“Look,” path said. “I’m sorry, but it’s true.”
Without further protests, his father stood and began walking, heading toward Nowy Solum.
Path strained to see anything up ahead, any detail of the upcoming city, but he could not—only sand and low clouds, and the last of these few deserted huts that had, just moments ago, seemed so monumental.
When he closed his eyes to rest, perspective shifted:
Wrapped in lengths of cloth, he lay on his shelf where he always lay, near the firepit. The dried fruit salesman, who had unluckily been passing through the arid area where path’s family had dug their hole, sat cross-legged on the packed dirt floor, sipping weak tea. This was clear: the man’s scarred face; the hair on his hands; the smell of his cheroot as he smoked. Mention of Nowy Solum had brought this image back, like a form of sorcery. Prone on his shelf, path was invisible to the stranger. His mother and father listened to the stories that surely could not be real, stories of a fabulous, teeming place, stories that trailed off when the salesman realized path’s father, drunk on spiritus, was a lost cause, a waste of breath.
But this traveller had lived in Nowy Solum. Had lived there for some time. He described all manner of people and creatures, pushed together in the thronging streets, for better or worse. Anything, the salesman said, could happen there. A man could die in his tracks and be stepped over by all that passed by, or a man could grow rich beyond his dreams. There was food, so much food: fish from the distant ocean, and herbs and roots and spices, giving out such scents as they simmered that they could transport anyone who breathed them. Jewellery. And women, too, like you could never imagine. (Pardon me ma’am.)
Physickers and splicers created life with their own two hands almost as easy as they might remove it. A palace, and a beautiful young chatelaine. Officers, without gods to lead them, and fecund monsters hiding in underground caverns.
Exemplars of the gods had once led congregations there, swallowing their host, or touched by the light of the deities.
Touched by gods.
Path’s forehead throbbed.
The smell of the cheroot stung his sinuses.
He saw scars on the man’s face and the way the salesman stared at his mother—lusty, through half-closed eyes.
At the time, path could retain nothing, had no framework on which to hang these stories, no references. He had imagined, as the days passed, that the words and images had been devices, illusions meant to impress his mother, who was very much alive then, and still plump, human, and warm (though by no means could she ever have been considered beautiful, like the chatelaine the man mentioned).
Path had also seen the way his mother silently regarded the salesman as he spoke, peering from her shadowed corner of the living area: like a shrike watching a mouse.
But the salesman finally did leave, unscathed, without a sale and, because his father had managed to stay awake the entire time, without his mother’s full attentions. Path’s mother, therefore, was in a foul mood when the door finally closed. No one ever really knew or cared that the boy had lain there, listening, first to the fabulous stories, then to the argument, then to the sounds of fists striking flesh. Familiar cries filled the hovel: pain, and frustration, and the isolation of their parents’ desiccated lives.
Drooling, an idiot, path lay on his shelf.
Yes. These were the memories that could come back now. He would need to be careful.
Temples, path thought. And being touched by the light of the gods.
Could his father recall these events, the salesman? Preoccupied, brooding over the curse that was his progeny, no doubt his father did not remember the encounter, or the fight with his now departed wife.
They continued along the road, which became more and more defined—more and more like a road with each step—both of them aware that Nowy Solum had called to them, and that the city was, and possibly had always been, their destination.
Beyond the vaulted stone ceiling of the grotto, where Name of the Sun’s eyes had earlier failed to discern anything of note, and where the liberated cherub soon came to roost; beyond the stalagmites and lime deposits and the blind white cave beetles that fed on the guano of blind white bats, was a corridor, and a series of holding cells, used for prisoners of castellan and chatelaine alike, throughout the ages. There were four cells. Currently, three were empty, sealed, and had been this way for centuries. The fourth was occupied.
Forever ajar, hinges crusted with buboes of rust, wood gone soft and black and pulpy, the door was a swollen affair. Dank vegetation from inside the cell spilled out through the narrow opening and, in many places, through the rotten wood itself, to die there, in the unlit corridor.
Approaching, a smell of mould and rotting vegetation, of stagnant water, became denser and denser, but there was another scent, almost indefinable—sweet, not altogether unpleasant. The young servant girl, the kholic named Octavia, nearly choked on this brew. She filled her lungs again and again, eyes watering. She had missed such pungency.
Octavia held her lantern out, staring at this partially opened door, or what was left of it. Strangely, there was another light, dim and green, coming from inside the cell. These plants by her feet, dying or not, defied nature.
She hung the lantern on an iron sconce.
Stagnant water pooled the worn stone floor, staining the rough corridor for some distance. Her flat rattan shoes were quickly black and befouled, but until a fortnight ago, she had never worn any.
From inside the cell erupted suddenly a bray of laughter, followed by low, muttered phrases Octavia could not catch, though she was sure she heard her name.
There was just enough space for her to squeeze between the stone doorframe and the rotten wood of the door, which pressed against her body, soft as flesh and almost as warm; with the stench and heat of the cell filling her lungs, dense against her face and hands, Octavia stepped forward.
And she looked in.
First she saw a portcullis, within arms reach, though not at all as rusted or old as she would have imagined, if she had imagined a portcullis. Beyond these bars she saw no creature, no fecund, though just how this beast might appear she was not entirely clear. There was only a lush habitat of startling green, a riot of growth, as if the source of all life were crammed into here.
Was this a joke? An initiation of sorts? Those stories from her childhood, tales and rumours passed down in the dorms of the ostracon, untrue? Maybe the chatelaine was playing a trick on her?
She stood upon a thin strip of wet rock. On the other side of the bars, vines spilled down the walls and over the floor. More vines hung in verdant cascades from the ceiling, which was almost totally obscured. The more she looked, the more vegetation she discerned.
Tiny lizards hovered over the flora, and black beetles rustled through the humus strewn by her ruined shoes. She frowned. She even smelled traces of the outdoors here: soil, smoke, and a struggling breeze. But from where? That greenish light seemed to emanate beyond the lianas overhead, as if there was a source up there, but none of this was possible because she had travelled down several flights of steps, and down many sloping corridors in the bedrock—tugged along by the chatelaine’s dream, which she held clenched in one sweaty fist—to get to this subterranean room.
In a quiet, quavering voice, Octavia called out, “Hello?”
That breeze, rustling, was her sole answer. Followed by the hum of bumblebees. She could not really tell how big the cell was. When she established a wall, and then tried to see the wall opposite, they seemed to shift.
Was a pond covering most of the floor? The surface had become so thoroughly choked by arrowheads and duckweed and algae that it almost appeared to be comprised of the same greenery that overhung the cell and draped the walls, and when one first—
The pond moved.
Octavia stepped back.
Solidifying, massive and green, rising up before her, what else could this be, emerging from the water? As if the pond was m
etres and metres deep? What else but the fabled fecund? Octavia steadied herself against the wall. Had the monster been lounging, camouflaged in the shallow water all this while? Or maybe, Octavia thought, there was no floor at all in there, and the fecund had come when she had called, swimming up from a water-filled tunnel below the palace—
The monster filled the cell now, turning her long face slowly toward Octavia, revealing through this movement the undeniable fact that all of this was extremely real. Their eyes met. Octavia could not look away, though she tried. Evidence of the fecund’s gender was certain, locked into those little red eyes. Though difficult to admit, Octavia felt an unspoken bond tremble between them, a connection that was like a faint shock through her body; she tried to step farther back but the wall prevented her.
“My my my,” said the monster, in a strangely soft and motherly voice (though Octavia had never heard her mother’s voice). “What have we here?”
Rough skin, tinted like the water in most places, but mottled with brown, as if by disease. Those eyes were like a snake’s, with vertical pupils. Clearly no human emotion had ever been portrayed there. Predatory teeth, hundreds of them, all exposed in what might have been a smile. And a black, forked tongue, flickering, tasting the air.
“Speak up, child. What do you want? Why did you call me? I don’t have all day.”
The voice was tremulous in the air, hissing inside Octavia’s skull. “I’m sorry to disturb—”
Quickly, from that long tongue, the fecund spat several small, dark items, two of which hit the bars of the portcullis, but one hit Octavia wetly in the face and then dropped to slide slowly down the front of her shift. A tadpole. A fat brown tadpole. Octavia brushed the larvae off—maybe frog, or toad?—as the fecund tossed her head back to laugh the same laugh Octavia had heard while approaching.
Then the monster said: “You didn’t wash before coming here?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your face. Your face is dirty.”
Octavia would not let the fecund bait her.
“Did the chatelaine send you? I see she’s scraping the bottom of the barrel. Or is visiting me only fit for untouchables?”
“We’re not called that. Not any more. We’re kholics. Melancholics.”
The fecund laughed again. “Oh, I’ve touched a nerve! How clever of me. Melancholics. But really, you humans are so predicable and boring. I don’t care what you have on your face or what you force others to put on their face. You’re all the same to me. Let me guess. She’s adopted you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re her latest project. Or, if you’re not now, you will be soon.”
“I work here, in Jesthe.”
“Really? Doing tasks other than wiping asses?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sleeping with her?”
“No.”
“Shame. But my goodness. Social changes! Marching forward and all that. Bravo! What does everyone else think? The staff? Do they treat you nice? Do they welcome you to their bosoms? Do they play cards with you? Share gossip? What does the chamberlain think, for goodness sake?”
“I’ve never met chamberlain Erricus. He doesn’t go to the floor where I work.”
“The floor where you work. That’s rich. From what I understand, he would remain unaffected by your marred and somewhat offbeat beauty. He might not even see you at all. Or perhaps he would see only your mark? That would be enough for him. I’d love to know what he would think if he knew you were here! And what would his predecessors say? They would gut you like a rabbit.”
“How could I know the answers to all your questions?”
“These questions are rhetorical. You’re so serious. Do you know what rhetorical means? I don’t need you to answer me. But you say that the chamberlain knows nothing about you? No one has told him, I’m sure.” She tilted her head, squinting at Octavia. “Maybe you would charm even the cold palatinate. What do you think?”
Octavia shrugged. This reek, she realized, was not the smell of rancid gardens, or of the river that bisected the city, but was mephitic, a perfumed corpse, preserved forever by unnatural means, forever rotting.
Her legs trembled. The fecund seemed to know everything. Octavia squeezed the dream in her fist and tried to clear her head. Surely the fecund could not see her thoughts, flicking unwittingly through her mind, like birds? “The cherub,” she said quietly. “The pet you made for the chatelaine—”
“Made?” Moving so fast that her great body was a blur, spraying water, the fecund wheeled, algae pendulous from her torso. The swamp seemed to be a mere puddle. That grin was long gone. “What happened to my baby?”
Octavia stammered nothing coherent.
“What happened to her?”
The monster’s stomach distended in muscular rolls and her green breasts hung heavily, two either side. What looked like smoke came from her nostrils as she levelled an accusing finger at Octavia as big as the girl’s forearm. “And I didn’t make that cherub.” The monster moved her rear quarters, lifting them so they cascaded. Octavia saw the green vagina, opening between scaly thighs. “She was my baby, my child. Tell me what happened.”
Emerging fingers spread apart the grey labia from the inside: a nose poked out, briefly, twitching, and glittering eyes glanced at Octavia before the face withdrew, though whether by its own volition or if it had been sucked back in by contractions of the infamous uterus was impossible to determine. Octavia felt dizzy.
“Will you answer me, kholic? Can you tell me? Because that cherub, as you insist on calling her, was my child. Now what has happened? Is she alive, at least?”
“Uh, the chatelaine, that is, she’s not sure. I don’t know much. Your child was stolen.”
“Speak up!”
“Stolen.”
“Stolen?” The fecund’s voice changed, deep enough now to shake the stone walls of her cell and reverberate the very bedrock of Nowy Solum. “People are such hopeless fools! How could someone have stolen her?”
“I don’t know any details.”
“What? I told you to speak up! Thieves, you say? Thieves in the palace?”
“Well, in the chatelaine’s bedchamber.”
The fecund made a loud hissing sound, no doubt of disgust, and slopped back down, splashing water up against the walls. “Now I understand why she didn’t come down here herself. She got you to do the dirty work. Was the stupid bitch drunk again last night? Drinking spiritus and fucking animals?”
“I’m not sure,” Octavia said, lamely, but of course she knew the tales of indiscretions and self-abuse; these were common knowledge in the city. Even in the ostracon. Until not long ago, Octavia couldn’t have cared less about the chatelaine’s behaviour, but now she had stood on the threshold of the bedchambers, had felt the gaze of those eyes, the dry heat of the chatelaine’s fingers on the nape of her neck. She had seen the devices and smelled the scent of stale sex. She cleared her throat. “The chatelaine told me she needs another cherub, for her collection.”
“Oh? For her collection?” That tongue came out again, coiling, accompanied by yet another low hiss. Several black worms fell from the fecund’s gums to quickly dive for cover. Yet the monster seemed to have partially resigned, or at least had let go some of her anger. “But I have little choice, right? I must submit, for I am but a slave. Do me a favour, kholic? At least tell your boss this for me. No more. Tell her that. My babies are not playthings. They live and breathe like all little babies.” The grimace forming now on the fecund’s face might have been a different form of cruel smile. “They are children, as I’ve said.” She cocked her head. “Well, what are you waiting for? You must know what I need to get started? Have you got the stuff?”
Octavia nodded. She opened her fist and held the batten out.
“Throw it.”
Octavia hesitated.
“Go ahead, throw it, girl.”
So she tossed the cotton at the monster, who caught it with a snap
of her jaws and a grotesque wink.
“Thanks, sweetheart.” Swallowing.
Octavia waited, afraid she might pass out from the tension that tightened in her chest.
The fecund squinted, chewing. Paused. “Hey, that tastes a little funny.”
“What?” Chills ran down Octavia’s spine.
But the fecund laughed. “I’m kidding. Jeez! It’s yummy, as usual. I can’t wait to see what this one’s all about. Now run along. Let me gestate. And bring me what else I require. Soon. Has she told you about that?”
“No.”
“Ha! Well, she will. The old lady isn’t through with you yet, I assure you. We’ll talk again. Hey, are you all right? You seem a little pale. In a few places, anyhow. I hope I didn’t frighten you. I get a little angry, that’s all. I’m bored. I like to make jokes. I’m actually very maternal, you know. Which is an understatement. But maybe next time you could find the key for that gate and come sit right here, next to me?” Patting a mossy stone. “Then you could hold my hand while I deliver? That would be so nice. Nice to have a visitor. Especially one as comely as yourself. Really, with that nice tattoo all over your face. It’s been many years since I’ve been close to a young girl as beautiful as you. I used to have quite a, well, quite an affinity—a taste, shall we say—for girls as attractive as you.” The monster licked her scaly lips and smiled again. “You’d better go. Let me sleep on this.” She burped.
As Octavia turned, a large salamander, or similar such amphibian, mostly pale green but with fat red spots, appeared on the shoulder of the fecund, grinning, and its face—or so it seemed to Octavia—bore hints of her own features, including the black kholic’s mask, which arced over the snout, mocking her own.
Nahid walked a few paces behind Name of the Sun, on Listower Avenue, between the ever-leaning structures. A chicken ran between them, pursued by a lone, sluggish cobali. The sound of the blacksmith, and the smell of his forge, was in the air.
The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter Page 7
