Here is a story that loses no savour in the telling.
Recall, if you will, old Cenere. There was a rogue! Malfeasant in manner and in mien, among the most morbid of His Hardship’s company. Scarcely was there a day when he could not be found to jeer at our celebrations, disturbing the City’s cheer by lounging in fountains and publicly shedding pieces of his person. (We know that the City was glad to retake it, as she is ever fond of embracing her children should they slip - but often must settle for their parts, when they see fit to discard them. Poor beldam! May we be ever in her whims.)
His was an epithet freely chosen as much as given, for when some well-traveled functionary noted his resemblance to one of the four-footed, slobbering beasts that dwelt in a realm of utter insignificance, Cenere was the first to take it up. He wore it proudly, much as any of the effluvia and worm-meal that caked his chitin.
Now we are all put in mind of this unsavoury image. Retain it - it shall be of import subsequently.
And each of us know also that when His Stygian Hardship, Her Sable Melancholia, They-Whose-Inkéd-Name-Shall-Be-No-More-Uttered-Save-As-A-Curse-In-This-City was exiled from this very isle, others of that coterie followed fast behind. Not all at once, no, for we know the price for such defections, but little by little, as coal-dust trickles from the funnel. For love of their lordship they went, or for resentment of the city that had outthrown them, and truth be told we were not often sorry to see them go. For who should live in Alagadda who does not desire fully to be there? And who should be trusted, who ever once followed a lord so warped as that?
Cenere, the dog, was long suspected to have been among that number, for he disappeared at around that time. You know well the fashion among some of our eminences to name those darker times “the dog’s days,” in hopes that their colleague’s ousting would rid our city of such unrestful influences. And from time to time one might hear certain nearly-nostalgic murmurings on the street, or notice discreet glances cast about, as though in search of something just about to emerge disheveled and filthy from the corner of one’s vision. Whether out of perverse wistfulness, persistent loathing, or mere curiosity—which we know is the deadliest muse by far - the vanishing of this public menace invited much rumor.
To those of you still in the throes of torrid conjecture, this tale will no doubt be met with grim relief. For I have here in my mind - and on my tongue - word of what befell that most familiar mongrel.
Cenere departed Alagadda on one of those myriad paths that lead through the void, twisting and treacherous. And treacherous to Cenere this one proved to be! - for between one step and the next, between thought and motion, the bridge dissolved beneath him and sent him hurtling down, down, down into the spaces between the worlds.
Old Cenere fell for a long time: through lands far and fallow, realms of all chromatic and chronological arrangements, cosmic recesses untrodden even by the hook-heeled one. Worlds where the ground arched over an inward-facing sky, and worlds where vast thistles breathed their down up into a vortex of fritillaries. Strange and marvelous all, yet none the stage for our story.
What concerns us is this: old Cenere opened his eyes and could not move. Nor could he perceive the rest of his body or, in fact, speak.
(Woe betide! Truly, what misery matches that of the provocateur when deprived of his only weapon?)
But Cenere could look, and look he did.
Suspended he was, on a wall beneath which spread rows and rows of seats. Set into the opposing wall was a great window of colored glass, a patchwork of alien and familiar hues. Eventually he made out a set of wooden beams - some sort of vertical settee - on which a strange figure reclined. The ends of its limbs, outflung like a bird in flight, were stained in the color of revelry; so too its chest and the hair about its brow. The face bore an expression of drowsy serenity.
And so for much time Cenere beheld this image, for there was nothing else to do. It remained unmoving, utterly still; there was no sign of life to it, not even what passes for life among the mortals of this world. From time to time smaller creatures would congregate along the seats, sometimes more than others, and after certain incomprehensible rituals would issue a chorus of noise from their throats. This filled Cenere with the utmost envy, for he remembered the times when he was free to mock the citizens of our fair city with his own voice, now made inaccessible to him.
Few of these mortals looked back at Cenere. Their eyes were for the pierced and bleeding thing opposite, and even when they turned towards Cenere it was brief, with wary gaze and gestures across their chests.
Then - he could not say when, for time on this world is too rigid and treacle-thick for our ken - one of them paused beneath his wall. An old man, hunched and grey with age, and he raised a hand swollen with arthritis in what appeared to be a greeting.
“Now, you’re a fine devil!” he said. “Seems a shame for you to be stuck up on this wall. Come to think of it, how did I miss you before?”
Cenere, of course, was unable to answer, though even if he could he would not have been able to find one.
Day after day the old man returned, to scrutinize every inch of what Cenere could only assume was his own image. Sometimes he brought a pad of paper on which he would scribble marks with a piece of charcoal, periodically glancing up at Cenere.
Time passed. Then one day Cenere opened his eyes and saw no longer the rows of seats and dyed-glass figure on the back wall. Or rather - he still saw this, but only from one eye.
From the other, he saw a pinch-faced man with small round spectacles, holding a paintbrush. The brush came up another time and he saw the same scene through the other. This time he looked upon a small, dark room, within which loomed the shape of forge and bellows and a great scored wedge of anvil that filled up the space so much that it seemed a shock that there should be any room left for inhabitants.
The painter stepped back, turning to the old man, who had been observing his work. A grubby-looking child stood off to the side, also peering up, though warily.
“How is this?”
“Perfect!” said the old man, who Cenere took to be a smith, though his tools were much cruder than those of our artisans. Gnarled were the hands he clasped together, and a wide crooked grin lit up the wrinkled face.
“Thank you, master. I tell you, you wouldn’t believe how long it took to find a willing artist!”
And so began Cenere’s life at the smithy. Each day the old man would enter through his door and greet him before going about his work, calling him tovarisch and fellow countryman and other such nonsense. The words filled him with puzzlement, for even in Alagadda none had seen fit to call him countryman: we had all found him too distasteful, just as he did his best to make himself distasteful.
After some experimentation, Cenere found that he could throw his sight between the smithy and the mortals’ holy building, though the latter held little interest for him. For at the smithy he soon found that he could perceive his head, and then his torso, then limbs, fingers, toes. Not only that, but he could move!
Still, he was confined to small gestures and could not make many at a time. Nor could he remove himself from the wall. He amused himself by making faces - from grin to grimace and back again - and frightening the smith’s customers, who would blink and gape and shake their heads like fleabitten hounds. This was double joy for him, for in the City he’d had a face like all of ours, still and porcelain-hard as faces are meant to be - not the fleshy, stretchable stuff possessed by those who dwell in this realm.
Often the grubby child - presumably the smith’s son - would play in the smithy, when his father was too busy to show him the tools of their trade. But he gave Cenere’s door as wide a berth as the space allowed. Once, the boy struck up the courage to creep closer. Quick as a serpent Cenere pulled a face, and it was his best one yet: he stretched his mouth as wide as it would go, stuck out his tongue, and rolled his eyes back in their sockets. The child went wailing for his father.
And so the blacksmith’s son developed a hatred for the painting that his father greeted daily like a friend.
As I have said, time is a thing that does not mean for them what it does for us. For us it is like the ebb and flow of waves at the eternal shore, fluid and mutable, yet ever-returning. For them it is like… the weight of all the earth, an inexorable march, proceeding in a single direction for all eternity and bearing down with crushing force.
And so in time the smith grew ever more hunched of back, more wrinkled and smaller of step, as though that invisible force pressed down on him. And it came to pass that one day he did not come back into the smithy at all.
For weeks the place stood empty. Cenere waited and waited for him to step sprightly through the door with his usual salutations, and then for anyone at all.
Finally, he felt the door swing open. But it was not the cheery old man who came walking through, but his son, who had grown into a dour and doughty youth. Hard of face and heart, he quickly set to work.
Now a bleak chill fell upon Cenere, who envisioned his image defaced, his door torn down, and his vision banished back to that monotonous sanctum. But the blacksmith’s son did none of that. Instead, he would merely knock Cenere’s head with a monstrous hammer, exactly thrice, whenever he came to ply his trade. And it was always accompanied by a glob of spittle.
And Cenere - to his surprise - felt it! He felt the blows of hammer on door, hard and heavy as the passage of hours, and the wet slime of the spittle. Never before had he been so insulted! While normally he would have been glad to regain some of his faculties, and as accustomed as he was to filth and squalor, this was not to his liking. The old man’s treatment seemed to him infinitely preferable to that of his son’s. But there was naught for it - the old man did not return, and only the son frequented the forge.
Several of their years passed like this, as Cenere redoubled his efforts to frighten away the son’s customers. And his faces were more terrible than ever, for now he acted out of hatred rather than jest.
Business began to suffer. The townsfolk whispered of a curse on the smithy: a painting not only blasphemous, but haunted as well. While he was living they had tolerated it out of respect for the old man and the quality of his workmanship. But his son had no such talent, and was a prickly man besides. Only the memory of his father, who had commissioned it, had stayed the son’s hand. But now he began to think long and hard, and to wonder if he should not remove the painting after all.
At this point Cenere found that he had regained much of his movement. The only matter left was that of moving along multiple dimensions, and soon he found that he could almost reach his hand from the painting.
And so in the dead of night Cenere reached out from the door - first a finger, then a hand, and then two. He braced himself against the frame and heaved himself from it bodily.
Alas! When Cenere stood he found that this body was frail and sickly, covered with spots of the kind that comes with mortal disease. He had emerged in the form of a leper. And not just any leper - but one with rheumy eyes, swollen joints, and long matted hair that resolved into a wild beard. And in this form he felt mortal weakness for the first time, and all the pains of a perishable body, such that he slumped on the floor and could not get up for some time.
Try as he might, he could not change his shape.
This is all very well for the City, thought Cenere. All the better to appall them with. But what of my plans for the smith’s son? For he had many such plans indeed.
And so in the morning a leper came begging at the smithy’s door. “Some food and a roof over my head, master,” rasped Cenere, “and I shall be your assistant.”
The son would have laughed, were he the laughing type. Instead he merely glared, and had nearly slammed the door in Cenere’s face when the leper stuck his foot through the crack.
Heedless of the pain, he continued. “My name is Konstantin Cherniy. I may look like a dog, but I can smith. In fact, I was a friend of your father’s - we apprenticed with the same master.” (For when he was in his cups the old man would sometimes sit by the door and tell Cenere of his life.)
“Let me ask you: was not your father also aged at the height of his craftsmanship? Was he not heard to say ‘many hands make light work’? These hands, ugly as they are, are still hands. At least let me prove my skill.”
The son regarded him suspiciously, but the mention of his father had unsettled him. Reluctantly he allowed the leper to craft what he would - just one item, to prove his worth. Having watched their work for so many years, Cenere fashioned a beautiful theater-mask of beaten bronze, in the shape of a laughing face. Despite its utter uselessness, so detailed was the workmanship - and so quick the work - that the son had to concede his skill.
From then on he worked as an assistant at the smithy, and with Cenere’s help, the business was restored to prosperity. As they worked, the son slowly realized that this uncouth man was a person of unusual wit and insight, and could sometimes be quite humorous. (Trust a mortal to flock to vulgarity!)
Of course, that the devil on the door - which to Cenere’s delight turned out to be a dog-headed one, a veritable hellhound! - no longer made such fearsome faces helped a great deal as well. Though no one caught more than glimpses of him, rumor began that the wild-looking man that the young smith had hired was in fact an exorcist: one of those mad, wandering monks who could banish devilry with nothing but a swing of the censer and the concentrated wrath of God. O, delectable irony!
One day an aged baroness was passing by the smithy. She heard the strains of a familiar melody from the window. Approaching, she beheld a man hammering something into shape on the anvil—then gasped.
“My good man,” she exclaimed, taking care not to step too close. “If I may ask, how can you work in your condition?”
“Oh, simple!” said Cenere, pausing in his work. “My master Koschei taught me many tricks. My illness was too advanced to reverse, but at his workshop, I learned how to forestall my death.”
“And wherever did you learn that song you were humming?” she asked. “It reminds me of when I would dance with my sisters on the banks of the Volga, and weave crowns of flowers.”
“At his workshop also.” Then, conspiratorially: “But the greatest trick of all was that of restoring youth. For a lady as kind and venerable as yourself, I could reverse… forty years? Perhaps fifty.”
She stepped into the smithy and asked him what to do. First, said Cenere, she should put on the laughing theater-mask, and then go lay in the forge. It will grow warm, but she need not fear, for that is the sign of returning vitality. When the spell was done, he would pull her out again. And so the lady did as he bid her, for although somewhat afeard she thought to herself - I have lived such a long, full life already, and now at the end all seems grey and lonesome. What have I to lose?
But all transpired as he said it would, the warmth less like flames than a summer breeze. And when Cenere fetched her from the forge, the baroness felt - changed. Though her appearance remained the same, her heart and mind were bright as springtime, and she felt as lively as a young girl - as though she could dance a hundred waltzes. Tearfully thanking the leper, she rushed back to her carriage, sped home, and begged her husband to visit the smithy too.
By that time the blacksmith’s son had returned from his errands and resumed his work. When word came that the baron was to visit his smithy, he asked Cenere to hide himself away, as was their custom.
“Is it true that you can make one young at heart?” asked the baron. “My wife said that someone here could do so, by putting you in a mask and then laying you in the forge.”
“No, sir,” said the son, beginning to wonder what Cenere had gotten up to when he was gone. “You must be mistaken. I have never heard of such a thing.”
“Then you are calling my wife a liar, and that she certainly is not.” He turned to his guards. “Seize this man. You will perform the procedure or find yourself short a head.”
And so the son had no choice but to fetch the mask for him, and help him into the forge, for the baron was not so young himself. He left him there only a few moments, hoping to salvage him with only a few injuries - but it was too late. When he pulled him out the baron had died, strangely silently, of his burns.
So the blacksmith’s son was to be tried and hanged for murder, though it must be said that there was very little of fairness nor justice - those ideals they claim to so adore - in those proceedings. The baroness was beside herself, and unable to testify, so that only the word of the guards could be relied on.
On the night before the hanging, the son was staring awake at the ceiling on his hard cot when a figure appeared at the bars of his cell. Cenere had come to gloat.
“Oho, what is this? A dead man laid down, as though already in the grave!” And he grinned with all of his hideous crooked teeth. “Now, young man, this may be hard to believe - but I was the devil in that painting your father commissioned. For all those long years I was his dear companion, and he spoke to me as a friend when you were no more than a brat. So you see, it is not only my pride for which I claim redress - for believe me, I have nothing of the sort - but his as well. For every time that you spit on me, you were spitting on his memory as well!”
The smith’s son listened to all of this without a word. When Cenere had finished, he said: “So you may be. Then you should know that it was for love of him that I left you there at all.”
By then Cenere had realized his purpose, as it were, for being sent to this world and confined to that painting. For the City in her infinite mercy had seen fit to bestow him with one more chance to prove his worth as a citizen. Her words came to him through time and space, as though in a dream: Condemn this man! Play this ultimate jape, and you may return to our fountains and plague us to your heart’s content.
Cenere considered this. Perhaps he found it tempting. Perhaps even he had dreamed of the City in his exile, this consummate ingrate, dreamt of her endlessly winding streets and ochre skies, her glass-blown fountains in the shapes of the universe’s own hopes and fears - even its fleas! - and the lapping of the eternal tides.
But there is a certain point beyond which a storyteller can no more speculate. Who knows what played in the folds of that depraved mind? Perhaps some unfathomable emotion had seeded themselves in his chitin. For Cenere, ever contrary, said to the blacksmith’s son:
“Very well. Then I will help you out of this mess, as long as you do something for me in return. For as rude as you are, I do not think he would want you dead.”
And so on the following day when the sun rose and the smith’s son was marched off to the gallows, who was to stall their path but the baron himself? Alive as if by miracle, accompanied by the affronted baroness, she made him apologize to the son, then apologized herself and explained what had happened. Evidently he had not been killed but merely badly injured, and by her neglect rather than his - she had failed to describe to him this mysterious alchemist who could restore the youth of the soul.
But this very man - a saintly, holy man by all accounts - had fetched his body from the grave and healed him, bringing him back to her just before the crack of dawn. ‘Breathed the spirit of life back into him’ were the baron’s own words - his wife quickly assured the authorities that he was delirious, still reeling from this harrowing experience.
So the blacksmith’s son was released back to his smithy, still watched over by the devil on the door, which was no longer beaten nor spat upon. He was evermore filled with inspiration, and the quality of his works increased until he became very wealthy indeed.
As for the holy leper, old Cenere himself, he vanished. However, it was soon told that in the nearby towns and cities, an unidentified patron began to commission paintings of devils and dog-headed figures, and that despite much scandal it became all the rage among artists of that region. Strange things, however, were said about these paintings after their display - tales of crude gestures and ugly faces that reverted as soon as one looked away, and other such superstitions.
And to this day we might imagine that Cenere lives on in this backwater, in his one-dimensional tableaux, toying with the mortals and deriving his particular brand of satisfaction from their affront.
By custom, this is the part where I dispense some wisdom upon you, some ‘let this be a lesson to us all.’ Yet as none of us present can be said to share his unique sensibilities, we may simply pity him, and be once more gladdened that he is gone.
There was a set of mortal girls who loved more than anything to dance. For otherwise they lived in an inarguably dull place, a grey and dreary place where the crops died and the rivers dried and the people’s eyes had all been eaten by blackbirds. It was a love passed down to them by their late mother, and all leisure found them in the ballroom retracing their steps.
Each day their father growled gibberish to petitioners that rattled in their great stone building like an empty goblet. The girls, well-practiced in the art of deciphering gibberish, knew that he intended to marry them off. From the time of this realization they had set about devising a means of avoiding this, but confinement within the stone prison under strict and loathsome guard made the endeavor difficult.
In the thick heat of summer one of them had a dream. She was neither the oldest nor the youngest, neither ugliest nor prettiest, one of those plain mortals about whom stories would not be written were she not a princess. (In their parlance, prince and princess are a sort of rank conferred upon offspring of certain attributes begotten from royal bloodlines, commonly produced through shallower equivalents of the intrigues familiar to our readers and other vagaries of human procreation with which I shall not bore you.)
She had this dream while sleeping, for their dreams are not like ours. In the dream she stood in a vast hall draped with heavy tapestries all in shades of red. As her eyes tracked upward she saw dancers waltzing, not only across the floor on which she stood but the floors above and to the sides—to her eyes, the walls and ceiling. Sweet music wound its way through the space, of tinkling bells and snaking flutes. Deep into the hall she ventured, until she came upon a dark and lonely corner, lit by a single lamp.
There sat a figure writing at a desk. These were, of course, the sanguine halls of our Mirthful Lord, and its seneschal the Cerise Intercessor.
“I understand you have sisters,” said our colleague, without looking up from their work. The girl nodded. “And you are all fond of the waltz.”
She nodded again, somewhat entranced by the melody. Then something shook her from her reverie. It was our colleague’s face. How hard and white it was, she thought, like fine porcelain upon the mantelpiece of their late mother’s parlor.
“Not only the waltz,” she added. “We also know the branle, the pavane, and the galliard.”
“Wonderful!” said the Intercessor, passing her the sheet of paper. On it was written the first gibberish that she had not been able to decipher in all her life. At the bottom of the page was a line. “Sign here, if you please.”
Lacking in gratitude, the maiden tarried. “But what are the terms?”
“Simple. Every night, you and your sisters have our leave to come and dance here in our halls.” They indicated the ballrooms behind her. “Your fatigue and scuffed shoes will become the mystery of the court; your father will allow no marriage until he discovers how this came to be. Take care not to reveal it! For then the deal will be broken.”
“And what, good sir, will you receive in return?”
The Intercessor gave her a look that indicated the answer should be obvious, the effect of which was unfortunately lost on her. “More guests for the dance, of course.”
After waiting a moment that felt to her could have been an eternity, or perhaps two hours, she indicated that she would like to confer with her sisters before coming to a decision. Generously our colleague agreed to her doing so. The following night she returned forthwith and signed the page. In exchange, she received a recipe.
Thus did the princesses enter a new stage in their lives. By day they would dwell in their grey and dried-up world, moving sluggishly through the rituals of meals and lessons, waiting for the release of nightfall. Then they would fling open the door beneath their bed, which in truth would only appear to them in the early stages of sleep. Hereupon the wine that they had imbibed—for this was the recipe given by our colleague—allowed them to enter a shared dream: one into which they could bring things like their dancing-shoes, and the mind to make decisions. But to all observers their bodies remained sleeping, and none could see them go.
Into this door they would step, and down the winding stairs emerge beneath our saffron skies with their multitude of sable stars.
Their father decreed that any man capable of uncovering the reason for their fatigue could marry any one of them and become heir—for he was mortal, and mortal kings expired. So too did he have a streak of whimsy about him, and declared that any who failed in this were to be put to death. To this game many princes lost their lives, some in the bloom of youth and beauty, and some very good dancers too, which we must count as an unfortunate corollary to the Intercessor’s bargain.
Now from the west there came a man. Dark was his eye and grim his step, for he had gone afield and known that most odious art of war. Thus changed, he returned with a limp in his step and a bone-deep weariness that could only be felt by mortals.
Dull as most mortals are, the soldier sought no glory. Strangely, he sought no pleasures nor even great riches. Only enough to feed his ailing parents, and his three small children, whose mother had in his absence run off to join the wolf-bandits in the hills—but that is a tale for another recounting.
Once as he traveled near foreign woods in search of work—for employers shunned him on account of his injury—he found himself gazing deep into a space between the trees. The darkness soon resolved into one who had cheated us before. A horrible old flautist, bent-back and cowled, who shuffled towards him with uncanny determination. “You there,” said she. “You look like a man in need of something to do.”
He replied that he was, if it paid. She replied that no job paid better than a king’s. He asked how it was that he might become a king, and she spoke to him of the bewitched princesses. (Bewitched! As though they had not come into our demesne of their own accord.)
“And how could I succeed, when all these king’s sons have failed?”
“Practice and preparation,” she told him. “They will offer you wine. You must drink—but that alone is not enough. All others it sends into a deep and dreamless sleep. The land that claims them—do you know what it wants?”
He replied that he did not.
“Their skill at dance,” said she. “And their passion. Garb yourself as one of them, and it may help. But the wine will answer only to the light of step, the graceful of movement.”
He gestured at his leg. She said that he should figure that out himself, as she was not his mother. And he saw that although she carried an old flute-case, her hands and mouth had been scarred so as to render her unable to play.
And so the man arrived at the great stone building of foreign royalty, but not before he taught himself the waltz and many dances besides. He picked these up performing odd jobs for a local noblewoman’s dancing-master, a steely old man who perhaps saw something of himself in the soldier. Then with his last savings he paid for special shoes that would allow him to dance even with his limp. Finally, remembering what the flautist had said, he stuffed one of his wife’s old dresses into his pack.
When our princesses saw him they thought little, though the youngest distrusted the grizzled look on his face. The eldest was heard to remark that if they were down to such wretches, then soon enough only rats would be left. The middling princess, our deal-broker, eyed his limp and said nothing.
Alone in his rooms the man felt discomfited, for although royal furnishings are to us little better than rags, he had never seen such luxury in his life. That night they offered him the wine, as they had to the other contenders. He drank it in full view of them, their eyes fixed on him like the mouths of hookworms. How canny our princesses were! How patient and exacting! Yet mere canniness cannot account for all things.
They returned to their rooms. Fumblingly he exchanged his tattered uniform for the dress. How constricting it was, how difficult to move in! But we know that such is the price of beauty. Likewise he pulled on his dancing shoes. Thus attired, he laid back on the bed and allowed the dreamful sleep to claim him.
And here is where we err. Or rather, I should say, the Red errs. For it must be said that they care little for precise numbering where mortals are concerned, and one who can move with grace and wear what is required seems to them not so very different from another. So it was that when the dream-door of our esteemed colleague opened for the princesses, it opened for him as well.
Under our stars their faces had been made suitable for the City. With utmost tenderness she welcomed them, auspices unfolded in a murmuring of black waves. But the soldier marveled not at our shining groves: not the trees strung with quicksilver, nor the ones that wept golden ichor, nor the ones that dripped with crimson diamonds. He was unsettled by our smooth-growing buildings, and shuddered in distaste at the texture of his face. But this ingratitude did not stop him from plucking a token from each of the groves. The gall, when we would have given them had he only asked—for a small price, of course.
With his newfound skill at dance, he did not tread on any dresses. But the keen-eared youngest would have heard the complaints of the trees, if not for the reproach of the eldest, who was in truth a rather disagreeable and wish-minded sort.
Soon again they came to the canal where a host of our fair citizens awaited them on gondolas. These were apportioned according to the number of guests who were to arrive, and so the soldier had one all to himself, in the company of—and I tell no lie!—yours truly. But I was not yet wise in the ways of the otherworld, and so did not detect anything amiss, save that this guest seemed more taciturn than the others. When they departed at the castle I watched him go, for I had never been one for dancing.
For a mortal he performed admirably. So admirably that our colleague the Intercessor grew suspicious of his abilities, for none of the princesses had ever displayed such a singular step. And so they summoned him to the floor, to dance with them the volta.
Courteously, all the other dancers paused to observe. Faster and faster they whirled, until they were a blur of red and yellow—once some alien color favored by the soldier’s wife, transformed by the City into a dull goldenrod. At last, even our colleague had to concede defeat, though having been consigned to a desk for too long to suit their carnelian sensibilities, they were glad for the challenge.
At the height of the festivities the middling princess pulled him aside.
“I know very well that you are not one of us,” she said.
The soldier did not know what to say.
“We will not be able to return after tonight. All I can ask is for you to marry me, instead of one of my sisters, for it was I who got us into this mess in the first place.”
“I would rather not marry any of you if I could help it,” said the soldier—out of some strange mortal sentiment, for he could have been a king. “I have a wife. She ran off to join the wolf-bandits.”
“Then why did you undertake this quest?”
The soldier told her about the flautist in the woods, and his family. “But now that I have these,” he showed her the tokens he had taken from our groves. “I hardly need to be a king. If I were to escape before the night is over, I can sell them, and you all can dance for as long as you like.”
“No,” said the princess. “In truth, I fear for my sisters. We waste away during the day. We forget to eat and drink. I think… that we will lose ourselves to this place. Better that we end this deal.” The traitorous tart! As though dancing was not what she and her sisters lived for.
And having made this choice for the lot of them, as mortals are wont to do, our merry conspirators plotted their way through the remaining night. Again they passed the dark canal with the citizens, and the groves of shining trees, and the staircase that descended upward. Struck by the City’s wonders, no other noticed the extra among their number—though the youngest came the closest.
In the morning the soldier approached the king and presented him with the pilfered tokens. “Drink this, Your Majesty,” said he, offering the wine, “and you will see the land from where these come.” Dazzled by the glittering wealth, the king downed it in one swallow. For the middling princess had confessed all, and why should a daughter lie to her father?
Well! Lie she did not, and that is a feat worthy of the City. But she did omit. For this was the Intercessor’s recipe: one cup of good red wine, four drops of blackbird’s blood, a thimbleful of dandelion fluff, the yolk of a viper’s egg, and fifteen seeds of the poppy. Enough to help them dream, and send any forbidden by the City into a deep and dreamless sleep.
This was what the princess placed in her father’s cup: two-thirds a cup of good red wine, a third-cup of blackbird’s blood, a handful of dandelion fluff, three yolks of viper’s eggs, and forty seeds of the poppy.
When he sipped from this concoction, the king fell into a sleep from which he would not wake. In a fortnight the eldest princess became regent, then queen regnant, and although she would never be a very good ruler she at least had the youngest to advise her. Though they were aggrieved—and rightfully so—at being stolen from the City, they could still dance, which was after all what they cared for most in the end.
As for the middling princess and the soldier, they vanished in the middle of the night. Weeks later in the soldier’s homeland, a foreign dancing-master could be seen setting up shop with her assistant. Recognizable by his limp and distinctive shoes, he sent what he earned to his family, and sometimes dreamed of wolves in the hills. And sometimes he would dance the woman’s part and her the man’s, and they seemed no sorrier for it.
And that was how we were robbed of twelve (for that was the number after all! twelve!) of our most well-behaved prospects by a homely girl, a troublesome old soldier, and the undiscerning nature of our rubescent colleagues.
You come out here every day.
A rare emptiness, a sliver of empty marble on the edge of a platform. Past the layer upon layer of slanting monoliths, the labyrinths of wreckage, the fabrics dyed and re-dyed until their colors are unrecognizable, draped across every surface; everywhere someone’s trash, everywhere someone’s precious bauble, the air thick with voices, with debris, face and feet and beak and antenna protruding from every corner.
It all unfolds into the haze like an obscenity, like defiance, like utter randomness. Something with no reason for existing, yet which exists all the same.
It is like a flower, you think, or compost. A flower of the lost, many-petaled and fruitless. Compost for what comes. Three days ago another ship crashed in the eastern quarter. The sole survivor had leapt from some exit just before impact, and fallen into a roll that saw only all her limbs broken. Something in her arms. A pod, a flower inside. Peony or chrysanthemum maybe.
It is like that flower, but—no. The metaphor is insufficient. You cross out what you’d jotted.
If you lean out far enough, here, you can see Eleu’s crown, the patterns elaborate, stretching out below the platform until it meets her head. A human had called it corinthian, once; he had been dressed in a waterlogged toga and shivering slightly. His eyes looked yellow; oily, like the eyes of fish. He left briny tracks on the marble.
And it really is marble, beneath it all. Marble, smooth and perfectly circular. Few ever think of the circle. The platform is so large.
Beyond, a blue haze. Clouds in the sky of skies. It is never clear. Other islands loom like shadows in the distance, their bearers descending into the fog.
Eleu is short for Eleutheria. She’d mentioned that it meant freedom, and you had wondered how her kind conceived of freedom, bound to a single duty until the End.
Your species possesses… well, you possess a limited psychometry. You are the last of them. It had been useful on your ancient homeworld, where the skies had thrummed with a web of ghosts, living and dead, ghosts of people and things and ideas, before they had cracked like glass and let the void come flooding in. That is what permits you to speak with her. Else her voice would shake the ground, risk dislodging the island.
How fares the project?
In your mind, her voice. Cold as stone. All the words come at once, like a pebble into water. Beneath your palm, the marble is likewise cold.
It fares. You know how it goes.
Your species had possessed a limited psychometry. But the Nihl had given you spores. They drift around you now, invisible to the eye. You guide their movements with your mind. One of the perks of ideology.
The Nihl hold that an ending is desired. That all things end. That it is better to love inevitability if it is by nature inevitable. This is well known.
But do endings, too, contain a grain of rebirth?
This is where you begin to divide.
Few would deny that decay gives rise to life—for what else are the organisms on which you base yourselves? Yet if all life is as microbes accelerating existence to its End, would anything emerge from the universe-corpse itself?
The Terminus speak of unending silence, an eternity of nothingness in mourning for what had gone. The Cyclics sing rebirth, and hold out hope. They are further divided into those who believe the new reality could be anything, and those adamant that this one would repeat forever, unto eternity.
All agree that there should be no trace of this reality—as it was now—in what comes after.
All, except you.
You do not know when you made this decision, only that you made it. You decided that something of this multiverse should live on in the next.
Not for nothing did you join the Nihl; you revere the End as any other. But there cannot be one before the part that came before. It would lose its meaning, if one could not know what came before.
So this is your project. Every night (you call them day and night though there is no sun to speak of, only periods of greater light or darkness at varying intensities, intermittent, as though space itself is flickering) you send off your spores. Each to alight, very gently, on a different person.
There is no shortage of people. Sometimes they land on chitin, sometimes scales, occasionally metal or something like rubber, or fur, or skin. But always on someone.
Your spores, which contain a little of you and therefore your psychometry—for you had undergone the mycoconversion long ago—collect things. Bits of memory and feeling. When they return to you, settling on your hands, you take these in.
This, alone, is useless. They are raw data, unable to be absorbed by anyone save those who possess your psychometry. That is where you come in. Through careful barter you have acquired a book with infinite pages. An empty book, its pages blank and inviting. A thing that should not exist.
And every day, you come out here to write the stories of every being who lives on these isles.
You use the trade-script of the outer cosmos, the most common one. And if reality is cyclical, then perhaps the same script will develop again. Perhaps someone will recognize it. This is why you began your acquaintance with Eleu.
At the End of everything, you had asked her, will your kin be the last of the last?
I do not know, she had answered. But we have not gone yet.
Indeed, they stand straight as columns, still as stone, bearing up the last of the living cosmos. Each in different poses: hers as the water-bearer, lifting the platform overhead with her hands. No one knows for how long they have stood. No one knows on what they stand.
You’d asked her that, once. The answer was the same.
It feels… solid and not solid at once. There is no texture. It is as though we are suspended. Fixed onto space.
She had agreed, then, to take your book into the End with her, as far as she could. It is the best you can hope for.
Day after day you come to this place, to write and speak with her. Mostly to write. Your mind had been designed to process information like this, but not to translate it into words, and it is hard to draw narrative out of scraps of sense-memory and everyday feeling. Some are more inclined than others to think of their lives as narrative. I am the hero. I am the villain. He jettisoned my father from the ship, and I will have my revenge. My life is tragedy: my love is doomed. My life is comedy: I’ve this fuchsia rash along my shell!
Sometimes you would speak of ethics.
Do you think yourself entitled, Eleu would ask, flatly, to the stories of all these people? Every one, no matter how different from you? Some of them may wish to be forgotten.
You'd reply with conviction. No, but the End is entitled. The End, and what comes after.
On this day the dawn is blue. Bluer than usual. You have been doing this for years; the pages in your book are ink-choked. How unfortunate that for the last few days, you’ve been crossing out all you write.
It must have been that human; the one with the flower. Ever since you saw her crawl bloodied through the street, begging anyone to take the pod—no, ever since you walked over yourself, plucked it from her hand, and saw—
A dry planet that had once been verdant. A family and childhood, happy but lean. They planted flowers in memory of the dead, so their spirits would live on in the seedlings and the seeds of the seedlings. When the ground below started to pull apart, when the magma came up to greet them, when gravity came undone… she had been on the last escape ship. Her family had not. They had not known what course to chart. She did not know who the flower was, but whoever it was, they would be the last of them all.
The flower, and its pod, now sit on a shelf in your cramped tenement. You have recounted all this to Eleu.
I feel, she says suddenly, that I finally understand the meaning of my name.
Is that so, you reply. Just to say something.
At the moment when it all unravels… The sense of a sigh, like a footstep’s echo on old masonry. That is when we will be free.
You glance down. So you’ve finally come over to our philosophy.
You don’t sound pleased, she observes.
At that moment, you realize that you will never be able to capture with your words the full span of existence. You could never have hoped to capture it: life that burns bright with pain and pain that blots out the sun, all the soaring joy and giddiness of hope, albatross-winged, the memory of a drowned city in the eyes of a man weighed down by water, the moment a world tore itself apart, a thousand thousand worlds across innumerable, uncountable realities. You could capture it no better than the smell of a flower from the hands of a dying woman.
I am pleased, you tell her. Thank you, truly. For everything.
Far off in the blue haze, there is a faint sound of shrieking. A bird, perhaps. One of the many brought from all manner of worlds, and there are a variety—birds that walk and talk, birds with scales and sixteen eyes, birds with other birds living in their feathers, little mechanical birds that drink oil and breathe fire. Or else one of the entropy trawlers malfunctioning, careening fatally off into the sky of skies.
Tell the End I’m on my way, you say to Eleu, and lift your hand from the marble.
You give yourself to failure. You give yourself to freedom. The sky of skies is a yawning mouth and you know its name is comfort.
After you, the invisible silhouette lingers, for just a little longer. Your book lies open. Its pages flutter in the wind.
Have you heard the stories?
You must have. New parents, freshly-endowed, with posies of hope pinned to their breasts, awaken one morning to find their child… changed.
Gone is the squalling, red-faced infant they'd put to sleep just the night before. In its place lies a silent creature. Still, almost sculpted in its placidity. If you touched its cheek, it would not budge. If not for the still-warm body, one might think it dead. Yet you would know it for a living being when it opened its eyes.
And oh, what eyes! Many a horror-stricken word has been spent on the eyes of these infants. See how they glint, the irises somehow dulled. How the pupils glitter coldly, like little worms' homes. It has even been said, by some parents, that they resemble those of cats or goats, or venomous snakes, and so forth.
(But that is hogwash plain and simple. It would have no reason to look like anything more, or less, than human.)
And of course, if you have heard these stories, then you must know what is done with these children in other towns. Burned, drowned, smothered, left to nature's tender mercies… I could go on. Cruel, yes? That is what you must be thinking. But what would you do if you believed your child replaced by a monster? That the only way to save them was to dispose of the lookalike?
Well, I shall not tarry. You must be wondering what I mean by other.
***
Our town was just like any other town. Perhaps a little farther from king and capital, and perhaps a little smaller, but you could still draw up twoscore families in any given year. Toss in those who lived alone, and you’d have a respectable population on your hands.
A stable population. Sustainable. Fecund.
“Our town was just like any other town.” Of course, that is what they all say, before some unwary traveler spends the night and finds the carpets crawling with spiders, or peers into the well on the outskirts and spies some great thrumming violet void, a gash on the face of the air.
You know how this goes. Our town was just like any other town, except in all the ways it wasn’t.
I first got the sense of this at the tender age of three, when my mother took me walking. I had just begun to walk, you see, and considered it a great accomplishment.
You have to understand, what happened was not my mother’s fault. She had been careful to keep an eye on me as I toddled along, turning over pebbles and eating the occasional lump of dirt. So careful, in fact, that as an extra precaution, she had brought a friend along, one Miss Emily Babbage.
It was this very precaution that brought everything about.
There was an old mill on the east end of town, not too far from our home, by the brook that ran past us and into the woods. In it lived a miller, who seemed—implausibly—even older. Somewhere along the road, very near there, my mother and Miss Babbage were so engrossed in conversation that they did not notice as I toddled away, towards the enticing burble of water.
I do not remember how long it took for me to reach the brook, only that the grass became gradually taller, and the trees blocked out the sun. Then I was at the very brink. There was a thin line of silt between the grass and the water; I thought I could see small things glitter in it. I reached out to scoop up a handful, then was distracted by the sight of my reflection in the water.
Distorted by movement as it was, I found myself fascinated. There was a strange shimmer on the water, more than the scant refractions of sunlight. My own smile seemed cheerier than before. I reached out to touch it…
And felt a hand on my shoulder, jerking me roughly back.
It was the miller. I had never seen him before. Now I was seeing more of him than I would ever have wanted. His grizzled face—ornamented with its mottling of warts, wrinkles, and a shockingly hateful expression—appalled my younger self. I began to cry.
Heedless of this, he took hold of my wrist ungently and dragged me back to my mother.
What puzzled me, though, was what he said to her.
“This the one, eh?”
A jerk of the thumb, aimed at me. I hid my face.
It was around that age when I’d first begun to note some strangenesses in the way people treated me. My mother, for instance. She was a widow, younger than most, and from an early age I had understood that there would never be a father, as there was for the majority of my playmates. This had never bothered me. What did was the way my mother sometimes looked at me.
Oh, she fussed over me as any mother might: brushed my hair, wiped the dirt from my face. But at times when she thought I wasn’t looking, I would see a certain expression come over her face. Not wistfulness; it went deeper than wistfulness. Nor was it malice. Only a pure grief, a haunted well with no mouth and no bottom into which she seemed to be forever falling. As though she saw a ghost whenever she looked at me.
As I grew older, I believed, at first, that it was a resemblance to my dead father.
You awaken to noise. All sorts of noise, really. Mule-bray and parrot-squawk, merchants hawking their wares, the distant hubbub of a busy street. But one sticks out above the others. A dull sort of clanking, like someone striking a rock with… another rock? It takes you a few seconds to figure out why. The noise is going through you, a wave of vibrations in time to every clack.
You raise your eyes, and—wow. You’re short. Almost ground-level. Direct above you lies an avenue of unblemished sky, framed by humanlike shapes and the silhouettes of buildings.
Indistinct movement, swatches of color. A vague panorama. From the looks of it, you seem to be parked in the middle of some kind of bazaar.
Correction: the sky would be unblemished, if not for the face currently looming over you.
A girl. Crouched in the middle of the street, just like you. You note the grubby face and unwashed hair of an urchin, in contrast to her remarkably solemn expression. In her hands is a large rock.
“Ow!” you cry instinctively. “Watch where you’re aiming that, missy.”
A flash of puzzlement. “You can talk?”
Can you talk? That does seem a question worth asking.
“…As of right now, I think so.”
The girl withdraws the rock, just a little. “Well, how did you get here?”
You wrack your brains. Nothing. “I… don’t know. No memories.” You wave your claws in the air. (Claws?) “If this doesn’t sound too strange… what, exactly, am I?”
She only stares, bemused. Seconds pass.
“A crab,” she says finally. “A coconut crab. Now stay still so I can crack you open.”
You flinch backwards. “Can’t you answer a few last questions before that?”
She frowns.
Just as she opens her mouth, someone trips over her. The hoof of a passing mule seems about to descend on her head—before she rolls away, pulling you along. The two of you are treated to a string of swears from the owner, heartily invoking the stormclouds to fry you to a crisp and the stormcrows to devour your livers.
Without much gentleness, she grabs you by the claw and drags you into a corner. “Three questions. No more.”
“Where are we?”
“The back of Aram Tsarappha, the Many-Legged City. Where’d you think?”
“Why do you want to crack me open?”
She rolls her eyes. “For food, duh.”
But there’s something else there. A deeper hatred.
Sure enough, she sighs. “And my mother. She was a famous pilot once, before she landed on a deserted island. She was injured. And your lot—” An accusatory finger. “—smelled blood. You ate her. So now I’ll eat you. Every single one that tasted their blood. I’ve heard you can live for sixty years, so there’s still time. And if they’re dead, I’ll eat their kids.”
If you had eyelids, they would be blinking in shock.
“Er… how do you know how she died?”
“The little things. In the wind and the water,” she says. “They’re all around us, you know. They talk to me. Tell me things. But they don’t always tell me everything.”
In the golden days of the fourteenth month of the Year of the Moonlit Salp-Harvest, the people of the city Hayec-Davm were much afeard. For it was said that a plague of forgetfulness had begun its descent upon their city, as it had once swept through their neighbors to the north and west, and the northwest, and the north-northwest.
Forgotten were the floating fountains of Seramene, flower of the salt-flats, which had prided itself on clever irrigation and—with some reluctance—the innumerable species of migrating birds attracted by their aquifers. For who could maintain the fountains, when even repairmen forgot what was to be done with a wrench?
Forgotten, too, were the squid-worshippers of old Uulinor, who had once floated silken lanterns, ink-filled and many-tasseled, down the tortuous canals of their marshy home. For even the master lanternsmiths could not remember their designs, nor their apprentices techniques they had learnt just the day before.
Certainly forgotten were the steam-baths of Iolant, whose forebears had chosen, unwisely, to build around the mouth of a caldera. It was said that in the end, some even forgot where they lived, so that it seemed to them as if nothing laid beyond the rim of their cryptic home. That the sun and moon rose from somewhere deep within the volcano, and returned there when they fell.
Most forgotten of all were the hedge gardens of that distant, nameless city, where it was said that at one time, many centuries ago, a well-shorn topiary could come to life and walk among the people. They said that this was the first city the plague had claimed, though—and here they would lean in, wide-eyed, voice whittled to a stage-whisper—far from the last.
Where, then, did their denizens go? Hard to say. For the plague touched upon every person who dared venture into the ruins of these cities, so that in time, even their names were at best guesses. Some said that they simply died. That in the last stages of the illness one forgets to eat and drink and sleep, and then, to live. There were others, though, who claimed that the disease preserved. That all its sufferers had in fact fallen into a dreamless, deathless sleep from which there was no wakening.
Now in these august days there came from the east a traveler: a woman who carried nothing but the clothes on her back, a jar of rice-wine, and a wide-brimmed bamboo hat that she could, upon request, balance on the tip of her nose like a seal. When she entered Hayec-Davm, she found the people there blear-eyed and somber in disposition.
“What ails thee, honored sir?” she asked a merchant. “I had heard this was a festive city.”
The old man looked at her, aghast. “The same thing that ails us all! Have you not heard the news? The forgetting plague has come!”
And the woman tipped back her head and laughed. “Perfect,” she said. For to forget was exactly what she had come here to do.
So she settled in and made lodgings in the city, prepared to welcome the plague with open arms. But she found that even as the first signs of forgetfulness began to show, she could not forget as she wanted to, for the people of Hayec-Davm were either grimly resigned or worked up into a frenzied panic, and their drawn faces only served to remind her of unpleasant things.
One day she asked the innkeeper, “Why do you all not simply leave?”
“Some of us try. But the news has gone out, and no peopled place will take us. Besides,” they said with a frown, “it’s no use. The disease is in all of us already.”
Discontent, the traveler went back to waiting. Still she found that the plague was not progressing at a satisfactory pace. Perhaps from time to time she would find herself misplacing her hat, or forgetting what she’d had for dinner the other day. As for the things of her past, they remained ingrained in her memory, like pebbles rolling incessantly around the insides of a shoe.
So she went asking after the origins of this disease, and at last found an aging archaeologist whose eyes were going bad—but whose memory retained its alacrity. In this way, the traveler came into knowledge of the lost cities. Seramene, Uulinor, Iolant, and all those unremembered metropoles that lay beyond.
“Perfect!” she exclaimed. “Surely one of them holds a more potent strain of this illness. I'll go through them all, and who knows? Perhaps the inhabitants are still alive, and perfectly happy with forgetting. Then the people of this city may learn to stop griping.”
The archaeologist looked at her with concern. “Who are you again, dear?”
Delighted, and hoping to speed along her own illness, she gave the old woman a quick embrace. Then the traveler was on her way.
She followed a map the archaeologist had given her—though this task proved difficult, for every time she laid eyes on the location of a city, the knowledge seemed to trickle slowly from her mind. But the traveler was, after all, a traveler, and used to taking frequent looks at maps.
She journeyed through valley and forest and steppe, til the tall grass finally parted and gave way to an ancient salt-flat, running into the horizon as far as she could see. There in the distance she beheld a city, crowned by the many-tiered bouquet of suspended discs that were once its glory.
But as she approached she saw that its walls were cracked, and its marble columns dull with age, and drops of stagnant water dripped slowly from the fountains from which strange plants had sprouted and grown. Bird droppings were everywhere, as they must have been even in the halcyon times. Only now there was no one around to clean them up.
Flocks of pigeons watched her as she passed. For it must be said that animals, unlike humans, were not affected by the forgetting plague. They began to follow her, drawn by the scent of her memories, which called to their own memories. Deep, genetic memories. Memories of old women with walking sticks and grubby-handed girls who had once scattered breadcrumbs by the handful, before the beaks of their fathers’ fathers.
These days, life was hard for pigeons. The enigmatic, fernlike plants that had sprouted from the fountain-detritus yielded small, bitter fruit, and they were constantly at the mercy of passing hawks and eagles. Worst of all, after living in this city for so many generations, they had lost their migratory instinct and become sedentary.
There was in fact a prophecy among the pigeons that a human who had retained their memories would one day lead them out of the city. For this reason alone, they had largely avoided feasting on the bodies of the afflicted—who, as it turned out, were still very much alive. Some in their beds, some at their tables, and some in the very streets. But no matter how much the traveler slapped them around, called them names, and even sang for them, they remained limp and comatose. And no matter how much she tried to breathe in the miasma of disease from their nostrils, her forgetfulness did not progress.
Eventually, the traveler noticed her feathered entourage. She tilted her head. She stared into their bright, beady eyes. She took in their dirty feathers and diminutive statures.
Finally, with a sigh, she took a loaf of bread from her pack, carefully crumbling it into her hat. Having made certain that no pieces were large enough to incur death-matches, she scattered the crumbs before them.
And so it was that when the traveler departed Seramene, she was followed by a great mass of pigeons, like a cloud rising up from the earth.
Next she came upon the wetlands at the mouth of a great river, where its waters mingled with that of the sea. There stood Uulinor—or what remained of it. Without maintenance, parts of the city had sunken into the swamp, and that esoteric place which had once been called the Shadow City for its manufacture of ink (but also the City of Lights, for its love of bioluminescence) was now a ruin as well.
As the traveler sailed its canals, she found the citizens here much the same. Preserved as they had been, miraculously alive after centuries of sleep. Some slumped on balconies, some still floating in gondolas. All forgotten.
At night, there was a glow from beneath her boat. She looked down and saw squids jettison through the waters, large and small, some translucent, some banded with spots of light.
(The pigeons, still following, inspected them curiously. Some of them pecked. But the squids were too canny, and after one unfortunate bird was pulled under in a flurry of feathers, they ceased.)
On the matter of humans, there was some division among the squids. Certainly, they were no longer being culled for their ink, but some of them missed being gods. Those who did spelled out a message with their light, imploring her to find a cure for the plague. One of them offered her its eye. “Eat this,” they spelled, “and you will have sight beyond sight.”
“What would I do with sight beyond sight?” said the traveler. “I wish to forget.”
But she tucked the eye into her pocket.
And so the traveler sailed out of Uulinor and up the coast, until she came upon the slopes of the mountain where Iolant was nestled.
A plume of steam issued from the cratered top, visible from far off. The dormant volcano, which had just barely managed not to erupt in the centuries since Iolant’s forgetting, kept the waters of its lake perpetually heated. Even when there was no one to take advantage.
The mountain was tall and steep, but the traveler traveled light, and her pigeons had wings. Emerging over the caldera's rim, they found a ring of basalt ruins encircling the lake. Sprawling gymnasia, low-built dwellings, and public baths, all of them lush with overgrowth.
The traveler walked up to the water’s edge and sat down… whereupon the steam that rose from its surface gave her an idea.
I cannot contract a more potent strain from the people, but surely this water must be saturated with plague! So thinking, she breathed deeply and cupped her hands in the scalding water. Heedless of the heat, she brought it to her mouth and drank.
Nothing happened. Memories of erstwhile things continued to prick at her.
The traveler considered her wine-jar. She had come to Hayec-Davm to drink her troubles, to lose herself in the crowds and festivities. But now ambition had heightened. Nothing short of total amnesia would satisfy.
So she gulped down the rest of the wine, and filled the jar with water. If she could not live out this plague to the fullest, then she would carry this always in remembrance. To remind herself of what she had come to do.
The steam-salamanders blinked slowly as she left, flicking their tongues after her burned hands. It didn’t matter to them, either way.
Many unremembered cities did the traveler pass through, those with names and those without, and some whose names were only imaginary, and some which existed only in the imaginations of those who told stories about them. Cities where the streets were paved with verdigris, and cities where parrots still repeated the phrases that their forebears had been taught, and cities that had burned because of a single forgotten stove.
But none of them yielded the potency that she wanted. None of them sped along the course of the disease. She could still remember her name, and who she was, and the place where she’d been born.
Yes, some things did shed: the precise route she had taken, and the faces of the people who had spoken to her, and the name of Hayec-Davm. But so long as she had the wine-jar, the memory of her quest clung to her, like resilient cobwebs. And so she did not relent.
Finally they approached that last city, the one where it had all begun. Though the map had become useless long ago, the traveler proceeded in the direction that inflicted the greatest forgetfulness, where she would forget the location of a tree as soon as she passed it, and even the placement of the ground beneath her feet.
She soon became lost in a dense tangle of forest, full of oddly-shaped trees, and could not tell where it had begun nor where it ended. Even the pigeons, who had no problems remembering, were confused. Just as the traveler began to despair, she remembered the squid’s eye. It had shriveled after so long in her pocket, but she dug it out and placed it in her mouth.
Then she became aware that the forest was in fact the city. What she had taken to be oddly-shaped trees were in fact overgrown topiaries, which had swelled over time into wild, monstrous shapes. They clustered around the heart of the city, the path to which became increasingly obstructed, and then at one point impassable.
It was a walled garden. The gate was open, but so clogged with vines that it may as well have been deadbolted. Yet it did not stretch to the top of the walls, which had somehow remained bare and smooth. Too smooth to be climbed.
The remaining pigeons reached an agreement amongst themselves.
Gathering close, but not enough to disrupt their flight, they formed a sort of flying carpet on which the traveler could be borne. In this way she was carried up and over the walls of the garden, at which point the miasma of forgetfulness became so strong that even the pigeons forgot why they were doing this, deposited her from several meters in the air, then flew away.
In the center of this place was an enormous topiary of no discernable shape, an amalgam of abstract confluences of tree and shrub and vine that stretched far into the sky, even taller than the garden walls. Here, even the plants had forgotten they were plants. They moved about aimlessly and did not photosynthesize, occasionally eating birds and small rodents.
The traveler walked up to the topiary. Something compelled her to uncork her wine-jar, and pour over it the waters of Iolant.
Then, with a voice like the rustling of leaves in high boughs, and the slithering of vines in low hollows, and the drumming of a woodpecker's beak against rotted bark, the thing spoke.
“Who are you, and why have you come here?”
“Merely a traveler,” said the traveler, “seeking to forget.”
There was a pause.
“And why have you not forgotten?”
“I don’t know,” replied the traveler. “Have you?”
Moments passed. The traveler waited.
“…Yes, I have.” Something like a shudder wracked the herbaceous column. Leaves fell, then several branches. “I have, damn you. I still forget, though I gave everything for memory.”
At this point the traveler sat down to listen. And so the topiary told its story.
Centuries ago, it was sculpted to be the perfect servant, for in those days this city had been famed for its living topiaries.
And yet, for reasons beyond its understanding, it did not turn out to be so. Its mind was marred by continuous forgetfulness, so that whenever an order was given, it would forget what was said almost immediately. There were humans with similar conditions, but such things were not expected from topiaries. Its sculptor was devastated. It was meant to be his greatest project.
They found him in this garden, bleeding out from his own clippers.
(“I’m sorry,” said the traveler. A single petal fell.)
And then, well, it lost itself. One thing that must be understood about despair—it percolates deeply. Sometimes it can even bend the fabric of the world. In the case of the topiary, the hunger for memories permeated all the way down into its spores, which released in one great miasmic cloud with the sole purpose of finding and drawing in the memories from other minds. And in this way it had eaten all the memories of its home, and innumerable other cities, and soon-to-be Hayec-Davm. But all these memories were too much for a single topiary. They buzzed around its interior like a swarm of locusts, causing it to expand and distort into this twisted form, and at the end of all this it still could not remember what had happened just a moment ago.
When it finished with the story, silence fell.
Into the silence the topiary spoke again. “Who are you again?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said the traveler. “But I think I understand now. Relinquish the memories of all those cities, and you may have my memories.”
“All of them?”
“Every one.”
Night was falling, and the cicadas beginning their symphony. For a moment the traveler leaned back on her heels, as though about to take flight.
Then she stepped forward and was swallowed by the topiary.
On the morning of the next day, that is to say, one of the grey days of the second month of the Year of the Forgetting, the people of Hayec-Davm awoke to find their memories back. They no longer had to write little notes to remind themselves to buy flour, or to go to work, and many people who had gone to sleep confused as to why they were living together suddenly recalled that they were family.
And all along the coast, to the north and west, and the northwest, and the north-northwest, the cities who still had living inhabitants awoke suddenly to find themselves remembering events from centuries past.
In Seramene they frantically tried to reactivate the fountains, so as to wash the excess of droppings off themselves, while those pigeons that had found their way back perched on the rooftops, waiting impatiently for crumbs.
In Uulinor, the master lanternsmiths attempted to salvage their waterlogged designs, while in Iolant they awoke to find the water several degrees hotter than it had been when they had first forgotten, and resolved to relocate.
And out from the nameless city where this had all begun stepped a topiary that had shrunk back down into its original shape, which resembled that of an austere maiden; and a woman who could no longer remember being a traveler.
“You should go back,” suggested the topiary. “They will sing your praises in the streets. They will call you the Hero of Hayec-Davm, and many cities besides.”
But the woman could not remember the name of Hayec-Davm, nor that of any other city.
“Who am I?” she asked.
The topiary smiled a leafy smile.
“Come along, then, and I shall tell you who you are.”
Listen well, O traveler, for I shall only tell this once.
You were born in a city far from here. Towards the east, from whence the sun rises.
Located at the juncture of three warring kingdoms, its threefold walls had been built up high and thick, from dense granite and heavy mortar, each surrounded by a moat, then lined with spikes for good measure. The only way in was through a solitary gate, reinforced so as to be ram-proof and watched at all hours of the day. Emergency stores of food were rigorously maintained. It was accustomed to siege and strife, attempts at conquest, and every form of incursion under the sun.
The last attempted invasion had been over a century ago. Rejvadk the Terrible, conqueror of the north, had led thirty thousand men up to your gates in the autumn, convinced that he could take the city quickly—only for his army to starve when winter came. The magistrate used to boast that your walls would never again be breached.
And, as a girl, you believed him.
Even so, your city was not a rich one, and the ever-shifting alignments of its surroundings made trade difficult. Your childhood had been a succession of lean days. There had been a mother who helped patrol the walls, and a father who worked at the papermaker’s shop. But they were often busy, and you spent your days running wild with the other children who roamed the streets, some with parents and some without.
One day, a man came into your city.
Nobody knew the direction from which he had come. An elderly matchmaker said she had seen him walk in from the north with a spring in his step; while a cobbler claimed he had spied him coming from the south, on a resplendent chariot drawn by horses with sharpened spinels for teeth. A poet described with care the strange feathered mongoose he had ridden in on, from the east; and a mendicant monk recalled riding in with him on the back of a cart loaded with grain. A little boy even swore up and down that he had seen him step from thin air, right into the city square.
The first thing he did was go to the magistrate. He claimed to be a traveler from another world, and was generally believed—not for any evidence that he could produce, but merely for his eccentricities. They said that you could tell his otherworldly nature from the blueness of his beard, and the twinkle in his eye, which glittered like spinels.
The children, you among them, would stare as he passed by.
For although he had many odd devices and illuminating texts to show the magistrate and his council, the man would favor your bunch with the choicest baubles. Green-glowing mushroom lanterns, prisms of soft glass, little metal birds that moved on their own.
And then—well, you remembered this day clearly.
You were sitting by the edge of the city’s central well. It was wide and deep, and although there were other wells, nearly everyone had drawn water from this one at least once.
You were plucking the petals off a flower and blowing them off the rim of the well. Then, as soon as a petal had drifted, you would grab it right out of the air. It was a delicate task, fraught with the danger of tipping over and falling in.
And, in fact, you had just lost your balance.
Your arms swung wildly. The well’s dark mouth came up to meet you… until someone grabbed you by both shoulders, and steadied you. You looked back. It was the blue-bearded man.
He crossed his arms, smiling.
“Hello, little grouse. Why the long face?”
You dangled your legs over the rim of the well. “Why do I have to be a grouse?”
“Would you prefer to be an elephant? Or a seal? An elephant seal?”
You could, in fact, balance things on the tip of your nose. It was a particular skill of yours. But you didn’t trust this man, with his effusive cheer and violently pink eyes.
You shrugged your shoulders. Your stomach growled.
He raised an eyebrow.
Finally, you relented. “…We’re running out of food, at home. Everyone has to give to the emergency stores.” Not that there was ever much at marketplace to begin with. The few farmers that made it here charged high prices, complaining of long routes through disputed territories. And the fighting had gotten worse of late.
“That magistrate of yours looks perfectly well-fed.”
“Not him. Or the council. Just…” You waved a hand. “Regular people.”
The man pulled an exaggerated frown. “Well, that won’t do. Tell you what, little grouse—what if I could ensure that no one in this city ever goes hungry again?”
You blinked at him in astonishment.
“How?”
“Oh, it’s quite simple. All you have to do,” he said, smiling again, “is drop this into that well.” He opened his hand. Inside lay a small pink crystal, barely the size of your smallest finger, and exactly the same shade as his eyes.
“Why can’t you drop it yourself?”
“Hmm, well—it doesn’t work that way. I’m afraid it has to be you.”
For long moments, you considered. Something about this felt off. But then, what could such a small thing do?
You looked him in the eye. “Do you promise?”
“With all my heart.” The smile was beatific now. “Not another moment of hunger.”
Carefully, you plucked the crystal from his palm. Then you turned and watched it fall into the well, until the darkness swallowed it. As it might have swallowed you.
You felt a sudden wave of cold. You glanced around, expecting to find the man gone, perhaps disappeared into thin air—but he was still there.
“Thank you,” he said. It was getting dark. All around you in the city square, people were walking to and fro, going about their sundry tasks. But none of them seemed to have noticed what you’d done. “Shall I walk you home?”
You shook your head. Then you pushed yourself off the well and scampered down the street, all the way back home, as fast as you ever did.
In the next few days you tried to forget what had happened. And for a little while, it truly seemed as if nothing had. Life went on. Your parents would return home tired, with what little food they could afford, and you would fall asleep to the growling of your stomach at night, wondering if the man had merely been a liar.
Just to be safe, though, you stopped drinking the well-water. When your parents weren’t looking, you began to secretly collect rain in a little tin pot that your grandmother had given you before she passed. It tasted faintly of dirt, and of guilt. But you told yourself that was ridiculous. Nothing was happening, after all.
Then, one day, the news came that the magistrate was stepping down. For his replacement, he had chosen one Nal Natal: a name that no one had ever heard.
Next the council turned in their resignations, one by one. No one replaced them.
The strangest thing was, not a single person seemed at all surprised. Everything continued as usual, and the other children kept on running the streets, though perhaps with bigger smiles. And the gate was opened more often, to let in emissaries from the surrounding kingdoms, who were invited by Lord Natal to taste your water and broker a peace treaty. Each of them left with pink crystals in their pockets, and soon the news was coming in that each kingdom had acknowledged him as their rightful ruler and ceased their wars. For the first time in your life, food became plentiful.
When you finally decided to ask your parents, your mother simply frowned and felt your forehead.
“Are you feverish? Or…” She sighed. “Would that we had the money to pay for classes. Lord Natal has always ruled this city, and we have always been his subjects. It says so in the histories. He is immortal, dear, and built this city for himself. All those walls, raised by a single man! Our people came later, as invaders. Can you imagine the folly? He subdued our ancestors easily, but because he was lonely, kindly allowed them to stay.”
“But mother—” you insisted, through the sinking sense of futility. “The walls were raised by Gan Utay, the thirty-seventh magistrate! He commissioned Yulin Dar-Vayna, the blind architect, because his father had been killed when the Knimic army breached the previous walls. I don’t need classes to know that. Everyone does!”
In your panic you rushed over to ask your father, only to receive the same answer that you had from your mother.
And all through the city and the three countries beyond, the very same story was being told, by matchmakers and cobblers and poets and mendicant monks, and even by your friends the other children: of what a wonderful, gracious, generous ruler Lord Natal was, and always had been. To allow your wretched people to stay, all those centuries ago, and now to broker this long-overdue peace between your neighbors.
Finally, you’d had enough.
You marched your way up to the magistrate’s palace, past the guards that lowered their spears for you, past the gilded doorframes inlaid with spinels, all the way until you reached his seat.
And there he was. The same man, that otherworldly traveler, blue-bearded and rosy-eyed. The man who had done all of this. Who had made you into his accomplice.
“Hello, little grouse,” he said. “Are you happy? Is this what you wanted?”
“No!” you spat, your hands balled into fists. “How could you do this? How could you think this would make me happy?”
He blinked, and for a moment something like genuine confusion passed over his features.
“But you are well-fed, aren’t you? All of you. And happier than you have been.”
You tried to search for the right words. “But it’s not real. None of it! They’re all living in… in a lie! It’s as if our history never even existed.” You stabbed a finger at him. “Undo it! You can undo it, can’t you?”
He gave you an apologetic look.
“I’m afraid not. It’s in their blood now. Blood and water—it all permeates, you see?” He leaned back in the seat, looking thoughtful. “But I needn’t go any further. This city, these three kingdoms… it should be enough to keep you all fed and happy. And I hope you know—that is really what I want, in the end.”
You didn’t believe him. But what could you do? You were only one girl against this otherworldly traveler, this immortal god-magistrate. So you turned around and went back home.
For years you lived like that, like everyone else, hoping to grow used to it. Warning them of the water was useless. Your parents merely stared at you like you’d sprouted dewtoes, or a mouthful of eyes, and warned you to cease such talk.
Several times you felt the urge to drink from that well, and wash away your guilt. But you never quite managed. And so the knowledge of the truth remained in your mind, cold to the touch and lodestone-heavy.
Then one day you awoke and looked down at your hands. And you realized that you did have power, in your own way. For you were the only one left in this city who still remembered. Who would ever have the motive to do something like this.
After so many years, surely he would not expect it.
In the dark of night, you grabbed your mother’s old dagger (for the walls no longer needed manning) and snuck out of the house. Even now the city was merry and bustling, for it was said that Lord Natal liked merriment at all hours of the day, and that he could remove the need for sleep. You passed through the streets unnoticed.
Retracing the path you had once walked as a girl, you came to the magistrate’s seat once more. Only now it was more like a throne. Spinels of all sizes jutted from it, pink and blue and green, glittering violently.
The man was waiting for you.
“So you’ve come again! And not so little anymore.” He sounded almost sad. “But I fear the result will not be as you wish.”
He stood, stretching out his arms. Spread them like an invitation.
“Try it.”
You stared at him. Then you took several steps forward, and plunged the dagger into his chest.
He staggered, but did not fall. His flesh had the texture of a cloth doll. And his heart—
In the cavity where his heart should have been, there was only a lump of spinel.
“Now do you see? I cannot die, even if I wanted to. And if I were to leave, the people would be lost without me.” In the moonlight his smile was wan. “Perhaps it is you who should leave, little grouse. I’ll take good care of them. I promise.”
Slowly, you lowered your hand. He said something else you did not hear, and then you turned around and marched your way out of the room. No one stopped you. There were no guards, as there had been none on your way in. For who would ever want to harm the exalted Nal Natal?
And so, seeking only to forget, without bidding farewell to anyone, you walked, and walked, and walked all the way out of the city of your birth, with only the clothes on your back and the hat on your head.
And you have been walking ever since.
When I was young my mother held me close,
pressed shut my eyes, and told me of
a certain shop.
Never stop, she urged me. Never stop,
if you should see it on the street, or
in your dreams, or perched on the horizon,
like a balance-beam.
But why? I asked, for until that moment
there had never yet been shop nor street
from which she had forbidden me.
For there lies strange and wondrous things
within, said she.
And no shopkeeper, so you may think
it fine to simply peek within.
The shop itself will buy and sell!
But to buy—you must sell.
And a high price it shall take:
the miner trades his lungs
for iron lungs, the mermaid gives its flesh,
and young assassins carve out their hearts
for ones of chatoyant ore.
But now the miner finds
the air will always taste of rust
and with its new feet the mermaid walks
as if stepping on needles.
And for each life the assassins take
their hearts will tarnish, grown heavy
and heavier
til they fall from high walls.
For the shop takes more parts
than can be seen or felt.
Take my hope, you may say—
to lose despair
for the two come in a pair.
Yet life without hope
may not prove kinder
than a life in disrepair.
So saying, she lifted her hand
from my eye—just one
so I could peer into her own
which glittered green, like glass.
And I thought to myself
how I’d never seen her cry
nor shut that eye for sleep.
Many years my mother lived
and when finally she died
the only thing left of her, when burned
was that eye made of glass.
But now I am old, and have seen all
the ways that oneself can be lost—
to work, to war, and to the chore
of merely living.
So ere tomorrow, with mother’s eye in hand
I may just pay a visit
to the self-appraising shop.