Winterlong w-1, page 24
part #1 of Winterlong Series
I stammered, “She was—I didn’t want her to touch me!”
“She was looking at your hair,” explained Martin. “She lost all her hair, she was just looking at your hair—”
“Shut up!” I whirled to raise my fist at them so that they could see the sagittal glowing there. “Take her—get it out of here!” I kicked at the girl’s corpse and stumbled away from it, shielding my eyes.
After a minute I heard Oleander command them, “Do it.” The smaller children scuffled for a little while, dragging their burden. The door wheezed open and shut. When they returned I stood panting in the center of the chamber, glaring at Oleander as he fingered his swivel nervously. He cleared his throat.
“You—we’re supposed to—you’re still to come with us.” He raised his eyes and smiled, looked more sober as I bared my teeth at him.
“And if I don’t?” I snarled, when from the chamber entrance rang the scholiast’s harsh voice.
“Flee, cousins. The House of High Brazil is beset by lazars. Flee, cousins. The House —”
A crash. The scholiast fell silent. The door swung open to show a tall slender figure silhouetted against the pale light.
“Dr. Silverthorn!” Bellanca cried. She and Martin ran to greet him. Oleander bit his lip, drew the gun from his makeshift belt and pointed it at me. From across the room Octavia made a thick clucking sound and waved. Her fingers had rotted, flesh and bone, all the way to the second knuckle.
“Dr. Silverthorn,” began Oleander. He shifted the gun from one hand to the other. “It’s him. That boy. The one he told us about.”
The figure stepped into the light where I could see him for the first time. I gasped and looked away.
“I understand that the Consolation of the Dead wishes him to be returned alive, Oleander,” he said, disdain icing the words Consolation of the Dead. A thick voice—he had difficulty forming the words—but kindly and intelligent for all that. “Will you put that damned thing away and let me see him? And where is Angeline?”
Sheepishly Oleander tucked the gun back into his belt and stepped away. I heard the other children whispering as they surrounded the newcomer and plucked at his clothes.
“He killed her, Dr. Silverthorn. I saw it—”
“That one, the one he told us—”
How can they bear to touch him? I thought as I tried to calm myself.
Because in that brief instant I had seen a horrible thing: a man of bones whose clothes flapped about him like gulls taking flight, with a nearly fleshless face drawn into the hideous grimace of a skull picked clean of skin and sinew.
2. Parts of the nature of a skeleton
I STARED AT THE floor, trying to keep my heart from racing. That awful face! I heard the scrape and rattle of his feet upon the floor, the crackle of his stiff clothes as he moved slowly among the remaining children.
“Dr. Silverthorn, can we go home now?”
“Dr. Silverthorn, did you see the party?”
“Dr. Silver—”
“Shh, children,” he hushed them. A rustle as he crossed the room. He finally stopped a few meters from me. I heard his breathing, a thick glottal sound as though he choked upon the air. Still, if the children did not fear him I could at least make a show of boldness. I turned to face him.
He stood there, a shrunken scarecrow of a man all in white, his long tunic stained with dirt and grass. White gloves covered his hands, a loose white scarf wrapped his throat. Only his face was not hidden: pink and white and gleaming as a piece of fresh meat, the veins and capillaries stretched like vines across the tendons and smooth solid bones of his skull. My eyes filled with tears.
“Ohh …” I cried. In spite of myself I was moved to pity at the mere sight of this stranger. “Why have they done this.to you?”
He shook his head very slowly, as though if he moved too quickly the tenuous strands that held him together might tear. “But don’t I know you?” he murmured as though he had not heard me. He stretched out one gloved hand to brush the tears from my cheeks. “Wendy Wanders?”
I shook my head. “No—I am Raphael Miramar.”
My tears stained the tips of his gloves. He drew his hand to his face and stared at the damp cloth, then turned his gaze back upon me. Once perhaps those brown eyes had been tender; perhaps even now they regarded me with pity or wonder. But with no flesh upon his brow, no lashes to droop across those swollen orbs he could only stare rigidly, a fine sheath of flesh flicking up and down when he blinked. “Raphael,” he said, shaking his head. “Yes, of course—the Aviator told me, the children spoke of you, they saw you by the river. …”
With a soft creak he swiveled his head to look behind him, to where the children waited. “Poor things, they are tired,” he murmured, then returned his attention to me. “But you are not Wendy?”
“No,” I said. I was torn between wanting to look away from him and wanting to stare in repelled fascination and pity. I fixed my gaze upon his hands. A clear liquid seeped from beneath the gloves and stained them as my tears had. “Who are you?”
He sighed, the sound unnaturally harsh as it hissed from his lipless mouth. “Three weeks ago I was Dr. Lawrence Silverthorn of the Human Engineering Laboratory. Three days from now I will be dead.” His clothes rustled as he shrugged and pulled from beneath his tunic a large black leather bag. He removed a narrow vial and began to rub a clear ointment on his face. “Antibiotic,” he explained, smearing it across the planes of his cheeks.
“We heard that Wendy was alive,” he said absently, as though once more taking up a long story. “A trader from the City said he had seen her performing with a wretched group of actors. We thought we might escape as she did, we thought we might find help here …”
He glanced up at me and laughed silently, mirthlessly. I hugged myself to keep from shaking at the sight; but I would not look away. “They kept some of them alive for a month while they tried to synthesize the bioprints,” he went on, clumsily replacing the cap on the vial of ointment. “After that they killed them. Their heads in vats while they pried their brains out. I hid Gligor and Anna in my room. At the end they ran out of anesthesia. All of your empath friends, Wendy, except for Anna and Gligor. All of them dead; all the children.”
His teeth clicked as he shook his head to indicate the lazars. “You were right to run away with that Aide. But you are not Wendy?” he asked again, confused. He glanced around the chamber. “Where is Angeline?”
“Dead, she’s dead, Dr. Silverthorn,” Bellanca cried. “He killed her. Can we go home?”
He started at the sound of her voice, then nodded. “Of course. Yes, of course, Bellanca. But lie down first, rest for a few minutes. All of you, rest.” He turned to me. “You did kill them, then: the albino boy and that other man. How?”
He stared as though he perceived me through a thick wall of glass. I held up my fist. The sagittal’s fierce radiance had faded to a faint lilac, almost gray. “This,” I said. “A sagittal. I did not mean to.” I bowed my head.
Dr. Silverthorn nodded. “A sagittal. I have seen them. They were prototype geneslaves developed during the Second Ascension, for—” His jaws moved as he turned his face toward mine, teeth bared in a horrible leer. “But you already know what they are for.”
He continued to stare at me for a long time. Finally he dipped his head to pore through the contents of his bag. I glimpsed the soft white globe of the top of his skull, blue-veined and shining dully. “Ah—here, boy.”
I moved to avoid the hand he reached toward me. He only stared with those cloudy eyes, continuing to stretch out a gloved palm holding a small round patch of blue cloth. “I am not contagious,” he said softly. “None of us are—but nobody here knows that, do they? They pick you off like little flies and you let them die, you let yourselves die. You ignorant fools.” There was no malice in his voice, not even a hint of it. All feeling might have been stripped from him as well as flesh and nerve.
“Here: this is a mild stimulant, it will make it easier for you to come with us.” I shuddered as he touched my neck but this time did not move away. He pressed the patch beneath my ear and drew back. “Now: look through this and find a vial with clear yellow capsules in it and give me one. Please.”
He handed me the bag and waited while I fumbled through its contents, strange bottles and instruments like swivels and flares, oddments similar to those I had seen Doctor Foster employ, but new and gleaming as though they had never been used. I found the bottle he wanted and handed him a single capsule.
“Thank you,” he said, swallowing it with difficulty. “It’s hard for me to get those out with the gloves. And I can’t use the others now: no skin left for them to adhere to. Soon not even these …”
After a moment or two his eyes seemed to glitter more brightly, and he flapped his hands. “Well! But I’ll feel better now.” He dropped the bottle into his bag and patted it closed. “Are you ready to come with us?”
My head had begun pounding, but not unpleasantly. I paused.
My tunic hung from me like a tattered standard. The sagittal was a cool weight about my wrist. Perhaps I might fight my way free of here. Perhaps I was strong enough to run, hide within the endless chambers of High Brazil, and after a day flee to the House Miramar. But then I recalled Whitlock’s face when the lazar Pearl had greeted me as Baal. Remembered the malicious eyes of the elder Balfour, and how the Saint-Alaban had cried aloud in fear when he saw me at the Butterfly Ball, and how even Ketura’s face had twisted in terror when she met my eyes.
There would be no going back for me now. The Hanged Boy had marked me as His own, and it was as it had always been in Doctor Foster’s tales. The old miser must go with the ghosts; the magicians must search for the beggar king; the metal boy find his human father in the belly of the mosasaur.
I would follow the Gaping One’s children to find Him again. Then I might be free.
I got my boots and pulled them on. Then I stared at Dr. Silverthorn defiantly.
“Where am I going?”
He grinned, baring his teeth. I heard his jaw snap as he replied, “Where we are all going: to die a horrible death.”
3. A brief and paroxysmal period
I CAN HARDLY BEAR to relive our trek across the City. At the fringe of the Narrow Forest a path led to the northwest, where no one but Zoologists and lazars ever traveled. That was the road we took. In the distance I saw the spires of our Houses upon the Hill Magdalena Ardent, and black smoke billowing from the minarets of High Brazil. A little while earlier I had watched numbly as flames swept the Great Hall. But Dr. Silverthorn had hurried us outside.
“It is better this way, boy,” he said as we passed the ruins of the Butterfly Ball, ribbons and streamers and the empty husks of moths all given to embers now in the blue light of day. “Let them burn, let them burn!” We fled down the Hill and passed into the Narrow Forest.
Fever and fatigue plagued me despite Dr. Silverthorn’s stimulants. He insisted upon pressing another patch to my temple, and had me feed him more of the yellow capsules. For hours I stumbled through the forest, prodded by Oleander or helped by one of the smaller lazars when I felt I could go no farther. Dr. Silverthorn’s chemistries only fed my hunger and terror, until a sort of delirium overcame me.
“Here, Raphael,” someone murmured. Dr. Silverthorn prodded at my chin, tilting it back as he held out a broken shoot of a thick reddish vine. “Drink this.” He poured the liquid into my mouth: thick and speckled with dirt and insects, but sweet and cool nonetheless.
“It will give you strength for what is to come,” he said. “I tested the water here when we first escaped: pond water, rain water, still water in tree stumps. Did you know it all has abnormally high levels of biotoxins?” He tossed aside the broken vine and started clambering along a twisting path amidst the greenery.
“So you are poisoning me.” I stumbled after him. “Is the Gaping One worth anything to your master dead?”
He paused, steadying himself against a slender tree like a white birch, but with filaments of green and yellow dangling from its limbs instead of leaves. They drifted to caress his skull, drew back to float upon the still air. “No,” he said, surprised. “I am not poisoning you. It won’t kill you. That’s what’s so strange, that it doesn’t kill you. At least not immediately. I took samples of Gligor’s blood, before we were—detained. And the toxin levels were high, so high; and it— changed him, it does seem to change things.” He looked down at his gloved hands, the sleeves of his white robes hanging limply from arms as thin and fleshless as the limbs of trees. “But it doesn’t kill you outright.”
“Dr. Silverthorn!” Bellanca’s voice shrilled from somewhere far ahead and out of sight.
“We’re coming,” he called. He waited for me to draw alongside him. “You don’t think that’s odd,” he said after we had been walking for several more minutes.
I slapped at a green fly biting at my leg. “No,” I said. “I know nothing of the Ascendants and their poisons.”
He nodded very slightly, almost regretfully. “No. Of course you wouldn’t. But it’s very strange. We had no idea, back at HEL , what it’s like in the besieged sectors.”
I snorted. Through the mesh of leaves I could see the children in the distance, hacking at vines with sticks and pelting one another with the harmless yellow flowers that grew from rotting stumps. “Is that what you call our City? The ‘besieged sector’?”
He stopped in the shade of a great sycamore tree and clicked open his black bag, held it out for me. I found one of the yellow capsules and waited for him to swallow it before we went on.
He said, “One of the besieged sectors. Just one.”
After a few minutes he added, “There will be many more in the days to come.”
I bit my lip to keep from sneering at him. His words infuriated me. All that I had heard of the Ascendants was proving to be true: that they were monstrous, that they had nothing but contempt for my people and even for the Curators whose knowledge was so far beneath their own; nothing but contempt for the entire City they had all but forgotten in the pursuit of their distant and endless wars. I followed him in silence.
But after a while a sort of peacefulness descended on me. The warmth and sweet odor of the afternoon, the buzz of the great gold and crimson bees in the trumpet flowers, even the silent wings of passing butterflies all conspired to drain me of my anger and even my fears, for a little while. The children too had fallen into a drowsy silence. One or another would run a distance ahead, to lie upon a cool bank of moss and nap until the others woke her. Only Dr. Silverthorn seemed untouched by the torpid vapors that drifted here at the edge of the Narrow Forest. He talked ceaselessly the whole time, to himself if no one else was listening. As the afternoon wore on and its languid air dissipated he recited one nonsensical tale after another to the children, now restive and anxious to reach our destination. And he told me things that sounded as mad as those stories he amused the’ lazars with.
“At the end Emma told me there was a twin boy,” he said once. His teeth chattered with excitement, and he stroked Martin’s head as the boy paced alongside him. “If we’d only known before!” The gaze he turned upon me was brilliant, the dark eyes glowing. “To think of what we might have learned!”
And later, “If only I’d known. I would have saved her if I could. We might have revived her, you know; although they weren’t going to do anything with her brain, not after cyanide! She was a brilliant doctor. I quite hated her when she was alive.”
And, “I didn’t believe they’d come after us, you see. They sent fougas: our own people sent fougas after us. They caught us crossing the river. Anna nearly escaped but ran back for us. And Gligor went quite mad. He tried to pluck his eyes out, to kill himself. And I should have let him, you know. I should have let him.” He fell into brooding silence.
As nightfall drew near, even Dr. Silverthorn began to seem uneasy. He walked faster, waiting impatiently for the smaller children to catch up with him. I had grown weary of his endless chatter, and fell back to walk alongside the sober Oleander.
“Where are we going?” I asked him, hoping for a more satisfying answer than that Dr. Silverthorn had given me earlier.
Oleander looked at me in surprise, then made a steeple of his hands as he replied, “To the Engulfed Cathedral.”
I stopped in the middle of the path. “The Cathedral?” I repeated, stunned. “You mean Saint-Alaban’s Hill?”
“That’s right.” He dropped his hands, pulled a leaf from an overhanging limb. When he bruised it between his fingers it released the sharp scent of lemons. “Saint-Alaban’s Hill, that’s what the Paphians call it. We always said the ‘Engulfed Cathedral.’ Once great fields of lavender and dittany-of-crete grew there.”
“But why?” I asked. “Why the Cathedral?”
“Because that is where we live,” said Oleander. “We have to return there. Tast’annin says so.”
“But no one has ever lived there,” I said, stumbling after him. “It’s haunted.” I clutched at the tattered collar of my tunic, drew away a handful of feathers that I cast into the shadows.
“This entire City is haunted,” a hollow voice said into my ear. I cried out and backed into a thorny hedge of roses. Beside me Dr. Silverthorn peered from the thicket. He cackled at my alarm, and the children with him. “You must walk faster to get there before dark,” he scolded. “Else you won’t get the full effect.”
But it was nearly another hour by my reckoning before we reached our destination.
Saint-Alaban’s Hill: the viper curled at the foot of all the Saint-Alabans’ superstition, the legendary ruin whence the Gaping One would rise to confront the Magdalene to begin the Final Ascension. In all my seventeen years I had heard nothing but evil of Saint-Alaban’s Hill and the Engulfed Cathedral. I prayed silently for the Magdalene to deliver me from what was to come.
