by Mike Allen
This time the girl did not let herself be distracted by the images, no matter that she could have stepped only a short way around the great curve of the wall and seen a picture of stripeys. She wanted the thing itself, and she had decided she would be bold enough to ask for it.
So she approached the dais and the great throne atop the highest step. She kept her eyes away from the throne, where the Lady sat cloaked in a radiance that could hurt her eyes. She dropped to her knees at the foot of the lowest step and bowed her head. The Lady had taught her in calisthenics how to bow and curtsy; how to kneel properly, keeping her legs coiled tightly, ready to spring when least expected.
After a time she felt the touch of fingers in her hair and upon her neck; the next instant she jumped up, thrusting her right fist in the air, putting all her energy into the leap.
It felt like long seconds before the girl fell back to earth, to land on the balls of her feet. Her knees flexed to absorb the shock; she stood erect, straight and still, for more long seconds, until she sensed the painful radiance had lessened. Then she raised her head to look up. She saw the Lady upon her throne, ten feet above her head; She looked back at the girl and beckoned with a finger.
The girl climbed the first step of the dais. Now, all about her large-boled trees rose. Three birds were busily feeding on the leaves of small shrubs that grew among the trees. They carried their heads forward at the end of long necks, yet even so they stood taller than she was. Their plumage was flecked brown and white, with purple at the throat. One spotted her, stopped its feeding and opened wide its beak to give a call: a deep wail that resonated in her bones. The girl stayed motionless for a long while, until the bird quieted down and returned to its feeding. Still the girl waited, then she edged silently around the three animals, avoiding their notice. These birds were among those of the Lady’s friends that scared her, even though she would eagerly spend time with them when possible. Theirs was a terrible beauty—not unlike the Lady’s.
The girl walked away from the three birds, going downhill and into denser clumps of trees, until she came across a wide block of stone in the middle of a clearing. Then she lifted her gaze again, and saw the Lady atop Her dais, beckoning her. The girl curtsied with one hand hidden behind her back before stepping forward and up, into a vast expanse of sand. She strode along the crest of a dune; some sand crumbled under her feet and slid downslope. She saw no friends; between this crest and another one some grass and spindly trees grew, and she guessed the friends might live there. They were probably very small.
At the end of the sand crest she came across the next step of the dais, and saw the Lady still beckoning to her. She stepped up again, onto the shore of a lake. She saw movement in the water and instantly jumped to the side and away, racing at full speed away from the jaws of the friend who dwelled in the billabong. She saw its eyes surveying her even from a long distance, the rest of it almost completely submerged. It had made no attempt to jump out of the water; always the Lady had told the girl she was safe in Her presence. But She had never said the girl should not be frightened of scalies; and so she remained.
At the far side of the lake she saw the last step to the top of the dais, though the Lady was not visible. Once she had reached the step, the girl waited a long moment for a sign. When none came, she steeled herself and stepped up. Sometimes one had to take risks.
She found herself back within the great inner enclosure, next to the Lady’s throne, high in the air. Still the curved wall rose higher about them, and the girl saw pictures ringing the inside curve, pictures too small for her sight to resolve clearly at this distance. She thought that they showed even stranger animals than she had ever seen in the flesh: great armored monsters with a curved tail ending in a knurl of bone; beasts with four pillarlike legs and heads covered with horns; shaggy, green-furred things taller than trees. Up and up the wall rose, and the pictures spiralled upwards. If she fastened her gaze to them, she could go on and on along the spiral to infinity, torquing into three extra dimensions; yet if she focused her sight on the wall itself, then she could see its top, not so high as the top of the trees all around.
“Come close, girl,” said the Lady with her smooth, slick voice. The girl’s own voice she always saw in her mind as many lines in parallel. There was a screeching that was part of it, especially when she was excited. The Lady’s voice was a single line, or not even a line at all, it was like a ribbon, thick and dark, without asperity.
The girl came close to the Lady’s knee and halted. The Lady’s unshod, pale green feet rested on a cushion; her legs were wrapped from ankles upwards in a gold robe. Her knees were at the level of the girl’s head. She was, as ever, unsure what was expected of her; she risked putting her hand on the Lady’s knee and when this brought no rebuke, she leaned her upper body against the Lady’s legs and wrapped her arms around Her knee. The Lady’s flesh was pliant and cool; there was no sense of the bones beneath, only of a firm, elastic flesh, cool as a piece of metal left in the shade on a summer’s day.
The girl felt the Lady’s fingers in her hair again; she sighed in contentment and closed her eyes.
“Girl,” said the Lady, “it’s good that you came early tonight. I have to show you something, and talk to you, before the sun goes down. Climb upon my lap.”
The girl grabbed a handful of the Lady’s golden robes and with a twist of her body, launched herself upward into Her lap. The Lady looked down upon her, Her green face unreadable as always, Her black eyes gleaming in the light from the orange sky. The Lady’s crown, which rose so high above Her hair, caught the rays of the sun and flashed burning gold.
The girl, drunk on pleasure, filled with a sudden wild joy, dared to make her request.
“Oh, Lady,” she said, her voice still making screechy jagged lines in her mind’s eye, “Lady, it’s been so long since I’ve seen the stripeys. Could You please, if You want, let me see them—”
She had hoped to hear yes and she was prepared for no, but when the Lady said “I can’t” the girl was taken completely aback. Throughout her life the Lady had told her you can’t and she had learned never to argue this. For the Lady to state that She Herself could not do something … it was unprecedented, astonishing.
The girl wanted to ask why, and dared not. As she let her mouth gape open, the Lady answered her unspoken question.
“I can’t, because they are all dead. You won’t see them anymore; no one ever will.”
“Dead?” The girl’s voice was a strangled whisper. “All of them? But they were young; all except for Fifteen. It’s all right for Fifteen to die, not the others.”
The Lady was silent a long moment; the girl felt Her cool fingers at her side, more prison than cradle.
“That isn’t how it works,” said the Lady at last. “It is possible to die even when you’re young. It’s called ‘being killed.’ It has happened before, many times; but you didn’t notice it. There have been other friends gone, who will never be seen again.”
“But why did you do it? Why?”
The Lady’s expressionless face bent down toward her a fraction more.
“I did not do it. I have never killed. All of my flock are precious to me, because they are the last. You most of all, because you alone can understand your state. None of the others have a care. They live as their ancestors always did, and die still in ignorance. You know that you are the last, you have always known. Which makes you still more precious.”
The girl was weeping with grief and incomprehension. “I don’t know that word,” she sobbed, “precious.”
“It means ‘of great worth’ or ‘very important.’”
“So I’m of great worth because I’m the last … ”
“And because you know it. But you don’t really understand it. It is too soon.”
“Too soon for what?” the girl asked.
“I am forbidden from explaining things to you. I think that … that they fear you too much; they fear what you might become, given just
a little bit more time. After all, you come from a long, proud line. Even as your forebears killed themselves they died with pride, believing they left nothing behind them but ashes.”
The girl buried her face in the Lady’s dress, pawing at Her breast as she used to do when she was younger. The golden dress melted away and the Lady’s viridian breast was revealed, her dark nipple as wide as the girl’s face, already oozing milk. But then the Lady covered Her nipple with Her hand, before the girl could even think to suckle; after a second the opening in the dress sealed itself up. Gently but firmly the Lady pushed at the girl’s head and made her look up.
“No,” said the Lady. “No, not that. It’s too late now. I can no longer offer you comfort. You time here is done. When the sun has gone down, then you must leave.”
“You want me to go back to my house? Why?!”
“No. I mean leave here. Leave the Garden. Forever.”
The girl said nothing for a long moment, stunned by the enormity of this latest betrayal. The grief that filled her was too loud for reasoning and too deep for screams. She could only say, softly, “I just wanted to see the stripeys again.”
“They are dead,” repeated the Lady, and then she used other words the girl could harldy parse. “They were taken out, and hunted, and killed. Like all the others before them and all the others yet to come. They were precious because they were the last, and so I was paid a small fortune for their death.”
“Why?” protested the girl. “Why? Why? Why?”
“I have no choice in the matter. That is my function; that is who I am. Do you understand, girl? Don’t mistake my purpose. I do not preserve; I procure. I was shaped for that only. I am paid in energy to continue my own existence; it is a joke, of sorts. You are a wild animal who thinks she is a person; I am a slave who deludes herself she has some freedom.”
The girl was weeping again; the tears that filled her eyes blurred her vision and the Lady’s form swam in the reddening sky like a fish in a pool of blood.
“It is not even justice,” said the Lady. “They are not punishing you; they are not exacting vengeance. They do what they do because they wish to … .”
With one cool, gigantic thumb the Lady wiped the girl’s eyes clear; they burned now, devoid of moisture. She wished to sob and cry, but no tears came, and her breathing was suddenly not her own: smooth and regular, as if someone else were breathing for her.
“Listen,” said the Lady, bending Her expressionless face above the girl’s. “Look.”
She held up Her left hand, the crystalline one, transparent except for a few metallic flecks in the depths of Her flesh. Above Her cupped palm appeared images that drew the girl’s sight painfully.
“See this. Remember it.” Something black, long as the girl’s forearm, slimmer than her wrist. She thought she understood it.
“Is it a gun?” asked the girl.
“In many ways, it is more like a glove,” said the Lady. The girl saw Her fingers wave, transparent shapes only perceptible because she knew they were there. She wanted to say the thing would never fit a hand, but she stayed silent; another image had bloomed above the Lady’s palm, a pair of flattened spheres the color of the sun and of oranges, a wide gash in the middle of each.
“They have six eyes,” said the Lady, “in three dyads. If you destroy a single eye, it is not a severe injury, as the other will take over its function. But if you destroy both, then there is a significant loss of coordination and balance. A sharp stick can break the cornea; you need to jab as deep as your hand is wide to destroy the nerve.”
With great effort the girl tore her gaze away from the eyes in the Lady’s palm, brought it up to look at Her face. It was as void as it had ever been, even with its mouth half-open; Her eyes were twin pits of darkness. It was impossible to tell if She was heartbroken or gloating.
“You have spent your whole life here,” said the Lady. “You know that within the Garden some of the ten dimensions are unfurled and torqued outward. Outside, this is not the rule, and almost always and everywhere there are only height, width, and depth. But they have access to the same technology that made the Garden possible. Individual … ” She paused for a long moment, immobile. The girl felt herself stop breathing. Her heart began to pound louder and louder—then suddenly she was drawing a huge breath, and the Lady continued: “Individual generators are not as powerful as those in operation within the Garden; their range is limited and they may unfold only two other dimensions. But this is still enough to take you by surprise. A hand may come for you from inside a rock, even if you cannot see the arm it belongs to.”
The light was fading; the girl felt that she could hear the sun sliding down the bowl of the sky. The Lady’s nocturnal friends would be coming out soon. Not the stripeys; never the stripeys anymore, never again.
She had come down from the Lady’s lap; she was standing next to Her throne. The air about her felt thick and brittle; both of the Lady’s hands, green flesh and invisible crystal, cradled her like a doll. The Lady was so close to her yet far away at the same time: the door to the Garden was opening and all distances were being shattered.
“They killed all your friends,” the Lady was saying. “They seized upon the desolation that Man left behind him and merely completed his work. You are the very last; after you there can be no others. Make it count.”
The sun had set completely. The sky still held a ghost of light, red as an apple, as coals, as blood. The girl stood at the top of a small hill that emerged from a forest. In the far distance she saw crests of rock; from her left came the purl and mutter of a stream. Stars were beginning to appear within the vault of heaven: Achernar, Rigel, Toliman. The girl wrapped her arms around herself; for a long moment she wanted to do nothing more than collapse into a ball on the ground and wail. But the words of the Lady had sunk into her, and she could no longer cry. She was of great worth; she was very important. She was the last.
The girl crouched and felt around her feet; rose up with a straight branch in her hand, the size of the batons she used to play with. Its tip was a broken-off shard of wood, pared and wickedly sharp, a little longer than the width of her palm. She turned her back on the dying sky; eyes alert for boulders, her bare feet shrinking from contact with the treacherous rocky ground, she picked her way downslope. Once she had reached the forest, she began to run.
THE CANAL BARGE MAGICIAN’S NUMBER NINE DAUGHTER
Ian McHugh
Something thumped onto the deck. Behra peered out into the rain from the shelter of her little hut at the front of the canal barge. The only light nearby was from the barge’s running lanterns and the open door of the coal furnace at the far end of the deck. The glow of the town’s street lamps was too weak to reach across the canal.
Her half-brother, Geneic, was by the furnace, his heavy Saltukkuri features lit orange while he bent his back against the downpour, shovelling coal. In the shadows of his brows, his eyes glowed a deeper red than the fire. In the wheelhouse beyond him, Behra could make out Chiufi’s smaller silhouette. Their father and Sorgui, Geneic’s twin, were asleep belowdecks.
A small shape skittered across the deck, nearer to Behra than to Geneic. She bit back a cry. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the right shape for a rat or a water dragon or a cat. She waited, watching and listening. The only movement on deck was Geneic, the only sounds aside from the patter of rain were the rasp of his shovel in the coal and the thud-thud of the barge’s steam engine.
She sat back, dissatisfied, and pulled her blankets back around her. Her ankle chain scraped across the boards.
“Don’t be afraid,” said a tinkling voice, right beside her in the hut.
Behra yelped.
“Shh!” said the voice, urgently.
Her heart rattled inside her ribs. Slowly, her eyes began to make out the speaker. It was man-shaped, slender, but it stood only about the height of her knee, the top of its head well clear of the hut’s low roof.
“Are you a fairy?” she bre
athed.
The visitor laughed, a sound like the chimes Behra had sometimes heard on the sedans of Ornomagnen ladies, and stepped from the shadows into the faint light of the deck.
Behra’s eyes widened. The visitor was a porcelain doll, its sculpted features those of a young Ornomagnen gentleman. It was dressed in a gentleman’s frock coat and hose, damp from the rain, its outfit completed by tiny brass-buckled shoes and a tricorn hat.
“You’re a doll,” Behra said.
“A golem,” it corrected. “I am in disguise. Do you speak Ornomagnen? My Rhuinish is limited.”
Behra blinked. It hadn’t occurred to her what language they were speaking. “Only a little.” She could understand better than she could speak.
“No matter,” said the doll, briskly. “I am Palinday.” He swept off his hat and executed a courtly bow, revealing a head of real yellow hair, tied with ribbon at the back of his neck. His eyes glittered blue, catching the lamplight.
“Behra.”
“Little Nine?” he said in Ornomagnen, translating her name. His face moved so little as the doll spoke that Behra wondered if she imagined his amusement.
She pulled away, tucking her knees up in front of her. Her chain clanked. Palinday’s eyes followed it from her foot to the ring bolted to the frame of her hut. Now she was certain that his expression changed, painted brows drawing together in a frown.
She glanced towards the back of the barge. Geneic was looking towards the bank, sniffing the air. Chiufi, too, had turned his head that way.
Palinday said, “Hide me!”
Behra looked at him in confusion, but the doll was already burrowing under her blankets.
“Hide me,” he repeated, muffled by the covers.
