Book of Transformations

by Mark Charan Newton

‘Why do we even bother?’ she asked. ‘People say the world is dying. Seems to me like this culture is already dead.’

  ‘Because there’s always something worth fighting for, Lan,’ Fulcrom told her. ‘So we don’t have the guilt from having sat around doing nothing while the world caves in. Come on, let’s get a drink.’

  *

  The tavern was a tiny, two-up two-down affair that had been converted into a cheap but charming salon. Lined with old fishing and agricultural gear, with cheap candles melting slowly onto ancient wooden tables, it was usually a quiet place, though tonight there was a bawdy bunch in the adjacent room. These days it seemed there was a lot of heavy drinking going on.

  Fulcrom swirled a beaker of malt whisky, whilst Lan sipped a warming wine. There were contented, pleasant pauses in their conversation. Occasionally there was eye contact loaded with potential meaning. Where did their tentative plans for romance fit in with all the recent violence?

  Fulcrom was nervous. He was terrified that he might see his dead wife – or indeed any other ghosts – at any point. He hadn’t yet reported his findings to anyone – not that he had any findings really. If only a few dead had surfaced, then maybe he could find them one by one, and persuade them to go back down again.

  He wanted to share his burden with Lan, this woman who was becoming increasingly more beautiful to him.

  ‘I shouldn’t stay out too late,’ Lan told him. ‘Vuldon will just get frustrated if we don’t get back to work before long. Have we any plans for how we deal with the anarchists now? We’re loathed by the Cavesiders – who knows what damage the massacre has done to the people there.’

  Fulcrom peered into his glass. ‘We stand up, brush ourselves down, and carry on. We have no choice. You take your brief glory for saving the Emperor – and you will have to ignore what happened with the protesters.’

  A short man with a ginger beard stood by the end of the table and asked to shake Lan’s hand. ‘Sorry to disturb, lass, but jus’ wanted to say ta for doing a great job keeping us lot in business. Things’d be a lot worse if it weren’t for you Knights.’

  Glancing to and from Fulcrom, she obliged, took his thanks, and said little else. An awkward silence came and went, and the man trotted off happily enough.

  ‘This fame,’ Lan said, ‘I’m not used to it. Somehow it doesn’t feel right. It’s like I’m being thanked for nothing. I don’t feel like I’ve protected anyone.’

  ‘People are grateful for what you’ve done,’ Fulcrom said sincerely. ‘Enjoy it.’

  ‘All I’ve done is enforce the law – and I saw what that meant this afternoon. The law is geared up to protect the people in here from the people out there.’

  ‘I guess so,’ Fulcrom confessed. ‘Depending on where “here” and “there” is.’

  ‘The Cavesiders, the poor – they have just as much right to our protection as the rich do.’

  Fulcrom frowned. ‘You need to be careful who hears you talking like that. That’s what the anarchists’ new slogans say,’ he said. ‘Walls are being whitewashed daily to remove such sentiments.’

  Lan sighed and leaned forward to take Fulcrom’s hand. ‘I know. Let’s not talk about work. Can we go back to yours?’

  Don’t let her see you react, Fulcrom thought, dreading that Adena might be there waiting for them.

  ‘We don’t have to if you don’t feel you want to,’ Lan said.

  Fuck, now you’re caught between the ex-wife and exacerbating Lan’s deepest fears. ‘Sure, we can go to mine,’ Fulcrom said. ‘I’d like that. Though, are you sure you’re not too upset about the events yesterday? I wouldn’t want to be seen to be taking advantage . . .’

  Lan just smiled and kissed him.

  *

  They held hands as they ascended the stairs to his apartment, kissed against his door, and all the time Fulcrom feared letting her down. As her lips gently pressed down in tender ways across his neck, he couldn’t help but worry if his dead ex-wife would be waiting to berate him on the other side of the door.

  He held his breath as they blundered into his apartment . . . but there was nothing, just the empty silence of his room. He sighed with relief and lit the fire in the stove, perched on the end of his bed, then he noticed how Lan froze. Again he thought of a ghost, but then he guessed that this one was probably her own.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Fulcrom asked softly.

  ‘Yeah, of course. Yes.’ Her words were almost to herself, but he didn’t mind that, and didn’t even mind the hunch that he was helping her move on somewhere in her own headspace. In many ways, she was providing the same relief for him, too. He removed his cloak and she laughed as he folded it neatly on the chair to one side. ‘How spontaneous,’ Lan whispered with a sarcastic grin.

  ‘I like to be neat.’ Fulcrom chuckled and sat down next to her.

  They kissed. There were tentative gestures of exploration. He could feel her tense up, then gently unfurl, offering herself to him. Surprisingly he found that his desire to help her through whatever issues she herself might be suffering, her anatomical-based fears, overtook his own concerns that this was the first woman he had kissed since the death of his wife.

  Half-clothed and worried she had forgotten how this sort of thing was done, Lan laid him back and straddled him. He fixated on the symbol on her Knights uniform. She peeled it off, joking, ‘No one’s going to save you now.’

  Please not my dead wife . . .

  He moved his hands inside underneath her uniform, helping it off. Again she became still.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Cold hands,’ she replied.

  ‘Oh, right.’

  After losing the rest of her clothes he could tell she waited for his reaction, so he was quick to show her that she was – as indeed she was, and damn she was – a fine-looking woman.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ he breathed against her neck, kissing her gently, and inhaling her fragrance. He whirled his tail around and ran it down her spine. She arced her back like a crescent moon. Lan seemed so small above him, in the gentle glow of the fire, so vulnerable. Something inside of him melted. He could not help himself. He wanted her.

  He spun her over, unleashing years of introverted agony. He levered off his breeches with his tail whilst running his lips against her legs.

  Lan made it clear she didn’t want anything more than this. They lay under the sheets for an hour, embracing, curling, fondling, learning each other’s quirks and preferences. And he simply enjoyed having her soft human skin against his tough rumel hide.

  Whenever she shuddered he paused to check it was because he’d done something good, and not disturbed a memory – and she told him to stop worrying, laughing it off. There was something so wonderfully free about all of this, about having waited so long, about the not knowing, and it filled him with so much adrenalin, so many emotions, that it was an exquisite agony.

  After their passions had ebbed, they lay there, a pleasing tangle of legs and arms and tail.

  Eventually, breaking this monumental sense of peace, Lan said, ‘I shouldn’t fall asleep here.’

  He agreed and after another long, slow kiss, she climbed out of bed. He watched her like a voyeur dressing in the half-light.

  Reluctantly he roused himself, pulled on his breeches, and moved to see her out. He kissed her at the door and, as they parted, he noticed how she seemed a different person – they both did. Barely a word was uttered – and there was no need, because the warming look in her eyes told him enough. She brushed back her glossy black hair and sashayed sleepily down the corridor. By the top of the staircase, one hand on the rail, she blew him a kiss.

  Beaming, he glanced away and strolled casually back inside—

  Where his heart nearly stopped.

  Adena was there, fully formed, with a ethereal sheen and a black-bloodied neck, sitting on the chair next to his bed. The room felt colder than it had previously, the fire had gone out. The darkness was more oppressive than before. He peered ar
ound anxiously.

  ‘Fuck,’ Fulcrom declared, agog. He felt guilty, a sinner, a cheating spouse, in the midst of some ridiculous love triangle between the living and the dead.

  ‘How long have you been there?’ he demanded.

  ‘Enough to see that you’re still the attentive lover you always were.’

  Adena was wearing some kind of dress – though it was more or less in rags – and her dark hair contained bright silver streaks, her scruffy fringe hanging lankly before her eyes. The bones of her body seemed to jut out more than usual, darkness pooling in sunken skin. Her presence still sent a shiver through his body, and his tail was rigid with fear. Now more than ever there was a sinister air about her, although her expression remained muted.

  ‘Where were you when . . . ?’ Fulcrom faltered, his voice was weak, as the world around him tried its best to reduce him to pure insanity.

  ‘In the corner of the room,’ she replied. ‘I chose not to be seen though.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say something? I don’t know, spook us, slam a door, flip a book across the room. Why did you just watch something so obviously painful?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered flatly. ‘Because it didn’t affect me the way I thought, I guess. When I first watched you, through the mirror, everything seemed intense.’

  ‘I . . .’ Fulcrom faced the floor and closed the door behind him. ‘I’ve no words for this situation,’ he continued honestly. ‘What can I say? I thought you were – are – dead. I know you are a ghost at least. I even went down there, and saw others like you.’

  ‘To the underworld?’

  He placed his hands on his hips and tried to gauge his situation, to remain logical amidst this madness. ‘Yes, I was told all about the escape from the priest himself, and I followed him to the city beyond the river.’

  ‘Would you go back?’

  ‘It’s not exactly top of my travel destinations. There’s no way to return you there forcibly, if you were wondering. You have to go back by your own will.’ He found himself being remarkably stern, harsh even, perhaps a panic reaction, but what was he to do? He was talking to a ghost. There were no rules for such a discourse.

  ‘You’ve kept well,’ Adena said, ignoring his not-so-subtle request, and only then did he realize he was semi-naked, showing evidence of his betrayal.

  ‘You shouldn’t have stayed,’ he said.

  ‘I had to see it through, Fully,’ Adena muttered. She seemed to curl in on herself as the conversation continued. ‘I had to know if there was a chance of us ever getting back together.’

  The emotions came from somewhere, and he found himself on the verge of tears. ‘There couldn’t be, Adena. You’re not alive. It was never possible.’ He knelt before her on the floor and tried to take her hand. It was colder than a frost and he released it in an instant. ‘We’ve been allowed a rare moment to see each other, but you have to realize that out here – in the real world again – time goes on. I can’t just stand still, though there was a time I contemplated . . . joining you. But that was long ago.’

  Adena glanced up and gave him a deathly stare. She didn’t mean to frighten him though, and he knew it – it was just the way she was now. When will the madness stop? he thought, logic suddenly visiting him. Get a grip on this, immediately.

  ‘You know, it isn’t as bad as you think,’ she said. ‘Everything still hurts, but it’s . . . Look, I’ve had a few years to get used to coping without you, too. That makes it a little easier.’

  ‘What will you do now?’ he hinted.

  ‘You’ve made it clear there’s nothing for me here.’

  ‘There’s a world down there that you can make your own, surely?’

  ‘No. It’s pointless to have much ambition there, Fully. When you have all the time in the world, nothing seems to happen. Did you notice time dragged by so slowly while you were down there? Well, it’s the pressure of dying, I think, that makes you do things quickly up here, whether or not you lot realize.’

  They talked a while longer, he didn’t know how long, didn’t bother looking at the clock. He was too drained to care any more. His eyes were sore, and he was exhausted, mentally and physically. This had been the most bizarre day of his life; and a healing one, too. Now old wounds were being poked at, but he forced himself to be mindful that he was more than a pile of emotions.

  Adena spoke of wishing she could visit him, but she thought as soon as she crossed that river once again, that was that, she would never speak to him again. Awkward silences grew now, he suspected, because they were waiting to find something profound to share in that final moment, the last sentence they would breathe to each other.

  He consciously tried to hold her again, but she flinched. ‘Just because I might move on, doesn’t mean I won’t think of you. The reason it’s taken me this long is because I couldn’t get over you.’

  ‘I know,’ she agreed miserably. ‘It’s just me being selfish and I should leave you alone. There were only a few of us up here, the dead, but a lot of those have gone back now. The fun wears off pretty quickly when you can’t feel much.’

  ‘I loved you. I just have to make the most of what time I have here.’

  ‘Loved,’ Adena whispered. ‘Look after her, Fully.’

  I’ll do my best, he thought, welling up again, feeling the lump in his throat becoming unbearable.

  Adena stood up from the chair and again he noticed how similar she was to Lan, something about the face shapes, the body; and whether or not his subconscious had been at work, he didn’t care at all. Adena walked – drifted, almost – into a wall . . . and then the ghost of his wife was gone, just like that.

  The fire in the grate sparked into life and he jumped. Warmth erupted, dissipating the chill her ghost had left.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he climbed and then collapsed onto his bed, where he cried himself to sleep.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Ulryk’s Journal

  For two days I walked among the dead.

  Their city had no name, though there are several districts. Woe, Wailing, Fire, were the more palatable labels; Aaru and Duat being names with which I was unfamiliar. They were deserted places, though comprised of distinct cultures and architectures. Some were classical structures, other more elaborate and baroque; some utilize straight lines, others domes. These districts were vast and seemingly endless.

  I spent some time in the district of Woe, where there seemed, ironically, to be large numbers of healthy specimens of the dead. Ragged clothes were washed and strung up to dry, draped over lines that extended betwixt high, grey-stone walls – it appeared that even the dead had codes of etiquette and cleanliness. There were crude irens that traded in colourless gemstones, faded metals and dreary items of Art; though I had not found anything that resembled a market in food, a common centre-point of surface world cities, and there were no bistros either. Thus the dead congregated around places of entertainment: crude board games, or impromptu poetry recitals.

  Experimentally, I tried summoning Frater Mercury just the once down there, but was unsuccessful. The necessary elements in the text, or possibly even speech, simply did not work. As I suspected, in my very last transmission to him, in the real world, I must raise the other copy of the book to the surface, and there I shall continue my rituals.

  What might I unleash when I summon him here? I often wonder. Still, if indeed creations are spilling into our own world, then it can only be a good thing to bring him back for our defence. I can see evidence in everything else he has done or said, enough to allow me to have faith in the things I cannot see.

  *

  The underworld beneath Villjamur does indeed fit with Jorsalir descriptions, what little there is, though the state of one’s soul after death is a complex business. There are hell realms, of course, where we are said to go if our lives have been conducted in an unfulfilling manner. There are realms of gods and demigods, who are said to bicker and fight constantly over status, wealth and power. Bu
t the dead here were in limbo, so it is said, souls who were trapped. Yet, they were not in stasis.

  For instance, they were very helpful in my search. It seemed that several of them were utterly bored and my predicament gave meaning to their lives, a way to spend their endless days. I was, I suspected, of great amusement to them.

  Whenever I managed to communicate with Frater Mercury, and I sought the precise location of the tome, he spoke only of the ‘House of the Dead’ and ‘artificial realities’ and up until now I thought that it meant the underworld, where the dead roam free, but what if he meant something else: a specific location. A house, indeed, within the house.

  I spoke to some of the locals about this ‘House of the Dead’. I questioned them, but was met only with silence, faces that responded as if I was barely even there – as if I was the ghost.

  *

  Perhaps, I thought to myself, libraries were houses of the dead, with voices speaking from beyond the grave, throughout the centuries. I, too, know that when I am gone these words will linger.

  Aker has enlisted Pana and Ran, two frail-looking fellows with strange gaits, and who seemed more insane than useful, to help my search. They sauntered off throughout the Unnamed City to locate any libraries in which the other copy of The Book of Transformations may reside.

  But there were great challenges. We knew that there are obstacles, buildings in which there are traps that even the dead fear. Why? I did not know – they seemed ethereal things that could even ensnare spirits. The dead did not fear dying – they feared only an eternity of nothingness.

  I felt certain that the agents of the church could not hunt me down. They did not know what I was doing, but were merely trying to stop my knowledge from reaching far places, though of course it was too late. The church had propped up their own myths and I could wait no longer.

  *

  Back in Villjamur, it was still daylight and I breathed the air of the living. Only when I returned did I realize how oppressive it is to walk among them, the countless faces that have died through the ages. I became mindful of life. Even in a troubled city such as Villjamur, I realized there was much to be appreciated.