Clockwork Phoenix 5

by Brennan, Marie

  “What hath the name of thee?” she asked me.

  “You know that. You said it once. Ananda, same as my grandmother.” It was an odd question. “What is yours?”

  “Sano.” Dark, clawed fingers curled under the doorframe like inchworms. “Ananda, I’ve a message for thee.”

  “No. Please, not yet.” An angel without a message would have to leave me.

  I wanted to unlock the door, but I was afraid.

  * * *

  The holy women in the sky practice the art of falling in ascending stages.

  First, an acolyte meditates until she can command each wing still. This is done in utter silence and isolation, for her wings never rest in life, and it takes immense self-control.

  Next, she suspends herself over the void and stills her wings, one after another after another, as many as she can stand. Usually the first wing will flutter again before she gets through even the first dozen. It’s easiest to start with the wings of the feet, but these are also the most impatient, and won’t pause long.

  When all her wings stop, she will slowly begin to descend. It can take years to fall. If she loses concentration for even a moment, she will jerk upward like a kite in a strong draft, borne up all the way to the cloud-cities, and will have to fall again from the beginning.

  As they fall, the swifts bring them fruits from the earth to weigh them down. Holy women should only eat earth-food. Even the acolytes cultivate gardens from the seeds the birds bring. In this manner, the flying peoples’ gardens have become the wildest and most variable in the world.

  Occasionally, their gardens sprout roses by mistake.

  * * *

  It grew harder to stay grounded. I filled my pockets with rocks to hide my lightness from my mother when she limped up the path that week.

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” she asked, craning her neck toward my hut. It was a long walk from the village, especially for a lame woman, and we were accustomed to taking rose hip tea for refreshment. It was threatening to rain.

  “We might disturb the nesting swifts,” I said. “I’ll prepare tea in the garden.”

  I struggled to sit down. I had grown so light already, the ground shrank from my touch. My skin itched. Already prayers flocked to me, clamping to my skin like mosquitoes, opening the scabs left by the rose thorns. I scratched running sores beneath my sleeves.

  “It’s nearly summer.” My mother poured herself a cup of tea. “I began my ascent in summer, you know.” It happened before my birth. My grandmother took to the air the next day, even before she knew if her daughter would survive her injuries.

  “Mm-hm.” A prayer floated on my tea’s amber surface, its ten black legs floundering for purchase, its proboscis extended. I tried to sip around it.

  “It’s a good season for it, don’t you think? Weather’s nice. Plenty of seeds to eat. I remember seeing the garden in summer from high over the trees, everything green and growing and the roses in bloom.”

  “Yes, it’s very nice,” I agreed. Over my mother’s head, I caught a flash of wings in my hut’s upper window.

  “And of course, the rain would be most welcome right now, during the growing season.”

  “What rain?” I slapped three biting prayers roosting on my hand.

  She fixed me with a piercing look. “What do you mean, ‘what rain’?”

  “Right. I’m sorry. I forgot,” I admitted. My hand trembled, and tea splashed from my cup. When I bent to pour myself more, rocks clicked in my pockets and a trickle of pebbles bounced around my feet.

  My mother gaped at them. “What’s this?” She grabbed my arm, and more stones spilled, and without their weight my feet left the ground instantly like terrified sparrows. “You—you’ve been stalling! How long have you been ready?”

  “You don’t understand.” I tried to pull away, but how did one gain traction, treading on air?

  Her fingers dug like claws into my wrist. “Oh, Daughter. Oh, you mustn’t do this. Have you learned nothing from me?”

  The prayers buzzed and nipped at my face. My feet dug into air. She was only one lame old woman, and somehow I yanked away, stumbled several steps higher. I floated level with the high windows. Inside, wings fluttered in the rafters. I pounded on the glass. “Sano!”

  “Ananda!” she yelled back, voice muffled through the glass.

  “Who are you hiding in there?” my mother demanded. She tried the door, but it was locked. Sano’s flapping grew more frantic.

  I skipped across air over the hut, but did not know how to descend. I had so little sin left. Every step carried me a little higher. I knelt over the roof and dipped a hand downward until my fingertips just brushed the straw.

  The prayers swarmed in my eyes, and I swatted at them, casting for something to weigh me down, anything to bring me near her. A chimney swift hovered near my shoulder, its tiny vestigial talons almost invisible against its underside. Down in my empty pocket, I fished out a little brass key—the one that unlocked the door.

  Down you go now. Down the chimney, little swift.

  Thunder rolled, but it did not rain.

  * * *

  There is another way the holy women of the sky can learn to fall. It is not artful. It is not celebrated, or even condoned. But it is very, very swift.

  If a woman wants to reach the ground in a hurry, meditation will not do. But there is no faster way to still one’s wings than to tear them off. As many as you can reach.

  One’s errand would have to be very urgent to attempt such a thing.

  * * *

  She had changed during her time in the hut. I’d expected her wounds to heal over, but instead bones had grown like shoots from the many, many holes. Some had even sprouted a fuzzy black down. They all flapped at once. I could just make out Sano’s body at the center of the scintillating sphere as she stepped into the yard. Her feet no longer touched ground. She must have been lighter than me, judging from the speed of her ascent.

  “Ananda!” she cried out. “’Tis myself that is ascending now!”

  I grabbed at a wing-bone as she rose past me. It cut me like a blade, but I pulled her close, clasped her through the beating flurry until her wings embraced me back. One by one, they ceased their frenetic flapping and rested against me. Slowly we descended, together heavy enough to fall.

  “Don’t let go,” Sano said.

  “I won’t.”

  * * *

  The saints of Earth leave the ground in search of Heaven. They step on water and ascend the air. Falling is an art reserved for demons.

  What if, when the saint reached Heaven, the angels were amazed? If the saint explained Earth wasn’t Heaven at all, but only another destination? If the saint’s coming caused a great debate among the people of innumerable wings? If their priestesses called it blasphemy, but their people, raised on falling dreams, saw a way to Paradise?

  What if lightning were not a natural phenomenon, but the war machines of furious angels, weapons against a schism?

  * * *

  My grandmother had reached Heaven after all.

  “It was years ago, and thy grandmother ascending in our midst, so confused,” said Sano. “And asking wouldn’t we take the prayers from her, but we could not, to be sure. We are not gods or angels.” Our toes touched my hut’s roof. We hugged tighter, afraid to lose each other. “We do not send the rain. We only go to war.”

  “Why did you come here?” I asked her.

  “Because she said they would have sent another like her, and another, and another, until someone showed them their errors. Our priestesses, the rumors they quelled this time, and my people they convinced thy saint was mad. But if another saint of Earth arrives in our city, it will be war for certain. It needs to end.”

  “Will you toss aside the prayers of others so easily?” asked my mother. “Oh, you will fall too, and then what will we do?” She knelt among the roses, cane in lap, cheeks wet with tears. Pity pricked my heart. My whole life I had been intended to carr
y their prayers to Heaven. It had been no different for my mother, only no messenger came in time to save her from a wasted life, a pointless fall.

  I clutched Sano tighter. “I am sorry, Mother. I won’t be like Grandmother. I can’t.”

  Sano whispered in my ear. “Let go, and trust me.”

  I let go of her waist. The moment we lost contact, her wings fluttered, and she rose like a kite. My own lightness bore me up alongside her. Afraid, I clutched at her, and Sano gave me her hand. It felt cool and clawed and secure in my palm. Hand in hand, we shot straight as arrows toward the mountains, neither falling nor flying as long as we touched.

  * * *

  There is another way to fall: toward someone.

  * * *

  My Love and I have become flying, falling things. We have no need of a Paradise above or below. We are not saints or demons. We are fallen women. We are broken angels. We have an embrace that anchors, a kiss that soars, and a love that balances entropy.

  We sow our garden from seeds the swifts bring us, and whatever grows, we eat with thanks. We dine on plums and parsley and rose petal tea.

  One evening late in the fall, when leaves paint the ground in sunset colors, Sano points upward and shouts my name. High above, a dark speck floats down from the clouds: an old woman descending step by careful step.

  The Perfect Happy Family

  Patricia Russo

  Mathie was a little girl who thought everything smelled like candy. The old woman who kept mumbling that she needed to sew her buttons always sat next to Mathie when the group took a rest, and slept beside her when they found a place to camp for a night or a month. Leyis, the boy who insisted that his jar used to be able to speak loudly before it was broken during a raid on his settlement by the Rat Folk, but which now could only whisper half-words, teased Mathie by saying the old woman was her grandmother. Soon enough, they were all calling the old woman Grandmother. She didn’t seem to mind or, in truth, even notice.

  “Be careful. They might start calling you Daddy,” Ketter said to Ched. That night they were camped by a river. The children had collected several armloads of firewood, and Ched had gotten a fire started with one of the bits of old tech he carried in his pockets. Ched carried nothing else—no backpack, no satchel, no bedroll. He liked to say he had no baggage, especially when he got fed up with the bitching and groaning from the skull in the sack Ketter hauled around. The sack was full of bones as well, almost a complete skeleton, but it was only the skull that grumbled and bemoaned its fate.

  “They can call me whatever they like,” Ched said. “Names mean nothing. Ask your friend the skull. It can’t even remember what its name used to be.”

  “He’s not my friend. He’s my responsibility.”

  “You don’t even know if it is a he.”

  “Whatever. When I was lost in the dry lands, dying of desiccation, the skull showed me the path to the crystal lake. I could not be so ungrateful as to leave it behind. He or she used to be a person, just like any of us. Its spirit is bound to its bones, and I promised to help free it.”

  “We know,” Ched said. “You’ve told us the story at least ten times.”

  The sack began to rattle. The first few times this had happened, the clattering of dry bones had frightened the children, but now they both called, “Let Uncle Skull come out.”

  “It could be Aunt Skull,” Ched said.

  “My jar says it’s Uncle Skull,” Leyis said.

  “I need to sew my buttons,” Grandmother mumbled. Nobody knew why she kept saying this. She wore a long smock-like dress without any buttons at all, a shawl, and rubber boots.

  “I need to see if I can catch us something to eat,” Ched said. “I don’t know if there are fish in that river, but there are certainly frogs. I can hear them.”

  “There are fish and frogs and water spinach,” Mathie said. “I can smell them. They smell like caramel and peppermints and licorice.”

  Ketter unlaced the top of the sack and rummaged around for a moment before pulling out the skull. “Woe is me,” the skull said as soon as it was out of the sack. “My spirit is bound to my bones, and it will never be released until every one of my bones has saved a life.”

  “We know,” Ched said. “Do we have to hear it every single time?”

  “I don’t think he can help it,” Ketter said. “It’s probably part of the curse. Uncle Skull, in the dry lands I collected all your bones, remember? We gave your finger bones and toe bones to the green ants to build fortifications against the vermilion spiders, so we’ve made a start.”

  “Use my ribs to make a net to catch fish. Sharpen my wrist bones and use them as spearpoints to skewer frogs.”

  “And how is that saving lives?” Ched asked.

  “Feeding us saves our lives,” Ketter retorted. “I believe that’s what Uncle Skull means.”

  “I need to sew my buttons,” Grandmother cried, rocking back and forth. Mathie put her arms around the old woman.

  “It would be nice if she stopped saying that,” Ched muttered.

  Leyis whispered to his jar, then put his ear to the crack that ran from its rim to its base. He shook his head. “Great-Uncle Jar doesn’t know why Grandmother needs to sew buttons.”

  “Now there’s a surprise,” Ched said. “The broken prophetic jar can’t read an old woman’s broken mind. And you can call one your great-uncle and the other your grandmother all you like, but they will both still be broken.”

  “Why are you so prickly?” Ketter asked. “You’re the one who gathered us from every corner of the six-sided world.”

  “Hardly that. I came across you on my way to the City of New Unity City, that’s all. Lost children, a demented old woman, a man with a sack of bones—if I’d left you where I found you, you’d all be dead by now. Except for Uncle Skull, who is already dead. Oh, and the jar, which was never alive.”

  “Why do you want to go to the City of New Unity City? Which is a stupid name for a city, by the way.”

  “I didn’t name it. I’m traveling there because I want to live in a civilized place, with streetcars and electric lights, running water and regular garbage pickups. These wastelands and wildernesses are not for me.”

  “You were born in one of these wastelands and wildernesses,” Ketter said.

  “I was not. I angered a Misfortune Teller—an error of youth—and she banished me for a period of seven times seven years.”

  Leyis said, “Daddy Ched, Great-Uncle Jar says you have softened the curse on yourself. Now the banishment will end in three times three years.”

  “How did he do that?” Ketter asked.

  “By consenting.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ketter said.

  The boy shrugged. “Neither do I. What does consenting mean?”

  “Ask your jar. If it can really talk, it should be able to tell you,” Ched said. “I’m going to the river. Mathie, would you give me a brand from the fire to light my way?”

  “Yes, Daddy,” she said.

  Uncle Skull said, “Take my marrow for bait.”

  “Your marrow is dry as dust, useless for bait. But give me your strongest leg bone, and I will use it as a club to whack the fish on the head.”

  “Thank you, Daddy,” Uncle Skull said.

  “How are you going to catch the fish?” asked Ketter.

  “I have my ways.”

  “You were not born in the City of New Unity City.”

  “No, but I was born in a city.”

  “I don’t think the City of New Unity City exists.”

  “It does,” Mathie said, bringing Ched a torch of resin wood. “I have smelled it in my dreams. It smells like honeydrops and chocolate.”

  “I doubt that,” Ched muttered.

  Ketter pulled a long leg bone out of his sack and passed it to Ched.

  “I need to sew my buttons,” said Grandmother.

  Ched rolled his eyes. “Why don’t the rest of you try to do something about that while I’m gone?” />
  “Like what?” Ketter asked.

  “Since two of our party are known to lie under curses, I wouldn’t be terribly shocked to discover Grandmother suffered under one, too. It may be that she can free herself through sewing buttons.”

  “How do we find buttons?” Ketter asked.

  “I’ve heard buttons can be made of bone.”

  Uncle Skull let out a howl that filled the night, reached up to the sky, and bounced back off the clouds. Ketter cried out in trepidation, but Leyis and Mathie laughed. Ched strode toward the river, leg bone in one hand, torch in the other, without glancing back.

  “Mother Ketter,” Mathie said, “don’t be afraid. Look at Grandmother. She is smiling.”

  “Mother? I can’t be your mother. I am a man.”

  Leyis pressed his ear to his jar. Looking up, he said, “You can if you consent. What does consent mean, anyway?”

  Uncle Skull said, “Mother Ketter, to save a mind is as worthy as to save a life. Give Grandmother some of my small bones.”

  “But how is she to make buttons? How is she to sew them?”

  “She will use stones to shape the bones, and splinters from my thin arm bones to fashion needles; she can bore holes in the needles with either bone or stone. As for thread, you can unravel my sack.”

  “Uncle Skull’s bones smell like fruit jellies,” Mathie said.

  Leyis said, “Great-Uncle Jar says that if Grandmother sews enough buttons to bring her spirit back to herself, then Daddy’s banishment will be reduced to one year and one day. By that time, we have found the City of New Unity City.”

  “And what will we do there, if such a place exists?”

  “Don’t you know?” Mathie asked. “You and Daddy will get a house. Brother Leyis and I will live with you until we are grown. Grandmother will live with us until she dies, and Great-Uncle Jar will live with us, too. Uncle Skull may have found release by then. If he hasn’t, then he will live with us until he does.”

  “Mother,” Uncle Skull said, “please consent.”