Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories

by Kelly Barnhill

  The hills have flattened into prairie. He is so close. Perhaps midday tomorrow he will see the singular bluff standing alone in a sea of yellow and yellow and yellow, and the tower that has, for months now, infected his dreams.

  Go to Vingus Country, his dreams told him. Find the Astronomer. You’ll understand when you arrive.

  Now that he is this close, the Bug-in-Spats is not so sure. Certainly, the philosophers said, in somnis veritas.8 Surely his dreams would speak truly to him if the philosophers claimed it so.

  Still, after his decision to leave his post at the Royal College of Athletic and Alchemical Arts, he has never wavered on the veritas of his dreams and the truthfulness of his inexplicable inclinations.

  The Astronomer will know, he told himself. The Astronomer will understand. And he lay there the rest of the night, awake and staring, his great black eyes reflecting the endless glitter of endless stars.

  8.

  The Astronomer has built nineteen automatons—all named Angel—who roam the tower and the grounds, and even explore the depths of Vingus Country, and do the Astronomer’s bidding. Angel #11 is the one who has haggled at the flea markets and book dealers for rare volumes. Angel #9 goes to the forests to find specific herbs and fungi.

  Angel #4 was sent into the schoolrooms to give lectures on the wonders of the stars. The automaton has no mouth. Its eyes are painted on like a doll’s. The children covered their ears. They closed their eyes. It was so terribly wrong that the children wept silently and hid their faces until it finished its programmed speech and stuttered out of the room.

  Not all of the Astronomer’s automatic creatures walk on two legs, however. The tower itself is an automaton of sorts. The windows and the doors possess a delicate and precise gear work, both internal and external, that anticipates their use and opens and closes them with the gentlest whirring to let in the day or to keep out the wind. Light boxes show images of the stars and screens and display maps of places no one has ever heard of and books in languages that do not exist. All the floors turn on a central axis, at differing speeds and seemingly random directionalities. One floor makes a full turn every hour and another floor turns so slowly that a person standing by the window would have no knowledge of its movement, until realizing that the window now faced north, when it had surely faced south earlier in the day. Some floors’ windows follow the sun, while other floors’ windows fear it.

  The Astronomer does not call his automatons by their names, even though each one has a name welded to its metal lapel. He calls each one “brother.” He calls the tower “brother” as well.

  The Mayor of the Township of Lin, during his yearly Visit of Friendship to the Astronomer—a ghastly, tedious affair, in which both parties consume foodstuffs that they do not care for (the Mayor, because he is of Vingus Country, a land not known for its cuisine, but famous for its cultural habit of complaining about the food; and the Astronomer, because he does not eat, though he understands that other people do, and has done his best to understand it, without yet learning the knack of replicating it) and engage in topics of conversation that do not interest them, all in the name of cooperation—once asked, in a rare moment of candor (one that has not been repeated), “Can you tell me the reason for the intricacies of the tower?”

  Immediately upon asking, the Mayor found himself choking on a particularly insipid piece of pastry. What was he thinking?

  The Astronomer, for his part, was so stunned that he forgot to drink the foul-smelling liquor that was so typically served at that wretched function with any kind of relish or gratitude, and instead allowed himself to grimace. The Mayor noticed the grimace, took it as an indication of a shared moment of honesty, and carried on.

  “I mean to say,” he said, “that I mean no harm. I simply notice that your work—from my point of view—requires no special equipment. Indeed, it seems to me that your work only needs your two flesh eyes and your one living brain and your own beating heart.”

  The Astronomer looked at his companion in surprise.

  “My dear sir!” he said. “But surely you know I possess none of these. I never have! My machines serve only to lure the one who might lend me his flesh eyes, his living brain, his own beating heart. My machines are my beacon of hope.”

  “What?”

  “D-did I . . .” the Astronomer faltered. “I m-mean to s-say . . .” But he said nothing after that. His eyes flickered and dimmed. His fingers pressed to his lips and stuck tight. He did not move for the rest of the luncheon.

  The Mayor said nothing. He took his liquor. He ate his food. He left without another word.

  He never returned to the table at the Astronomer’s tower. His eyes and brain and beating heart hurt just at the thought of it.

  9.

  The Insect agrees to stay the night at the home of an aged couple in the village that sits in the shadow of the Astronomer’s tower. They are extraordinarily kind. They have tender smiles and searching hands and glittering eyes. The Insect loves them. Their house is cozy and warm. Their food makes him sleepy.

  He has never been so sleepy.

  He takes another drink of wine. The room swims.

  “Look at you,” the old woman says, her hand resting on the fourth segment of the Insect’s arm. “As light as a feather. And after such a long journey and all! Do you see him, my love? Do you see the state that he is in?”

  There is a rumble in the ground. A squeak of gears. A scuttle of metallic legs. The Insect does not notice. The old man and old woman do not notice either. The man sharpens his knife. The woman checks the heat in the oven.

  “Is someone coming?” the Insect asks.

  “Only you, my dear,” the old woman says. “And you have already arrived. Lucky us.”

  The old woman fills the Insect’s goblet. The old man cuts his meat. The Insect curls his fingers around berries and breads, he pours tea and milk and ale and wine into his open throat.

  “Thank you. My heart thanks you. Cor ad cor loquitur.”9

  The old man puts another slab of cheese on the Insect’s plate. “I don’t know what from cors, but you’re in a sorry state, my friend. A sorry state is what,” the old man says. “They work you too hard in that there city. All those buildings! All those people! That’s no way to live. And you just a young bug.”

  “Not so young,” the Pycanum bellus gigantis says sleepily.

  “Young and supple,” the old woman says. She smells his skin and smells his head and smells each of his hands. The Insect assumes this must be some sort of custom. “Did you see the shine on him, darling?” she asks her husband. “Did you see?” And to the Insect: “Eat. You must recover your strength. And your vigor. Your journey has sapped you dry.”

  The Insect, it’s true, is still starving. Starving. He feels he will never be full. His tongue lolls and his head rolls back. “Propino tibi salutem,”10 he garbles. He can hardly get the words out. “Abyssus somethingus proboscis,” he yawns. “Slurpus, durpus, interpus.”

  “Of course, dear,” the old woman says.

  She turns to her husband. “You did sharpen my needle, didn’t you, darling?”

  “As you said, precious,” the old man replies.

  “Vescere bracis meis,”11 the Insect yawns. He is not making any sense. His words are dry leaves. They are a cold wind in an empty field.

  In his mind’s eye the Astronomer’s tower stands against the night sky like a beacon. At its pinnacle, the Astronomer himself balances on the needle spire and calls his name.

  Come to me, the Astronomer calls into the gale. Come to me.

  There are salt tears in the Insect’s eyes. An ocean surges in his heart.

  “Provehito in altum,”12 he whispers to the tower in his dreaming.

  “Wake up now and eat,” the old woman soothes. She pulls a tape from her apron pocket and measures the breadth of his abdomen. She peers
into his mouth to scan for disease.

  Butterflies line the walls, each one pierced at the thorax and preserved under glass. Bright purple billie-bugs too. And occula­flies and snankets and whirlibeetles, and three-headed crickets and trupalapods. Swamp moths and apple moths and moths-of-paradise and moths defying description or name. And they are beautiful. And they are everywhere.

  “Your collection . . .” the Insect begins.

  There are no Pycanum bellus gigantis that he can see. The old woman moves in closely.

  “I’ve caught other genera of the Acanthosomatidae for years. A fine suborder. One to be proud of, dear. Bright, beautiful things. But I’ve never seen such a fine fellow as you.” The Insect notices the delicate beading on the woman’s blouse. He hears the whispers of the fragile husks that ring her wrists.

  “Are they wings?” he asks. “Do you have wings?”

  “You are . . . so lovely,” she whispers.

  “Around your wrists.” The marching is closer. Metal on stone. Metal on dirt. Metal on damp gravel. Doors slam and shutters rattle and people shriek in alleyways. “Are they wings?”

  “We all have wings, my darling. Mine are invisible. Yours are under your waistcoat. How I long to see them!”

  A scramble of gears. A moan of rust. He hears a rocky hillside giving up its scree, the scree tearing up its soil, the soil submerging its trees and tumbling into an avalanche.

  “More wine?” she asks.

  The Insect woozes and burps. He can hardly keep his eyes open. He blinks and blinks and blinks again. The old man and the old woman see their reflections in his inky, shining eyes. They see their shoulders hunch, their arms rise, their features loom.

  The hill is there. It waits in the darkness. It calls him home.

  The old man holds the shine of the knife next to the Pyca’s throat. He pauses, gazes into the bug’s large eyes, and smiles.

  “It won’t take but a second. If we thought we could trust you to stay put under the glass, we’d do that. We don’t want you wandering off.”

  “I’ll get the needle,” the old woman says. “Mind you don’t muss up his waistcoat. We can make use of it later. Such a fine fellow. A fine, fine fellow.”

  His eyes roll back.

  The ceiling, he realizes, has a curious sheen. It flutters and shines like wings.

  There is salt in his mouth.

  There is salt in his eyes.

  The old woman screams and the old man shouts, “I’m armed!” and the Insect says armed, armas, armat, armamus. Armaments. Arm-and-a-leg. Men-at-arms. Armies. Amis. Amigo. Amante.

  The Pycanum bellus gigantis says amo. Amat. Amamus.

  There are arms and legs and arms and legs. There is metal and flesh—muscle and exoskeleton and snapping bones. There is the shine of a needle in the hand of the woman on the top of a tower on a lonely, windswept hill with the Astronomer balanced atop it like a flag.

  Amo. Amas. Amamus. Amant.

  I love. You love. We love. They love.

  I am coming for you, the Astronomer says. I am coming for you. I am already here.

  In his dream, the Insect lifts into the air on a cloud of metal and dust. In his dream he arcs around a burning star again and again and again. What is time to a planet? What is time to a star? Does the light from the star love the darkness? Does the darkness love the light?

  Darkness and light thunder and thunder and thunder inside the head of Pycanum bellus gigantis. And he is gone.

  10.

  When the Insect awakens, he is on the roof of the tower. His eyes are open. He feels the glint of each star like a needle. He is pinned in place.

  He is terribly cognizant of his wings. This has been a growing problem. He has kept his wings bound by his vest and morning coat for so long that he can hardly remember the sensation of the sun warming the membranous shimmer of his forewings and mesothorax. There was a time, before his education, that he went without clothing—a round-hulled marvel of color and light. How strange it seems to him now! How foreign! His wings itch. They ache. They long to be free.

  The Astronomer lies next to him, his hand as close as possible to the Insect’s arm to almost-touch without touching. There is no heat from the Astronomer’s hand. His chest does not rise and fall.

  “Are you alive?” the Insect says.

  “Are you?” the Astronomer counters.

  “I eat and I breathe and I rest. I yearn and I ache and I wonder. I rage and lust and feast. I imagine and fear and mourn and journey. I am very much alive, thank you.” His voice is a trifle sniffier than he had intended. Embarrassed, he clears his throat.

  The Astronomer turns his face to the sky. “Pulvis et umbra sumus,”13 he says.

  “Quaecumque sunt vera,”14 the Insect counters.

  The Astronomer laughs. “May I take your hand?” he asks.

  “You may,” the Pycanum bellus gigantis says primly. As he had assumed, the Astronomer’s hand gives off no heat. But it is not cold. It feels like a stone that has been warmed by the sun all day and is only just starting to cool—pleasant to touch, pleasant to hold. Cooler than the body, but guilty of no chill. The Astronomer’s skin has an elasticity similar to the Insect’s own wings. He rarely displays his wings—he is, after all, terribly modest. And shy. And when he undresses at night in the privacy of his room and lets his delicate fingers run down the length of his glittering wings, he shivers with pleasure.

  As he shivers now.

  You called to me, the Insect thinks. And I came.

  I loved you, the Astronomer thinks in reply. And you loved me in return. Rare bird yearns for rare bird. Things that have no opposite. Each to each.

  “The question still stands: are you alive?” the Insect asks.

  “Whoever made the stars,” the Astronomer says, “imbued them with the life of a machine. They follow their courses. They implement their programs. They operate as they were designed to do. They are made of dust and return to dust and remake themselves from dust again. They recuperate, reincarnate, regenerate. Their gears do not rust. Their steps do not stumble. Their workings intersect and dialogue with the workings of their billions of brothers and sisters burning their way through courses of their own. To watch the sky is to watch the most intricate of clockworks, the most perfect of machines. They are unalive. And yet. They are terribly alive.”

  “So?”

  “That’s all there is.”

  “You did not answer my question.”

  “You want to know too much.”

  “I want to know everything.”

  “Qui totem vult totem perdit.”15

  “You don’t mean that.”

  The Astronomer laughs ruefully. “You’re right. I don’t.”

  “Did you call me here?”

  “I did.”

  “Why?”

  “I needed your eyes so that I may see the reflection of the stars that I love in the eyes that I love. I needed your hands to steady my hands and your mind to temper my mind.” The Astronomer closes his eyes. He does not breathe. He does not swallow. The Pycanum bellus gigantis can hear the whirl of his gears. He can hear the pulse of the bellows and the tine of the spring and the click of each finely jeweled tooth into each delicate groove. “A heart burns like a star—perfectly, patiently, selflessly. It lights the sky and it invigorates the land and it asks nothing in return. I have no heart. But I love yours. Is that enough?”

  The Insect does not blink. He does not move. He is shadow. He is dust. He is bound by stars. He is particle hooking to particle hooking to particle. He is accretion and convection and radiation. He is heat and light and heat and light. He is sky and wind and deep, deep sea. There is salt in his mouth. There is an ocean in his eyes. There is an abyss in his heart and an abyss overhead. An abyss teeming with stars moving like clockwork across the deep, deep sky.

&nb
sp; His waistcoat buckles and splits. Its perfectly tailored seams rip wide open.

  “Wings,” the Astronomer says. “Wings, wings, wings.”

  “Yes,” the Insect says. “Wings.” And it is true enough.

  The stars say nothing in return.

  Opposite is cured by opposite.

  Deep calleth unto deep; or—Sea calls to sea.

  The times are changed, and we are changed in them.

  Be amiable, then you’ll be loved.

  Knowledge is power.

  Seek the truth.

  The stars incline us, but do not bind us.

  In dreams there is truth.

  Speaking heart to heart.

  Cheers.

  Eat my shorts.

  Launch forward into the deep.

  We are dust and shadow.

  Teach me whatever is true.

  He who wants everything loses everything.

  1. Now.

  The Vox sputters to life, on schedule, at four a.m.

  Even the chickens are asleep.

  “CITIZENS!” it shouts. “ROUSE YOURSELVES! THROW OFF YOUR BEDCLOTHES! PREPARE FOR A MESSAGE FROM THE MINISTER HIMSELF. TODAY, BELOVED CITIZENS, IS A GLORIOUS ONE! RUB YOUR EYES! CLEAR YOUR THROATS! THE ANTHEM IS AT HAND!”

  Every citizen has a Vox. It’s the law. Everyone knows the schedule by heart. Still, the jangly arrival of the announcer’s voice is a jolt in the nationwide quiet. In households across the country, traitorous pillows cover otherwise patriotic ears. And in the darkness, thousands of children feel their inconstant eyes well up, mourning the loss of yet another night’s rest.

  The junk man’s daughter stares up at the scattered stars, the harsh glint of planets cutting into the black. The hay under her back has clumped and matted over the course of the night, and everything is damp. Her father—well, her foster-father—is lying on top of the heap of gathered treasures, head below hips, arms splayed over cracked urns and dead radios, skinny legs hanging over the side in unlikely angles. He snores prodigiously, and even from where she lies a few yards off she can smell the decaying drunkenness; her eyes burn from the alcoholic cloud emanating from his mouth and off-gassing from his skin.