moteur kept us pointed toward it—even with its lights blazing red, purple, gold, topaz, and emerald—seemed but a village.
“Then: ‘Look up, above us!’ the Necromancer called, from his nest behind mine. Mine that I shared with the corpse of my Rhodrar.
“I looked above. Blue sparks crept over our framework! Crackling and flashing!”
“The second light, then,” the curator broke in. “The one we saw after. When you were too high to be seen in the searchlights, yet brighter and larger than your running lanterns. The ones that you carried.
“But was that not dangerous? That is, does not corpse-gas burn?”
She nodded. “Yes, I think. That is, the Necromancer explained it—but I was too frightened of everything then, you see. What were the words he used?
“Yes. Le feu Saint-Elme. He said it was soul-charged, akin to lightning, because we attracted it. Crackling with storm-fire. You know the feeling, before there’s to be a rain, your skin’s sometimes all prickly. Because souls like lightning, too, slipping in cloud-layers, riding wind currents there. Because that’s what souls do—so he explained it to me.
“And as for our ballonnets, they would be safe enough, because our metal-wired framework carried the sparks from them. Down to our baskets.
“Or, more properly, my basket—where Rhodrar lay with me, his head cradled in my lap.
“Blue sparks surrounded us—I thought I saw him move. An eyelid flutter! I kissed him on the lips.
“But, once more, the Necromancer shouted. ‘Something is wrong!’ he screamed. ‘That cloud approaching—’
“I saw it. All black. But amorphous and moving, splitting and shifting—not like a cloud at all.
“Then it was on us. A storm not of rain, but birds! Carrion birds! Night birds! Owls and juggers! King-vultures, ravens! Of hooked beaks and feathers.
“They tore our ballonnets. They stole—they ate—Rhodrar, right there where I sat with him.
“I could not stop them.
“I called behind me, to the Necromancer, but he, too, was helpless. Surrounded, too, by the birds, fighting to keep our machine from falling.
“And yet we did go down.
“I landed, hard, but the basket was flexible. Strong and yet yielding—the fall scarcely harmed me.
“I could not find Rhodrar, not even a bone left. Nor the Necromancer, although I searched for him. I do not know if he came down in his basket, but fled before I did. Or if the birds ate him too.
“And so I wandered. I saw, in the great distance, the lights of New City, so I took that as my guide. Threading my way through the alleys of Old City, its ruins and tunnels.
“At dawn, the ghouls took me in. They did no hurt to me—it is their law, you know, that they are not to murder the living, unless in a fight or for some provocation—though I did not eat their food. Then, the next night, my journey continued.
“I think it was that night—or was it the one after? This night, just passed, that I came to the causeway. I knew it was almost dawn. I saw the last of the corpse trains departing, its high-wheeled carts passing me. Emptied of cargo.
“I walked the causeway, alone, as you saw me. And pulled on the bell-cord once.
“And so I am here now.”
“Yes,” the curator said, helping her when she gestured her wish to stand. I had not realized myself, until then, how weak she had become, both from her journey and what she had been through before. She who was wealthy, of stature in the New City, and yet as fragile herself as a flower—such as we heaped on graves.
I watched
as she trembled at the curator’s next question: “Why, then, the bell-pull? The train masters, as you know, pull it once for each corpse, so we will prepare for the number they carry. But you come to us alone, your husband’s corpse taken, already, from you.”
She nodded. She reached up. She took off her day-mask and loosed her chador, letting it fall to the ground at her feet. Her body beneath it, bare, save for her jewelry. Encrusting it, breasts and hips, covering her over. More fully than clothing.
But it was her face we saw, half eaten by the birds! The flesh pecked away from it, half-destroyed in their greed.
The half she had pressed to her husband’s own head, in vain to protect it.
The other side beautiful, still—and, in that way, perhaps all the more grotesque. Especially when she smiled: “They did not hurt my soul. Nor did they Rhodrar’s. I know now he waits for me.
“What he will see of me is what I was before. What we both remember.”
Her body, too, half-torn.
“Yes,” the curator said, after a pause. “And I understand, now, what you meant of z’étoile.”
She nodded again. “I would have my tomb look south, toward where we met briefly, once more, in that basket. To where I last left him. And the roof above it to be windowed, of course, to be open to the sky.”
The curator motioned to me. To the others. To fetch diggers. Builders. Whatever might be needed.
“Of course,” he answered.
THE FLOWER
Love, some say, is as a rare blossom, short-lived but beautiful.
• • •
“THERE IS A LEGEND,” the woman told me. Her name was Salanann and she was a princess among the boat-gypsies, the mistress of her own ship, her husband having been killed, I gathered, in some kind of battle. There were pirates in those days.
“This,” she went on, “is of a certain flower, not of a type usually brought here to the Tombs, for remembrance by those whom a corpse had been dear to, but rather a rare, hidden, parasitic plant—an orchid that feeds on the life-sap of its host tree—that takes in memories as well as nourishment. That is, it recalls those who finally pluck it, and, so the legend says, thus the dead, too, that it might be entombed with will remember also.”
She gazed at the coffin-sized cask she had had brought, her servants heaving it up from the river gate to where it stood now, safe on a plaza that overlooked the east wall. Beyond, the lights of the New City blazed bright, rivaling the day-sun now only hours set—its heat driving all indoors or under boats’ decks, or tents of sail-canvas, or in mausolea or crypts where we lived here attending the dead, allowing us only to re-emerge after dusk—and reflected as well on Salanann’s pale flesh, barely concealed by the gauze garments that she wore. So wore all such gypsies. Blue, spangled with gold, her hair long, flowing to her hips, black as her coal-dark eyes, contrasting with her lips’ blood-crimson lushness.
Lips that she moistened now with her tongue’s darting tip as she continued.
“My husband is in this, preserved in brandy from berries that grow to north, far up the river. A part of our cargo we’ve sacrificed for him. I would have you keep it here, safe until I return.
“Then we shall take it back.”
I shook my head. “I do not understand. I am a curator here in the Tombs. I preside over records—the names of the buried—the stories of lives they had once led—not corpses in barrels. I mean you no disrespect, but what am I to do?”
She smiled. On an impulse she reached up and kissed me, her silken robes rustling. Her soft, white breasts pressed, for that moment, against me.
Her strong thighs against my own.
“My husband, Barcal, was of the river,” she said, pushing back again, “just as I am also. Our lives are filled with dangers, at best, the poisons of river mists, riptides and currents, of shoals and swamps and snags. Even, sometimes, robbers, though it breaks custom. Our cares are of details, ladings, cargoes. Of schedules and port fees. And when death concerns us too–”
She smiled once more, wistfully. “Where, then, is love to be?”
Now she turned, businesslike. “So it is I charge you. I seek this flower, so that he will remember.”
She motioned to her crew, to follow her downward, back to where her vessel lay chafing against the cut-stone pier. Silhouetted against the New City’s lights, purples and auburns, yellows and greens and golds. Dimly, far to the south downriver, the blue sparks of ghoul-lights.
She gazed, herself, downriver.
“It is where this flower is found,” she said. “And upon our return you, too, shall have a story.”
• • •
So then it was that I left the Tombs, I, Salanann who record this tale now, the offspring of admirals, steerer of my own craft: Leaving the corpse of my love behind me, a promise as well to the Tombs’ curator, a man of respect who would wait to hear, should we not perish, the tale of my quest.
And something else as well.
And, yes, I did kiss him too, in that such might give him a thing to recall, should I not return. For this, my tale, is chiefly of memory—of memory and legend, for how do these differ save, perhaps, in their distance in time from the tale teller? Of lore of a strange plant that grew to south of us, and eastward through a great swamp—this a rare plant indeed, a type of orchid that thrived on the tallest trees, sinking its roots in the crevices of their bark. Thus a true parasite, not a mere compagnon that might cling to its host-tree as moss on a stone, but ask nothing else from it.
This plant was different.
Lore held that it stole sights, impressions, and memories, as other blooms might store smells. In this was its value. True-orchidlike, it possessed aerial roots as well, hanging from its high perch, trapping what flew below. What swung on vines from trees neighboring its own host—so gaining world-views from the eyes of monkeys, the feel of the wind in the membranes of flying squirrels, insects, and eagles. All these brought together.
But mostly that last memory.
My plant-quarry knew greed. For which of us does not?
And I had once seen one, although dead and dried by then, for, as all flowers, this, my bloom, was delicate. Just as we, too, who ply the river—and who should know more than we, we who deal in flowers often, common blooms, granted, conveying them as cargo down to the Tombs. Most flower-fields are to north, where there are meadows as well as forests, where blooms run as riot as the lights of New City. We fill our holds with these.
We convey these down, as I write here, to the Tombs’ docks, or else to New City, or numerous other towns both down and upriver. We follow funerals—our agents in such places tell us when those of wealth seem to be sickly. Thus providing customers of those they may leave behind. And also weddings, and birth-celebrations, these too provide business, along with the harder goods our boats’ holds swell with. Diamonds, tools, timber, fine-crafted gifts, artworks, all such things we carry, we who they call gypsies.
Yet who beg us as monarchs when they have needs: “Please find me a ton of iron to feed my factories.” Iron, which is perishable on the river, corroded by water’s mists! Or, “Bring me produce, but only the freshest.” Or, “Fish from the ocean port, fine ascaris-flesh, bloodlet, and stickback,” the sea far to south of here, and this not always the safest of journeys. Ghouls line the riversides, shouting their hate of us. The estuary itself may be choked with mud.
Also there are exiles, those cast out from us for cheating on commerce. Or otherwise outlawed, banished from river trade—told to live, now, on land.
Sometimes these still find vessels. Sometimes they steal from us.
But, as I say, this time we sought a flower, a single plant only, my crew and I. One I had seen once dead. One only I might pluck, wherever it might be found, thus to assure it stole memories of me alone when roots caressed me, mistaking me for some prey. As we so hugged our two life-forms together, I offering it of mine to give to my husband, to snatch the bloom to my boat, racing it upriver so that, unspoiled, i
t might be Barcal’s grave gift.
In memory of me, you see.
Thus I looked back once as, clearing the Tombs’ stone quay, we tacked to mid-river on our foresail only, allowing the current then to turn us southward. And then, at my order, we raised the huge mainsail, I gripping the tiller, as was once my husband’s task.
I seeing to it the stern lantern had been lit, that and the bow light too.
Thus we made quick time, now passing the Old City’s ghoul-lands to left and right, sparkling with corpse-lights, blue, twinkling more distantly as we were carried past.
Our wake sizzled with curses, for there is enmity between us and ghoul-kind. Threats hurled at us also from their Necromancers.
I am a simple woman who write this. I know little of what lies beyond the river’s banks, little, that is, of the world and its peoples, save those that I deal with. I know winds and currents, presagings of weather. That is enough for us.
I know too of love’s pull.
But, as I say, I am not a learned woman. No spinner of fine tales I. Rather I put down these words as they come to me, all a-jumble, so filling my ship’s-log. To share with the Tombs’ curator as he should wish, he to recast them if he is so minded. To smooth them and make them sing.
I, I go to this work mostly by day, as we heave into coves or tie up in backwaters, as, it being nearly summer already we hesitate to sail out in full sunlight. Even with deck-awnings.
We huddle in shadows.
And so we sleep, fitfully, with only a bare watch set above our hatches. One climbing the masthead, bedecked in a thick chador, sunhat, and day-mask, much like Tombs-folk wear as well under the sun’s glare—the light itself poisoned to cause blains and lesions to flesh unprotected. Swaddled as it were above the river, his or her eyes peeling. Until, again, night would come, this our second night coursing downriver. The wind in our sails, hot, as if from the great desert some tell me lies to west. Unrelieved, blistering.
But to the east there were grasslands—the waxing moon showed them a stark black and silver with land birds rising. Grain-eaters and insect-hawks. These were chaperones to us in our voyage.
