Furnace

by Livia Llewellyn

  I lift my wet nightgown. —Stay with me, and you can take everything you need.

  I drop to the floor, back arched, thighs apart. The second contraction rips through me, and I howl. The barker said there would be pain, and he didn’t lie. He said it would be the eighth wonder of the world.

  4

  The barker stood where I had seen him a decade ago, as if he had never moved from the spot: on a wood-planked platform in the middle of a vast dirt and sawdust-covered warehouse floor, surrounded by rows and rows of broken and abandoned caravans and carousels and fair rides in fading pastels, painted canvases depicting creatures and humans of sublime beauty and deformity, statues and stuffed beasts, tanks and cages, carts and costume-choked trunks. It took an eternity of footsteps to walk to him. The musk of animal and tang of sea creature and the green of chipped wood filled my lungs—none of it had moved in ten years, none of it had changed. Bits of jewel-colored glitter floated through the smoky, popcorn-scented air. Antiques, it said on the crumpled brochure I’d found blowing about on the street that spring day so long ago, and had carried in my purse ever since. Rare Circus Items Curated from America’s Golden Age of Entertainment. Powerful Carnival Artifacts Rescued from Civilizations Lost Forever in the Mists of Time. A Veritable Cornucopia of Wonders, Mesmerizing and Terrifying. This Once in a Lifetime Opportunity, Only For You.

  —Are you ready? he called out, and his words echoed back and forth between the high walls before dying out in a faint burst of calliope music. —Have you made your choice? He lifted his cane and pointed down. Below the stage sat a massive flat-topped megalith, with five black marble boxes resting on its rough surface, each carved on the top with the name of an ancient carnival, culled from histories lost forever, as the brochure had said. Within each box, though, anything but dry history resided. Chaos, essence, power, folding in on itself in infinite spirals. Waiting for an incubator, a warm walking womb to carry it to its new home, to release. Unchecked primal appetite, that could consume anything, even a woman with an endless appetite of her own. I felt my breath shallow out, my heart beat fluttery and weak.

  I reached out and touched the box labeled Kronia. It vibrated slightly under my fingertips. After a pause, I pushed it back.

  —Masks and merriment, as I recall. Too weak, I said. The barker nodded and smiled.

  I picked up the boxed labeled Navigium Isidis, and immediately placed it on top of the Kronia box. —Floats, processionals, parades. I think she’d be amused. I don’t want to amuse her.

  At the far edge of the floor, a chair moved. I felt the contents of the space shifting, as if rousing itself from a too-long dream. A low sigh wafted across the room, or perhaps it was only the wind, or the ghost of a dream of the wind.

  Three boxes were left on the stone. —Bacchanalia, I said, picking up the one to the left. I placed it on top of the stack. —Savage. She’d be disoriented, repulsed. But not incapacitated.

  —Are you certain, madam? the barker said. —Wine-soaked madness and lust in the night? Nothing to stop you from partaking as well, if you desire. If you aren’t dismembered, that is.

  But I had moved on. Saturnalia, said the next box. I lifted it up.

  —What’s this one again?

  —Pageants. Very theatrical, said the barker. — I must warn you: there will be many, many clowns.

  I added Saturnalia to the stack. A single box remained. Dionysia, it said. I ran my fingertips over the carved letters. The barker smiled.

  —Great festivities within, he said. —A carnelevare of god-frenzied transformation, which subsumes and liberates all.

  —I don’t want to transform her, I said, adding the box to the stack. —I don’t want to liberate or destroy her.

  For the first time, the barker looked unsure. —What is it that you want, then?

  —I want something so wondrous and primal, she’ll never be able to leave it. I want to fill her up, completely. I want her to fall in love.

  The warehouse floor grew quiet. —There are no boxes left, the barker said. —There are no more choices.

  I reached out, placing both hands flat on the megalith as I contemplated the stack. The stone was warm and smooth, except for spider-thin scratches. I moved my fingers over them. Back and forth. A sixth name, in a language I did not recognize, running across the surface. A secret, sixth carnelevare.

  —No more choices, the barker repeated.

  —There never was a choice. This is the one I’ve always wanted, I said. —The carnival with no name.

  —The first. Do you know what it is you’re asking for? The barker motioned to the dusty rides and ruins scattered across the warehouse floor. —It won’t be like any of these. No sequins or carousels or quaint colored lights.

  I pointed to the black boxes. —The other carnivals I considered were nothing like that.

  The barker’s cane came to rest on the pitted surface of the megalith. A sharp click hit the air. —Nothing since the dawn of history has been like this.

  I said nothing. There was nothing more to say. After a time, the barker nodded.

  —As you wish, he said. —The conception will be—complex. I will need time.

  —I have thirty days.

  —Thirty days out there, you mean. He pointed up, to pale blue skies shimmering outside the high windows. —In here, it will be as long as I need it to be.

  —All right.

  —I am compelled to caution you: your body will change. Your mind will change. And there will be pain.

  —I’m a woman. There always is.

  5

  Outside the house, days have come and gone. Months have bled away. Within these walls, the universe pauses to watch.

  In the undiscovered country of my torso, from out the limitless valleys of my most intimate self, another monster emerges, another child of the carnelevare, horns and hooves slicing through skin and muscle and bone and capillaries. By my side, The Grand struggles, but I do not lessen my grip. Massive clawed hands clutch at my slick thighs, hoisting its heavy furred body up and out and into a room so spattered by my blood that I cannot tell where my body ends and where the house begins, except there is no beginning and ending, it is all one and the same, an ouroboros of continual birth. And the monster cleans its bull-shaped face against my stomach and licks my breasts, and crawls away, far into the house, and something else begins to emerge from my body, worse or better I cannot tell. This is the sixth carnelevare, the great removing and raising of the flesh, the coming of a god so old it does not remember its name, and with it all its attendants beautiful and hideous, bursting forth from every orifice of my flesh to celebrate the mystery of all mysteries.

  The floor beneath me shudders beneath my sudden burgeoning weight, and I hear the crackling of tree limbs, the cracking of bones. The dislocation of my jaw, the colossal clang of bells. Vastness pours out of me like an ocean. And the backwash of darkness rolls over my mind like a breaking wheel, and I float in the spirals of those faded painted galaxies of my childhood, holding my great-great-great-great grandmother’s slender hand. Who lives around all those stars, can they see us, what are their names, my nine-year-old self asks her as the ghost of my mother daubs specks of gold and silver paint across the fathomless blue, and my grandmother replies, I am the only human in the world who will ever know.

  Together we look up, and up, and up, and from our starry perch we see the deep woods of all the worlds, the labyrinths and groves, we see the satyrs and stags and bulls and the wolves and women and men. Masked and naked, they dance and contort around frightened fires, they chant their prayers and pleas into the shadowed cracks of the world, they laugh and crash together in god-fevered horror and cry out as the sparks of their devotion float up and wink out with their ecstasy. They gyre together and pull apart transformed, endless variations of monstrosities kaleidoscoping out of their frenzied couplings. And I am the night, and out of the night and the woods their god comes to them, into them, into her, in the strike of lightning and the shud
dering of the earth, in the terminal vastation of his song.

  —Close your eyes, I whisper.

  —Never.

  I sigh, and the fires wink out one by one. I sink back down to the floor, to a room filled with clear light and the silk rattle of morning through the tree’s wintery bones.

  I force my sticky eyelids open. My body feels empty, still. I blink, and the ceiling swims in a thin wash of red. I can’t tell if I’m dead or alive. I’m not breathing, and I cannot feel the beating of my heart. There is no pain, I realize in shock: the complete absence of such an all-consuming presence makes me light, free. I roll slightly, slowly, and sit up. I am covered head to toe in blood, and I am whole. My right hand holds the mangled, broken wrist of a woman’s severed arm, the grip so tight and deep beneath her flesh that I cannot see my fingertips. Crimson-brown gobs of placenta and blood cover every inch of our joined skin. Under the drying gore, I recognize The Grand’s flower-carved wedding ring. I leave the ring on the couch, with the arm.

  Outside, gossamer trails of night-blue mist waft through the backyard like torn strands of the Milky Way, sparking with millions of little pinpricks of pure white light. They drift and catch on the sleeping faces of the women and men pulled from their neighboring homes in the carnelevare’s orgiastic wake, settle into their hair and over their bare tangled limbs, crash and break apart against tall pine trees and dissipate with the rising sun. A thread of it trails against my bare leg, disappearing beneath the triangle of matted hair. The effluvium of a nameless carnival as it blew in and out of town. I gently pull it out and let it float away.

  At the edge of the yard, legs tucked under thighs white and hard as marble, the small body of a woman with a missing left arm rests under a large tree. I walk over, and kneel before The Grand. She looks no older than me. Her pale green eyes are open, wide, blank. They stare through and beyond me, up into the sky. Her face is raised and lips are parted, as if being forced to drink from a bottomless cup. Or perhaps, as if about to speak a name.

  6

  A blood-orange sun was sinking slowly into the edges of my city’s wide electric edges, and I raised my worshiping hands and face like a grateful Akhenaton into its early autumn heat. I had lost a month, and so much more. It was time to go home, all the way home. Behind me, just within the shadows of the open warehouse doors, behind the boundary he could not see or cross, the barker stood, hesitant.

  —What does it feel like? he asked.

  —This? I turned, hand on my stomach, already slightly curved.

  —That. All of it, the god and the power and the mysteries, folded into something so small and insignificant as you. To be so full. And, the sun. The weight of the air on your body. The pleasure of bearing so much pain. Being a part of the world, while knowing you’re not really a part of anything at all.

  —I couldn’t tell you. I don’t have any answers.

  He stared at me, waiting, disappointed yet still expectant; and then his eyes glazed. I could see him moving beyond me, his mind traveling to that invisible realm beyond the carnelevare’s end, where all questions are answered, all hunger sated, where all the endless pleasurable and terrifying variations of the chase dwindle down to a dead and desiccated end.

  —Do you really want to know?

  He looked up into the sky, then smiled his yellow-teethed grin.

  —No.

  The Last, Clean, Bright Summer

  This Journal Belongs To:

  Hailie

  Tacoma, June 15th

  I’m writing this in the car. Mom cried again this morning when we left the house. Everything was spotless and put away just like we were going on a vacation for a little while, even though we’re not coming back until late fall. She’d been cleaning like crazy since last year, like literally starting on my fourteenth birthday. Dad says she’s nesting, because when we come back home, it’ll be with a new baby brother, and maybe a sister too. Which totally shocked me, because I didn’t even know she was pregnant. There were so many things she wanted to take, but Dad wouldn’t rent one of those big RV’s, and everything had to fit in our crappy old VW camper instead. So she just made everything look super neat and nice. I swear, I did more laundry and dishes in the last month than in the last five years! Anyway, so we packed two suitcases and one large backpack each, and got rid of most of the food that might spoil, except for what we’re taking (which is currently sitting in paper bags and boxes next to me on the back seat, and all around my feet), and that’s it. We pulled out of the driveway early this morning, before it was really light, and I turned around and watch my little yellow house disappear. Last night Dad went out into the backyard with Abby, our dog, to the spot in the back where Alex was. That was the only time I cried.

  And now we’re on our way down the freeway to Olympia. Dad isn’t taking the longer scenic way around the peninsula, but it’ll still be a couple of days before we get to the town (which has almost NO internet access, of course), so I brought this journal (even though I’m totally lazy about writing in it) and a couple books. We’re going to Oceanside for a humungous family reunion—I was born there, and so was my mom. My parents moved away when I was born, but we used to go back every summer until five years ago, when my younger brother died and my mom said she couldn’t do it anymore, at least for a while. I remember we stayed at a really cute cottage inland from Oceanside, a kind of suburban area called the Dunes, where my mother’s aunt used to live. She would babysit us while my parents went to the parties—we were always too young to go. I remember it was all shiny wood, and Great Auntie had two huge trunks, one filled with puzzles, and one filled with the most beautiful dolls. And if you stood in the road outside her driveway, you could see past the houses and scrubby trees all the way to the ocean, even though it was almost a mile away. That’s how flat it is. That’s why the reunion is held there, Dad says, because of the strong tides and the flat beach. Mom doesn’t like to talk very much about it. I know she’s never liked the reunions, but I’m kind of looking forward to it. I just hope there’ll be some interesting boys in town.

  Aberdeen, June 16th

  This town is super creepy, but kind of cool in that weird way. Mom says all the geometry of the architecture here is wrong, and it makes everyone depressed. I have no idea what that means. We stayed the night in a motel just off the highway, and I kept waking up to all the traffic sounds. So, after Mom and Dad were asleep for a while, I got dressed and snuck outside. We were the only ones checked in, and all the other windows were dark. I could see the highway from the balcony, all the lights of the trucks and cars. I just stood there in the dark for a while, listening to the sound of all those cars, watching the red lights stream constantly away.

  And then I saw them. I don’t know where they came from, but it was like all of a sudden they were just there, standing under the bright yellow parking lot lights. It was two faceless men, although I could barely tell. They were naked except for very tall black top hats, with very shimmery pale skin, all scales, I think, or maybe skin like an alligator. I was so shocked I almost peed my pants! I just stood there frozen, and my skin got all hot and cold like it does when you’re so frightened you can’t move. They stood there too, looking up at me. I thought about running, but Dad had said that they weren’t dangerous. Just be respectful, and think of them as our summer observers, he had said. Just let them watch us, and we’ll all get along just fine. And then they started walking very slowly and gracefully across the parking lot, and I don’t know why I did this, but I waved, in a very slow and dignified arc. And they both waved back! I was so happy. And then they disappeared, and I stood there a while longer, watching the cars’ lights twinkling and all the stars rush past me overhead. It was a pretty good night.

  This morning before we left Aberdeen, we had breakfast at the restaurant downtown that we used to go to all the time when we came down here, in the old brick building near the factories Dad would visit as part of his job. We all had that awesome french toast, just like we used t
o, and Mom asked the cook for his secret recipe, and he said no, just like he used to. And then they got in a fight, and Mom was all like, I don’t know why you won’t give it to me since we’re probably the last customers you’ll have all summer, and he was all like, well, summer’s not over yet and besides, in the fall I’m heading down to South America and taking my recipe with me, and then she was all, it’s not South America anymore, you idiot, who do you think is left down there who eats french toast, and then she ran off to the bathroom. The cook grew super angry and quiet, and then my dad took him aside, probably to apologize and tell him Mom’s all hormonal and everyone down in Obsidia will totally love his secret french toast.

  Mom needs to chill out. She explained what’s going to happen at the reunion, that we have to dance around some big-ass dying sea creature in some ancient tribal ceremony to honor our ancestors, and throw some spears into it to “defeat” it, and it’s totally not going to be hard at all. It sounds stupid and completely lame.

  The Dunes, Oceanside, June 23rd

  We’re at the cottage now. It’s been kind of a strange couple of days. I’m kind of bored and anxious and I don’t know. I guess just it’s weird to feel like you’re on summer vacation when something so incredible and important is going to happen and you finally get to take part. Mom and Dad are in the town on a dinner date, and this is the first chance I’ve really had to myself. We got to Oceanside on the 16th. It’s straight up the coast from Ocean Shores, but it’s a long drive, and the highway gives out to dirt roads and logging roads after a while, and those are a bit hard to find. There were less cars, though. People up here are like us, they’re relatives, part of the family or they’re company people like Dad who are cool about everything and stay out of our way. We didn’t stop at Ocean Shores, even though I wanted to, but Dad said it was off limits because they’d already done their ceremony and totally fucked it up (his swear word, not mine!) and the town was a total mess. We did stop at this really awesome beach further up the coast, just outside this huge area of abandoned quarry pits. It’s hard to describe how the ocean was there. I mean, there were these waves that were so high and grey and hard, you could feel the beach quake when they crashed down, and they sounded like thunder. They would rise up in the air, and just hang there like they were alive, like they were waiting. For what, I don’t know. All the sand was pure black, just like in parts of Hawaii, and we found a skeleton of some huge whale thing that was about as long as our old neighborhood road. Dad kept calling it a kraken, which was hilarious. Mom got pretty excited when she saw it, and took all kinds of pictures and had us all pose next to the skull. I sat in the eye socket. Yeah, it was kind of neat! I was just happy to see Mom so happy. It was sunny and warm out, and there were gulls everywhere and the funniest looking crabs.