The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter Read online

  He reviewed, briefly, his impulse to bash the women’s head in and could see no good way the scenario might have ended. Perhaps he was an idiot. He had been called this many times, for sure. He looked at the corpse. All he had ever wanted was a chance to improve himself and to own shiny things. Were these the crimes of an idiot?

  His eyes burned. His skin, stung over and over by lashes, seemed to scream. Snatching up his mace, Pan Renik tried desperately to formulate an additional step, one last step, or to see if one were possible, but the tails beat his face, his neck, his shoulders. “Leave me alone,” he shouted. “Leave me alone, you lousy galls!”

  He saw more ambassadors approach from above, through the red haze of sap on his face. Dozens of them, coming to get access to him, to contribute their bit to his punishment. Exile, condemnation, existence: all unfair!

  As a tail caught Pan Renik across the cheek and he felt hot fluids burst on his face, his strength and anger and energy suddenly exploded: he spun the mace without further thought, knowing full well he could never hit an ambassador, for they were invincible messengers of a higher power, of the mighty Anu, but to his shock he heard the mace connect, heard the buzzing clip: the ambassador spun down, fizzling, crippled, to land on the twigs of his nest, near the woman’s corpse, where it flopped about and emitted a high, keening wail.

  Other ambassadors backed off a few metres, en masse.

  Pan Renik stared at the crippled messenger for a second. Incredulous. Then he looked up, beyond the masses of hovering ambassadors, at the clear blue sky. There was no entity visible, no sign of Anu coming out of the sun to kill him.

  Not yet, at least.

  He smashed the broken ambassador again as it tried to lurch away. Sparks sprayed from a crack in its back. He hit the device one more time, a mighty two-handed wallop that smashed its carapace, and again, until the ambassador stopped twitching and lay in shattered fragments.

  “Galls upon you,” he panted. “Galls!” A spring popped up from the wreck: the trajectory took the spring over the side of his nest and down, beyond the clouds, out of sight.

  Pan Renik’s breath came in ragged gulps. He tightened his grip on the mace.

  Then a distant rumbling, as if of thunder, emanated from the firmament, building slowly. Pan Renik only saw the calm blue expanse of the morning, stained along the east cloudline with brighter light.

  But something was coming.

  Faster than his eyes could follow, the ambassadors vanished.

  All of them.

  Something was coming—

  Scrambling over to where the dead woman lay, Pan Renik madly searched the black outfit. There were strange seams, confounding him, a variety of studs, clasps, all foreign to his clumsy fingers. Several openings parted easily, others he tore, but he managed to completely strip the sap-covered corpse.

  Naked, the woman seemed less alien. Smaller, somehow. He tried not to wonder what her laugh might have sounded like. He tried not to think about lying with her, like a padre, and how her body might have felt against his, if it were not cold and hardening.

  The rumbling from heaven continued to build.

  He saw, next to the woman—so black it looked like a hole in his nest—an object the size and shape of his forearm. He thought of starless nights. Hesitating, stooping, his fingers almost touched the object, but not quite, because a faint voice started to whisper in his mind.

  But there were no living ambassadors around.

  He grabbed the treasure, which must have rolled free of the outfit, grunting as his hand closed over a surface so smooth and cold against his skin he thought he’d been seared. When he lifted and cradled it, the whispering grew louder and louder, and he wanted to throw the thing away but literally could not. Voices reached a crescendo in his head, then just the sound of wind.

  He pushed the object back inside the suit, then put his own limbs into the sleeves, under the straps. He fastened clasps he had previously undone. He pulled material tight over his body. Pan Renik had no way of knowing if he had put the bizarre costume on in the correct fashion but he could not wait, not for anything. Not anymore. Waiting was over.

  Sounds from above made the thin branches quaver.

  Metal rods that the woman had died for extended out either side of Pan Renik’s body, trapping gusts of wind. Strung between the rods, the black blanket stretched, filling, pushing him forward. He looked like a glider. He looked like a gall-licking glider. He hooted and tried to make a rude gesture in the direction of the settlement but his movements were hampered. The rods were lighter than Pan Renik had expected. He braced himself on his haunches, shrugging, even dancing a bit, and discovered that he could unlock the frame; pressure from the wind suddenly decreased; he was able to fold his arms.

  The broken mask, streaked with the dead woman’s sap—and by drips of his own—covered Pan Renik’s eyes, mouth, and nose.

  And here they came! A mass of ambassadors, approaching directly from the sun. More than he had ever seen before: a thousand, ten thousand. Behind the myriads, some bigger shape shimmered into view. The intensity of light made him gasp. Around the form, sky broke up into scales of light that made it difficult to focus. He saw a large torso with a fiery tail, and an elongated head, eyes dim with blindness.

  Ambassadors were leading the sky power to him.

  Massive hands grasped the air, tentatively, spread out to soar—

  Anu was coming.

  The end of the world. The end of everything. Looking down at the distant settlement, Pan Renik spat (but the spittle caught the wind and smeared his own cheek), shrieking, “Rotten galls! Aphids! Tumours!”

  Taking an awkward run at the corpse, keeping low—rocking from side to side—he used all his strength and what little momentum he had to roll the woman, moving her body toward the edge of his nest, pushing with his shoulder, straining with his legs. Garbed in the outfit, shifting the corpse was difficult and the woman’s naked limbs were rigid and unyielding. Outflung arms crashed down against the twigs, impeding movement. Once, twice. But he flopped the body over. There were metal studs down her blue flesh and these flashed patterns of dull lights at him. Tattoos on her palms. Tattoos on the bottoms of her feet. Hairless legs, vagina, head. But he could not look at that face any more. Glassy eyes watched him. Black crust of sap, silver teeth, exposed in an ugly rictus.

  The rods over his back clanged against each other. The blanket flapped taut against him.

  Then the body tipped over the edge, catching for just a second on twigs before plummeting down, away, toward the clouds. He heard faint but rewarding screams of the padres, no doubt trying to protect themselves from the blasphemy falling at them from the sky.

  Pan Renik stood on the precipice. Above, Anu, moving quicker now, guided by his phalanx of ambassadors, was about to take his life. Below lay endless, poisonous clouds. He held his arms out, fighting for balance, staring down as the winds roared, eager to pluck him away.

  For just an instant Pan Renik lifted his face, one last time, eyes nearly closed, and let out a scream of defiance.

  Then he launched himself over the edge of the world, arms held out like wings, like a glider, in hopes of soaring into the morning, leaving all this behind, but instead he plummeted, faster and faster, shrieking down, past the padres—who stood open mouthed in shock—entirely out of control, toward the clouds.

  Afterwards, she lay on her bed and might have even dozed. The girl had quickly departed. The orgasm had not been as exceptional as she had hoped it might be, though it had not taken the kholic long to achieve. Truth be told, when sober, little effort was required to get the chatelaine off. Plus, Octavia could make almost anyone come by just standing there. Her body had been taut, pungent, lithe. Her skin was grimy. People in Nowy Solum that were able to look right through Octavia, as if she did not exist, must suffer from dementia.

  The chatelaine rolled onto her side and looked in her mirror, upward, at an angle, so she could only see the wooden ceiling of her
chambers. She wasn’t ready yet to meet the gaze of her pets. There was always a tiny element of shame she harboured whenever they had witnessed her shouting and thrashing about during congress. Sometimes she wished that when she came she could retain more decorum. Be discrete. Absurd that she lost control like that. What did the girl possibly think? Octavia had been utterly silent throughout, even as the chatelaine went down on her. What did any of her lovers think during sex? The chatelaine knew that citizens talked about her, chuckled about her antics. Octavia had even paused at the worst possible moment, looking up from between the chatelaine’s thighs, probably to see if the chatelaine was okay or not. Embarrassing.

  Yet she smiled at the memory.

  The chatelaine tried to gauge if fucking the girl had changed what she thought about the kholic. She did not feel more in love—if these emotions were indeed burgeoning love—but neither did she feel further distanced, as sometimes happened after the mystery of such attractions was, well, consummated. One thing for certain: her day had begun to look up.

  Octavia did make several flattering, if deadpan, comments during their lovemaking.

  And, of course, the girl had initiated the sex. That was a compliment the chatelaine would not soon forget.

  She rose, arranging her clothes, checking herself in the mirror to ensure everything that was supposed to be covered stayed covered, and left her chambers.

  The nearest access to one of the towers that supported the dungeon was across the Great Hall, in the corner of the room her ancestors once used for dining. Fires here had not been lit in years and the great table was furred with dust. Mice scurried as she entered, and a larger creature, unseen, thumped wetly to the floor to drag itself off. She had brought a lantern, but even shadows crept slowly away.

  The chatelaine had climbed this spiral, the Northeast, countless times, since she was a little girl, but never once had she been able to count the actual number of steps. Even now, ascending, as an adult (albeit an adult in fairly bad condition and somewhat preoccupied with events of her day), the chatelaine tried to count them. Of course, she had the capacity to reach higher numbers than she had as a girl, but seldom did she pass three hundred with any confidence of accuracy, and this number was reached perhaps a third of the way up—still well below the level of the highest rooftops outside.

  The stairs themselves were barely wide enough for her feet, and the torch the chatelaine carried illuminated only the nearest of the steps and the immediate curve of the adjacent wall. She was very careful to make sure her footing was secure on the damp and worn stone before moving upward; if she hurt herself here she might lay for hours, or tumble head over heels to her death. Servants seldom came up, the palatinate never. Not anymore. Thanks to her. Food for the castellan was delivered via a system of pulleys, through a long shaft from the kitchens. There was one old man, Tuerdian, who lived permanently in the dungeon with her father, in tiny chambers of his own, employed to tend to the castellan’s fires, arrange his meals, and draw the old man’s infrequent baths, but Tuerdian spent most of his time sleeping or sitting in his cot, hacking up his lungs. Thinking about the man now, the chatelaine realized she had not seen him in many moons. She would ask her father about the old servant’s health, when and if she finally got to the top.

  Moments later, glancing out one of the tiny apertures in the tower wall, the chatelaine sighed at the clutter outside. Perhaps, she thought, walls surrounding the entire city should come down, to let Nowy Solum spill forth. There had been times when the chatelaine had ordered the destruction of makeshift homes, which appeared—seemingly overnight—hastily built in such a way that access to one of these windows was compromised. Whenever she gave the orders, she felt bad, for a little while anyhow, and even considered offering the displaced families compensation—though she had not done anything of the sort so far. Shacks and hovels would completely smother both her and Jesthe, if she let them.

  Resuming her tedious climb, around and around, the chatelaine moved above the last of the rooftops. Her mouth was gummy, her tongue sticking to her palette. The taste of the kholic was on her lips. At the highest window, the chatelaine paused. The parchment cover was torn, and it crumbled when she tried to move it aside, to get a better view. She was far above the city now. Only the other towers remained, and the mists. A small flock of brown lizards flew by. It was starting to rain again. She thought about her father, emptying his chamber pots onto the homes below. There were no pipes up here, and the castellan balked at the idea of having them put in; he claimed they would make him ill. Symbolism of her father’s act was so obvious that the chatelaine, thinking about it now, smiled sadly.

  A breeze murmured in low tones, as if mad. Nowy Solum extended, cluttered and dark, the rooftops muted tones of rust and brown. She saw the River Crane, and the parapets atop the perimeter wall, where it arched over South Gate.

  As she began going up again, pigeons erupted from a hiding spot very near her, in a panic, preceding her and leaving behind a small storm of feathers and debris. She put a hand on her aching heart to calm it. On this day, it had seen such extremes.

  When the storm had passed and waters were relatively calm, the women tried to repair the mast, which had snapped and trailed in the sea. All they had to work with was the clothes on their backs and the salvaged remains of the second flight suit. But stiff oceanic winds made short work of their splicing attempt; the frame of the suit, which they had used as a splint, bound against the shaft of the mast, quickly bent; the sail remained useless.

  So now they sat, peeling and reddening and blistering, as the raft drifted, uncontrollable. Yet these issues seemed insignificant compared to dehydration and imminent starvation.

  Shoulders touching, the women watched the horizon. Clouds sometimes reached out to smite the water, as if in battle, and occasionally the water leapt up to retaliate. Once there had been an island—small, inviting—but this too had drifted past. They had wept then, silently, for hours.

  There were gulls, too, and the women had briefly seen the floor of the ocean through gorgeous water, long weeds brushing the surface.

  They were astonished by faces on the fish that rose to watch with eyes like their own, looking back up at them.

  They drifted close to the edge of this world. They heard the crash of the waters, falling into the abyss. When their crippled car had been shot down by the brood craft, and had plunged through the atmosphere and clouds, they had desperately sought a place to come down. Just enough time to register a desert, and a city—like a sudden scab—then the impossible cliff of water. Banking over the abyss, holding the car aloft for as long as possible (though the engines were smoking and debris broke away), they wheeled back over the ocean, to strike the water—

  They ejected the raft, the suits.

  All three had survived, with only cuts and scrapes.

  The brood craft did not pursue below the clouds, which, they soon discovered, blocked all efforts to get any signal out.

  Without a sail, or oars, the plunge was inevitable. An end to this ordeal was something to look forward to.

  The third woman had vanished so long ago now that she must be dead, though it might have only been two days since she had left. Their co-worker, their friend. Their lover. She had taken a flight suit and a transmitter and gone up, to fly above the clouds, to send for help.

  She never came back.

  Any form of rescue seemed impossible now. Their associate had not made it. They would never hear her laugh again, or her foul mouth, cursing them as they played and drank and worked.

  The two remaining women said nothing to each other. Peace would come soon. They would expire together. They watched lights moving above the clouds. From here, these lights seemed almost pretty.

  Screaming, Pan Renik fell. There had been branches at first, then nothing but vapours. With no choice but to suck in the mists, he was shocked to discover he did not die right away. He imagined his inner works filled with poisons, damaged beyond all hope. O
r maybe he was already dead, and the transition to death had been painless—

  As the suit also gulped air, and flapped loudly, turning him about, the vista cleared, intermittently, affording moments of nothing but whistling wind and the sight of another bank of rapidly approaching clouds.

  Once, a pack of startled gliders!

  Then amber again.

  Pan Renik grew tired of screaming and sucking in poison and wondering if he was dead. Wind burned his exposed skin and stung the welts the ambassadors had raised. Could he fall forever? Were the clouds of infinite thickness?

  This was an oddly pleasant afterlife; he felt moments of surprising peace, such as he had never before known.

  With his shoulders he clicked the rods over his back into rigidity, extending the blanket until it was taut: he was propelled forward. Clicking the rods once more enabled him to slow forward movement. Hunching his back, first one way, then the other—forcing his elbows to bend—caused wide, slow turns.

  These clouds, poison or not, were wet, almost refreshing against his face. Pan Renik spread his arms as wide as they could go, closed his eyes, and let himself soar.

  Spluttering awake, path sucked in fluids, filling his lungs. As he sank, dying, light came dwindling through the milky liquid. He did not want to drown. He did not—

  “Son?”

  His father was shaking him; he was not immersed in liquid.

  Groggily, he said, “I am a mother . . .”

  But, blinking away the dream, another vision faded, joining the first to lie mingling inside him.

  They were stopped by the side of the road. His father peered down at him. Others, curious, gathered around. Path shuddered. His mouth was very dry and he felt sweat trickling his forehead.

  “You all right? You was flopping about. Then you went all still.”

  “I’m okay,” he said. “Let’s go . . .”