Memoranda
Page 29
“Do I amuse you?” I asked.
“The spectacles,” she said, covering her mouth with her hand. “When they draw you in the newspaper at Wenau, they make you a fierce monster.”
I had to smile.
“You’re not, though, are you?” she said quietly.
“If only you knew, my dear,” I said.
“Do you remember the river?” she asked.
I nodded. “Was it four years ago?”
“Six,” she said. “I was seven then.”
“Very good,” I told her, and then didn’t know what else to say.
“Those boys were frightened of you. The one with the hat is my brother, Caine. The other one is our friend, Remmel. My name is Emilia.” She held her hand out to me.
Those long fingers, that thin arm, looked too delicate for me to touch. I bowed slightly instead, and said, “Misrix.”
“I’ve come to tell you that not everyone in Wenau is afraid of you. Many have read the books of Cley and know that you helped him and us. Many don’t believe the Physiognomist and think you are a wild animal. Those in the church say you are the spirit of evil,” she said as if performing a speech she had memorized.
“It is likely that they are all in some part correct,” I said.
“Because you pulled me from the river, I knew you were gentle. You will not hurt me, will you?” Her eyes went wide, and she lightly touched a locket that hung from a chain around her neck.
“That would never do,” I said. “You are my first guest. Would you like me to show you the ruins?”
“Yes,” she said.
I started walking, and she followed me. This was an opportunity I had long waited for—someone to whom I could explain the ruins. Throughout the long, lonely years, I had become a kind of archeologist, digging artifacts out of the chaos, researching the lives and lifestyles of its citizens, reading the histories in the library, poring over surviving documents from each of the ministries. Now that I had the chance to expound, I was tongue-tied by the youth and honesty of the only one ever interested in listening.
We had walked a hundred yards in silence, and I was beginning to sweat, when she said, “Can I touch your wings?”
“Of course,” I told her.
She came close to me and reached out her left index finger, running it along one bone and then down across the membrane.
“Not as smooth as I thought,” she said.
“Smooth is not my specialty,” I told her.
“Tell me about this place, Misrix,” she said.
So I began, and although she was only a child, I decided to be as honest with her as possible. “All of this you see around you,” I said, “all of this destruction, this coral mess, and the metal and human remains that lie amidst it, when added together, combine to tell a story. A great, grand story. A tragedy for sure, a cautionary tale, but a love story nonetheless …”
I showed her the laboratory with its miniature lighthouse that still projected the forms and sounds of songbirds, the only remaining complete statue of a miner, in blue spire, brought here from Anamasobia, those sections of remaining architecture that might give an idea of the original grandeur of the place, the electric elevator that once led to the Top of the City but now only traveled four floors, the underground passages, and the blasted shell of the false paradise. There was, of course, much more. She was a great listener, only speaking when she had a question that could not wait. I appreciated her silence, her focused attention, her mere presence.
I ended the tour after two hours in my room, where I house the Museum of the Ruins, my own natural history installation of those objects I believe to hold an integral part of the essence of the Well-Built City. We strolled up and down the rows, and I showed her the head of the mechanical gladiator, the old shudder cups, etc. When we came to the back row, I took down the core of the fruit of Paradise that Cley, himself, had eaten, and let her smell it.
“I see a beautiful garden surrounded by ice,” she said as I held the core up to her nose. For some reason, the look on her face almost made me weep.
From the museum, we went down the hall to the library, and I showed her the volumes and my writing desk with the pen in its holder and the pages from my previous night’s work neatly piled.
“What are you writing?” she asked.
“About Cley,” I said. “I’m trying to find him with words.”
“People who believed Cley’s writings in Wenau gathered money and sent an expedition a few months ago to the Beyond to also find him,” she said.
“A mistake,” I told her. “I wish them well, but I’m afraid what they will find there is death.”
“They took a lot of guns,” she said.
I could not help but laugh.
She was unfazed by my reaction. “Cley has become a hero for them,” she said.
“I wish them well,” I repeated.
Then she pointed to my desk, at the jeweled box I keep in the corner of it. It is fixed with red stones and fake gold—just a trinket, but something that I have always liked since finding it underground by the site of the false paradise.
“What is that for?” she asked.
“Nothing,” was the real answer, and I was going to give it to her, but at the last moment, I had an idea. After our tour through the ruins, she knew most everything about them, but I thought as long as there was some element of mystery here, she might return again.
“That box holds a powerful secret,” I told her, knowing by her obvious intelligence that she would be susceptible to wonder. “I’m not ready to show it to anyone,” I said. “I would have to know that person very well indeed.”
I thought she would ask me to open it for her, but she didn’t. All she said was, “I understand; I have a box like that at home, myself”
“And at home, they do not mind that you and your brother have run off to the ruins?” I asked.
She looked away from me, down one of the long aisles of the library, as she spoke. “We were supposed to be going to Latrobia to visit relatives. I made the boys follow me to the ruins by telling them they were cowards if they didn’t come.”
“How were you traveling?” I asked.
“On horseback. We had two horses—Caine and I on one and Remmel on the other. I know they have probably taken them and gone back to Wenau to tell my mother that I have become lunch for the demon,” she said.
“Come quickly,” I said. “We will easily beat them to the village.”
As it turned out, I flew her home. I cannot recount the details of that journey because as I now fly in my memory, I do not pass over the fields of Harakun, but instead, move at the speed of thought over the flat land of the Beyond. The beauty has me in its arms, and I am empty-handed, searching for Cley. Below, the wilderness is shaking off the spell of winter.
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Acknowledgments
I could not have written this novel without having read two books about mnemonics by Frances A. Yates—The Art of Memory and Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. These are truly incredible works of scholarship, and I recommend them to anyone with an imagination.
I also must thank the following individuals for their help and encouragement:
Bill Watkins, Kevin Quigley, Mike Gallagher, and Frank Keenan for reading and commenting on this manuscript in its various stages of creation.
Walter, Jean, Dylan, and Chelsea for their generous technical support.
Jennifer Brehl, editor of this book, who, amidst the baffling maze of memory, would not allow me to forget to remember.
About the Author
Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels Vanitas, The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, and The Shadow Year. His story collections are The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, and Crackpot Palace. Ford has published over one hundred short stories, which have appeared in numerous journals, magazines, an
d anthologies, from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction to The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. He is the recipient of the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Edgar Award, France’s Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, and Japan’s Hayakawa’s SF Magazine Reader’s Award.
Ford’s fiction has been translated into twenty languages. In addition to writing, he has been a professor of literature and writing for thirty years and has been a guest lecturer at the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, the Stone Coast MFA in Creative Writing Program, Richard Hugo House in Seattle, and the Antioch Writers’ Workshop. Ford lives in Ohio and currently teaches at Ohio Wesleyan University.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1999 by Jeffrey Ford
Cover design by Jamie Keenan
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9388-1
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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