Ceaseless Steam: Steampunk Stories from Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine

by Scott Andrews (Editor)

  A Goat in Valhalla starred Franchot Aucoin in his most famous role as ‘The Goat’, a licentious Hyperborean skald. Aucoin was a genius at physical comedy, proving Chimère’s strategy of capitalising on the successes of A Goat at the World Tree and A Goat Among Giants was sound: Aucoin would bring in legions of fans in this infamous role.

  I watched the bawdy comedy play out. The Goat’s slapstick pursuit of the Valkyries was inspired, and the clever script even made colours crucial to the plot. But I couldn’t relax and simply enjoy the flicker, and searched each scene for runes and spirits.

  Something was sapping my vitality, bit by bit, but it was so subtle that anyone not expecting it would dismiss it as tiredness from sitting still too long. I couldn’t think of any spells or charms to counter it, and that worried me.

  In the second act, the Goat arrived at a Silver Door covered with runes, but the shots never lingered long enough for me to decipher them. I made a note to ask Katarin if I could examine the props.

  Laure Harbin appeared in the next scene, in the role of the youngest Valkyrie. Though I was struck by how well colour brought out her true beauty, now that I knew about her and Aucoin it was difficult to watch them interact on screen.

  Katarin made her cameo as another Valkyrie after the final battle. In a touching scene where she collected the soul of the Goat’s faithful companion, she convinced me she belonged in front of the camera. But I could not oust from my mind the fact that a Valkyrie was the spirit of a slain warrior, and that Katarin played on-screen one of the dead.

  I called Katarin and Carmouche back to hear my analysis. “No ghosts in the film that I could see, but I’d like to examine any props with runes on them.”

  Katarin nodded. “Everything’s kept in Warehouse Three. Would you like to rest before we continue, Tremaine?”

  “No. I won’t let this curse get the best of me.”

  “I’ll stay for this film and keep you company,” Carmouche said. “Two sets of eyes are better than one.”

  Katarin left the room while Carmouche and I prepared the next reel: Serpent of the Nile.

  “Just between you and me, Professor, do you think Madame Bertho resents Laure Harbin for taking her place in the limelight?” Carmouche asked quietly.

  “Carmouche! She wouldn’t.”

  “I have to consider every possibility. Maybe she doesn’t consciously wish Miss Harbin harm, but her repressed envy might be fuel for the curse.”

  “Let’s eliminate all other possibilities first,” I said.

  The chimera mascot sequence again began the film, and it was Carmouche’s turn to be amazed by the brilliant colours. “Astounding!”

  Laure Harbin played the lead in Serpent of the Nile, and her performance as the vengeful daughter of a murdered Aigyptian pharaoh captivated me from the start. Aucoin played a minor role as a jolly slave, providing comic relief in this otherwise sombre tragedy. Unlike the previous film, they never appeared in the same scene.

  As the film played, my slight discomfort welled into a nameless dread; my body ached as though a year of my life had been ripped through my skin. I gasped for air, fearful that I had condemned myself to an early death.

  Halfway through, when Harbin danced for the usurper’s son in a most revealing costume, my cheeks flushed. I tried to focus on the hieroglyphs and sphinx statues in the background instead. During the bathing scene, Katarin appeared briefly as one of the handmaidens. But tantalizing glimpses aside, I was still on the hunt for the source of the curse, as was Carmouche. I didn’t expect to find Hyperborean runes in a flicker set in Aigypt, but films were rarely perfect recreations of a specific time period.

  Even though the film ended on a powerful note, I was relieved it was over. Carmouche weathered the film better than I did, though he kept rubbing his left shoulder as though it was sore.

  Katarin returned. “Anything?”

  “A few anachronisms here and there, and two hieroglyphs I’d like to revisit, but none of the same runes from the first film,” I said. “Though I must say, Katarin, there were gross historical inaccuracies with Miss Harbin’s costume.”

  “Ah, but no one will forget how well she wore it,” Katarin said, a tinge of envy in her voice. Was Carmouche right? “It’ll immortalize her. . . if anyone ever sees the film again.”

  “Only The Lioness in Summer left.” Carmouche stroked his moustache. “Whatever it is, it should be in the first half-hour, to trigger the panic.”

  I nodded. “It certainly narrows down where we look next.”

  Then, the answer hit me like a one-tonne golem. One thing did appear in all three films. . . or more precisely, before them. I’d grown so used to it at the ciné that I forgot all about it.

  “The studio mascot!” I struggled to my feet. “You filmed a new opening with a new chimera, didn’t you, Katarin?”

  “We had to. . . the old sequence was in black-and-white, and the animated clay model simply couldn’t convey realistic colours.” Her eyes widened. “Goddesses, Bernard Marec was responsible for it!”

  “How did he do it?” I asked.

  “Taxidermy, with hidden gears inside, I think.”

  Marec had built the studio mascot using animals that were once alive. The thought sent shivers through my body.

  “Necromancy. It’s three animal corpses stitched together to mimic a beast of magic. There’s power in that.” I took a deep breath. “The chimera cursed the opening sequence, which is why it took effect so early in the third movie.”

  Katarin understood. “That’s why the pre-screened scenes weren’t dangerous—the mascot clip was spliced in later! And Philippe would’ve seen that chimera more than anyone else. Framing, focusing, threading the film—”

  “Maybe the chimera’s bleeding us.” I thought about the victims’ bloody eyes. “Ever hear of shadow-plays? Silk screen, puppets and their shadows? They’re a form of entertainment as popular in the Orient as films, but older and more ritualistic, involving prayers and offerings of food to the spirit. The first shadow cast in a shadow-play was always that of the World Tree, blessing the performance to come, and the same image closed the show.”

  “But instead of a World Tree blessing, the chimera cursed the films?” Carmouche asked.

  “Exactly. The longer you watch a cursed film, the more lifeforce you lose. Philippe would have taken many wounds after seeing the chimera many times but not ‘bled’ to death until the third film was well underway.”

  “Then we must destroy that chimera to break the curse,” Carmouche concluded.

  I grabbed my walking stick. “Take us to it, Katarin.”

  ~ ~ ~

  I’d been to the studios on numerous occasions but had never seen inside Warehouse Three, a hulking gray building at the far end of the lot. It took longer than usual to walk there, with Katarin and I still suffering from a twice-viewed curse. Strangely, my lethargy was slowly fading while Katarin remained weak.

  As Katarin unlocked the door, I took my foxfire-in-amber out of its cherrywood box and mentioned my returning strength.

  “Same for me. What do you think it means?” Carmouche asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “We may have overlooked something.”

  The warehouse was dark but for a glimmer of light near the other end. I held my foxfire-amber high, illuminating the rows of movie props. I recognised a few iconic set pieces in the shadows: a two-storey Tarot card depicting Ankou, the personification of Death in Graalon myth; the massive Bronze Gong of Shangdu; and the colossal clockwork griffin, star of a series where it terrorised the Great Undrowned Cities of the World.

  “The light’s from Marec’s workshop,” Katarin whispered. “That’s where he keeps the chimera.”

  Carmouche drew his palmcannon. “Go back to your office and lock the door, Madame.”

  “No.” Katarin was adamant. “My company, my responsibility.”

  “Then stay well behind us,” Carmouche said. He and I led the way deeper into the warehouse
, with Katarin a distance behind us. The row we walked down held props from Lioness in Summer: a rack of spears and mirrors from the Hall of Mirrors scene, arrayed facing each other. The mirrors magnified the light from the amber, creating the illusion of infinite corridors as we passed.

  At the four-way juncture, we turned right and then left onto the adjacent row. An open work area, illuminated by a gem-dish of foxfire-ambers on a cluttered table, lay at the end of the row of obelisks and sarcophagi. Bernard Marec stood behind the table clutching a glassy object in his left hand. When he saw us, he raised his free hand and flicked his wrist.

  The shelves to our left came crashing down on us. Carmouche pushed me forward in the nick of time, but I hit the ground hard, and the foxfire-in-amber skittered out of my hand. I glanced back: Carmouche was half-buried under the avalanche of boxes. Luckily, Katarin had been far enough behind us that the shelf missed her.

  Then I saw the chimera.

  The beast stood in the adjacent row, its lowered goat’s horns undoubtedly what toppled the shelves. The lion’s head clicked its jaws open in an odd staccato motion while the serpent’s tail stayed motionless.

  “Katarin, run!” I shouted.

  She turned to flee, but the chimera darted behind her with the speed of a live lion, barring her way. When it stopped moving, it remained as still as taxidermic art.

  Without turning, I called to Marec. “Are you going to kill us?”

  “No one was supposed to die!” The chimera trembled in time with his shaking voice. “I only meant to steal enough life to give me back my strength. My body’s breaking down, Voss. This arthritis, these failing eyes—I won’t become a prisoner of my own body.”

  So that was it: he stole strength from others to stave off his illnesses! That explained his speed at Le Pégase.

  I turned towards him. “But you took too much. People are hurt, and a young man’s dead.”

  Would he kill us now to keep his stolen life energy? Yes, if he were desperate enough. But if the same power animated the chimera like a puppet, then the puppeteer might need to see us to attack with it.

  “What of you, Tremaine?” Marec said. “Wouldn’t you want to feel young again, and walk as though you’d never injured that leg? I can teach you how.”

  Oh, to be able to run again! How the thought tempted me. But the cost to my humanity would be too great.

  “How’d you do it?” I asked. “A spell from a book in my museum?”

  “Exactly. I needed a way of drawing enough lifeforce all at once from the audience, so I made a taxidermic chimera and used stop-motion photography to simulate its life and motion. The viewer’s eye interprets the fast-moving frames and thinks the dead model’s alive, their energy in fact willing it to life.”

  “Clever, making the audience unwitting participants in their own doom.”

  I finally recognized the crystalline object in his hand: a polished lens. But if it wasn’t the projector’s lens. . . it must belong to the camera that had filmed the chimera.

  “That’s why you were at the theatre, wasn’t it? The chimera’s physically too far from Le Pégase, but you could capture the audience’s life energy if you were there with that lens.”

  “You have it,” Marec admitted. “I etched the spell on the lens I used to shoot the stop-motion.”

  The chimera model owed the illusion of motion to the ensorcelled lens, so any lifeforce torn from the audience would flood into the crystal. That explained why Carmouche and I had regained our strength soon after the screening room viewing; the crystal lens wasn’t physically close enough to trap our life energy.

  “You had to come back for the chimera, didn’t you? It’s a linked set, the lens and the model. Brilliant.”

  “They say that photography’s the art of stealing souls, but my art has stolen years of—”

  As he was gloating, I reached out with my walking stick, hooked back my foxfire-in-amber with the lion’s head and scooped it up, hiding its light. The area around me turned pitch black. I could still see Marec but hoped he had lost sight of Katarin and me.

  “—Vooosssssss!”

  Under cover of darkness, I moved and crouched, trying to ignore the pain that flared in my leg. I managed just in time: the chimera crashed into the spot that I had vacated.

  Marec beckoned the chimera back towards him with a gesture, and as it padded past me, its fur brushed against my hand.

  Marec grabbed a glowing amber from the gem-dish and made its viper’s mouth bite it. He sent the puppet back towards me, now bearing its own light source.

  Time to run. Marec would have to move to keep both the chimera and I in line of sight. I uncovered the amber to light my escape and hobbled at top speed into the next aisle, fighting the ache in my leg—

  —and came to a dead stop when I entered the corridor of mirrors.

  Photography was the art of stealing souls, Marec had said. But I knew my anthropology well enough to know the superstition came from a similar taboo against mirrors. A mirror was said to trap a creature’s soul as reflection within itself.

  I turned and saw Marec coming down the shadowed aisle, sending the puppet chimera after me. The reflection of the great beast filled the expanse of the mirror next to me.

  With as much strength as I could muster, I smashed the mirror with the pommel of my walking stick moments before the beast reached me. As the mirror shards fell, the force animating the chimera peeled from its frame like a glove. The lifeless puppet skid to a halt at my feet.

  “How. . . ?” Marec rushed towards the fallen chimera but didn’t see a rune-carved spear extending at ankle height from under a shelf. He tripped, and the crystal lens flew from his hand, smashing to pieces against the floor. “No!”

  I stepped over the inert chimera, drew the blade from its cane sheath, and put Marec at the point of my sword. He grew wizened before my eyes.

  “Mirrors steal souls as well, Marec. It’s said that if a mirror breaks while you’re reflected in it, it damages your soul. You imbued your chimera with stolen lifeforce, a pale imitation of a soul at best.” I ground fragments of the life-stealing lens under the heel of my shoe.

  Katarin and a bruised Inspector Carmouche emerged from the adjacent aisle.

  “Well done, Professor,” Carmouche said. “Bernard Marec, you’re under arrest for murder and several counts of attempted murder.” He grabbed a length of rope from a prop shelf and tied Marec’s hands.

  I once thought Marec had a decent man. It might have been a façade, I supposed, but I sincerely believed he had not strayed until the spectre of death changed him. For the sake of his soul, I hoped he remembered who he was, and who he could still be.

  Katarin touched my face with a hand, her touch warming my cheek. “My strength seems already to be returning. Will the others recover as well?”

  “In time, Katarin.” I turned my head, my lips grazing her fingers. It was all I dared. “In time.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Dr. Tony Pi was a Finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2009. He works at the Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto, where he’s surrounded by the cinematic at all times. His story "Silk and Shadow" appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #11 and the Beneath Ceaseless Skies ebook anthology The Best of BCS, Year One. "The Curse of Chimère" is the third stand-alone tale in the Leolithic Age setting (following “Sphinx!” in Ages of Wonder and “Night of the Manticore” in Abyss & Apex). His stories can also be found in such diverse venues as Writers of the Future, Clarkesworld Magazine, and Intergalactic Medicine Show.

  TO THE GODS OF TIME AND ENGINES, A GIFT

  Dean Wells

  CECILY LIKED TO HURT THINGS.

  She didn’t know why. Sometimes a disorder of the Mind just happened, and the ghosts in the Machines had claimed her as their own. Likes became rituals and rituals became worship, in the service of clockwork deities as twisted as she.

  It was the last lingering hour before twilight when the offering came d
ue once again, but Cecily had lost track of the day and cursed her misfortune for it. She lived in the custody of an elderly uncle in a broken-down chapel that was far older still. Granduncle was an odd fellow, Royal Navy (ret.), whose appetites centered on men much younger than he. So it was there in the ruined churchyard, amid roses and wild brambles, that Cecily found her gift picking berries. A gift chosen in haste and with even less care, but Time waited for no one and the boy would have to do.

  He stood atop a gear-and-wheel ladder, young and stripped to the waist, gleaming with perspiration in the deep setting Sun. A steel hoop pierced each nipple, and blonde hair softened his chest and chin. His name was Oliver, and he was very beautiful.

  Yes, Cecily thought. He would do.

  “Good evening, Pretty Bird,” Oliver said. His smile was bright and genuine. Cecily accepted the lie for what it was. She knew in her heart that she’d never been pretty; her body was narrow and pale and had long since betrayed her with the coming of monthly blood. So she darkened her eyelids with black metal powders and shrouded her scars in black lace.

  “Good evening, Oliver,” she said in return, smoothing her long skirts the way other girls did. “May I have some berries, please?” She mimicked his smile with the cruelest of lies and pointed to a cluster just out of reach. “There, the shiny ones on top.”

  Oliver reached for the berries, round and bright in a sky thick with industrial ash, the muscles in his arm stretching ever higher; his movement ordered and precise. Great electrick airships bound for the night’s mooring thrummed overhead amid smokestacks and brick chimneys, while the armored face of the Moon displayed itself in grandeur farther still.

  Do it, Cecily! Quickly, child, without delay.

  The words popped into her mind of their own accord, vexing her, goading her to act. The silent commands were with her all the time now, haunting and familiar. She’d been here before, this moment, this place. The Sun continued down the great arc of its rails, sinking ever closer into dusk and the night.