Evriel took one shuddering breath, and then another. “I should very like to hear the rest of that ballad."
"I'll roust Asha—"
"Do you sing?” Evriel paused, flushing, and started again. “I'd like to hear you sing it. If you would."
Sayla gave her a long, measuring glance and shrugged. Straightening her shoulders she leaned back and began in a low, pure voice a song of a woman, beloved of the regent, who traveled the far domains. Yet only when she came to the backlands did she find a man she loved, and they married, rough country man and his lady wife.
Was it like that? It was not like that. She had not loved Japhesh at first sight, nor in anapestic tetrameter.
Sayla sang on, of how the backlands give fleetingly and take without regard, and so they took the lady's husband. She, wild with white fury, scorned the tumbling hills and set sail again on the sea between the stars, promising never to return but with scourging fire for the mere planet that dared steal her lover away.
There Sayla stopped.
"Thank you,” said Evriel, voice catching. “It is ... very dramatic, isn't it?"
No mention of the barren loneliness? The icy fear not of living but of only existing, forever numb, on this world turned suddenly, wholly alien? No, nor the regret. Would Lakmi have guessed those things and left them unsung?
Sayla looked at her a moment, silent. Then, “Maybe it's how she thought it should have been."
Evriel closed her eyes. She waited for tears, or relief, or the murky shame that had swirled so long about her feet. My daughter, look what I did to you. She waited for Lakmi, beautiful and righteous, to appear before her and accuse. But she didn't come. The silty tide of shame didn't come.
Evriel prodded, waiting for the ache to bloom into familiar regret, familiar loss. It didn't.
Finally she opened her eyes. “Thank you,” she repeated.
"It's what you came for, then."
"I—yes. Yes, it is.” A pause. Then, “But not the only thing."
It was to have been a short stay.
Evriel said, “I wonder—would there be a need for another archivist, somewhere on the mountain?"
Sayla gave her another long, measuring look. “Your ship'll be leaving."
"Yes.” Evriel considered her words, tested them. “I lost a husband and a daughter here, and I might as well have left myself behind. I won't make the mistake again."
Sayla nodded slowly, not approving, quite, but acknowledging. Evriel found that that meant something to her.
Sayla rose, saying, “Time for Asha to be getting up and breakfast getting started."
When she was gone, Evriel wrapped another robe around her, walked the cold stone hall to the door, and stepped out into the gleaming white. Soon she must sketch her plans, make lists of forms to fill, messages to send. It was no easy thing, retiring from the service of the regent. But for just a moment she would look again down the tumbling plains to the winding black thread of the Serra.
Copyright © 2009 Sarah L. Edwards
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MICROCOSMOS—Nina Allan
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Nina Allan's short fiction has appeared in Interzone, The Third Alternative/Black Static, Midnight Street and the World Fantasy Award-winning Strange Tales from Tartarus. Her story ‘Angelus’ won the 2007 Aeon Award and was subsequently published in Albedo One. Her story collection, A Thread of Truth, was released by Eibonvale Press. Nina lives in London.
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It was a Wednesday. The in-car thermometer was registering forty degrees. Melodie held her bag on her lap, the red plastic pouch containing her most important possessions: the buff notepad and its blue pencil, the glass medallion, a blurred Polaroid photograph of her best friend Sara. She shifted in her seat, the bare flesh of her thigh making a sticking, ripping sound against the plastic. She watched the back of her mother's dark head, her father's large hands on the wheel.
"Not far to go now,” said Douglas Craven. “I could do with a beer."
"Beer?” said Bella Craven. “We'll be lucky to get decent water, the way he lives.” She turned to look at Doug, presenting her retroussé nose in delicate profile. The seatbelt cut a diagonal stripe across her arm. Melodie looked out of the window, not wanting to attract her attention. The fields swept yellow and flat towards the horizon.
"I'm still not sure this is a good idea,” said Doug. “We should leave him to decide on his own."
"He's incapable of making decisions,” said Bella. “He needs a doctor, if you ask me."
Melodie counted the fence posts at the side of the road. From a distance they looked sandwiched together like the matchsticks in a cribbage game, but as they came closer they appeared to separate, sliding apart as if on metal runners. The space ahead seemed to expand and fill with colour as they entered it, like the dried flowers her mother put into water as table decorations.
The man they were going to see was called Ballantine. She didn't know his first name, her parents had never mentioned it. She tried names out on him: Dunstan, Waverley, Beresford, names she had read in books and especially liked. She found a pleasure in unusual words. She liked the patterns they made in her head.
The fields gave way to a no-man's-land of bare earth with outcrops of rocky scrub. From time to time they passed a petrol station or a storage depot or a scattering of stone-built cottages. The cottages had mesh-covered windows and solar panels. There had been a toy tricycle outside one of them but Melodie found it hard to imagine what child might live there, so far from everyone else, so far from the city. Her mother leaned forward in her seat, groping for something in her handbag. The back of her dress was stained with sweat. They had been driving for more than three hours.
The road dipped and swerved, following the contours of the old river valley. The house appeared without warning. It occupied a position on what had once been the shore of a lake but was now a ragged shaft of land overlooking a vast cleft of soil choked with bramble and giant hogweed. It had once been white but was now a dingy grey. There were no other houses in sight.
Melodie had expected that Ballantine would be there waiting for them but the gravel drive was empty apart from a green Ford van. The van's chassis was mottled with rust and there was a thick coat of dust on the windscreen. It looked like nobody had driven it for weeks.
Her father brought the car to a standstill outside the house.
"I don't like the look of this,” said Bella Craven. “I want Melodie to stay in the car.” She clasped and unclasped her hands, twisting her rings.
"I want to play in the garden,” Melodie said, although there was no garden to speak of, just some stunted bushes and a row of dented black oil drums. The thought of staying in the car appalled her.
"Let her stretch her legs,” said her father. “She's been cooped up in here for hours and it's going to be a long drive back."
"You'd better not go running off, then. Make sure you stay close to the house.” Bella unclipped her seatbelt. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat. They had made a rest stop an hour before. Doug had gone to the kiosk and bought some spam sandwiches and a carton of Long Life orange juice. Bella had taken Melodie to use the toilet but had not let her wash her hands or face because the rest stop didn't have a water certificate. “Come on,” she said to Doug. “Let's get it over with."
Her shoes crunched on the gravel. Melodie scrambled from the back seat. The outside air smelled hot and heady, filled with the acrid odour of dry bracken and baking soil. She went to the edge of the drive and looked out over what had once been the lake. The red leaves of the hogweed seemed to ripple and soar towards her, the stems tangled and shiny like a mass of exposed electrical wiring. They smelled of scorching rubber. Melodie knew that if you broke the stems of hogweed the milky mess inside could burn your skin. She held her purse to her chest with both arms and stepped back onto the path.
She felt nervous in spite of herself. She wond
ered where Ballantine was. Her mother had said he needed a doctor and she wondered if he had perhaps gone into town to find one. Her father had said there was a town close by, what had used to be the river port, although there wasn't much to see there now.
The house had no doorbell, just a tarnished brass knocker in the shape of a lion's head. Her mother knocked hard three times, just as Melodie had seen a policewoman do in one of the film dramas on the crime channel. Melodie was forbidden to watch the crime channel, but her mother occasionally forgot to reset the parental controls on her computer. There were three echoes, like distant gunshots, and then there was silence.
"He's obviously not here,” said Doug. “He must have cleared out weeks ago."
"No,” said Bella. “He's in there. I can hear footsteps."
Then the door opened and there was Ballantine. Melodie knew him at once as if she had dreamed him, created him herself from only his name. He was of medium height, with thinning grey-brown hair and a prominent nose that jutted from his face like the beak of an eagle. His eyes were a watery blue. He was wearing a pair of shapeless grey trousers in a tweed fabric that seemed quite unsuitable for the weather. One of his shirt buttons was missing. It had been replaced with a safety pin.
"Bella,” he said. “What are you doing here?” His voice was soft and low and Melodie had to strain to hear what he was saying. He stepped backwards, blocking the doorway. Bella folded her arms across her chest.
"Can't we come in?” she said. “We could all do with something to drink.” She barged forward, perhaps trying to catch him off guard, but Ballantine did not move. He looked past her down the drive, fixing his eyes on Doug, Doug's car, the green Ford van. When he saw Melodie he seemed to recoil.
"You can't use the water,” he said to Bella. “We've had notices. We were cut off for most of last week."
"God,” said Bella. “I presume you have bottled?"
"I'm almost out,” said Ballantine. “The van's been playing up."
"We'll have to go into town then.” She sighed. “Is there anything else you need?"
He looked down at his feet. His shoes were dusty and cracked. “No,” he said. “I don't think so."
Bella sighed again, more loudly. “Get moving,” she said to Melodie. “Back in the car."
Melodie's heart sank. She wouldn't have minded seeing the town, where her father had said there used to be a naval base and a canning factory, but the thought of the sweltering car was close to torture. She knew she would be car sick, and the thought of this was more upsetting than the thought of being left alone with Ballantine. She wondered what he would do if that happened, whether he might try to speak to her.
You don't have to reply if he does, she thought. You can sit here in the drive and look at the road. “I'm boiling,” she said. “I want to stay here.” She scraped her sandal against the gravel, making a line in the dust like a capital ‘i.'
"She'll be all right, Bee,” said her father. “We'll only be gone half an hour."
Bella inhaled sharply and seemed on the point of insisting then for some reason changed her mind. “Come here,” she said. “I don't want you going into the house.” She dug in her handbag and brought out a tube of sunblock. It smelled rank and sulphurous, like the oil in a can of pilchards. Her mother rubbed palmfuls of the stuff into her arms and shoulders and neck. Her hat cast a circular shadow like a hole in the ground.
She held Melodie at arm's length for a moment then nodded and got into the car. Melodie sat down on the stubble and watched the car driving away. She had seldom been left on her own. She wondered what she would do if the car never returned. The thought was terrifying but curiously thrilling and full of possibilities. It seemed to give her a new sense of herself, opening regions of her imagination she had caught glimpses of but never truly inhabited.
She glanced over towards the house. The front door was standing ajar but there was no sign of Ballantine. She thought about the way he had looked at her, a mixture of terror and joy. It was as if he recognised her but she knew this was impossible. Ballantine didn't know her. She had never seen him before in her life.
Suddenly he appeared. He was holding something in his hands, a glass full of some cloudy liquid. He began walking towards her. Melodie felt herself stiffen. She drew her arms up around her knees. Her skin prickled in the heat. She reeked heavily of sunscreen.
He came and stood in front of her.
"Would you like a drink?” he said. “You must be very thirsty."
She had forgotten her thirst, but the sight of the glass brought it back. Her mouth and throat felt dusty and bone dry. He handed her the glass. It was tall and etched with flowers, cold and almost freezing to the touch. She smelled the tart yellow smell of lemons, making her stomach cramp and then release. The drink was sour-sweet and delicious. It foamed gently against her lips.
"There's more inside if you'd like some,” he said. “It's too hot for you to sit out here."
She drained the glass to its dregs, wondering why Ballantine had not offered the lemonade to her parents. She felt a small shiver of pleasure at the thought that she and Ballantine already had a secret together. Her mother had not wanted her to go in the house, but she had not expressly forbidden it. She stood up and followed him inside.
The hallway was dark and shaded. There were pictures on the walls, enlarged photographs of centipedes and spiders, a bumblebee hovering in midair.
"The bumblebee can't fly, did you know that?” he said. “Conventional science says it's impossible."
"We learned that in school last year,” she said. “What's your name?"
"My name is Lindsay,” said Ballantine. “What's yours?"
"Melodie. Melodie Craven.” She had always thought Lindsay was a girl's name but it suited him anyway. She liked the sound of it, the way the ‘d’ pressed against the ‘s’ as you pushed the tip of your tongue to the back of your teeth.
"Go through,” he said. “I won't be a moment."
The main room overlooked the back of the house. Cloth blinds masked the upper parts of the windows, and a wooden ceiling fan, shaped like the propeller of a small aircraft, took off the worst of the heat. There was a long, low couch covered with a tartan blanket, a tall glass-fronted cabinet crammed with books and what looked like the lever arch files that some of her older classmates used for storing their homework. She was aware of an absence of dust. Closest to the window stood a narrow oblong table scattered with a variety of small, shiny objects: glass Petri dishes, triangular flasks filled with translucent liquids, tweezers and a pair of scissors, the narrow blades half-open in a steel-blue ‘v.’ She recognised many of the objects from school, although as an arts prelim she had never been allowed to touch them. She found the object at the centre of the table especially fascinating. It had a long tubular barrel and a viewfinder and was made of some dark, non-reflective metal. There was a platform half-way up, with levers and clips jutting out from it at right angles. The machine looked both interesting and dangerous, reminding her in some fashion of the things in the school medical suite: the heart monitors and dental equipment, the miniature camera that could be inserted into your body through a tube passed down through the throat.
She had once vowed to herself that no-one would ever touch her with those things, that she would die first.
"That's a microscope,” she said.
"That's right,” said Ballantine. He had come up behind her with scarcely a sound. Close to he looked younger. He was carrying a tin tray with another glass of lemonade on it and a plate of some oatmeal biscuits. She noticed how thin he was, as if his body as well as the landscape had been eroded by the hot wind and sand. She drained the second glass as quickly as the first although her thirst was less urgent. She replaced it on the tray and out of politeness took one of the cookies. Its texture was gritty, like birdseed, although the taste was not unpleasant. There was a microscope at school, but only a very small number of pupils were allowed to go near it.
"What's
it for?” she said. “The microscope?"
"It's for exploring the hidden universe,” he said. “The microcosmos. Would you like me to show you how it works?"
She nodded. He was examining her with that strange look again, the look that said he knew her. His expression unnerved her but it excited her too. It made her feel important.
He put the tray down at the end of the bench, then taking a glass pipette he extracted a measure of liquid from one of the vials.
"This is ordinary rain water,” he said. “From the barrels outside.” He nodded towards the window, and Melodie remembered the oil drums lined up along the back of the house. There had been no rain for several weeks. The water in the barrels would be filthy by now, undrinkable without straining and boiling, reduced to a greenish sludge. Ballantine lifted the lid from a long plywood box that looked a little like one of the cigar boxes her father used to store paperclips and other desk stationery. It contained hundreds of small glass rectangles all of an identical size. They reminded her of the massed ranks of lenses in an optician's window.
Ballantine squeezed a single drop of water from the pipette onto one of the pieces of glass. Then he placed another piece on top of it, a wafer-thin circle the size of a thumbnail.
"That's the cover slip,” he said. “It holds everything in place. The larger sheet underneath is called a slide."
He laid the slide on the viewing platform and secured it with the metal clips.
"You'll need this,” he said. “Here."
He pulled a high varnished stool from under the table and indicated that she should kneel on it. The wood felt warm and smooth against her knees. She put her eye to the viewfinder. At first there was nothing, just a circular field of brightness, as when you viewed a blank transparency through a light projector. Then suddenly there was movement, a haphazard, frantic scrabbling, as of some small rodent or other verminous animal, a tight burst of energy that seemed somehow to flow in every direction at once.
She gasped and drew away from the viewfinder. The glass slide and its securing clips were undisturbed. What she had seen was impossible, monstrous. She felt a single bead of sweat loosen itself from between her shoulder blades and begin to creep along the runnel of her spine.
Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #222 Page 7
