The Song of the Underground

by Wendy Reakes

  She went to a partition in the shelves covering the walls of her office. She pulled a lever and a small table rolled out. Within the recess was a machine. The Sous Llyndum scientists had made it to her specifications, to enable her to store the city’s data without using precious parchment. It was a remarkable accomplishment, considering their limited recourses.

  When Byron threw some switches, a fan started to rotate slowly at the side. It began to hiss and turn as the cogs and gears churned along with it. A viewer came out from the machine. It resembled a pair of binoculars made of brass and ebony, similar to the ones her father had once owned.

  A small shelf was pulled out below the table, which acted as a seat for the user. She sat upon it and rested her hands on the metal keys of the keyboard on the table. The keyboard had been specifically designed by Byron. She’d described the organ she had once seen as a girl, during a royal ceremony held at St Paul’s Cathedral. At Byron’s recommendation, the makers of the machine had formed two brass and black metal keyboards on two levels; one with numbers and symbols and the other with one-hundred-and-five letters that were used to graph and record data. The letters were a compilation of English and Arabic inspired by one of the forefathers who had first resided in the city, Christian Ravishimself, the German orientalist and theologian.

  Byron moved her face forward and peered through the viewer. Her fingers hovered over the keys and she began to play, as the organist had played, by memory of touch. Inside the viewer, letters formed. Byron had worked alongside the designers of the machine when they had invented an illusion of a floating sheet of parchment onto which words formed themselves from the keys she played so proficiently. There Byron recorded the words of the king from the meeting earlier, as was her duty.

  The word of the king was sacred to Byron. King Kite was not only a great ruler, but he was also a scholar. It was he who had initiated the idea of recording his actions, so that he might one day bequeath it to his heir as an order of practice for ruling the kingdom of Sous Llyndum. That single action alone offered such foresight and imagination, no one could fail to respect the man who brought a modern slant to a city, still caught in the image of the old world.

  Byron heard a gentle tap on the door. ‘What is it?” She clucked her tongue, annoyed for being disturbed.

  “It is I.”

  The voice was gentle and familiar. Byron turned and watched the girl step into the room. “Your father has been asking about you. I can’t keep lying to protect him from your wild antics.”

  Wren ran across the room and wrapped her arms around Byron’s neck. She kissed her cheek where the scars marred her sublime, unwrinkled skin. Out of habit, Byron brought her hand up and placed it over her cheek. She used her other hand to slap Wren on the backside. “You know I don’t like you doing that.” She pulled some locks of hair over the side of her face.

  Wren frowned and rubbed her behind. “Oh, dearest Byron. I could not bear to see you without those lines upon your face. Who would you be? What would I make of you? You would be a stranger to me, would you not?”

  Byron pushed the two keyboards back into the machine. She turned her back to prevent Wren from seeing her faint smile. “What are you up to now, girl?” Byron pulled a lever and the machine stopped hissing. Another lever next to it operated the lights and the inner workings of the machine. The sound of churning wheels and cogs stopped and the room became silent again, apart from the background noises of the city outside.

  “Hmm? Well, while we’re on the subject of strangers...”

  Byron pursed her lips. “Were we?” She looked at the vaulted ceiling above them, where stone arches mingled with beams of wood, bolted with ornate metal clasps.

  Wren offered a nervous smile. “Yes...we were talking about how...”

  “Yes, yes...” Byron was used to Wren trying to manipulative her. “How I would be a stranger to you, if it were not for the perfect lines etched all over my perfect face.”

  “Well...yes.”

  Byron noticed something different about the girl. She couldn’t put her finger on it. She looked…different! There was something going on. Something she wouldn’t like.

  Byron had known Wren from the moment she was born, because she was the one to bring her, single-handedly, into the world. Her mother, Rosella, herself practically a child, had been prevented by the king from being touched by anyone, other than the Bird Catcher. Rosella had given birth in the market place, where all the babies were born. The people had come from their homes and witnessed the act, as they witnessed all the births in Sous Llyndum. They had averted their gaze, turning their eyes from the mother lying on a bed of fine white linen draped over a cushioned platform. And as her screams and that of the newly born infant filled the colossal space within the cavernous city, and with their eyes half-closed, the people murmured the name of the child, thus drawing it into their world from the blessed womb of its mother.

  Byron had been the only one who witnessed Wren’s birth with her own eyes. She placed the baby into the arms of Rosella whom, after bestowing a smile upon the face of her newborn, succumbed to a natural death. Her breath expired with choking sounds reverberating around the auditorium and the people, without looking and hearing the cries of the baby, knew that Rosella had been taken from the king in the most savage of ways. From there, the heartbroken king commanded her body to be taken to Highgate, where her bones could be concealed from the upsiders under the statue of a sleeping angel.

  “So, Wren, tell me why you have come to see me. Spit it out, girl.”

  “Dearest Byron, I have a stranger. He is here...in the city.” She defiantly thrust her chin forward, giving Byron a look that could cool the heat of Damnation itself. “...and I want to keep him.”

  Then the rain came.

  End of Part 1

  Part 2 - Chapter 18

  Mark’s sleep was disturbed by the sound of rain. He could smell it. That unmistakable sense of cleansing; the cleansing of mind and body; the cleansing of the sweat and the dust from the streets; and the cleansing of the air until it was once more left pure, as God intended. He opened his eyes and for a moment could hardly gather his thoughts. He was in New York City, waking up in his apartment in the meat packing district. Any moment now, his eyes would focus and he would see a room with an unmade bed in the centre of his loft. It was a four-poster, given to him by Mrs. Cartwright as a keepsake for their blissful few years together.

  No, wait. He wasn’t in New York. He was in a subterranean city beneath London, England. He’d met a girl, a beautiful girl with a bird name to match his own. He’d been bitten by a snake. She had swept him away on a tide of fresh air, traveling atop a board contraption that sped along rails of steel…

  He lifted his shoulder from the rocking chair where the wings of a bird supported his head. And in front of him, through an archway open to the elements of the city, rain fell in heavy droplets like an English summer storm. He shook his head as he lifted himself off the chair. He rotated his shoulder to get the blood flowing through the muscles on his back, then he took two paces forward and stepped out onto the balcony.

  There, falling upon the underground city was rainfall, pure and simple. It crashed to the floor like splinters of broken glass and below, where the canals ran though the streets, it hit the water as if the surface were being stabbed by three-inch needles.

  Mark turned to look at the other buildings as they became pounded by the rain. The water was cleaning off the dust and it was collecting in the green coloured drainpipes caging the walls. He fixed his eyes on one, and imagined the water running along to the left, until he saw it spout off the end, down to another running to the right, and then back again, like a child’s game with silver ball bearings running along ridges to the bottom. And at the end, the water reached the final spout and cascaded into the canal below the egg-shell houses.

  As he became soaked, he could smell his own sweat, feeling as if he had just showered without soap. The rain dripped from his nose
and eyelashes, and streams ran down his cheeks to his chin where the water fell onto the stone of the balcony’s floor.

  He looked out to the view of the city. There were people lapping up the rain. They looked like street urchins with wealth. The men dressed in the same Victorian homespun garb of colorless shirts, waistcoats and britches, and the women wearing long dresses like Wren’s. But they all had something else about them; necklaces, belts, bangles and headdresses, single adornments, making their clothes appear in-vogue. He watched the smattering of people turn and dance, laughing, and lapping up the water falling upon them, turning and turning with their grateful arms outstretched, taking the streams of rain into their open mouths.

  Chapter 19

  Ben Mason came to a halt alongside the colonel and his men, now at ease in a random formation with their eyes cast front, taking in a scene of such wonder, that the conflict of their normal biased thinking must have suddenly made them forget why they were there. Ben stepped forward one pace, slow and unsure, looking across the vast city where the cavernous ceiling held an upturned landscape with rain falling in a steady stream of droplets, washing the city below like a giant hosepipe watering a garden. No one else existed at that moment. He was alone, watching a movie play out or a film of fantasy. “It’s impossible.”

  A voice woke him from his stupor. “They re-cycle everything. Even the damn water.” Ben turned to look at the colonel standing at his side. He too regarded the city below, where his eyes never flickered. But...Ben saw greed in them. Nothing made sense at that moment, Ben reasoned as he turned away from the man who made him wonder what his intentions were in the scheme of things.

  The colonel pointed upwards. It was an unnatural movement from one so rigid and formal. Ben followed the direction of his finger, which pointed to distant boxes affixed to the ceiling of the cavern. Ben squinted. There were thousands of them, side-by-side. They were hard to see as they blended with the grey rock, but as his eyes focused on one, he tried to comprehend what they were.

  “They are condensers of sorts,” the colonel said. “It’s pretty simple if you consider the workings of a cloud. The heat rises from the city, mostly from the large quantities of steam they use to keep it functioning, like the boats you can see on the canal down there. The steam is collected in the condensers, filtered, cooled and then turned back to water. When they are full, they open and release the water so that the process may start again.” The colonel gave a short chuckle. “It gives a whole new meaning to the word re-cycle. Humans have got nothing on the vermin down here.”

  Ben was shocked by the term. It gave him a whole new picture as far as the colonel was concerned. “Vermin?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he turned to his men behind him, the sharp action making the soldiers rapidly form a line with their eyes turned upwards, looking nowhere. “All right, men. You’ve had your first glimpse of Sous Llyndum. Get over it and let’s get this mission started. You have your orders. Do not deviate in any way. The success of this mission depends on you keeping your heads. Is that understood?”

  They responded by banging their heels together. The sound was like one sharp click. It was precise, inaudible to anyone else, but clearly demonstrating their comprehension of the colonel’s orders…and their loyalty.

  As the rain continued to fall, the regiment changed. The soldiers took their rucksacks from their backs and placed them on the ground. With fast and efficient motions, they unhooked the brass buttons of their uniforms and removed their red jackets. They turned the coats inwards and donned them once more, fastening them to their necks under their chins, like collarless jackets. The fabric was like army camouflage, but it was brown and black; no customary green.

  Ben was impressed as he watched them change their appearance from regiment to soldiers at war, getting down and dirty. They stooped to one knee, removed brown berets from their rucksacks and placed them on their shaven heads, then they took arms already holstered and buckled and belted them around their waists, concealing them under their jackets. They zipped up their sacks, threw them once more over their shoulders and went to the side of the dock. There they stood to attention, just as the rain stopped.

  Chapter 20

  Byron, at the window of her stateroom, had Wren at her side. They were sheltered from the rain as it fell outside the palace, cleaning the landscape of the city with its refreshing and cooling spray. Byron was tall and regal next to the princess’s slight and petite frame. The Bird Catcher had always valued her height. It gave her an edge over the people underground whose average height was only five-foot-six.

  She smoothed the tight sleeves of her garments as if she were brushing away a chill. “Who is this stranger?”

  Wren responded like a little girl, so grateful was she for Byron’s attention. She spoke softly when she answered. “I met him at the cemetery. He is from upside.”

  Byron's lips thinned as she gazed across the landscape. “You know the law. You may not bring anyone here, not without mine or the king’s permission. It is rare to allow it. We have no choice to accept the Jellalabad, but strangers…” she cast a familiar look at the princess. “Strangers are forbidden. You know that.”

  “Yes, but I could not help it.”

  “Could not or would not?” Byron was sharp with her. Too sharp! But discipline had to be maintained.

  “I love him.”

  “Love! What is that? You’re a child. How could you know about such things?”

  “It is a feeling. The English book says…”

  “Enough! I should never have agreed to you taking those books from your brother. Books mean trouble. Now, see what has happened here. Love! Hah!”

  “But I can still feel it. I don’t know what it means. I just know that I want to lie with him…alone in my bed.”

  Byron turned and grabbed her by the arm. Wren visibly winced at the strength of her hold and Byron was instantly remorseful.

  Nevertheless, “Listen to me, girl. You must stop this talk. Your father will not do well by it. You must learn to hold your tongue. Do you understand?”

  “Yes…yes, I understand.”

  Suddenly the rain stopped.

  Byron released her hold. Wren was crying with tears to match the droplets of rain “What am I to do, dearest Byron?”

  Byron inhaled and closed her eyes as she let the aftereffects of the cleansing rain to engulf her being. “I never tire of that smell…of that feeling…”

  Wren stepped to the edge of the balcony. She was straining her eyes, focusing on Cannes familiar abode. It was the first of the dwellings from the west side, at the top, where he often sat scrutinizing the comings and goings of the people on the dock. Byron spotted a minute figure standing on Cannes’ balcony, resting against the balustrade with his head bowed. It was surely him. Wren’s stranger. Then, as her gaze moved to the landing at the entrance to the city, she spotted a flash of bright red.

  When Wren whispered, “Byron, the Jellalabad are here. They have arrived,” she already knew.

  Chapter 21

  It was a fanfare. There were boats, ten or twelve, moving down the canal towards the dock. They were the strangest of contraptions, like canoes propelled with steam. The procession moved forward with the steam rising from their tubes into the sky…no not sky…there was no sky, more like expiring to the ceiling of that most obscure of places; a city below ground, of all the crazy things! Ben could hardly make sense of his thoughts as he stood on the dock, flanked by Barnes’ soldiers as they waited for what could potentially be an onslaught of white-skinned warmongers surging towards them in floating tanks.

  Next to him, the colonel stood to attention in his military red. Ben addressed him through the side of his mouth, without taking his gaze from the armada sailing to the dock. “Is this a battle about to begin? I wouldn’t mind a gun myself…if you have a spare…not that I’d know how to use the damn thing.”

  The colonel kept his eyes front. His men were on both sides of the dock, which jutted
out from a tunnel that had channeled its way through rock. “You won’t need a gun.” It was an encouraging response as far as Ben was concerned.

  He focused on a boat behind the ones that had already sailed past the dock. It was a larger steamboat than the rest. The three tubes, billowing steam, gleamed in the light from the lanterns dotted around the city, and at the front of the canoe a woman stood tall and elegant next to a girl, smaller and bustier than the first. The taller of the two was clearly a woman of authority judging by the way she held herself. She was dressed in a long dress of emerald green and subdued blues, like a peacock, with her dress clinging to her curves like a second skin. Her hair was braided into dreadlocks entwined with coloured braids and feathers, cascading over one shoulder and down her back like a cockerel’s plume.

  “If we don’t need weapons, why have your men got theirs, and why are they dressed like they just landed in Vietnam?”