The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter Read online

  Coming over the final ridge, he saw them. The benevolent sisters, bless them, were shimmering. Vibrating. Garlands that had covered them—offerings he had draped casually over the past few days—fell from the smooth backs of the sisters to the rock. He saw the garlands wither with growing heat and, as he stepped up onto the shale, felt this heat himself, radiating from the goddesses like the blast of fires. There was a loud hum, and the smell of thunderstorms.

  An eye cracked half-open. Never had he seen this before. Never had he seen the eyes of the sisters. The pupil was large and black and bottomless; terrified, the exemplar dropped to his knees, lowering his own feeble gaze.

  Get up, the sisters commanded. We shouldn’t be gone long. Are you all right? Get up!

  On shaky legs, the exemplar managed to stand.

  Unforeseen events have occurred, they told him. We’re needed elsewhere. You’ll relay the story of our lift off to the people. You’ll tell them.

  “Of course,” said the exemplar. But what was lift off? What would he describe to the people?

  If we haven’t returned in two days, get everyone inside the cavern and remain there. Do you understand?

  “Remain? But, but sisters . . .” His voice was as tremulous as the air and the ground. “Most benevolent sisters, may you be blessed and bless us in return, where are you going?”

  Get everyone inside the cavern if we don’t return. Do you understand?

  He managed to nod, though all he wanted to do was weep.

  When he looked up, more impossibilities unfolded: the sisters—each as big as a house—had spread out their arms, sweeping them over the perimeter of bushes, and now they hovered over the shale slab, a meter or so in the air. Their faces were alert, energized, their wings a blur. Muscles along the great spines bulged. They continued to watch him. They did not speak again.

  Flowers that had died, and which he should have removed, and flowers that should have been replaced fresh this morning, all rolled from the shale, withering further or bursting into flame. The growing heat dried his skin and hot winds blew hair back from his face. He turned away, feeling small, ashamed of his weakness. He wanted to ask so many questions but was frozen dumbstruck as the sisters, bless them, rose even higher into the sky, turning their faces away from him at last.

  Slow swells of water, as if the grotto had powers to alter viscosities of basic elements, such as thicken liquids or vanquish light, and the sound of distant dripping, had lulled the cherub into a deeper sleep. Little round face, pressed snug up against the gunwale, wings ruffled like a blanket over its pudgy torso. The creature breathed quietly. Watching the cherub in the dim lantern glow, the abductors had momentarily forgotten their recent disagreement. Adrenaline waned now, and exhaustion tugged at their nerve endings. Neither felt particularly fulfilled by their recent actions.

  In the boat were a boy and a girl. A kholic and a hemo. The boy was the abandoned twin from the refuse station at Hot Gate, and the girl was his lover. After coitus in her room, they had dressed without speaking, a mood of solemnity following them from the tousled bed (he came; she did not). Leaving the room on Hanover Street, which the girl shared with three others, the couple walked to the centrum, paces apart. Nowy Solum was getting dark by then and the streets were nearly deserted.

  Climbing into Jesthe by one of the tunnels in the stone foundation—which the girl had recalled so clearly from her childhood, and described in painstaking detail, with nostalgia a lump in her windpipe—was as simple to do as it once had been, yet upon entering, they both found themselves cramped and dirty and uncomfortable. Were these tunnels, wondered the girl, forcing herself forward, the tunnels of her memory? She tried to understand the difference between the tunnels of the past and the tunnels of the present but only managed to become saddened, having contemplated instead such things as time and life and her dwindling youth.

  Though she had never been among the children to reach the endocarp in bygone days, nor see the fabled riches of Jesthe’s interior (let alone return with a piece of salted meat or other treasure), accessing the interior of the palace now, with this kholic boyfriend in tow, was not especially difficult. Surprisingly easy, in fact. Certainly a journey without the myth and wonder of a child’s perspective. She imagined the tunnels growing.

  They emerged in dim, dusty hallways, empty chambers, dark cupboards. Peeked out, then withdrew. Cobwebs strung their faces. Creaks and footfalls echoed. After several wrong turns, and climbing a crude stone staircase, they ended up in a crawlspace, just beyond what could only be the bedchambers of the chatelaine herself. Through a dense grille, they saw the huge room, the canopied mattress, all illuminated by a pair of lanterns and a dying fire.

  The chatelaine was there.

  She was not alone.

  Side by side the couple stood, cramped behind the false panel, for a long while. They watched, speechless, stricken, until at last the guests left and the chatelaine lay still on that infamous mattress, naked, face down and snoring.

  What they witnessed was a series of drunken and depraved acts, at times involving as many as three men in masks, and two women. Bizarre apparatuses—the uses of which neither would have ever guessed had they not seen them employed with their own eyes—scattered the floor, like casualties.

  The girl entered the bedchambers, emerging from behind a thick curtain, and crept through the dark, feeling rather foolish, nauseated by the smells, getting increasingly uncomfortable with agreeing to participate in this folly. There had been times, she knew, in the history of Nowy Solum, when a thousand guards would have raised their spears at her intrusion. Now, nothing of the sort occurred. The room was desolate and cold. The pale chatelaine lay like a bruise against the bedsheets.

  After motioning several times to the kholic boy, who did not venture forth, the girl found the chatelaine’s pets, caged individually, a dozen of them, in a mirrored alcove on the far side of the bedchamber. One pet looked like a cherub, and this was the only creature she could bring herself to touch.

  From his hiding place, the kholic continued to watch. His limbs had frozen and his stomach burned with acid. He was horrified by his own fear.

  When the girl pulled the groggy cherub from its cage—reflected dimly in the huge mirror against the far wall in the light of a torch burning low in its sconce—the creature came awake with a start.

  Whispered and desperate assurances—for the chatelaine stirred on her bed!—caused the cherub, thankfully, to drift off again.

  The girl came back, holding the creature to her shoulder. The feathers of its wings were grey.

  He did not look into the girl’s eyes.

  They left.

  Hurrying back, the abductors discovered that the corridors under Jesthe did web farther and in more convoluted patterns than the girl had described: they ended up, to their bafflement and disconcertment, not in the centrum at all—not even outside—but in the grotto beneath the palace they had both heard so many rumours about.

  Awed by the size of this place, by the silence, by the darkness, they froze.

  “You went the wrong way,” hissed the girl.

  “You were leading,” said the boy.

  She wheeled, thrusting out the sleeping cherub. “What do you want to do with this?”

  He turned away. A large body of water, an underground lake, vanished into the blackness, as if swallowed whole. On the stone walls nearby, pale phosphorescence cast a greenish light. Four greasy flames burned in crude holders to either side of where they stood.

  The boy took one of these torches and held it high, but the extent of the cavern remained lost, the wan hemisphere of light humbled by the dark.

  “Let’s get rid of it,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t know. Let’s get rid of it down here.”

  From tiny caverns—places they had evidently found to settle—faces of people emerged, watching with interest. A child, naked, pale as a grub, stepped from the shelter of her home to stare; the girlfriend, with the cherub asleep agains
t her shoulder, bade the child a quiet greeting.

  When he saw the small skiff tied to a dock, the boy motioned toward it with his chin. “Here,” he said.

  So they boarded the boat, and again the cherub awoke, eyelids fluttering, muttering groggy inanities. This time the couple was far enough away from the chatelaine’s bedchambers that there was no fear of waking anyone, let alone getting caught. Regardless, the girl quickly rubbed her nose on the cool, fat cheek, saying over and over in comforting tones, There, there, hush little baby, hush, every thing’ll be all right, until a vacuous smile emerged, a pudgy white thumb thrust between pale lips, eyes closed in ignorant bliss.

  The boy mounted his torch in the bow.

  Pushing off, they knew their relationship was similarly cast adrift, threatened by imminent collapse, caused by inexplicable forces, risen up over the past few hours. Like the palace, their love was undermined.

  The girl lowered her bundle to the wooden seat.

  The boy poled the invisible bottom.

  Neither of these abductors had yet seen out fifteen years. If either were much older, they likely would have settled on a less dramatic way of trying to ruin the chatelaine’s day, or maybe they would have continued to lie there, after fucking, on the girlfriend’s mattress, in her room on Hanover Street, merely talking, or falling back asleep, or otherwise letting inertia settle in. Idealism and naiveté were youthful cousins. Foresight and the considerations of age and experience often brought inaction, compromise, second-guessing; the ability to foresee the extent of actions—to understand implications of cause and effect—could effectively thwart spontaneous, if impractical, decisions.

  Kneeling in the stern of the boat, the girl—who was named Dhuka by her parents but called herself Name of the Sun (because, like the rest of her generation, she had never seen this fabled orb, which burned, allegedly, above the clouds)—rowed, while at the prow, her paramour and the instigator of this misadventure, Nahid, the melancholic boy, steered clear of sharp rocks and the hanging masses of stalactites that threatened to brain them both from the surrounding ebon.

  The weak torch crudely illuminated the immediate vicinity of the lake, an area not much larger than the skiff.

  Grey aquatic creatures rose to bump oblivious against the hull, perhaps attracted to the glow, perhaps blind. Farther out, a monster breached, just keeping up with the boat—a string of sinuous humps—before slipping under the surface once more.

  Then the ceiling of stone opened overhead.

  This was heard by the couple more than seen: a gentle cessation of pressure, a change in the echoes that indicated the boat had moved into vaster parts of the cavern; beyond the glow of the lantern, fuligin depths remained absolute.

  Turning in its sleep, the cherub snorted.

  Both Nahid and Name of the Sun had been rendered insignificant, as if, in that second, their folly was exposed, the futility of their actions and the futility of their upcoming arguments, maybe even the futility of everything they have ever done or will do, was laid bare. They drifted, along with their victim, silenced.

  Until Nahid dismissed all of this nonsense by shaking the cherub roughly by the shoulder.

  “Wake the fuck up,” he said. “Wake up.”

  All he understood was that things had gone wrong. The act was nothing like the foreplay. He tried so hard not to remember the crippling fear he had felt looking into the chatelaine’s chambers. What had transfixed him? How would this deed bring his sister back, anyhow? Would it, for some reason, drive this other girl away, this hemo? Possibly. Maybe it already had.

  Nahid shook the chatelaine’s pet again, and it woke, turning its babyface toward him. Squinting against the light, the creature frowned. And blinked. “Who are you?” Sitting up on the worn wooden seat, knuckling its eyes. “Where’s my mom?”

  “Go,” spat Nahid. “Fly away!”

  “Am I in a boat?” The cherub smiled and appeared to be excited about its predicament; it stood on chubby legs to shake out its wings. Nearly as tall as the seated abductors, it peered around, into the darkness, not afraid at all. The boy suspected that the beast was too simple for sensible reactions.

  “Fly away.” When Name of the Sun spoke, she employed much softer tones than had Nahid. “You can go now. Fly away.”

  “But what about my mom?”

  “Don’t be a fool,” said the kholic. “That woman wasn’t your mother. Why would your mother keep you in a cage?”

  The cherub only blinked.

  “Nahid.”

  “Ever thought about that? You believe she was the mother of all those other poor creatures? In all those cages? Now go, get lost.”

  “Nahid,” repeated Name of the Sun. Statements were implied in the way she said his name, convictions and condemnations both.

  He scowled.

  “She would sing to me,” the cherub said, a far-away look in its eyes, as if it had not been listening (which, indeed, it had not). “Every morning, she would sing to me. If she was feeling okay. A lot of mornings she just stayed in bed. She would rub my back with her fingers, pushing them through the bars. She smelled of oranges and wine. Sometimes, when her sleepover friends had dressed and gone, and they had long-since finished the wrestling games they liked to play, light strained through the clouds—”

  “Fucking go!”

  With a start, the cherub lifted off, narrowly avoiding the swing of the shunting pole. Nahid’s words echoed.

  Name of the Sun cautioned Nahid yet again, disapproving of his methods, of his abruptness.

  He had just hidden there, quivering!

  Over the boat, staring down, the poor cherub continued to fuss and scold and ask in annoying tones about its mother until the pole whistled through the air a second time; only then did the beast circle—once, twice—flying higher, a blur on the far range of the light. Even the most idiotic of creations must eventually understand the obviousness of such situations, and soon it was gone, flapping away, flying its pudgy self into the eternal black of its new home.

  Distant dripping.

  The scent of sulfur.

  Eyes watched, from the dark.

  Feeling heavy and slow, wishing he could have remained forever in the streets, with his sister, Nahid ground his teeth. Name of the Sun, looking up, saw absolutely nothing. When she looked at Nahid, she still saw nothing, not in his shadowed face, familiar yet so strange to her now. Dark eyes floated over a darker mask. He would not meet her gaze.

  What had they just accomplished? What was this ridiculous gesture? Name of the Sun had watched the chatelaine trying to get off, as attachments and devices were enabled, and clumsy companions tried various techniques, and she remembered looking down at her, passed out in her bed, an old and skinny woman, much smaller than Name of the Sun. More pathetic than anything else, a lonely figurehead in a decrepit city.

  Taking a moment to inspect choices and actions that had brought her to this point in life, Name of the Sun was not happy with any of them.

  About to trail her fingers in the water, she decided—as they touched the cold surface, and a darker shadow rose from the depths—against it.

  Blades of the oars sliced down. The boat began to move once more.

  And there came from the dark a series of cries, as if the tortured souls of the city had not, in fact, been taken by gods when they left Nowy Solum but had found refuge down here in the grotto, and had chosen this instant to wail.

  Or, maybe, Nahid thought, listening closer, pushing forcefully against a column of sandstone to clear it, the souls were not wailing at all, but laughing.

  Directly above, in a dorm in the East Wing, the sister, whose name was Octavia, suddenly sat up on her pallet. Rats scattered from where they had been watching her. She scratched at her latest fleabites. The darkness of the chamber caused Octavia to appear almost like the other girls, most of whom slumbered with more success on the pallets about. Though the large dorm room was cold, she smelled sour sweat. She shivered. Octavia liked th
is scent.

  She had worked until long after dusk and needn’t awaken until second breakfast, though it might have been close to that hour now. She had hardly slept all night. Whenever she did manage to drift off, her dreams, benign at first, became garish and loud and quite terrifying, waking her, though details were elusive when she woke.

  Each night Octavia had spent in the palace had been like this: enough nights now that she wondered if one could die, or go mad, from not sleeping.

  Exhaustion was dry pressure behind each eye.

  She took a deep breath but could not fill her lungs.

  At first, in the dreams, she and her brother Nahid were together, in one of the common rooms at the ostracon. She remembered her brother’s hands, the veins like worms. He looked askance at her. “The womb,” he said, “is reserved for life. Outside, all bets are off.” She was not following. Nahid tried to explain further, but flames sprung up around them.

  She tried to hold onto the parts where she was with Nahid, but these fragments became eclipsed by unnamed violence, obscured by the horrid acts that repeatedly woke her.

  Coming here had been a mistake. She needed to get out of Jesthe. She had expected the chatelaine’s bed, special treatment, a taste of privilege. Maybe even an opportunity to somehow help herself.

  Not labour, and neglect.

  Octavia lay back down, to try sleep one more time, even for a few minutes.

  But she heard someone come into the dorm. She listened to the soft footfalls getting closer. She did not open her eyes. Whoever it was stopped by her pallet. And stood there. Still she did not open her eyes.

  “Hey, sleeping beauty?” A woman’s voice—Hetta, the night matron? “Hey, wake up. Our lady wants to see you.”

  A toe, prodding her, so Octavia could no longer pretend. She rolled over, glanced quickly up—and, yes, Hetta stood there in the gloom—and looked away. “Who wants to see me?”

  “Who do you fucking think? You know where the sun is really hiding? Not above the clouds, but up yer kholic arse, that’s where. It’s a fucking disgrace.”