Lumière (The Illumination Paradox)

by Garlick, Jacqueline E.

  “Where did you find that?” He lurches toward me, trying to snatch the book from my hands. The birds move in, squawking. Archie dives at his head.

  “Professor Smrt!” The voice calls again.

  My heads crank around to see the full-figured silhouette of Professor Rapture trundling down the steps of Brackishbee Hall, her image swiftly cutting through the fog.

  “Come quick!” Her hair is as frazzled and prickly as her voice. “It’s a matter of public emergency!” In her hand she holds a paper. It flaps about her head. Smrt jerks back, putting proper distance between the two of us.

  Quickly, I stuff the notebook down the side of my boot, rolling it just slightly to achieve the task. The ravens overhead flap and jitter providing me cover, their wings snapping like sheets in the wind.

  “Smrt!” Rapture shouts again, racing to join us, her gait checking to a staggered halt when at last I come clearly into view. Peering at me through her pickle-jar lenses, her eyes grow thrice their normal size. “Back away from her, Irving!” she says, clutching her crucifix. “Back away from that girl at once!”

  “What?” Smrt’s head swings. “What’s the matter with you, Penelope? Have you taken leave of your senses?”

  “No, but you might if you don’t do as I say. Now for the love of God, Irving, back away!” She pulls a handkerchief from her pocket and covers her mouth.

  Smrt squirrels up his face. “I demand to know what is going on here?”

  “You’re standing in the presence of a living demon, that’s what,” Rapture says. Her eyes cut to me. “By decree of the Council”—she holds out a message in her hand—“her mother has just been declared a Valkyrie! Guilty of the practice of Wickedry in the presence of mankind, through which she’s just ended the Prince’s life!”

  “She what?!” Smrt jumps away.

  The pulse quickens in my wrists.

  “She used her wicked powers to still the babe’s lungs.” Rapture narrows her eyes. “The sole heir to the Commonwealth trusted to her care, is dead. ”

  “No.” I shake my head. “That’s not true. I just saw him. Before I left for school. He had a fever. That’s all. My mother was up all night with him, she never left his side—”

  “—And now he lies lifeless in her arms.”

  “No!” I step back. “It’s a lie! They’re lying! My mother’s done nothing! She’s not a Valkyrie! She’s not a Cantationer! She’s nothing! Just my mother!”

  The ravens rise, screeching off through the trees.

  Rapture’s eyes grow wide.

  I should have known there was something wrong when the ravens came to get me. I should have known when I didn’t see Pan among them.

  “She’s to be dipped and hung this morning in Piglingham Square,” Rapture continues. My stomach pulls up into my chest. “Along with her suspected Valkyrie daughter—”

  “What?” I shiver. “But I’ve done nothing—”

  “Trip the gates,” Rapture sneers through her handkerchief. “Irving!” She glares. “I said to trip the gates!”

  Smrt stumbles backward up the stairs and lunges at the controls.

  I turn and hurl myself down the front step, squeezing through the last sliver of gate before it closes, mechanical ravens squawking overhead.

  “Stop her!” Rapture’s words lap at my heels, as I flee. “We’re not to let her get away!”

  Two

  Eyelet

  I race up the street toward my home—at the Palace—my feet slamming hard against the cobblestones. My heart roars in my chest like a runaway steamplough thundering off the tracks. Breath steams from my nostrils.

  How can this be happening? How can they think Mother would harm that child? She’s always treated that babe as if he were her own. How could they think she could kill him? Kill anything? Oh Mother, hang on…I’m coming!

  I race on, heaving in the breaths, the cold air stinging my lungs. Tears burn my eyes then fall away, torn from my cheeks by the wind. I must reach her before they do. Before they’ve had the chance. Oh, please Lord let me get there in time.

  I arrive at the gates, gasping and breathless, a crowd already forming, angrily strumming and shaking the bars.

  The word is out. The Commoners have come to seek revenge for the death of their Ruler’s only heir. They want blood. My mother’s. And mine.

  “She’s a Cantationer,” a woman hisses. “Using the powers of Wickedry she’s conjured a plague to still his lungs.“

  A plague? My head whips in her direction. She can’t be serious—

  “She’s a no good filthy Valkyrie, that’s what she is,” snorts another. “Likely contracted some fatal disease while in her alternate form. She must be bled and dipped immediately—both her and her wretched offspring—before they cause the death of all of us!”

  “Hear! Hear!” The crowd thrusts their fists in the air, shouting.

  I gasp, trembling, and fall away. Throwing my hood over my head to conceal my identity, I double back up the street. Boxed in at the end by row of Brigsmen, steamrifles at the ready, I lower my head and dart down the narrow alley at the foot of the Palace road. I run until I reach the Livery, then turn and dash through its centre, my boots echoing off the walls. Startled horses snap back their long broad faces and whinny out of fright. I twist my head around shushing them afraid they’ll give me away.

  Sliding to a stop, I thread myself through a pair of warped bars in the massive iron gate at the end of the Livery. Only the children of the palace know the hole exists. I pop out the other side into Piglingham Square—thankful for the escape—planning to cut through the centre of the grounds, and enter the Palace from the back, when…

  …I see her—

  “Mother?” My chest heaves. I nearly crumble to my knees.

  Strung from the gallows, next to the two petrified wax souls I passed this morning on my way to school, hangs my mother. A weave of rope forms a figure eight around her shoulders and neck. Her head hangs slumped to the left.

  Pan circles above her head, screeching endlessly.

  “MOTHER!” I break into a run, stumbling forward unable to feel my feet strike the ground beneath me. My heart thrashes in my ears. I am cold and numb and I cannot swallow. Tears burst from my eyes.

  I’m too late. I’ve arrived too late. I suck in a hollow breath. No, I shake the desperate thought from my head and will myself forward, knowing it’s only a matter of time before the crowd shifts. Soon they’ll be upon us, clattering at the ten-foot gates that surround the Square insisting the Brigsmen—willing and ready with keys to burst the locks—let them in to witness my mother’s death.

  I must get her out of here before they arrive. I’ve got to somehow save my mother!

  I lunge forward, throwing myself at the base of her stake when I finally reach it, my hands grasping at her ropes. “Mother!” I shudder, as she falls into my arms, her neck slit and gushing blood. She’s been cut and left to bleed. A practice performed only on those thought to be Cantationers, out of the fear they may use their magic to escape their eventual wax-dipping fate.

  “Oh, Mother! ” I cry, driven into the ground under the force of her weight, my knees buckling. Instinctively, I press a hand to her throat to try and stop the flow. Velvet blood laps through my fingers and soaks my palm.

  It’s no use. I can’t stop it.

  “You must go.” Her voice reaches for me, raspy and weak. “You must leave me. And run.”

  “I can’t!” I shake my head, my tears falling and mingling with her blood.

  “You must,” she gasps.

  “No! I refuse to leave without you.”

  “Listen to me, child.” She reaches up, stroking the tears from my cheeks. “This is my end and your beginning—”

  “No—”

  “It is the universes’ will.”

  “Pan!” I shout at the sky. “Pan, please, help me!”

  “No!” Mother rasps and the bird retreats.

  Voices arrive at the gates. I look up
, panicked.

  “You, there!” A Brigsman shouts, fumbling for his keys in his pocket. “Get away from her!”

  “Hurry,” Mother swallows, blood purging from her lips. “Take this.” She fumbles in the folds of her blouse and pulls out a pendant. An hourglass vial containing a jumping bolt of what appears to be emerald-colored lightning, swims in a pool of glowing plasma, sheathed within a filigreed brass case. Emerald, ebony, and diamond jewels adorn its pewter chain.

  “Keep this with you always.” She drops the vial in my hand. “Never lose it. Never give it up to anyone, for any reason. Do you understand?”

  “But—”

  “Your father asked me to keep for him. Do you remember?” My mind shoots back to the morning of the carnival. Father whispers in the kitchen. “You must keep it safe now.”

  “What is it?”

  “The key to your future,” she rasps. “To everyone’s future.”

  Her eyes roll to the back of her head, the life from them swiftly draining.

  “Mother?” I roll her up in my arms.

  “Get away from that prisoner!” the Brigsman shouts.

  My chin snaps up from my chest.

  Casting the lock aside, he loosens the chains. They slither like metal snakes clattering through the rails as they drop to the ground. My shoulders bounce with the fall of every link. The air inside the square blooms with the sound of voices spewing hateful chants, as the gate swings open, propelled by the force of the oncoming crowd. Brigsman in front, his rifle ready. The snout of it pointed at my head.

  “Go,” Mother rasps. “Quickly!”

  I stare at her, unwilling to leave. How am I to abandon my mother to this fate?

  She stares into my eyes, her eyes pleading. “How much do you trust me?” she whispers.

  Not since the morning of the carnival have I heard those words spoken. The last words my father ever said. “Now, go,” she begs, her eyes waxing with death. “Run. Hide. Live.”

  Clutching the pendant, I lean forward and press a kiss to my mother’s forehead, then scramble to my feet. The sweet scent of lavender perfume and sour blood twists through my veins as I bolt back across the square, slipping between the warped bars of Livery, ahead of the Brigsman, leaving him to cuss from the other side.

  “Please, Lord.” I beg the sky as I burst off through the streets of Brethren. “Please take her now. Don’t wait.”

  I lunge forward, my mother’s blood cooling on my skin, cocooned in breath and heartbeats, unsure if my feet still carry me, or if my ankles have somehow sprouted wings. I head for the outskirts of Brethren, knowing not what else to do, worried every step may bring on an episode, as other times when I’ve overexerted myself. Please, I beg the sky. Don’t let it happen to me. Don’t let the darkness take me over.

  “After her!” I hear Professor Smrt shout. “Do not let her get away!” I glance over my shoulder to see him charging through the gates, Brigsmen flanking his either side.

  I race on, winding through backstreets, the blood in my body running cold, my head twisting left to right, considering direction. I’ve no idea really which way to go. With no one left to protect me, no one left to help me keep my secret, what will become of me now? Wherever I go, suspicion will surely follow. Madness or Wickedry, take your pick. I could easily be convicted of either now.

  I suck in a breath, trying to quiet the panic in my chest, and push on toward the limits of Gears—the working-class city beyond my own, where life is hard, money is scarce, and women are considered the property of men. Without a chaperone to protect my virtue, any man will be able to pluck me from the streets and claim me as his own. But it’s either chance the uncivilized wiles of working-class, or face the wrath of the Council, here. I loop the chain of the pendant over my head as I run, terror rising in my cheeks.

  I’ve no other choice. There’s nowhere else to go.

  Boots pummel up the stone road behind me. A band of Brigsmen closes in.

  I turn, racing up an alley through a backstreet, only to hear boots again. I slow, breath loping in my chest, hearing the shriek of Ravens overhead. “Pan!” I scream out, seeing her sift through the trees, her tone much louder than the rest.

  She swoops, pecking at the arms and legs of my pursuers, giving me a loophole to get away. I rush through it and off up the cobblestones into another street. Smrt closes in behind, his bumbershoot brandished over his head.

  Pan swoops. Smrt swings.

  “Pan!” I shout, but it’s too late. Smrt connects, knocking Pan from the sky. She falls to the ground, a tiny tuft of twisted feathers rolling lifelessly against the base of a lamppost.

  I gasp, pulling to a stop behind a tree to hide myself, peering out around the bark. “Get up, Pan,” I whisper. “Please, get up.”

  But she doesn’t. She doesn’t so much as breathe.

  Smrt moves in, bumbershoot poised again to strike, waving it like a billy stick over his head.

  “No!” I shout, stepping out from behind the tree. The handle of Smrt’s bumbershoot slams into the cobblestones, narrowly missing Pan’s head.

  He turns and peers at me through shrunken lids.

  I meet his gaze. For a moment we stand, frozen in a silent stare—as if the two of us were captured inside one of my episodes. Then one of the Brigsmen sees me.

  He lunges forward, his voice calling out to the rest.

  I turn and fling myself up the road, soles of my boots grinding the stones beneath them, my arms pumping determined circles at my sides.

  Rounding the corner, I thunder down the face of Bayberry Street toward the city’s edge, pendant clapping hard against the bones of my chest. Part way, I ditch off onto Derbyshire, then flank the length of Pickerton, until I reach the mouth of the Dragon Topiary Maze at the base of Lankshire Street and Wells.

  Made of hedges, cut into the shape of a dragon, the maze was created for the Ruler by my father—in his capacity as Royal Science Ambassador. It once served as a sanctuary where the ruler’s children played. Secretly doubling as a weapon—a deterrent to all those who dared enter the city through the north end, without the Ruler’s consent. A lethal lure for the deceitful, Father used to say—a ruthless trap set to catch lawbreakers.

  Lawful citizens applied for work cards and passed through the gates at a checkpoint just a few hundred meters beyond the hedge. But these days, there are no work cards issued. Those born in Gears must face their fate. They live their lives as low paid laborers, in factories owned by the rich of Brethren, subject to air tainted by the Vapours.

  I swallow down the thought and bolt across the intersection’s grassy knoll up into the dragon’s mouth, past its teeth, down its throat, into its gullet, battling overgrown branches as I go. The once ominous and majestic ten-foot dragon hedge has now fallen to neglect. Serving as the wall that marks the end of civilized life it’s become uncivilized itself.

  I dart left then right then left again, making quick, careful decisions, twisting through the creature’s belly, on my way to its left hind leg. I need to find the dragon’s claw—the Mother Root—the place where my father planted the two original hedges used to form the maze. As they grew, he braided their trunks creating a gnarled and knotted staircase, leaving loophole steps inside each knot, leading up and out of the maze—a secret escape route through the centre of the hedge, just in case anyone were to become lost inside. My father showed me where to find it when I was little girl, along with how to trip the maze’s mechanical defense mechanism, buried deep beneath the ground—a series of metal spikes designed to spring up at the turn of a crank, deterring intruders—or killing them, depending where they stood.

  I fall to my knees at the dragon’s hind leg, ranking my fingers through the dirt. If only I could remember exactly where it is…I push aside a broken branch and prick my hand on something sharp. The tip of a nail. “The claw.” The word pushes out with my breath. “It must be.” I dig a little farther and expose the rest.

  My father sculpted a claw at the
base of the Mother Root to indicate its whereabouts. He then fitted the dragon’s three toes with a mechanism, that when tripped activates the maze’s arsenal of defense. I reach for the toes, gently clearing away the dank pile of soggy, decayed, leaves that surrounds them, my hand retracting to the cold chill of metal, and the rusty smell of warn, weathered copper. I’ve found it. The mechanism. It’s still here. Triumphant, I suck in a quick breath—startled by the sound of boots advancing up the row behind me.

  My head swings around. Brigsmen. They’re closing in, their breath heavy. I’m out of time.

  Swallowing down the fear that floods my throat, I stand, abandon the clank, and slip inside the hedge. Using the handle of my bumbershoot, I propel myself up through the centre, digging my toes into the knots of the Mother Root staircase, climbing my way to the top of the hedge.

  Before I reach it, something rises within me…sharp and dark and slow. I heave in a breath, my body trembling. No. Not now. I can’t do this now.

  The all-too-familiar silver twinge slinks bitterly through my veins. The feeling I get just before I fall into an episode. A migrating metallic feeling that turns my blood cold, my saliva sour, and my entire world—black.

  Oh, please, not now. I cling to the branches. I need all my wits about me. I struggle hard to fight the feeling as it feeds toward my brain. A blinding arc of light begins to burn behind my eyes.

  Closing my lids, I push through the feeling, willing it to be a small one, just a gentle lapse in time, a tiny break in consciousness, not one of the long, gyrating episodes of absence filled with nothingness, where I’m thrown to the ground and left drooling like a beast. I’ve never gone through one of those without the assistance of my mother. If it strikes, I don’t know what will become of me. I’ve learned to manage the small ones on my own over the years—but a large one, without her—I fear I may never wake up from.

  The twinge surges again, my body slackens, and I start to lose my grip. I hang from the branches, praying I’m not revealed, as my world darkens to nothing but shadows. Soon it will all go black. Just as I’m about to submit to the feeling, abruptly it shatters, as if crushed beneath a hammer’s head. The monster that seized me suddenly frees me, and I gasp in relief. The silver twinge has shown me mercy.