Marianne, the Magus, and the Manticore

by Sheri S. Tepper

  ‘I took them to church,’ David said to the assembly. ‘There’s just the two of them. Nobody followed them. This one is Helen. She says she was married to me once. The other one is the one from the library.’

  ‘Let go of me,’ Marianne snarled, almost weeping. ‘I am not from the library. My name is Marianne, and I’m not from the library.’ Two of the conspirators had risen to take Helen’s arms, keeping her from interfering. Helen wrestled with them angrily, but they held her fast.

  ‘Is that so?’ asked a white-haired man with a beard down to his belly, wild eyes under tufts of spiky brows staring at her. ‘We know that no one comes from there. And yet there are always people there, and you are the only one who has ever escaped.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she hissed. ‘People left there every night.’ A hard, leaden anger was forming inside her, spinning like a flywheel.

  ‘Really? Did you have the impression that others of the library staff left there at night?’

  ‘They went home at night,’ she said. ‘Of course they did.’

  ‘Ah. You say they went home at night. Those of us outside never saw anyone leave, did you know that?’

  ‘But I was always alone at night. Absolutely alone!’

  ‘And yet no one left. Believe me, that is true. Though, to lend credence to what you say, it is also true that you were the only one we could see at night, though we could see others from time to time in the day. Interesting. Did you know that since you have come, the Manticore walks more frequently than before?’

  ‘I – I didn’t know. I’m sure it has nothing to do with me …’ As she said this, she knew it was not true, and the heavy wheel within spun a little faster.

  ‘That is unlikely. Before you came to the library, the Manticore walked one day in ten …

  ‘One day in ten. We considered it a kind of measure of the malignity of the place, not decently hidden under a cloak of sickness or a robe of age, but ourselves, peeling away layer by layer, visible on every side, confronted at every turning, our own eyes peering at us from the walls, our own mouths pleading with us, our own arms flung out to evoke our pity. What was malign about the city, we thought, is that the Manticore walked one day in ten, a beastly decimator, herding before him our own mortality.

  ‘Well, there are those – in this room – who will not bear it, who will trap the Manticore and kill him rather than be torn off in this fashion, sheet by sheet, as a calendar is torn. We had begun to make plans …

  ‘But since you have come, the Manticore walks more often. He walks one day in seven, one day in five. Soon, perhaps, every day?’

  ‘Are you asking me?’ Her voice trembled with threat.

  ‘No. I am telling you. Explaining why we sought you out. Since you came, the fury of the place is doubled, and we demand to know why.’

  ‘We will know why,’ shrilled a tall, cloud-haired woman who struck the table with her fist, raising a cloud of dust. ‘We will know why. We saw you outside the Manticore’s window. We saw you looking at it long, eye to eye. We believe you know the Manticore! We believe you know who, or what, he is, and how he may be conquered. We believe you are some kin of his!’

  Within her the wheel sped once again, making a hum which filled her blood, set it singing. ‘How would I know the Manticore’s name? Why would it be kin of mine?’

  They looked uncertainly at one another, confused by her tone. Though they held her against the wall, she blazed at them from among their constraining arms. They could only repeat themselves.

  ‘We believe you know the Manticore, know what it is, who it is. How, or why, or when – those are not important questions. You looked at the Manticore as though you recognized him, as though you knew his name.’

  ‘I do not know its name. I don’t know anything about this place. I have no memory of what I was before. If you are doing something to get away, I will help you or go with you, but if you go on asking me questions like this, I can’t help you.’ She felt hot, angry tears, swallowed them, let herself snarl. ‘Why am I here? Why are you here?’

  The white-bearded one nodded, almost in satisfaction. ‘You have seen the Greasy Girls. They walk where the Manticore walks. Bald, shaven, naked, lean as leather, oiled to a brighter gloss than finished marble, walking and chanting before the Manticore, worshiping the Manticore. The Manticore laughs at them, kills one occasionally, lets them march and posture as they will. We are their antithesis. We will not accept, will not resign ourselves, will not permit, will not believe. We will resist! We will find a way to get into the library and burn it. We will find a way to kill the Manticore. We will find a way out of here.

  ‘And we will make you help us, one way or another. We don’t believe you when you tell us you do not know the Manticore – though you may not realize that you lie to us. Still, this is enough for tonight. Tomorrow, the Manticore walks. Soon after that, we will meet again.’ They let go of her and turned away, and Helen took her arm, perhaps in comfort, perhaps for comfort.

  David took them out of the place, the silence behind them breaking into confused expostulation as they went through the door into the night. Helen angrily rubbed her arms where she had been held. ‘Damn it, David,’ she snarled. ‘That was a rotten thing to do.’

  He rubbed his wrist across his moustache, face as hard and determined as it had been since they had seen him at noon. ‘If we were once married, woman, if we were, then you would forgive me, knowing that what I do is necessary. If we were not, then it is no concern of mine what you think of me. You may have resigned yourself to this place. I have not. What the Leader said is true. We will kill the Manticore or die, but we will not merely live here to see our souls pasted upon the walls of this place …’

  He left them with that, with no farewell, without a wave of hand or a gesture, and Helen began to cry silently, tears running down her strong face without a sound. ‘We’re going to Mr Grassi’s place,’ Marianne said. ‘He has a book I have to use.’

  Helen, busy wiping her eyes, did not answer, but neither did she object. Though it took them some time to find where they were and determine in which direction Manticore Street would be found, Helen said nothing in all that time.

  In the second floor apartment, Mr Grassi was unsurprised at their arrival. Marianne went directly to the shelf where her book, To Hold Forever, was found.

  ‘Oh, my dear pretty lady,’ said Grassi. ‘Are you looking for more answers to other questions yet?’

  ‘One question only,’ she said briefly. ‘Which we should have asked when I was here last, Mr Grassi. We should not have waited, should not have delayed. We should have asked the book then how to send the message you wondered about. How do we call for help, Mr Grassi? We must know, for this last day has convinced me we must have help or be here forever.’

  She let Helen tell him what had occurred as she sat down with the heavy book in her lap. Marianne paid no attention. She had begun to read at the place in the story which began with Grassi’s question, ‘What do you think? A kind of underground, perhaps?’ and went on through that day and the day following to the present time. She read broodingly, with deep attention, undistracted by the movements about her or the smell of the food they were preparing. Outside the windows darkness rested upon the city and only the sound of mysterious cars moving through distant streets came through the window. She read and read, finally placing her hand upon the page and reading aloud.

  ‘“They closed the restaurant and went down the busy street while there was still light in the sky, guiding themselves by the signal tower. There was in the center of the town a tower … It was simply slightly taller than the things around it, and if one scanned the circumference of the city, one might become aware that it was the highest point within that place … The conical roof of this tower was tiled in red so that it appeared as an inflamed carbuncle upon the horizon of the city. The place was called by everyone throughout the city the signal tower. Who signaled from it, or when, or for what purpose was never mentioned
.”’

  She thumped the book with her hand. ‘There is a signal tower, Mr Grassi. A place to signal from or why else is it called by that name? So, let us signal from it.’

  ‘My dear ladies – now? In the dark? When dawn may come at any time and with it the Manticore? Oh, surely another time, a better time …’

  The wheel within her hummed, a rising pitch of fury. ‘Mr Grassi. You are fluttering, and it is unlike you. Think of your native cunning. Think of your natural guile. Think how clever we are, Mr Grassi, and let us go. Who knows what another day in this place may do to us? I will not wait to be used by those plotters; I will not wait to be eaten by Madame; I will not wait to be pursued by the Manticore. Stay or go with us, Mr Grassi, but we will go, won’t we, Helen?’

  The woman nodded over her pot of broth, trying to straighten the kitcheny clutter with one hand even as she reached for her coat with the other.

  ‘Oh, leave it,’ said Grassi, impatiently. ‘Leave it. Who knows. We may never see it again.’

  They went out into the silent streets, still wet from the dusk rain, lit by an occasional lamp into uncertain pools of visibility which they swam between in the wet light, working their way back toward the church from which their evening’s peregrinations had begun.

  ‘I hear feet behind us,’ said Helen, almost whispering. ‘Following us.’

  ‘Probably David,’ said Marianne in a definite tone. ‘Or one of the others. Pay no attention, Helen. Of course they will follow us. Let them. Anyone who helps us helps them, though they may not know it.’

  ‘I hear cars moving.’

  ‘They always move at night,’ said Marianne. ‘When I was in the library, I used to listen to them at night, wondering where they came from, where they were going. I have never seen them in the daytime at all, but at night they come out after the rain, to make that wet, swishing sound throughout the night. Perhaps the rain brings them, like frogs. Perhaps they bring the rain and cannot move when the streets are dry. Pay no attention.’

  ‘There are bells ringing.’

  ‘They are ringing the bells in the church. Sometimes they do that at night. Whoever does it makes a very soft sound, though, not clamorous as in the day. Pay no attention, Helen. It will help guide us where we are going.’

  And, indeed, the soft ringing of the bells did guide them through the wet streets while behind them in the city the sounds of cars and footsteps increased as though a skulking assembly gathered elsewhere and increased with each moment. They came at last to the church, passed before its bulbous pillars, and stood at the foot of the signal tower. In the church there was singing, sad as tears; the sound lapped them in anguished waves where they stood.

  ‘I know,’ said Helen. ‘I will pay no attention to it.’

  Marianne smiled. Had she seen it, Helen would have been surprised at the cold efficiency of that smile.

  The stairs wound up the outside of the tower for at least half its height then entered through an arched opening into a lightless interior. From where they stood the heavy tower roof lowered down at them like brows over the shadowed eye holes of the high arcade. Marianne set her foot upon the step and the singing behind her grew in intensity even as the bells began ringing more loudly. Resolutely, she ignored this and went on, Helen and Mr Grassi behind her, the sound growing moment by moment into a cacophony, a tumult, the swishing of the cars and the tread of many feet underlaying other sounds with a constant susurrus as they climbed. Far away she thought she heard the crash of breaking glass and she turned to see the expression of surprise and fear on both faces behind her. ‘We would probably not be able to hear the Manticore’s window breaking from here,’ she said. ‘Pay no attention.’

  They were not long in doubt, for the next sound they heard was the unmistakable roar of the Manticore, far off yet infinitely ominous. They hurried up the steps, curling around the squatty tower once, twice, three times widdershins. Before them the arched opening into darkness gaped like a mouth, and they stopped as if by common consent before entering it. Below them on the street, things gathered, vision swam, and a file of Greasy Girls began to assemble at the corner. There were bulky shadows at the base of the tower, and Marianne saw one or two of them start up the tower stair. ‘David is there,’ she told Helen. ‘With others. It seems we are together in this, whether or no.’

  They hesitated at the dark opening. There was no door, no sign that there had ever been a door, and yet the impression of a definite barrier within that opening was clear to each of them. ‘Shall we risk what waits within?’ asked Marianne. ‘Or do you think we only imagine it?’

  ‘Something there,’ said Helen.

  Grassi nodded, put out a hand to feel of the darkness as though he measured velvet for a robe. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘something there, and yet I do not think it menaces us.’

  ‘Then we gain nothing by standing,’ said Marianne, pushing her way through the opening and into the tower. There was no light inside, and they fumbled their way around the stone walls until they encountered the stairs once more and could fumble their way up that twisting, railless flight. Gradually their eyes became used to the darkness, became accustomed to the velvet shadow, and they saw draperies as of mist against the dark. Faces of smoke. Hands which reached foggy fingers toward them. Voices of vapor. Marianne stopped climbing, sat down with her back against the wall and her hands held before her to warn away whatever it was which shifted and swam at the edges of her sight.

  ‘Ghosts …’ whispered Helen.

  ‘Peeled ones,’ corrected Grassi in an awed tone. ‘Those whom the Manticore has chased to the edges of oblivion.’

  A sigh ran among the shifting shapes. Marianne could see them more clearly now, forms of virtual transparency through which one might see the ghostly hearts beating slowly, the pulsing blood coursing through pale veins, translucent orbs of eyes staring at them through the darkness. Even as she watched, one of the figures threw up its gray arms and opened its mouth in a long, silent scream which echoed down the tower in a single pulse of agony, then came apart into shreds before her eyes, fading into the gloom, into nothingness. Around this disappeared one was an agitation of ghosts, a turmoil of spirits and a soundless wailing which bit at them like the shriek of unoiled hinges on old vaults.

  The anger within Marianne deepened, began to sing. ‘There is nothing we can do for them,’ she said to the others, beginning to climb once more. ‘We save them if we save ourselves. Otherwise, there is nothing for them or for us. Come, quickly. The Manticore is hunting through the streets.’

  Though the tower had not looked very tall from the street, from within it seemed to extend endlessly upward, and they turned around and around as they climbed, still widdershins, the world beginning to spin beneath them. At last they reached a flat platform and felt a ladder upon the wall. At the top of the ladder was a trapdoor, and it opened at their combined strength to let them out into the room at the top of the tower. The room was strewn with rubbish, with broken picture frames and trash and blown leaves from trees which had never existed in this place. In the center of the room was a fireplace without a chimney, simply a raised platform made up of large stones cemented together. Marianne did not wait. She began scavenging immediately among the broken frames, stripping a canvas away from its frame and piling the broken sticks upon the hearth. The picture had been of a naked girl carrying a light in a dark, frightening street.

  ‘I pray,’ she begged them, ‘that one of you has a match. Without it, I fear we’re done.’

  ‘Always,’ said Helen, rummaging in her pockets. ‘One must never be without fire …’

  Below them in the nearby street the roar of the Manticore became one with a roar from the crowd. Marianne heard a trumpet bray, somewhere, or a car horn, as she fidgeted while Helen searched. At last the woman found what she had looked for, half a dozen wooden matches, two of them broken. They crouched beside her, cutting off the wind, while she tried to light the broken frame with a kindling of dead leaves and s
craps of paper. The first four matches went out, caught by vagrant wind, burned out without igniting anything but themselves. Marianne gulped, wiped her hands, let frustrated fury take her. ‘Burn,’ she commanded. ‘You will burn to summon help, because I need help. Burn.’ Still, there was only one match left when the leaves caught fire to send tentative tendrils of flame up between the bits of broken wood. Then the wood caught with a roar, the paint upon it bubbling and pouring out smoke. They found other trash in the place, heaped it upon the small fire until it became a beacon of leaping red and a column of black, roiling smoke rising upward forever from the tower.

  ‘Now,’ gasped Marianne, ‘should we call a name? Invoke a spirit? Call upon God?’

  ‘Call upon Macravail,’ cried Grassi. ‘For if he hears you, he will bring God with him.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  The dusk rain wakened Chimera, sogging the rough curls of his mane and running across Lion’s closed eyes into the corners of the nostrils, making Lion sneeze. There was no sound to have awakened him, and he swiveled ears, trying to determine what quality of uneasiness it might have been which put an end to dream and brought him into this place. He rather thought it had been the sound of someone calling his name, but he could detect no echo of that summons now. He turned his heavy head, following the absence of sound, ears continuing to prick and twitch. This motion wakened Goat who shared the ears with Lion, centered as they were in the great arc of Goat’s horns. Through slitted eyes Goat stared calmly along the shaggy hair of the backbone to the end of his back where the flat, scaled head of Snake rested – still asleep, forked tongue flickering unconsciously – and Snake’s body curved away into Chimera’s tail. Lion began pawing wetness away, and Goat caught a glimpse of the dark wall which towered just behind them, arcing off into haze in either direction.