The chatelaine did not yet even know the kholic’s name. But today she would. She promised herself. Today. Today was a new day, a new start. “Fetch me the kholic.”
Scowling, mumbling, Greta shuffled away.
Recalling then, as she waited for the girl to arrive, the pretty, tattooed face, and the fabulous body hinted at under the shift that the kholic now wore, the chatelaine had to admit that there were elements of spite in the attraction and lust she felt, a distant but gnawing jealously of the kholic’s youth and beauty. She tried to tell herself this was a foolish thought: she was the chatelaine of Nowy Solum, after all, and the girl was just a kholic from the streets outside, but the chatelaine knew all too well on this morning of truths that her own youth had dwindled, her vitality faded. Exposed here, in her new skin, she also understood that beauty and youth were the reasons she had solicited the girl in the first place. Beauty, youth, and novelty.
“You are a fool,” the chatelaine said to herself under her breath, almost smiling. No, she did not suspect the kholic of misdeed: she needed the girl, more than anything, to be with her now, to make her pain go away.
A second later, miraculously, the chatelaine found herself staring down at the kholic’s face, a face even more beautiful than she recalled; the girl had appeared in the broad doorway to her chamber like a seraph.
Without hesitating, the chatelaine reached out and touched the kholic’s hair, which was brown and matted and greasy. The girl’s blue eyes did not quite meet the chatelaine’s own, but were nonetheless a startling colour against the black tattoo. The chatelaine wanted to embrace and be embraced in return. She cleared her throat. “Thank you for coming.” The girl was truly disarming up close. The chatelaine’s heart raced. “I would like you to call me, er, Terra Bella. That’s the name that the castellan—my father—gave me when I was born. Though no one is really allowed to call me that. I want to tell you, I’ve been robbed, and I need you to do me a favour.”
Those averted eyes, set off so gorgeously by the tattoo, did not appear to react in the least.
“Last night,” continued the chatelaine, quietly, reluctant to invite the girl in, for she did not trust herself at this point and felt, somehow, that if she did let the girl come in, the servant might get put in as much jeopardy as the pets (which were making a ruckus yet again): the chatelaine’s environment, and maybe even her own touch, were unsafe around any innocence. “A cherub, my beloved cherub, was taken from my chambers.”
“Winged baby?”
The kholic’s voice, too, was exquisite.
“Exactly. Yes. A winged baby. Can you hear my other darlings? They are in mourning. As am I. They are all I have, and I am all they have.” Now she could not stop herself from brushing a knuckle against the kholic’s blackened cheek, though she made a lame effort to fight the urge.
“Sorry to hear that.”
“I thought of you.” Her fingers went up to the matted hair again, twined. “You must forgive me for bringing you into my palace and then abandoning you. I had become, well, distracted. What’s your name?”
Octavia told her.
“You know, I feel I can trust you, Octavia.” The chatelaine smiled, but it was a pained smile. “Though you might find this impossible to believe, I think we have much in common. I feel it in my heart. We were meant to meet. Tell me, Octavia, have you ever heard of the fecund?”
“My Lady?”
“Of course you have. Even you.” This didn’t sound right at all. The chatelaine plowed on. “The fecund is my associate. My familiar. She belongs to Jesthe, rather. To whomever lives in this room. She was my father’s and now she is mine.”
“I’ve heard stories.”
“Well, the fecund is real, let me assure you. And you will meet her soon.”
The girl said nothing.
“She’s locked up, you see, in a cell, below the palace. She’s been there almost forever. I want you to visit the fecund, and I want you to give her a message. I am too ashamed to go myself. She already believes me unworthy. But she can be a powerful friend, you’ll see. She’ll meet with you, Octavia, and will listen to you. She’ll like you, I’m sure.”
Now the girl looked beyond the chatelaine, toward the rumpled bed, toward the harnesses and attachments abandoned on the crude side table, still smeared with fluids from the previous night. If Octavia was shocked by what she saw, she gave no indication. Her nostrils flared, sniffing.
“I don’t know what the fecund’ll make for me this time,” said the chatelaine, in an even quieter voice. “Probably not another cherub, not like that one. They’re all different, you know.” She put her hand on the girl’s taut shoulder. She could not stop touching her. “Listen, Octavia, I would invite you in but the place has not been cleaned, and my fire has almost died. I must see to that.”
“I understand.”
Was there a heat radiating from this girl? The chatelaine ran her fingers down the brown, toned arm. “Maybe you’ll come back later, after your task? Tell me how it went?”
“Sure.” There was still no expression on the tattooed face. “I’d like that.”
The chatelaine excused herself to fetch the small wooden box from her bedside table. When she returned, she displayed the contents to the girl. After a long moment, during which neither chatelaine nor kholic moved, she said, “You must choose one.”
“What are they?”
“These are my dreams.”
Hesitantly, the girl’s fingers rose.
“She feeds on dreams, you see.” The chatelaine whispered now. “I mean, she eats food, like me and you, but a dream gets her started. The fecund makes my pets, inside her, around these dreams, like pearls around a grain of sand. These are not from last night, naturally, but from several nights ago, from when I had an almost pleasant sleep. I was holding my baby in my arms while she rested against me. And when I awoke, I saw her on her perch, in her cage, looking peaceful and sweet. She sang me a little song that morning. She could talk, you know? The only one of my pets that could ever talk. Oh, Octavia, my heart has broken!”
Eyes downcast, looking at their feet. “What shall you have me do?”
“Do? Well, yes, of course. Please select one of these pieces of cotton and go down there right now. My chances are good, I think, to have a new baby similar, at least, to the gentle cherub. Will you go, Octavia? Will you do an old lady a favour?” She dabbed at her eyes with her fingers and felt moisture there.
The girl inspected the damp waddings and lifted one from the box.
“Be careful. Hold it in two fingers. Don’t get it all sweaty. With that in your hand, you’ll have no problem finding your way to the cell. I need not tell you directions. She’ll guide you, she’ll pull you there.”
As the kholic turned to leave, the chatelaine took her by the upper arm. “Your face is very pretty,” she said. “I have to tell you that.” She did not know how to continue. She knew absolutely nothing about this girl. She did not understand the kholic’s boundaries or sensitivities and felt that, already, she might have gone too far.
Were they all this damn stoic? There had been one or two in the past—strictly men, as far as she could recall—but subtleties of their demeanour were lost in the haze of spiritus and fervour of the moment—
Those blue eyes never once looked up.
The chatelaine straightened, trying to slough off this mood and appear, belatedly, to be the persona she was meant to be, whoever that was, certainly not this moping, awkward teenager. She cleared her throat again. “We need to descend and ask the crabby old fecund for another miracle.” But could she press her face into that neck, just once, lose herself in it, draw even a small portion of the girl’s youth into her aching lungs? “This is very important for me. You might think I’m a heartless and ugly old hag who wants to replace her pet on the morning it has gone missing, but there’s more to this than I can possibly explain to you right now.”
“I need no reasons. I’ll go see the fecund.”
“Well. Well, all right, then. That’s fine. I won’t hold you back any longer.” But the girl had not said, You aren’t ugly, Terra Bella!
Turning away at last, the chatelaine held her hands together in front of her, to remove them from the situation. Tears were coming now. She did not want to cry in front of this girl. “Of course, we will find who took her. We will have the city turned upside down. Now go. Please, go. I don’t want to lose any more time. We’d best begin.”
Octavia bowed.
The chatelaine watched the girl as she walked the Great Hall in retreat. “Come see me after,” she called, blurting the words out. “So long.” And then she chastised herself for sounding too desperate and adolescent. The chatelaine wondered if, of all things, she might be falling in love.
Up from the shallow valley, as if regurgitated in desiccated forms of sand and the harsh battered shapes of burnished wood and tin and other detritus—perhaps even imagined by the lakebed dry these many seasons—there rose piecemeal into view a series of what could only be the dwellings of people. Dull, scoured from rocks and desolation, all bespattered with dust and shit and pocked by endless storms, these were nonetheless homes. Homes. Perhaps two dozen or so of the structures clustered together, extending into the near distance where mists began to claim their details.
So incongruous and shocking was the sight of this ramshackle village—after travelling two full days now through deserted and unchanging badlands—that path’s father stood silent atop the hillcrest for a full minute, perfectly still, regarding the apparitions while hot winds plucked and pushed at his own tatters, urging him onward, and down.
His son, path, groaned and craned his neck just then, grumpily peering past the fabric ridge of the sling he rested in to see his father’s face; the boy had been dozing and felt shudders pass through the familiar, skeletal body that supported him, a trembling in the sternum always pressed to his own spine. This shudder had been followed by the cessation of movement; he woke from sleep to see tears streaking the grime on his father’s cheeks.
“Now what?” He ground his little teeth together. “Father? Are you listening? Will you please keep moving?” But by then the boy had also seen the structures out the corner of his eye and, as he turned his head, implications of what they might mean settled over him. A few moments passed before he found words again.
“All right,” he said, finally, reverentially, more like a breath than true words. “We can start here. Maybe this is what we’re looking for.” Path’s small heart pounded in his ribcage like that of a bird.
His father wiped at the dampness on his face with a shaky arm and, abruptly, as if suddenly disgusted, removed the sling from around his neck. He held the contraption away from his body, suspending path mid-air. He turned to the boy, to look into his eyes. “You told me you wanted people. I see lots of houses, son, but no people.”
This was true. Path frowned.
“Or it could be,” his father continued, “that they ain’t no people alive here. Could be something else. Not people, I mean. Other things. Hiding in the buildings.”
“Put me down.”
So path was placed, unceremoniously, onto the hot ground.
The sling had a rigid frame, clamped to path’s torso, and three short, strong legs that locked into place, enabling him to rest in an almost upright position. He could look around, at least until his neck became too sore to hold up his heavy head. More or less propped upright, he peered over the top of the sling, watching eddies of sand dance with the silent structures.
“Goodness knows what could live here.” His father held a hand over his eyes as a visor, though there was no sun and had not been any sun in his life or even in his father’s life. “I’ve heard stories.”
“Will you just go down there? Find out.”
“Likely kill us for trespassing just as soon as give us water or listen to any words you got to say.” Path’s father licked chapped lips. He was haunted by this adventure, by leaving his home, by what his son had become. Without looking back or saying another word, he suddenly turned and walked the grade, awkwardly, all elbows and knees, like he always moved when he was without his cumbersome burden.
Path closed his eyes, just for a moment. His lungs ached. He tried to control his breathing. The sounds he heard with his eyes closed were old bones tumbling against each other. He tried to recall details of what he had been like before the light had stricken him, transforming him, but he felt nothing inside. Nothing much remained from that time. Vignettes, tastes, an isolated cry. He knew only that he could never return to his old life or to his father’s house.
When the winds died a little more, path opened his eyes again. The only thing moving out there—other than his father, of course, who was still walking away—were flies: hundreds of the insects, in thick masses, hovered over the huddled houses like irritated spirits. Had they been there before? Path was unsure, and this unsettled him.
His father meandered, nearing one home before veering off toward another. A painful display to watch. Path looked away, in the direction from which they had just come, where the shapes of rocks in the badlands were being relinquished by the receding night: to path, squinting, the formations seemed to be giants, once stalking the landscape in great strides but frozen now, in place, by the advent of this day.
Yet rocks, he knew, were as incapable of walking as was he.
Until this point in his life, path had never seen so many huts. Not like this. Not in one place. His own home had been mostly cave, with several crude partitions to keep out blowing sand. There were a handful of people living in the area he came from, maybe seven or so at any given time. Mostly men, living alone, in similar caves. No children that he knew of. Ever. And women seemed to have been sucked empty, as if the land was so devoid that it stole any form of essence that could either give or sustain life. His own mother had withered to nothing, just a husk of skin and bones, losing her flesh and then her mind until at last she roamed the yards, a hollowed spirit, staring at path when he was left outside, or shrieking silently at the clouds. Eventually, she faded away to nothing, tattered on the winds.
What was left of path’s mother they buried in a jar: a handful of grey parchment and slivers of yellow bone.
He could remember her.
The spot throbbed where the light had touched him, the mark on his forehead, as if the luminous finger were still pressing hard against him. He had awoken from fourteen years of sleep with the burning desire to leave the desert, seek out people—not people like those who lived in the rocks near his home, or those weathered relics who gathered at the local market (which was really just a few blankets of junk set up a day’s walk to the north)—but thriving people, mercurial-minded people, living together in much bigger numbers than the sand-blasted ghouls he knew.
But his father was right: there were no crowds here, maybe no one at all.
Standing by one of the nearest huts, after having completely circled the silent community, path’s father was apparently still searching for a door or other means of egress. Path watched the clumsy movements with his small stomach gone sour.
“Knock,” he shouted. He was not heard. “Will you just knock?”
Suddenly batting at a dark cloud of flies—for the insects were upon path’s father now, and biting at his flesh—the forlorn man looked over at his son for a second, despairingly, hoping no doubt that path would call this whole thing off.
“Go!” Path’s voice was the creak of desert rats. Flies would find little succulence in his body. “Knock on the door, will you! Tell them we’re here!”
His father abruptly vanished.
Somewhat shocked, path wondered if his father had gone inside the hut. What else might have occurred? And who knew what his father would say, if indeed he was in there.
The heat sung. Path waited in this growing heat as best he could. Without options. What if his father was killed? How long would he remain here before dehydration killed path or a beast ca
me to investigate?
Sand stung path’s face and he turned away.
Later, reappearing from the house, walking briskly, narrow head held down, his father did, however, return.
Path had to prompt the man several times to discover if anyone had been in the hut, and why his father had chosen that house in particular, and what had happened within, because his father would never think to volunteer such pertinent information.
“Yes,” answered his father, finally, “they was people in there. Well, one anyhow.”
“Just one? In the whole place? Was he human? Like us?”
“Well, he was like me.” Their eyes met.
Path tried to ignore the implications of the comment but his stumps twitched. “And?”
“I told him you was waiting outside.”
“And?”
“Well, the man—cause it were a man inside there, a sickly man, and old, too—told me they ain’t no people here. Used to be, but no more.”
“What happened to them?”
His father pointed with a trembling hand, one boney finger indicating the direction they had been headed. “Out there, he says, just a few hours walk, or maybe a few days, is a place known as Nowy Solum. He said this place is where all people went, including his own three daughters, who left him alone and never paid him no visits nor ever bring him food. Out there, he says, in that direction. Out there what he called a city.”
“Pick me up,” path said, stricken. His forehead throbbed. High-pitched sounds played in his ears and images flickered behind his eyes. He could almost recall the epiphany that had changed him, and why the desire to leave home had been so strong. “That’s where we’ll go,” he said. “Pick me up.”
His father looked down the road. “No. We shouldn’t go there. We need to turn back. Go home.”
“We had no home.” Path was alarmed by this vehemence in him. “We never did. Just a hole where you drank yourself to sleep every night.” He watched the expression change on his father’s face—a draining of resistance, a slackness that set in, as if a shadow had fallen; his father bent slowly and put the sling around his neck.
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