by Allyson Bird
Carcosa:
Cassilda could make a door of anything. Air, earth, water, starlight. She could cut into that which exists and turn it into that which should never be. She could move bricks and grass with equal ease; she could partition a pocket into This World and That World, and walk between. She marked the worlds as she did her people, with the Sign only she and they could see, could feel. Each rotted its way down to the marrow.
At the end of the world, the most extreme opposite point of the beginning she had rewritten, Cassilda emerged cold and tired. She should not have been either, and feared (was that the prickling sensation down her spine?) that she was growing weak, that she would not accomplish her task. This was nonsense raising its head—this was the King in tatters laughing at her from the shadows. She hushed him and walked into the world.
This world had been unmade. Cassilda paused for an uncertain moment, having not expected this—the end of the world did not always mean the end, after all. People found a way, life found a way, but here, the city in the distance rose in a cloud of ash, reminiscent of her last glimpse of Carcosa. Lifting her gaze to the sky, she confirmed there was but one sun, and though thick clouds occluded it, it was alone as was she. A gray plain stretched into a gray horizon, the city a smoldering gray lump in the center of it all.
Cassilda walked, toward the city so that she might see for herself. Had everyone gone? Had she so completely and successfully put things to rights that humanity had—Had consumed itself? Would that they were that clever; humanity always needed a nudge toward the edge.
But now, the city echoed with her steps even as she approached still barefoot. It was important to walk, to hold this form and feel the ground beneath her feet. How unlike Carcosa in every way: solid and sure though horrors had been visited upon it. Every intentional step told her she was no longer in Carcosa and her body rejoiced.
Still, that prickle moved down her spine, and she turned in a slow circle, looking for the King. For anyone who might be near. The gray plain behind her stood empty, dust slithering over her footprints to erase all trace, but when she neared the city and its broken, skeletal buildings, the dust proved less efficient in its work. Within the debris, she saw the footprints of others, and these she followed, intent on the path of prints that showed bare feet as her own.
Within the labyrinthine streets, a low wind swept the grime into the air, a long scoop up from the pavement and into the gray air, so that it might become more laden with the filth of a vanished people—the air saturated to the point where it would become dust itself, so that none might breathe. Cassilda took a deep breath and exhaled a wind of her own, to push the dust back, to clear the path of prints she followed.
In the distance, she spied a shadow, the worn-thin tail of a skirt flicking around the corner of a building. She did not call out, but ran, bare feet pressing into the prints that had come before. Even now she did not force herself beyond human limits; she kept to this body, enjoying the way the heart pumped, the way the muscles warmed despite the chill of the day. The ground beneath her feet was solid even now, her legs taking long bites as she closed the space between herself and the other.
Around the corner, Cassilda found the person within reach and without thinking, reached. There was no sense in hesitating, not when she had so many people to tell.
The world stuttered, the woman turned wearing Cassilda’s own face. No masks here, and Cassilda had not worn one for longer than she could count. (She counted in her heart, every beat of that mortal thing inside of her telling her exactly how long it had been, exactly when the mask had last closed over her, carried her away, made her what she was only upon the cursed pages of that cursed book.) Her fingers closed into the tatters of the dress the other her wore, because to hold the shoulder beneath was to feel the hard line of bone beneath the taut skin. This other her stared at her with eyes that had seen too much, eyes that had endured this place. Eyes that, in the end, reflected the Yellow Sign.
“No.”
They spoke the word together and Cassilda’s knees buckled as the world seemed to tip out from under her, from under them. The idea that this woman—that she—had been left here, stranded, abandoned at the end of all things, was incomprehensible. Cassilda felt the weight of every Sign she had placed and held within her hands every single life she had bound. Every soul cried out that it had been for naught, that every step and every beginning led to this desolate place where Cassilda alone did roam. And how many times had it been this outcome—her mortal, traitor heart counted this too, so Cassilda did what she always did.
She turned away, opened a door in the ashen air of the world, and tried again.
Some Stranger’s Hand:
She broke through a doorway; on the other side, Paris, France and an apartment on the rue Beautreillis. A man sat slouched in a chair, frowning over a notebook, a bottle of scotch by his side, a clutter of books on the floor. She moved closer; he blinked and offered a smile.
His hair was long and untidy, his blue eyes clouded dark and bleary with drink. His presence was both majestic and fragile and she went to him, her story liquid on her lips and ready to flow. But crouched at his side, she paused, for this man, this poet, held her gaze like no other. He was a king in his own right, a king of words and lizards, but not a King, not her King. Would that she could erase everything and make him so.
“’If the doors of perception were cleansed,’” he said. “‘Every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.’ Aldous Huxley wrote that. Have you read him?”
She shook her head, suddenly afraid to speak.
“You should.”
He laughed, took a drink from his bottle. “That’s all we’re trying to do, all of us, break through the doors of perception. See everything, see the other side.”
“No,” she said. “The other side is broken and crumbling and you, you are not of that world.”
“We’re all of that world eventually.”
She grabbed his forearm. “No. Promise me you’ll never try to go there.” He would be found by another woman; he would be cold and still and marked by this world and not the Sign. It was another wound within her, that she could not save everyone, everything.
He smiled and took another drink as answer. She pressed a kiss to his hand and then his lips, tasting of his pain and his power. She shuffled through the books, wasn’t surprised by what she found. She pressed it into his hand. “This is not the truth,” she said and dared say no more.
He flipped through the pages, ripped one free, and tore it in half with his teeth. He chewed, chased it down with another pull from his bottle, offered the rest to her. The paper melted in her mouth, the lies drowning in her saliva and leaving a frisson of warmth behind. He tore another page and another and another, until nothing was left of the book but its binding. That, he tossed out an open window.
“Truth is man’s creation,” he said. “Real truth can’t be written.”
Her story danced across her tongue and she sensed, if spoken, the words would become his salvation as surely as they would become hers, but she refused to let them emerge. This man was already marked. She couldn’t see a sign, but she felt the dark and terrible beauty of its presence. He was not meant for Carcosa, not meant for this world. She rose slowly, and he pressed her hands between his, flooding her body with the current of his intensity.
“Stay,” he said. “Stay with me.”
She stayed. For a little while, not long enough, but she stayed with him, breathing him in, breathing herself into him.
The Scholar, Chapter II:
She whispers the truth into the scholar’s sleeping ears. He’s drunk on whiskey and words, a deeper sleep than sleep alone, but she whispers nonetheless. Will his mind remember this when she repeats the tale? Because she will, she must.
My Queen, he calls her. His devotion will keep him faithful, will keep him anchored into this world, will allow him to hear the truth without the brand appearing on his skin. (And if not, the tattered
part of her whispers. If not? There are doorways and other worlds. Always.)
The scholar, while greatly respected in his field, is not a man whose name is known by the greater world—not yet—but when he tells her tale, he will be believed. She has seen how this world works and knows that men like him—tall, commanding, self-possessed, and in positions of authority—are believed, often without question or complaint.
She checks his flesh for the Yellow Sign after these night-whispers, but it hasn’t appeared yet. She nudges his shoulder, impatient to have it over and done, damn the Sign’s possibility, damn everything, damn even the future of her beloved Carcosa. He mutters something unintelligible, doesn’t wake.
She slips from the bed and stands at the window. The moon hangs heavy in the sky, and she closes her eyes, remembering the glint of two suns on the lakes. A sound breaks the night and she scans the darkness. Is someone waiting there, someone she once marked? Have they finally given up?
They will never give up, but neither will she.
“Wake up, damn you,” she says, but he doesn’t wake and she watches the moon and cuts half-circles in her palms. Inside, she feels the other Cassilda stir, the one created. That woman—mad, deluded creature that she is—wants to peel off this Cassilda’s skin, to unmask, and take her place.
Will a day come when she forgets which is the fiction and which the truth? When she forgets the doorways that lead out and away? She tells herself that you can’t forget who you are, who you’re meant to be, but knows it isn’t true because the King sits on his crumbling throne, ruling his damned lands. Lands that were once hers, lands he pursues her across and beyond.
She unclenches her fists. The wounds gape, revealing black stars before they close. She is strong, she has always been strong, but she’s tired. Tired of running, of trying, of failing and falling apart. How many times will she have to tell her story before it erases the lies?
She glances at the man in his tousled sheets. The modicum of hope inside her rests heavy; best not to hold too tightly to such things. Still, she holds on.
His Explorer’s Heart:
Cassilda entered through his explorer’s heart. Among the materials of the world, she ranked hearts as easier than most. The muscle in motion was easily convinced to leap, to skip into stronger beat. Hearts of men had made her wary, but this man was unique, stripped of his manhood before he was ten. Most regarded him as having been made harmless through this action, but Cassilda knew otherwise. This man meant to explore the world—what was more dangerous than knowledge of the world?—and she meant for him to carry her Sign across all the waters, into all the lands. He was an admiral, but first he was a man who loved stories and knowledge and language. He called her Tianfei, celestial consort, and Cassilda could not say he was wrong.
In the lamplight of his work room, Zheng He’s hands moved over the stone tablet he carved. History would say another had carved it, a servant, a slave, but Cassilda knew better than most the many ways in which recorded history could be mistaken. The motion of his hands across the stone drew her into a sense of calm she had never known. It was alien, this place in which she floated. Calm and assured as he carved the stone with three languages.
He made a list of offerings made to Allah and others, and between each character paused for Cassilda to tell more of her story. He wrote of gold and incense, of silks and jeweled banners; she spoke of fictions and betrayals. He wrote of lotus flowers and scented oils (Cassilda could almost feel them both on her fingertips and could see in his eyes the way he wished to spread his own fingers across her lips, her thighs; being a eunuch, he had come to take pleasure in the simplest of things, fingers partaking what the rest of his body could not.); she spoke of kings and their wordsmiths, and how her voice had been taken, silenced the way his own body had.
Within every line he carved, Cassilda poured the truth of her story, and the stone swallowed it as a sponge would water. Should any touch the stone, they would know, they would carry the truth of her beyond this lamp-lit room. Zheng He invoked the blessings of Hindu deities into the stone, for a peaceful world, and Cassilda whispered truths, that peace was never really peace—even the familiar was saturated with duplicity.
They carried the stone onto his ship and Cassilda bid him go without her, though in the end it was as if he had opened a door within her own heart, for when he asked her to join him upon the voyage, to witness the stone set upon a distant shore, she could not say no. For the first time, she was uncertain what it was that moved inside her; the need to see her word carried across the world, or the need to see him do it.
She had not marked him, did not want to mark him, but knew in the end she would. She shared his cabin the long journey through, this being his third across strange waters. She kneeled on the land where he placed the stone, and kissed its salty, carved edge, cautious of the way her truths threatened to overflow it. She did not want to leave it here, alone on the edge of a place she did not know. But she did leave, the story within the stone reaching for her even as the ship moved further away.
Cassilda made five more voyages with Zheng He, infusing stones every step of the way. Zheng He smiled at her, and she did not know if it was with amusement or love and only when they prepared to lower his dead body into the ocean waters did she realize that one could also be the other.
Before they came for him, Cassilda sat alone, having unwrapped the linens that covered his throat. She did not expose his face, for she could not bear to look at his handsome face—only the neck of him, so as to lay her hands on either side as she told him for a final time, her story. Her truth. She spoke soft, but loud enough the ship around them quaked, every timber threatening to burst as they understood at long last what they had carried. Cassilda pressed her body into his, warming his dead skin beneath the linen wrapping him. It did not matter, she told herself as the symbol flooded from her body and into his; none would see and he could not go mad, not now. Even so, when she looked upon her work and smoothed the linen back into place, she feared what she had done to this man. There was still no time to doubt, none, so she gave him up to his men and they in turn gave him up to the waters he had so loved. His people would make for him a tomb on dry land, but it would be forever empty.
Beneath the salted sea and over the course of long, long years, the linen binding Zheng He dissolved, water and beasts eating away at his flesh, at his heart. It was the heart that at last spilled the truths Cassilda had told, swallowed even in death. His heart vomited through the water a strange cascade of topaz light, a light that called to a fisherman in a small boat. A fisherman who rowed over, peered into the unearthly glowing water, and drowned.
The Scholar, Now as Then:
The doorway opened into an auditorium: low lighting, long rows of curving seats, a spotlight, a man at a podium. With the sensation of a hand clutching her wrist still dancing across her skin, Cassilda sank into the nearest empty seat. For the moment, she didn’t care where she was, only that she was away.
(Breath on her neck, hand on her wrist, a smile of teeth and triumph, and the face, a face she knew—she always knew them, but it had been so long and her own surprise led to the pause that allowed the hand to grip—a face once filled with curiosity turned to rage and hate and worst of all, grim determination. There was something else, something even more horrible. Deep inside Nuru’s eyes, Cassilda saw that the woman was not mindless, not stripped clean of her previous self, only masked with a new purpose she could not fight, and an apology hovered in the swirling depths, even as her hand tightened and began to pull. Had the others been the same? Had she not seen it or not wanted to see it and would the seeing change anything at all?)
“No,” she whispered. No one paid her any attention; they were leaning ahead in their seats, listening, and the voice…she knew this speaker, this scholar, but he was gone. Gone. She’d watched him—Her fingers clenched on the seat’s arms; her fingernails tore the fabric.
His voice, rich and melodic, drew her in now as
it had drawn her in then. His words flowed—and so we see then how the events of the changing world, and his discomfiture with those changes, influenced his fiction—and Cassilda watched his mouth move, remembered the way he whispered, “My Queen.” This was wrong, he shouldn’t be here, she shouldn’t be here, but his voice held her in place. Here, then, she could pretend she was sitting in the auditorium for the first time, listening to him, deciding, ignorant of the truth to come.
When he finished speaking and the auditorium cleared, she rose from her seat. On the other side of the room, another woman stood as well. The woman glanced over both shoulders, wary, hesitating, and Cassilda saw her own face, her own determination.
She pressed a hand over her mouth. Was this a trick? Had she fallen back into Carcosa, fallen to wander endlessly through the cobblestone streets, her mind caught in what was as the buildings fell to ruin beside her and the black stars shone their dark light on her skin?
Was she this Cassilda or that Cassilda?
She pinched her arm, breaking the thought’s hold and answering her question. Loops of time, curving in, curving back. Doorways led; why shouldn’t they sometimes lead back, but was she seeing a future changed—or changeable—or a fixed past?
The once-Cassilda and the man stood together and Cassilda heard their voices, saw the way he bent his head in acknowledgement, saw the intensity of his eyes. Saw the once-Cassilda place her hand on his forearm, gullible in her naivety. It hurt to see her face like that, to remember how in that moment she was so certain he was hers, certain everything would be different because he knew the power of the written word, knew and accepted and feared it.
“Wait,” she shouted. The two continued speaking, yet there was a small flinch in the once-Cassilda’s shoulders, almost imperceptible but Cassilda knew her body, knew the movements and the gestures.
