The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter

by Brent Hayward

  Then Erricus, whose eyes snapped open, did something quickly with his left hand, so quickly that Tina could not follow the movement.

  Her son wailed.

  The wail ended abruptly.

  Outside Bedenham House came a tremendous roar, as if all of Nowy Solum were being torn apart. For an instant, Tina thought this was an extension of the test, a reaction, but two of the empty cots crashed to the floor and the beams of the Bedenham House groaned, shaking dust and debris that pattered all around.

  Erricus and his palatinate officer recoiled. The physicker went down on one knee. Gripping her son’s cot for support, with one hand on his chest, the old man looked outside. Screaming had begun.

  On the shed roof, Tully was surprised to discover a kholic man and a hemo child sleeping together, huddled under a threadbare blanket. Until this point, his day had been unfolding fortuitously. Most days started off rather badly for Tully and continued to be a bit of a struggle as they went on, yet Tully found himself on this foggy afternoon whistling tunelessly as he climbed in Kirk Gate Alley. He had slept well, eaten a crust of bread (stolen from a lady’s cart), and had wandered South Gate, looking for unaware cobali to trap or a rube from outside to rob.

  He had been, in unexpected ways, successful.

  Stopped over the couple now, though, his good mood wavered. Whistling ceased.

  “Wake up.” He spoke as coldly as he could. Neither man nor child awoke. This kind of thing, Tully thought, happened more and more. He kicked the man, who grunted and rolled onto his back, opening his eyes and quickly averting them when they registered Tully standing over him.

  “You piece of shit,” Tully said. “Did you just look at me? Did you fucking look at me? Shouldn’t you be cleaning shit off my arse instead of sleeping with our girls?”

  Continuing to stare at a point to the side of Tully’s face, the man said nothing. Now the girl had awoken. She might have been ten.

  The kholic said, “This is not what you think.”

  “How you know what I think?” Tully kicked the man again, harder this time, in the ribs. “I think I see a piece of shit sleeping on a rooftop.” Against Tully’s back, his heavy bag moved, and he remembered his intentions. “Lazy-ass motherfuckers. Sleeping away the day. You’re lucky I’m in a good mood. You,” to the girl, “what are you doing with this piece of shit?”

  “He’s nice,” the girl said, barely audible.

  “What? What did you say?”

  “He’s a nice man. He takes care of me.”

  “Nice?” Spittle sprayed from Tully’s mouth. “Mother fuck! You called him a man? He’s not a man. Does he look like me? I’m a fucking man! Let’s cut him open and see what comes out.”

  Yet Tully laughed to see the girl’s face.

  Rain that had just recently stopped had soaked the roof here, so that the couple lay in a puddle. Tully knew they were addicts, most likely not lovers, as the kholic had said. Not that he cared about the girl’s age—he had slept with younger—but hemos were for hemos. Kholics were for gutters and shit. He glanced about for anything worth taking but had no expectations and saw nothing that belonged to the pair anyhow except the rags they wore and countless fleas. He entertained a fleeting image of violence, kicking the kholic in the face, or perhaps forcing himself on the child, to give her a taste of red blood, and he amused himself briefly with these lurid images. But he had no time right now to follow through.

  Besides, he was in a good mood.

  He gave the kholic another kick but the kholic remained on his side, breathing heavily.

  “You need to learn your place,” Tully said. “Go back to where you belong. Are any of you left in that fucking shithole you live in? Seems like you get bolder every day, you lot. People won’t take this anymore. You’ll see. There’s something in the air. Find out soon enough. And you, kid, you’re as bad as him. You should be marked with a tattoo. You disgust me.”

  The girl seemed to be waiting for Tully to say something else but Tully was done. He would remember this roof. He would return. He told the couple this. The girl looked lithe and strong. She hadn’t been addicted for long. Most addicts had bags under their eyes and the skin of their faces was yellowed and creased. Like the kholic’s. What Tully could see of his face, anyhow.

  Tully smiled at the girl.

  As for the fleas, well, they could keep them—he had enough of his own. Adjusting the load on his back, Tully grinned. “If I ever see either of you again,” he said, “I will fuck you up, I promise.”

  Then, happy with himself, Tully stepped over the pair to scale the damp and mouldy bricks of the adjacent building. This residence had been constructed, or had fallen, in such a way that the surface of the wall merged with the roof Tully stood on. Moss and lichen and spawl gently sloped away from him. Masonry crumbled as he scaled it. His fingers, in more than a few places, sank right into porous bricks.

  The higher rooftop sagged under his considerable weight. Tully was a large-boned and meaty man. Always had been. Other body types irritated him. Any man who was not large and strong was unworthy, unless they had money or food.

  Women, other than his dear mother, and the whores of Canning Street, were entirely baffling.

  Once, his first time making the upward trip, he had nearly plunged through this very spot. But he learned where the hidden beams were and placed his feet accordingly now, almost without looking. A few inches made all the difference.

  Deeper water had collected in a pool here. The water must have been stagnant for a while, since swarms of the tiny tube-like creatures that lived in unemptied barrels and brackish ponds, and in the rain gutters of Nowy Solum, churned to detect his dim shadow. Because he was barefoot, Tully tried to avoid the pool, but his feet were already infested with parasites to the point where he could watch the skin near his ankles moving, if he took the time, as if his skin was cast over a stormy and ill-blown sea.

  The next part of the climb was more challenging. Tully made sure his bag was securely strapped across his back before attempting it. He spit on his hands and rubbed them together. Over his head, the wall of an old temple had shifted so it leaned overhead; he was forced to hang, suspended by the strength in his hands, hauling himself from lintel to gargoyle to steel flagpole, finally to another lintel, until his legs gained enough momentum to hook over the head of a great grey god. Pulling himself up, panting, he rolled onto this clay roof. The mists had made this climb more treacherous; surfaces were wet and slick. His cargo had banged against the stone several times. Grunts came from within the sack.

  At some point, Tully had cut his forearm. He sucked deep red blood from the wound.

  “Sorry,” he said, insincerely addressing the sack, “for the hard knocks.”

  Muted protests.

  Tully looked over and down. Already Kirk Gate Alley was miniscule, the people there no bigger than those damned cobali that were so fucking hard to trap. Well, not today. No frustrated efforts today.

  He could not see the shed where the kholic and child had been. Maybe on the way back, he told himself, if the girl was still there—

  Nowy Solum was a mess of chimneys and roofs, extending as far as the low clouds would allow Tully to see. He discerned South Gate, and the smudge of the Crane, as it left the city. He saw big houses on the hill, barely visible, and the markets at Hangman’s Alley.

  Turning, he noticed the approaching light coming at him from above before he heard the sound, the growing roar. With his mouth hanging open, he watched two shapes come down from the clouds, white and travelling fast, their arms swept back, their wings blurred. He caught a glimpse of long, taciturn faces, the dull gleam of light off smooth flanks. Wide, knowing eyes that seemed to look right at him.

  Then the goddesses were gone, leaving spiralling contrails, and a clap of thunder.

  The bag thrummed and thumped against his back.

  Tully went down on his knees.

  Gods had returned!

  He stayed in that position,
kneeling for a long while, as people in the city below exclaimed faintly and shouted and eventually subsided to a state of less audible shock.

  Gods had returned to Nowy Solum.

  But as Tully stared at his own knuckles, and the sac writhed between his knees, and he wondered what to do next, he thought: gods have returned and vanished again and I’m still hungry.

  Short, sharp jabs of Tully’s elbow stopped the activity in the bag.

  He got to his feet, grumbling. “Come on. A fucking miracle.”

  The city and the clouds appeared, once again, as they always did from up here. There was no reason Tully should not continue with his plan. Had he really seen the gods—goddesses, more likely? Had he seen them? They had not lingered or even slowed. Now Tully chuckled. There would be turmoil in the streets this evening. Maybe rubes, ripe for the picking. Nutters would come out.

  From the temple roof, the remainder of the ascent was vertical, heading past—sometimes through—the makeshift hanging homes and hammocks of the people who lived on the lower reaches of the tower. He saw the heads of a few citizens now, gawping from their abodes. Above them, the tower continued through a zone where no structures were permitted, toward the dungeon where the castellan had sought refuge many years past. Distant windows were visible, almost obscured by the mist. Low clouds blew past.

  “Friend,” Tully said to the sack, which was moving again, “you’ve made this day one to remember. An omen, I would say.” He laughed again. “Fucking gods have come back. Did you hear them?”

  Then he reached up and took hold of a plank, anchored in place, to be used by tower residents as a first step.

  “End of the world,” he bellowed, grinning up at them all. At the sound of Tully’s deep voice, and the sight of his burgeoning ascent, faces vanished back into their homes. Latches clicked. Belongings were pulled up on ropes. Most of the people living here were familiar with Tully and his heavy hands and feet. He had climbed past numerous times, up and down through their precarious homes. Sometimes he paid them visits.

  “You pieces of shit,” he called, though people were no longer visible. “End of the world! Stay in your fucking shitholes ’cause I’m comin’ up. Make way, make way!”

  Scraps piled to overflow in a basket so heavy that several times, on her return trip to the fecund’s cell, Octavia needed to rest, using her knee as a prop while her arms throbbed and spasms twisted her lower back. Warm liquid dripped onto her calf, though from the basket or from her earlier encounter with the chatelaine she could not be certain. Looking down, she saw the globe of her white knee, appearing as she imagined the moon might appear, based on stories she’d heard as a child about this orb lost in the skies.

  Directly after fucking, almost asleep on the opulent bed, Octavia had been told about the second visit. The chatelaine, whispering in her ear, ran her finger over Octavia’s belly, and down, between her legs. The news caused Octavia to sit up.

  Another visit?

  Thinking about possibilities for this encounter, Octavia tried to regulate her breathing, tried to remain calm; not much got her rattled.

  Scrawny Cyrus, fellow kholic, rat catcher who worked the kitchens, had given her four dead rats in exchange for a glimpse of her thigh.

  “Let’s have a little look, girlie, let’s have a little look?”

  Cyrus did not live in the dorms of Jesthe, like she did; he shuffled to and from the ostracon every day with others who tended the sewers, chamberpot chutes, vermin, and general garbage disposal for the palace. The old kholic’s tag was pale, with poor definition, similar to her own. A man of Cyrus’s age had been alive during times when being melancholic meant beatings, even death for many.

  But the old man grinned his toothless grin and shook with obvious desire (the way a good deal of men did, and a fair amount of women—kholic or otherwise—when they stood this close to Octavia). Licking his finger, he dragged it along her skin.

  Then he laid the rodents lovingly atop the heaped refuse, holding each by the tail, as if this act were a form of physical contact between himself and Octavia. His breathing was audible all the while. He stood so close, trying with his milky eyes to look inside her shift or otherwise get near enough to feel her body’s warmth against his own frame . . .

  Octavia hoisted the basket again and continued moving down the hall.

  These rats, it seemed, were already beginning to decay, skin pulled back from yellow teeth, hair missing in clumps. The corpses and the refuse they lay on emitted a stench rich and stupefying and wholly nostalgic.

  She stopped to catch her breath once more only when she realized that she was very near to the fecund’s cell.

  That squeal again, the monster’s high-pitched giggle.

  Illuminated by the torch she had earlier jammed into the sconce by the cell door and left burning there, she looked down at the contents of the basket: the four rats; potato peelings; egg shells; numerous bones (with as much gristle and fat attached as possible); rancid offal; four unwashed sanitary towels (from hemo girls who shared the room with her, and who were having their bizarre red flow); three pairs of breeches stolen from the adjacent room, where male staff slept, and which were obviously impregnated with their dried and crusty seed (spilled, no doubt, each night, while imagining her own body, pinned, sweaty beneath their thrusts).

  Octavia forced her way through the opening.

  Directly on the other side of the portcullis, the slitted nostrils, so close, turned her way and began to work. The fecund was very visible this time, sitting up in her pond, near to the bars. For a second, it seemed that the monster did not recognize Octavia, but suddenly she clapped her huge, scaly hands together.

  “So quick,” said the fecund. “Nice work. I do like you, my melancholy friend! Much better than that other silly old cow. I was thinking, you know, I feel I’m emerging from a dense fog. Why was I so attached to that old woman? Though, at first, I must admit, when you were right outside, I swore it was her approaching. Very strange: you smell almost exactly like her. Come closer, kholic, as close as you can, right up to the bars. I won’t bite.”

  But Octavia stood her ground. “You look different.”

  “Nonsense. I have indigestion. Pregnancies are like that. Reflux, I suppose. I’m only in the first few hours but my hearts have a horrible burning sensation. You know? Or maybe I’m just hungry. Show me that fabulous basket. Do I see rats? My favourite! Lay ’em on me!”

  Octavia leaned forward and tossed the rats by the tails, one at a time, through the bars of the portcullis, pulling swiftly back each time though the fecund did not try to strike, not once, or even move toward her. The fecund gobbled the rats whole. Octavia threw the handfuls of kitchen scraps, the bloodcloths and breeches, faster and faster, until the basket was emptied and mercifully light, and she just stood there panting. Her fingers bled from the sharp edges of the rattan and dripped with slimy waste. All the garbage had either been caught in the air by the snapping mouth or had been scooped out of the swamp before it had much of a chance to get wet.

  Octavia licked her fingers clean.

  Insects in the cell hummed and buzzed and gyrated; she brushed aside the ones that came at her through the bars.

  Chewing the last scraps, the fecund watched Octavia. The monster’s sharp teeth had made quick work of the meal. She swallowed, burped. “You’re a cool customer, girl. I’ve been doing a little research on you.”

  “Research?”

  The fecund showed her teeth. “You’re very fascinating. Would you like to hear what I have to say? No? I can see you don’t want to talk. Very well.

  “While I digest, and gestate the little gift I’ve been forced to gestate, how about I tell you a story? Would you like that? To pass the time.”

  Octavia nodded, leaning against the damp wood of the door, the empty basket hanging from one hand.

  “Well. All right, then, all right. Hold onto your knickers, this one’s going to be creepy.”

  She nodded again.
>
  “Long before people like you were tested for melancholy and whatever else officers of the palatinate look for, I think kids with black in their veins were just squashed at birth. Maybe a magistrate stuck a pitchfork in you. I don’t recall. Brutal times, I suppose, but simpler in a way.”

  Octavia had been thinking the very same thing.

  “Personally,” continued the monster, “I’ve never wanted to be worshipped like a god. That’s too obvious. Though I could have been, of course. I’m a creator, but a humble one.”

  “This is not really a story,” said Octavia.

  The fecund held up one long finger, for patience. “Naturally, I watched the pantheon descend, as did we all, burning through the sky as they came, thinking at first that they might be huge rocks thrown down to pierce the atmosphere, and that they would burn up upon entry, like other rocks do. I was just a young fecund back then, maybe a bit naïve. I watched the gods swoop down and land in forests and deserts and oceans.

  “In those days, I should add, I could come and go as I pleased. There were not many humans around, certainly no city for you to live in. And, of course, you had not yet been chosen, so you were as mortal as you are today. The main difference—” she spat out a rat’s skull, intact, which fell into the water with a plop “—is that you didn’t know what you were missing. Following? Yes? Or am I boring you?”

  “I’m following.”

  “Expansive territories I had painstakingly established—and which should still be mine today—were visible from the blue heaven you used to call the sky and from which your gods had recently tumbled. Poor girl, I can see by your reaction that you’ve never laid eyes on this celestial field, have you? Cerulean blue on clear days, the colour of wistfulness, of self-assurance. Ah, most likely my romantic soul recalls the skies as more beautiful than they really were.