Issue #12 • Mar. 12, 2009

“The Orangery,” by K.D. Wentworth

“Unrest,” by Grace Seybold

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THE ORANGERY

by K.D. Wentworth

        The orangery was steamy, even in January, and on cloudless nights, drawn by something we could not name, my younger brother and sister and I would study the stars through the vast glass panes. The leaves of the orange trees were black lace against the night sky as we wove through them. It was close between the terra-cotta pots, which had been painted two different shades of green to mimic the inner and outer sides of an olive leaf, and we played our games fiercely, silently, afraid we’d be commanded back to bed if Nanny Roentage heard us.

        The woman, who had been old even when our parents were children, retired early each evening, after tucking us sternly in, then sat nodding before the tiny fire in her grate to drink hot toddies. Once we were certain she was so occupied, we would rise from our beds, like dryads freed from their trees, and creep down the stairs, then through the sepulchral house into the orangery which we had claimed for ourselves.

        By all reports, the narrow white addition to Marbury House had been built for Mother, upon the occasion of her marriage to our father, but she had since abandoned it for the green and gold hills of sun-drenched Italy, having found both England and parenthood not the least to her liking, once she’d birthed three lusty babes within five years.

        Father had made it quite clear that he’d never been interested in parenthood in the first place, his distaste for it inversely proportional to his enthusiasm for the act which brought it to be.

        As for us—Reg, Phyllida, and me, Sophia—early on we had found them not to our liking as well, so the current estrangement would have been an equitable arrangement if it had not been presided over by Nanny Roentage.

        She was an odd character, barely my height, though I was not yet full grown, with antiquated notions of child-raising and a faint underlying accent that betrayed her origin in some unnamed foreign clime. She had odd habits, little idiosyncracies of pronunciation and personal hygiene, which we found risible.

        The daytime was her province, filled with a rigid progression of lessons, baths, hair combing, constitutionals out on the grounds, and endless attempts to amend our sadly lacking deportment.

        The nights, though, were ours, when we threaded between the orangery’s huge pots and breathed in the rich citrus of the trees, longing always for exotic far-off lands.

        It was seven year old Phylly who first noted the flash of red and gold brocade. Reg and I were fabricating some silly game of Knights and Kings, arguing over where we would locate our “castle,” when she gasped and pointed a shaking finger. She had always been an excitable child, perhaps because she was the youngest and therefore the least touched by our emotionally distant parents. Her hair fell in dark-brown ringlets, difficult to tame, her spirit likewise.

        She was sitting on the floor, humming an odd little tune she had learnt from Nanny, then her head jerked up. “A man!” she said. “There, before the windows!”

        “Oh, come off it, Phylly,” Reg said crossly. He was ten. And, though he had a sensitive, mobile face, he was already filled with the typical male authority of our age. “It’s freezing out there.”

        But then I saw it too, a sweep of red and gold, as though something quite thin and almost invisible had suddenly turned, so that I glimpsed it full on. And it was within the orangery, only a few feet away, not safely outside. “No,” I said, my heart hammering. “There, don’t you see?”

        Reg looked then, and I could tell by his sharp intake of breath that he saw it too. “Bloody hell!” he said in the vernacular he had been lately acquiring from the grounds staff.

        A man stood before us, his pointed beard gleaming with oil. He was clad in red and gold brocaded robes and was dragging a woman by her long black hair. Tiny yellow flowers were braided into her locks, and her arms, very white and round in the dimness, flailed as tears streamed down her elegant face. She wore an elaborate gown of pale green silk cut low across the bosom. She was not young, but neither was she old.

        “Let her go!” Phylly cried and lurched to her feet. I snatched her thin, childish body back and fenced her in with my arms. “No, Phylly, be quiet!” I didn’t know why, but I was desperately afraid for this phantasm to hear us. Reg was staring, on his hands and knees, his mouth agape in the most ill-bred fashion.

        Several more men appeared, also dressed richly in long robes of some foreign cut, one in maroon, the other in deep midnight blue, though neither so grand as the first. A moon-faced boy in servant’s drab stood behind them. They seemed to speak to one another, but we heard not a sound.

        And all the time the woman wailed silently, imprisoned securely by the man’s grip on her heavy black fall of hair.

        “Are they ghosts?” Phylly whispered against my cheek.

        “No,” I found myself saying. Icy perspiration glued my nightdress to my back. “No one like that can ever have lived in Surrey, much less this house, and the orangery was only built a few years ago. I don’t see how it could be haunted already.”

        The images flickered then, like a reflection on the water, and disappeared.

        “No!” Freeing herself from my grasp, Phylly ran to the space before the windows. “Make them come back!” She knelt to pick up a crushed yellow flower that was like nothing ever grown at Marbury House, even in season.

* * *

        None of us slept well that night, after we retreated to our beds, and Nanny, though not the sharpest of observers, made note of our slack-jawed inattention the next day.

        “Bed early for you three,” she said, when Phylly burst into tears over Reg’s teasing and I had failed to produce the correct answer in my tiresome geography lesson three times over.

        We made no protest, which was cause for suspicion in and of itself. Her withered lips pursed as she studied us across the nursery table, but she said no more, perhaps enjoying our inability to speak up for ourselves for once, since we were normally so lively.

        That night, we waited until we heard her singing that same odd tune softly off-key to herself, a sure sign the toddy had done its work. The minimal staff of servants currently in residence had of course retreated to their rooms at the first opportunity, doing whatever it was servants liked to do on their own time.

        Flanked by my brother and sister, I opened the orangery door and was enveloped in warm sweet-scented air. Even at this season, when there was no fruit, the trees exuded fragrant oils that brought to mind visions of more temperate lands. Phylly, crackling with excitement, clutched my hand.

        “Do you see anything?” I whispered to Reg.

        “You mean do I see anyone?” he whispered back.

        “Do you think he hurt her?” Phylly asked, her voice clear and unhushed.

        “The woman?” Reg turned to look at her. “Of course he did. She probably said something stupid, so he had to teach her a lesson.”

        “No, she didn’t!” Without warning, Phylly was on the edge of tears, and I saw that she had brought the faded yellow flower she’d rescued the night before.

        “Be quiet, both of you!” I crouched behind a pot and waited.

        “Oh, they won’t be able to hear us,” Reg said with maddening practicality, “or we should have heard them last night.” He hunkered down between the trees, and Phylly settled beside him, examining the flower’s petals and humming under her breath.

        A figure stirred then in the shadows, limned from behind by a blue-tinted light. It was the woman again, but alone this time, weeping, her gleaming black hair disheveled and bare of flowers. She wore a mauve gown tonight, cut in quite a different fashion, and wrung her hands in distress.

        Phylly darted forward. “Don’t cry.”

        The woman looked down, and her tear-stained face changed, as though she saw her.

        I stood up. “Phylly!”

        Reg ran to take his little sister’s hand, an uncommon move for him, then stared mutely up at the apparition.

        A strain of music began from somewhere, very faint. I swallowed hard. Was that Nanny, descending the stairs to see what all the noise was about? “Both of you, come away from there!” I said in a low urgent voice.

        The woman smiled, and I realized she had a bruise on her cheek. She wiped at her tears with the back of one hand. “Niños,” she said, “how have you come here?”

        A foreign accent flavored her words, as exotic as the fruit of orangery in its season.

        “This is our house,” Phylly said with the fearlessness of the very young. Her cheeks flushed. “We should be asking how you have come here.”

        “Mirnas is in a fearful temper tonight,” the woman said, glancing over her shoulder. The planes of her face were sharp but elegantly sculpted. “His mark pains him more and more with each passing day. Best you go back to where you came from.”

        The music grew louder, skirling with strange harmonies that wove in and out of each other, and I knew then it couldn’t be Nanny, though I did not recognize the instruments. I emerged from the artificial forest to stand behind my brother and sister. An elegant divan covered in striped cream and blue silk was faintly visible out of the corner of my eye. I crossed my arms over my chest as though I could protect myself. “Where is this?” I asked, my heart thudding.

        She smiled sadly. “No place you ever want to go, little one. Return home and travel like this no more.”

        “But we aren’t traveling,” Reg said, his brow wrinkled. “You are.”

        “That’s what I thought when I first came here,” she said. “I wasn’t much older than you.” She smiled at me. “Thirteen?”

        “Twelve and a half,” I said, feeling more afraid than I ever had in my life.

        A small creature slithered from under the divan. It possessed the shape of a snake, but its elongated head was that of a bird, and its body was covered in jewel-toned green feathers instead of scales. I stumbled back.

        Phylly gave a shriek of excitement and picked it up, nuzzling the lithe body against her cheek. “Oh, I want it!”

        I stared in horror. “Put that down!”

        “What is it?” Reg said, his brown eyes unnaturally wide.

        “It is a strega,” the woman said. “They are a rare breed, even here in this dark place. Be very careful with it.”

        Trembling, I prized the beast from Phylly’s small white hand and knelt to release it back on the floor. In spite of the foreign furniture, it was the same floor as that of our orangery, tiny white tiles bordered with blue and gold.

        The strega wrapped its tail around my left wrist and would not let go. Its touch was soft and cool, and it smelled oddly astringent, like just-pressed olives. “Peace, caro,” the woman said, bending over my wrist, her dark eyes on the creature. Her voice was soft. “This small one does not understand.”

        Its mouth opened in a hiss and its feathers rose in a ruff behind its head. Within its throat, I saw concentric rows of glimmering green, as though it had swallowed emeralds. Then it struck, fastening upon my hand. Oddly, I felt no pain, but rather a flooding warmth that rocketed through my veins.

        The woman took it then, easing its coils from around my wrist. Her tongue clucked as her long black hair fell over her face, and she held the writhing strega up to peer into its tiny glittering eyes. “Badly done, caro, badly done! You have not wrought well this night.” Her body flickered like lightening, then we were alone.

        Phylly and Reg stared at me. “Are you all right?” my brother whispered, for once, appearing less than his years, rather than more.

        “I—don’t know,” I said. I sat down hard. The ceramic tiles were chill beneath my spread fingers. Outside, the stars gleamed down on us, bleak and bright.

        Phylly took my bitten hand and turned it up. Three concentric green welts were apparent, and the warmth cascading through my body had transmuted to something else, a sort of burning. The scent of oranges was strong as I cradled the hand to my breast and wept, aching for something I could not name.

* * *

        I concealed my hand the next day in the folds of my skirt so that Nanny, always a bit fragile in the morning from her libations of the night before, did not notice. Reg and Phylly were unnaturally subdued and prone to give me searching glances from their seats in the schoolroom, but at length we got through our morning lessons, and, since the afternoon was fine, though very cold, were sent out to walk in Marbury’s vast gardens.

        “Does it hurt?” Reg asked in a low voice as we turned down a cobbled path with no attendants in sight.

        “It feels—strange,” I said, having no words for the feelings my wound engendered. I pulled my afflicted hand out of my pocket and we all stared at the concentric green welts.

        Phylly seized my hand so that she could kiss it, not at all in character for my small, fey sister. Her lips were quick and dry. “Maybe she’ll tell us more tonight,” she said in a husky whisper.

        I realized then there was no question that we would return to the orangery, no doubt among the three of us that we would see the woman again.

        When we returned to the schoolroom, Nanny was gazing at us with disapproval, as though she had walked behind us the whole way and heard every word. “Wicked children,” she said. “I know what you’ve been up to!”

        We hung our heads, not daring to look her in the eye.

        “You’ve been in the orangery!” She seized my chin and pulled my face up. “Hallings saw you in there last night. Admit it!”

        “Just to smell the trees,” I said, my heart beating wildly against my ribs. “The sun brings out their scent, and it’s so lovely—at this time of year.”

        Her fingers tightened painfully. “You have no leave to go in there, do you understand?”

        “Yes, Nanny.” My throat constricted, and I almost could not get the words out. “I’m sorry.”

        Reg bit his lip. “Sorry, Nanny.”

        Tears were running down Phylly’s suddenly pale cheeks.

        “Those are valuable trees!” She thrust me away so that I reeled in my seat. “What your parents would say if any of them were damaged, I can’t even begin to imagine!” Her eyes, with their odd foreign cant, were chill, and radiated more than a hint of fear.

        “We were—careful,” I said.

        “You’re not to go in there—ever again!” She straightened her back. “Do you understand?”

        The welts on my hand throbbed, and I concealed it beneath my unafflicted one as we nodded, each in turn when she held our gaze.

* * *

        That night, the nursery door was locked; Nanny did not trust us to keep our promise. As we would not, had we any choice, but it was sobering to realize Nanny was cognizant of that. She understood so little else about us.

        Reg gave the knob one last desperate turn, then slid to the floor, his back against the solid oak. “We can’t get out,” he said, his eyes glazed in the dimness of the night-nursery.

        “The lady will go away, won’t she?” Phylly looked from him to me, her body pitifully thin in her flannel nightdress. “She’ll come, but we won’t be there, and then we’ll never see her again.”

        I clutched my hand to my breast. It was filled with a strange thrilling, not pain, exactly, but a sensation akin to that of a limb in which the circulation has been cut off and is now beginning to return. It felt as though I must move, must translate myself at once to that other place we had glimpsed down in the orangery.

        I put my palms on the door, reaching with senses I couldn’t even name for what lay on the other side. Urgency beat at me, threaded with need. “I have to get out,” I said with quiet desperation. “They won’t wait!”

        “Who won’t—the lady?” Phylly said.

        Unable to answer, I threw myself on my cot and curled up, knees to forehead. The sensation of need was already past enduring. I didn’t know how I would go on bearing it night after night, since Nanny would never again leave us unguarded. I was certain of that.

        “We could climb out the window,” Reg said. He padded over to the icy pane and looked out. “Then down the roof to the corner where there is a lattice for the roses. I’ve done it before—well, once.”

        “But then we would be locked outside,” I said, trying to keep my teeth from chattering. “We’d have no way to get back in.”

        Then I thought I heard the music from the night before, wild and oriental, as though it carried all the way from the orangery on the other side of the house. I started up from my bed, heart pounding.

        “Your hand!” Phylly darted forward to take my wrist and gaze down at the back of my hand. The three circular welts, one inside the other, were outlined in green fire in the dimness. She shivered. “Does it hurt?”

        I pulled free of her, cradling it against my breast, rocking on my knees. I was damp with perspiration, and the ache within was like the need for air when one was suffocating, or the need for food when one was starved. I didn’t know what it was I craved, only that I might die of it, were the need not satisfied.

        “Both of you, stay here,” Reg suddenly ordered, as though we had a choice in the matter. He was very pale under his shock of dark brown hair. “I’ll come back for you.” With a heave of his young shoulders, he threw open the nursery window, inundating us with frigid night air, then disappeared out onto the roof.

        I knelt in front of it, welcoming the coolness on my feverish skin. Phylly pulled blankets off my cot, draping one around my shoulders, which I immediately shrugged off.

        The stars glittered down, hard and uncaring, as they were most nights when the weather was fine. I studied their diamond facets above the dark plain of the rooftop, wondering if our parents gave them any thought over in drowsy Italy.

        Fifteen minutes later, our door creaked open, and Reg, panting, smudged, and triumphant, wordlessly beckoned us out.

        Barefoot, we slipped past Nanny’s room. She was still singing, but her voice was hoarse, as though she had been at it for hours. Then we pattered down the steps single-file. Phylly was shivering, and I realized belatedly that I should have made her wear her robe and slippers.

        “How did you get in?” I asked Reg as we threaded through room after room of dark furniture.

        “I knocked on Cook’s window,” he said. “Told her I’d gotten carried away, pretending I was a pirate, and had climbed down off the roof after you two had gone to bed and couldn’t get back up.”

        “And she let you in?” Phylly’s eyes were wide with amazement.

        “Well, she did give me a proper scolding, but I asked her not to tell, and she said she wouldn’t, just this once,” Reg said. “She doesn’t like Nanny, you know. Says `that foreign woman’ is always sending meals back, saying they don’t `suit,’ so then Cook has to throw something else together at the last minute. Says she’s taken on `airs,’ since our parents went away, thinks she’s better than the other servants.”

        We entered the hall and were quiet then until we reached the orangery door and tried the knob.

        It was locked.

        I stared at it hopelessly, my hand cradled to my breast. Through the panes of glass in the door, I could see a faint glow on the other side of the trees, in front of the long bank of floor to ceiling windows.

        Phylly stood on her toes, peering through the glass. “Is she there?”

        “Stay here,” I whispered to them, then padded back down the dark hallway until I came to one of the small sitting rooms. On the mantel, I found a brass candleholder and carried it back with me.

        “Let me,” Reg said, immediately divining my intent.

        “No.” I motioned to the pair of them. “Stand well back.” I wrapped the brass in the hem of my nightgown and broke out the pane just above the knob, then reached through and released the latch. The door swung open, enveloping us with the redolent tang of oranges.

        Phylly squeezed through in front of me, heedless of the broken glass, and raced toward the outer bank of windows. At my side, Reg craned his head. “Can you see her?”

        Mindful of my bare feet, I stepped over the shards of glass and followed. The tiles were cool, but the air retained some of the sun’s heat from earlier in the day. I could hear Phylly talking in a low voice. Reg darted ahead through the carefully situated pots of trees.

        My afflicted hand trembled, as though it possessed a mind separate from my own and had business here. Phylly’s voice grew louder and I tacked toward it. I found Phylly and Reg standing together, staring up at someone as tall as any man I’d ever seen. I stopped well back surrounded still by orange trees and could not make myself go on.

        Reg looked over his shoulder. “That’s our sister,” he said, “Sophia.”

        The man had black eyes with no discernible iris and his hair was black too, limned with moonlight, though there was no moon tonight in our world. His teeth glittered in a strange, feral smile. “Sooo-phee-aa.” He stretched the word out, giving each syllable more than its due. “Come and let us take a look at you.”

        My feet obeyed, though my heart feared to do so. As I moved into his sphere, my senses swam, and then it seemed we stood in another place, not the orangery at all. Rich cinnamon-colored drapes hung from windows that looked out over a strange garden glittering in the light of a full moon. Out in that garden, banks of glimmering red blooms danced like living flame. The floor was layered with purple and black carpets worked in fanciful patterns, and I smelled the odor of something sharp and sweet, as though someone nearby were cooking.

        Phylly retreated to stand at my side. “Are you Mirnas?”

        “Be still, Phylly,” I said. Oddly, the floor beneath her feet was still the orangery’s white tile bordered in gold and blue, while I stood on carpet. I had somehow traveled farther than she in the few steps it had taken to get here.

        “You are a pretty pair, are you not, quite dear and tender.” The man cocked his immense head. “Yes, fledgling, I am Mirnas.”

        I could feel Reg behind me, watching. “How—do you come here?” I asked.

        “Actually, it is you who have come here,” he said. “Opening the doorway is a small knack, greatly assisted by the venom of the helpful strega.”

        “Where is the lady?” Phylly asked, looking around the strangely appointed room. “She was very pretty.”

        “Her name is Bella,” he said. “I’m afraid I was quite cross with her today. She may not feel like attending me tonight.”

        Phylly blinked solemnly. “Was she bad?”

        “That depends on how you look at it,” he said. “Often, good is bad, and bad is good. Strange, isn’t it?” He laughed, but it was a hollow, chilling sound.

        I took Phylly’s hand in mine, and it felt reassuringly warm, as though sunny Italy herself lived inside her skin. “We have to go now.”

        “So soon?” He dropped onto a low divan and stretched like a tomcat, all feline grace despite his height.

        “We’ll be missed,” I said and turned to go, but saw only a wall lined with chairs of some oddly fluted design, rather than the orangery.

        “Phylly,” I said in a strangled voice. “Do you see the trees?”

        She nodded, her hand limp in mine.

        “Then, you lead the way,” I said. “I’ll follow.”

        She stepped forward, through the furniture, disappearing into the wall. I tried to follow but was brought up short by its apparent solidity and lost hold of my sister’s hand.

        Phylly returned, gazing up at me apprehensively. Her hazel eyes widened. “Aren’t you coming?”

        My heart raced and my hand throbbed with that strange not-quite-pain. “All I can see is a wall.”

        Mirnas chuckled. I heard him rise from the divan, but I feared to turn around.

        Phylly took my hand again. “Don’t look,” she whispered and tugged me after her.

        “Nay, child, both of you, stay a while,” Mirnas said with cool amusement. “The night is still young, the moon very bright, and there is much I might teach you, since it seems poor Bella is determined to be indisposed.”

        I closed my eyes and plunged after Phylly, feeling the ghosts of wall and furniture like an unnerving itch as my body passed through them. When Phylly stopped, I opened my eyes again and found we stood among the dark glossy leaves of the orange trees. The breath rasped in and out of my chest as though we had been exerting ourselves and tears dampened my cheeks.

        I turned back to the bank of windows; the scene with Mirnas, his furniture and drapes and bizarre glowing garden, had disappeared.

        But there was also no sign of my brother.

        “Phylly—” My fingers tightened on my sister’s small hand so that I felt the bones give. “Where’s Reg?”

        She pulled away and didn’t answer.

* * *

        After searching the orangery twice without finding any trace of Reg, we swept up the shards of broken glass. Afterwards, I locked Phylly back in our room, leaving the key in the lock just as Nanny had, and went outside to climb the trellis and retrace Reg’s journey across the roof back to our window. Mrs. Reece, the housekeeper, would find the side door unlocked in the morning. I only hoped she would attribute it to her own carelessness.

        The stars seemed to sing hard bright songs up there in the sky and I paused on the roof to stare up at them. Were they shining down on Reg wherever he was? Remembering the full moon, I shuddered. That was a different place, apparently with its own separate rules and geography.

        Phylly was in her bed when I climbed through the window, the covers pulled up to her chin, eyes staring at the ceiling. “Where is he?” she whispered as I closed the window behind me.

        “In that other place,” I said.

        She shifted over on her side, clutching the bedclothes. “Can we get him back?”

        “I don’t know.” I slipped back into my own bed, half-numb with cold and dread. The darkness seemed to vibrate and I could see the strange garden of flaming flowers behind my eyes as though their image had been seared into my brain.

* * *

        When I closed my eyes, I thought I could not sleep, but Nanny woke me the next morning as though nothing untoward had happened, going on to Phylly, then stopping at Reg’s cot.

        “What’s this?” she said as I sat up, rubbing my eyes. “His bed hasn’t been slept in.” She turned back to us. “Where, pray tell, is your brother?”

        Phylly buried her face in her pillow and began to cry.

        I slipped out of bed and went to her, wrapping my arms around her shaking body.

        Nanny folded her hands, staring at us like a turtle who had just popped its head out of its shell and found something disagreeable. “I see.”

        Just exactly what she thought she saw, I do not know. Nothing of the truth could have been obvious from the scene before her.

        “See to your morning ablutions,” she said and left, slamming the door with a most ungenteel ferocity and locking us in again.

        We did not see her for several hours, and though the maid came round with our breakfast things, evidently the key was no longer in the lock. She was forced to leave the laden tray on the floor just outside.

        Phylly sat in her accustomed chair at the nursery table, gazing down at her hands, while I paced the circumference of the room, unable to remain still for any length of time. “She won’t find him,” my sister said in a small, stifled voice.

        “No,” I said, “she won’t. Would God that she could!”

        I tried to think about the scene last night, the last time I saw Reg. What had he been doing? Why hadn’t he come with us? But even the memory of that strange place seemed unreal and untrustworthy, distorted as though glimpsed underwater. None of it made any more sense than dreams ever did.

        The key rasped in the lock, then the nursery door opened. Nanny stood framed in the doorway, her gray hair untidy, gazing at us as though she’d discovered two serpents in our place. “Someone smashed the glass in the orangery door,” she said. “Cook reports Master Reginald was outside last night and begged leave of her around ten to be let back in.” Her mouth pursed in a most disagreeable fashion. “You will tell me at once what you know about this!”

        Phylly sobbed as I put one hand, my unmarked one, on her shoulder and squeezed. “We were up here, locked in, Nanny,” I said, my voice almost steady. “What could we know about it?”

        Her head craned to one side. “If you know you were locked in, then you must have tried the door!”

        “When Reg didn’t come back, we wanted to inform you,” I said, amazing myself with the ease of the lie tumbling from my lips. “But we couldn’t, since you’d locked us in.”

        “I see.”

        By the ramrod straightness of her back and the flush in her withered cheeks, it was apparent she did not believe me, and my marked hand began to throb again with that nameless sensation that was not-quite-pain. I thrust it into the pocket of my dress. I had put on ivory trimmed with rose ribbons for the day, as innocent a color as my wardrobe possessed.

        “What about you, Phyllida?” Nanny demanded. “What have you to say about this incident? Where has your brother gone?”

        Tears were streaming down Phylly’s cheeks. Nanny pulled her from the chair by one arm and made her look up into her furious face. “I’m sure he meant to come back, Nanny,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Reg wouldn’t vex you on purpose.”

        “I know what you are up to!” Nanny gave Phylly a little shake so that her head bobbed. “There’s nothing in the orangery to entertain such quarrelsome, indolent children as you three, so someone must have drawn you. Who was it?”

        For a heart-stopping second, I thought Phylly would blurt out the whole improbable story, then she hung her head and sobbed harder.

        “You don’t understand what you are playing with!” she said.

        I pulled my sister away from Nanny’s cruel grip, then folded her in my arms. “It’s all right,” I murmured into her dark curls. “He’ll come back. I know he will.”

        With an exclamation, Nanny seized my left hand and held it up close to her face, examining the strange concentric circles of glittering emerald beneath the skin. Her eyes finally raised to meet mine. “Foolish child, you will regret this, once you understand what you have done!” She thrust me away from her, as though the touch of my skin burned.

        “We’ll get him back, if you allow us to go to the orangery tonight,” I said, an odd coolness possessing me. “Then everything will be as it was. Our parents need never know about any of this.”

        The mention of her employers seemed to galvanize her. With a choked exclamation, she left us then, retreating to her own room where I heard the scrape of the key in the lock from within.

        I went out into the hallway to retrieve our breakfast tray with its cold toast and congealed porridge. “Shall we go down to Cook, Phylly?” I said, setting the tray on the nursery table. “I’m certain she’ll give us something warm, if we ask nicely.”

        She wiped at her cheeks with the back of one hand and nodded.

* * *

        We did not see Nanny the rest of the day, but my hand made me restless, the mark demanding that I be in continual motion. I walked the gardens out in the thin winter light, which was further diminished that day by dark, low-hanging clouds. The scent was dry and dusty, and dead leaves skittered along the paths, propelled by a cruel north wind. Phylly trotted along beside me, her hands thrust into a little white muff she’d received from our parents by post the previous Christmas.

        We entered the orangery at various moments throughout the day, but it had remained stubbornly only what it seemed to be, a vast echoing room, filled with citrus trees in their pots placed in their precise patterns, the sun’s wan heat magnified by the glass windows. We wandered the tile enclosure, noting that the missing glass in the door had been temporarily replaced by a piece of wood.

        Nanny did not come to us for tea, or later for the evening meal. There was a plate provided for both her and Reg, and the two of us stared at them silently, fearing to speak aloud that which consumed our every thought.

        As the short day faded, I watched Nanny’s door, but she made no offer to interfere with us. I waited until ten, our usual time for entertaining ourselves down in the orangery, then motioned to Phylly to take my hand.

        She stood, smoothing the wrinkles from her pinafore, then laced her small fingers through mine. Her touch was cold.

        The door to the orangery was not locked this time, saving us the bother of breaking more glass. That was for the best as I would not have let anything stop this assignation, no matter how much damage I might have to accomplish.

        As usual, it was dark in amongst the oversized pots. The leaves rustled as we brushed against them, and I could hear our breathing accelerate. I put my arm around Phylly and we settled together on the cool tile, close to the windows where we had seen that other place both times before.

        We waited silently, though that might have made no difference, for all that we knew. An hour passed, then another until I despaired and considered retreating back upstairs to our beds.

        Phylly’s head sagged as she hummed to herself, then, finally, a faint blueness glimmered in the air midway between floor and ceiling. She gasped and I pulled her closer. The air of the orangery seemed to burn away, starting from that single point and radiating outward. A scene formed before us, a room in some other place, a palace perhaps. The furnishings and draperies were certainly rich enough.

        The woman, Bella, was there, seated on the striped divan, her black hair alive with blue highlights. She was dressed tonight in gold and wore earrings to match that dangled almost to her shapely shoulders. The bruise on her face was gone.

        And Reg sat beside her, wearing breeches of copper-colored satin that ended just below the knees and a floor-length white coat with silver buttons. A turban covered his brown hair. His face was as pale as I’d ever seen it.

        Phylly lurched to her feet and I reeled with the sudden throb of my marked hand. “Reg!” she called and pulled free before I could stop her. “Are you all right? Nanny was ever so angry!”

        The woman looked up, then took Reg’s unresisting hand in hers. “See? I told you they would come again someday.”

        “I didn’t wish them to come,” he said in a disdainful voice very unlike our comradely brother.

        “Of course, you did,” she said. “NiÑas, come forward and kiss your brother.”

        Phylly emerged from the pots, her steps hesitant, as insubstantial as a bit of thistledown just before the wind whirls it aloft. “Does Reg have a different name now?”

        With a burst of blue, as though a door somewhere unimaginably faraway had opened, one of the two men we had seen previously appeared. He still sported the pointed beard, but now it was shot through with silver where before it had been uniformly black.

        “So, Bella,” he said, bracing his side with one hand as though it pained him. “They’ve come back. You should have called me.” An undercurrent of satisfaction permeated his tone and I shivered, despite the air’s lingering warmth there in the orangery.

        She bowed her head and I saw a thin line of dried blood along a cut on her jaw. “I was just about to call you, Mirnas,” she said lightly. Her fingers played over the striped silk. “They are funny little things, are they not? One has already met our clever strega.”

        “Has she, now?” Gazing back through the potted trees as though they concealed me not at all, Mirnas raised his chin and motioned to me with all the imperiousness of a foreign chieftain. “Come here, girl!”

        I stepped a bit closer, parting the leaves with one shoulder so that I stood half-revealed. “I am not a common servant,” I said. “It is not for you to summon me like one.”

        “A little queen, eh?” He laughed, but it was not a merry sound. “And just where do you think you are?”

        “I’m in my own home,” I said, “in the orangery my mother had built not long before the occasion of my birth. Where, sir, are you?”

        “In my viewing room,” he said, stroking his beard.

        Phylly darted forward and seized Reg’s hand, but he shook her off so that she fell to the floor. A tiny green feathered head peered out from his collar. My hand throbbed at the very sight of it. I wanted, no, needed, something, but could not say what.

        “This is another world,” Bella said. “Another place, not the one of your birth at all.” She tried to smile, but it looked out of place on her strained face.

        Phylly picked herself up. “Aren’t you coming with us?” she asked Reg.

        He stood up from the divan, and I realized he was taller than he’d been just the night before. His face had lost its roundness, his bones become heavier, as though he’d grown—older.

        “What? So I can put myself under that Nanny creature’s tiresome authority again?” His lip curled. “I think not.”

        “But—” Phylly hovered on the brink of tears. “You’re our brother. You belong with us.”

        Reg turned to gaze out the windows, which were remarkably similar to those of the orangery. Out in the darkness of this foreign night, I could see the glowing colors again, like flowers composed of fire instead of petals. “I shall never go back, so there’s no use in pestering me about it.” The strega slithered out of his collar to coil about his neck like a jeweled green collar.

        Mirnas laughed. “I think you should go back,” he said, “at least for a time. It might be amusing.”

        Reg whirled on him. “You know that’s impossible!”

        He was older than even I was, now, I realized numbly. Time didn’t pass at the same rate in this other place, and in the space of a single night he had become the eldest.

        “Come back,” I said, “please.”

        “Yes, go.” Mirnas waved him off. “I command you.”

        Bella fell at Reg’s feet, head bowed, satiny black hair cascading down to hide her face. “Caro, try, please! You know it’s no use. He’ll have his way in the end.” One hand stole up to caress his ankle as though stroking a cat. “He always does!”

        Reg flinched from her touch, trembling. How old was he now, I wondered. Fifteen? Sixteen? “It needn’t be forever,” I said in a calm voice that belied my eagerness. I reached out to him. “Just for tonight. You can come back here tomorrow, or whenever you like.”

        The strega around his neck hissed, the feathers standing up in a ruff around its head like the hood of a cobra. Need pulsed through me, an appetite for something unnameable. I jerked back and cradled my marked hand against my breast.

        His shirt slipped down, revealing a similar mark at the tender juncture where neck and shoulder met, three concentric circles of emerald that glowed as though illuminated beneath the skin. These were older than mine and much more healed, resembling an odd green birthmark rather than a wound.

        He saw me looking and laughed. “Yes, it burns, doesn’t it?”

        “It’s just a bite,” I said, though my hand was shaking and I attempted to conceal it in the folds of my skirts. “It will fade in time.”

        “Not this bite,” Reg said, “though some bear its stigmata better than others.” He looked over his shoulder at the man. “Isn’t that right, Mirnas?”

        The man scowled and turned away, his face flushed.

        “Anyway, we just want Phylly now to have a complete set.” Reg eased the strega from around his neck and held the slim green creature out to her. “As I recall, on that night so long ago, you were first to pick him up. It should have been you all along.”

        Phylly stared, her eyes wide, either in fascination or horror, I could not tell which. “Don’t!” I reached to pull her back.

        Mirnas was at my side in two quick strides and prevented me from reaching my sister. His fingers dug into the tender flesh of my arms. “It is the price of coming here,” he said into my ear with a hot exhalation of tobacco-breath. “You, all of you, chose this place.”

        I tried to free myself, but could not. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing! She’s just a child!”

        “As are you,” he said. “As were we all, each and each, when this dark land first called to us.”

        I didn’t feel like a child. I felt old and worn, far beyond my years. Fear streaked through my veins. “Phyllida Regina Hamilton Darcy,” I said, mimicking Nanny’s fussy tone as nearly as possible, “go upstairs to bed this instant!”

        She looked at me then, hazel eyes huge in her pale little face. I could see the logic assembling itself in her seven-year-old brain: Reg and I both bore the strega’s mysterious mark, and in all her short life, she’d never consented to being left out of anything.

        “You were such an ugly little boy,” a voice hazed with cracks said from the darkness back by the orangery door. “I always knew you would come to no good end.”

        I turned, but Mirnas would not release me. “Nanny?”

        “He had a monkey, you know,” she said, making her way through the maze of potted trees, allowing none of the leaves to brush her clothing. “A vile, dirty creature. I warned his father, Lord Alderoy, that no good would come of allowing vermin in the nursery. In the end, I found them, beast and child, to be much of a kind.”

        Bella looked up from her knees. “Oh, Nanny!” she said, and her voice was filled with longing. “It’s been such a long time.”

        “And, you,” Nanny said, coming into the light of that other room. She held a cut-glass tumbler half-filled with clear liquid in one hand and gazed down at the beautiful Bella. “You had such promise, for a foreign child. As long as you kept your mouth closed, no one would have known you were not English. You might have made a very good marriage, had you employed your assets to their best advantage.”

        Bella bit her lip and looked away.

        “What is it about this dreary place that calls children so strongly?” Nanny gazed about at the draperies and silk, the expensive carpets piled one upon the other. “I couldn’t wait to escape, when I was your age, to live in the clean, bright sun of a world that knew seasons. You always have the best of everything in your own world, and yet, one after the other, you inevitably abandon it all to come here!”

        “How did you do it?” Mirnas gazed at her with a terrible hunger in his black eyes. “How did you cross the barrier? Tell us the secret!”

        “It’s a little trick I learned,” she said, “a subtle shading of the heart.” She sipped from her glass. “But you have to possess a heart, and as was evident to all who knew you, even in the nursery, you have none.”

        Mirnas dragged me back. “See to your puling infants, madam!” he said to Nanny over his shoulder. “You’re not wanted here!”

        “It’s too late, isn’t it?” She ran a hand over the orange tree leaves so that they rustled. “You’re all quite, quite lost, aren’t you?”

        “Not Phylly!” I said as Mirnas threw me onto the divan. “She can still go back!”

        “No!” Phylly cried. “I want to stay with you!”

        “And we must have our Phylly,” Reg said with the quirk of one eyebrow. He raised the strega again. “What ever would we do without her?”

        I put a hand to my bruised arm. A few feet away, Phylly was stretching her hand out, strangely mesmerized, as the creature hissed. I felt the surge of my mark’s hunger again, terrifying in its unquantifiableness. It was unnatural, wrong, tainting.

        The strega’s neck feathers flared. I could see the glitter in its tiny black eyes and struggled up from the divan, reaching Reg’s side in two quick strides. Bella watched from the floor as I seized the loathsome beast with both hands and broke its back with a strong twist. It writhed, lashing its tail, then went limp.

        “No!” Mirnas struck me to the carpet. My fingers dug into the purple and black pile as I struggled to rise. Only a stride away, I could see that Phylly’s feet still stood on white tile bordered in blue and gold.

        The orangery faded, along with Nanny and my sister. I was left alone with Mirnas, Bella, Reg, and the strega’s broken body.

        Its feathers were falling away, two and three at a time, like autumn leaves from a tree. Its eyes dulled, and green ichor trailed from its open mouth.

        “Now—” said Bella brokenly. “Now—”

        But she never completed the thought.

        Much later, though, I would understand she actually had.

* * *

        Sometimes, when I can bring myself to hum Nanny’s wretched tune, I see the orangery and Phylly, wandering the avenues between the trees, her face stricken. Time is different there. To her, I know we’ve only just gone, while here, the better part of a year has already passed.

        It’s always night in this eerie land, though it possesses five moons of various sizes, and their combined light allows the vegetation, such as it is, to grow and bear. But I find it strange never to see the sun rise, never to feel its heat on my face or see the seasons turn. It’s as though we are mired in some strange eternal twilight and never quite awake.

        We live in what can only be termed a palace, full of rich furniture and servants with an oddly feral cast to their features, and we’re served exotic meals, strawberries and cream, truffles, along with other delicacies which do not exist in our world, though I have no idea who supports such extravagance.

        The flowers in these gardens are made of living flame, as I first thought, beautiful to gaze upon, heavy with fragrance, but strangely without warmth. If you touch them, they burn your skin with a cold that eats away at your heart. I have learnt to take great care in approaching them. In the dark skies overhead, bizarre elongated beasts fly, crying out. I think perhaps they are kin to that dreadful strega.

        And though many fruits grow here, tart as well as sweet, always I crave oranges, of which there are none.

        Reg, who has grown so tall and serious, walks the gardens with me occasionally, but seldom can be prevailed upon to speak. Having been here longer, he knows more about this place than I do, but seems to blame me for our exile.

        That brute Mirnas has gone for now, reportedly traveling the foreign reaches of this world in search of another strega, but there are many others in residence here, men and women, children, some from our world, some from others, all lured here at some point by some agency I have never met and cannot imagine.

        Nanny evidently numbered among them at one time, the product of a liaison between two residents, but then found her way into our world. I wonder where the strega marked her and how she managed to conceal it all those years.

        My own mark’s hunger grows ever more savage, and it seems, like Mirnas, I am one of those who does not “bear it well,” as Reg says. I believe it’s the hunger for our former lives, which we can never again possess, unless we learn the fashion of Nanny’s escape, and so far, she is the only one ever to do so.

        And for her, it was different. She was born here as we were not. For the rest of us, I am told if we surrender our desire to return to what we once were, the mark loses its ability to torment. I think, to some measure, in the years since Reg translated to this realm, he has achieved that state of mind.

        I fear I never will.

Copyright © 2009 K.D. Wentworth

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K.D. Wentworth has sold more than seventy pieces of short fiction to such markets as F&SF, Hitchcock’s, Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, Sword and Sorceress 23, Witch Way to the Mall, and Return to the Twilight Zone. Three of her stories have been Finalists for the Nebula Award. Currently she has seven novels in print, the most recent being The Course of Empire, written with Eric Flint and published by Baen. Her forthcoming book (also co-written with Eric Flint) is tentatively titled The Honor of Empire. She lives in Tulsa with her husband and a combined total of one hundred sixty pounds of dog (Akita + Siberian Hussy). Visit her website at http://www.kdwentworth.com.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

UNREST

by Grace Seybold

        Papa says often you will be looking for one thing and find another, and Papa is very wise and often right, for I was looking out for trolls in the pasture when I saw the soldiers instead.

        We see soldiers often, because the road between Kulosep and the Hado runs along the northeast edge of our farm. The Kuloseppae are very tall and paint their faces in war, and carry long spears. The Suhado wear helmets like birds’ heads and their women fight. We are neither. We are Esh. We were here before the armies came.

        These soldiers were Kuloseppae and they were off the road and coming across the field. I could have hidden but three dozen sheep could not, and if all they wanted was provisions and they stole a sheep because there was no-one nearby to buy it from, Papa would be angry. Instead I rang the night bell, and stood in place as they came.

        “Where’s your father, boy?” one asked as they stopped just past the sheep fence. His face was unpainted, which I took as a good sign. We had not heard of a war, but one’s first news might well be a night fire or a knife. So Papa says, and so he listens to the wind.

        “Coming, honoured sir,” I told the soldier, hoping it was true. For good measure and to seem eager to please I rang the bell again. The sheep stirred uneasily, butting against each other. I felt the same. Sheep are not clever as people are clever, but they are not stupid as city people think. We Esh understand these things. I felt the threat in the wind and the dark, whispering in my ears like a hungry ghost, and I stood and waited longingly for Papa.

        He came out from the house soon, his coat over his shoulders and a cudgel swinging from one hand. Once I saw him kill a full-grown troll with it, smashing its ribs with his first blow and then caving in the back of its head as it doubled over. Now as he saw the soldiers his posture shifted a little, became more shuffling and slumped. Just an old farmer, worried about his sheep. We Esh have been here a long, long time.

        I went back to watching the sheep, a few of whom had decided to make a foray along the fence toward the trees. As I was urging them back to the flock and away from where trolls could be hiding, I heard Papa sob, once, as though trying not to. They will take one of the sheep without paying, then, I thought. Papa is a great bargainer, but he is wise enough not to argue too far.

        “Tekel,” he said to me when I came back within earshot, while the soldiers grinned at each other, “you will go with these men.”

        I could not understand. The words were sounds only, without meaning. Papa would not send me away, not ever. I had misunderstood. I touched the fence, the back of one of the sheep, my father’s sleeve, seeking reassurance in solidity. He moved away, and the world shifted.

        They told me then that they were a recruiting party, and that the laws had been changed so that Esh and all who lived between Kulosep and the Hado were now citizens of one or the other. As citizens of Kulosep it was the duty of all able-bodied males to serve a term in the army, but in their kindness they would allow one man of the new citizens to serve for all his family.

        “You’re lucky you’re not on the Hado side, boy,” the speaker added. “They’d take you both and your mama too. War’s coming.”

        “Esh do not fight in wars,” I said numbly, and they laughed again.

        “Well, you’ll be the first, then, won’t you? Come on, boy, say goodbye to your daddy and let’s get moving.”

        Then I understood, and seeing my father’s face knew I was right. If war was coming, someone would have to keep Mama and my little brothers safe, and if I refused to go, they would take Papa instead. And would I, Tekel, fifteen years old, keep looters from our doorstep or lead our family to safety if the farm burned? No, Papa must stay, and I must go.

        Then it was darkness around me and a long walk through the night, and finally a cleared place where other men and other boys slept bewildered sleep. I wondered where we were going, and if I would see the walls and towers of Kulosep tomorrow or in days to come. I had never wanted to leave the farm, but if this was to be my life, let it at least be filled with marvels. Let me yield to fate and be borne up by it, like a plucked leaf that soars far from the tree. It is no disgrace, to yield to fate.

        We are Esh, after all. We understand these things.

* * *

        You’d think the damned greenies would teach these poor kids not to sleep on watch, first thing. He was leaning on his spear when I got up to the sentry-line, and I could tell even in the dark he was a new one, because he was out on his feet and didn’t wake up when I came up behind him. When you’ve been out awhile you learn the trick of sleeping so lightly a dragonfly on your shoulder wakes you.

        Not that I ever sleep on watch. No sir.

        Didn’t wake up even when I came up behind him and dropped my wire over his head. Garotte’s a quiet way to kill if you can manage it, that or a stab in the kidneys. Don’t ask me what kidneys have to do with not screaming, but it works, ask anybody.

        Left him and the next one and the next all in a nice pile under some bushes, after I took the trophies. That part I hate, I’m not ashamed to tell you. Leave a soldier some dignity, let the family have a body to weep over that looks like their boy or girl, not one so hacked up they’ve got only the sergeant’s word who they’re burying. You think when I die I want my mama looking down at me and telling them “No sir, that’s not my daughter, I don’t believe you?” But orders are orders and we were told to scare the bastards, so we did.

        No idea why they were out recruiting along the highway anyways. That’s what they were doing, we knew it, we’d been following them for days. I’ve been out with recruiting parties before, yes sir, but the farmers between Kulosep and Hado-home were supposed to be exempt. We’re not stupid; we know who grows our bread. If the damned greenies had been able to offer them something, or threaten them with something, to make them take sides (and I’ve talked to Esh and I can’t for the life of me figure out what that would be) we needed to stamp the whole thing out as hard as possible.

        So: the recruits died. By now the rest of our squadron would have done their parts. Adadaro and Omibibiro were sneaking into the camp itself to kill all the new boys who were sleeping, while the rest, me included, took out those on watch. That was most of them. It was part of their training, I get that, but still stupid not to have somebody keeping an eye on them. But by now I don’t expect greenies to be too smart. Tricky, sure, they’re tricky as all hell, but stupid.

        So back to our camp I went and what did I find on the way but Madidiyu asleep at her post. Kicked her awake and explained at great length how easily I could have strangled her just like those poor Esh bastards whose tongues and ears I had in my pouch. She was nearly in tears when I finished but trying not to show it, and I pretended not to see. Wasn’t too long ago I was a new girl myself. She had to learn not to be careless, though. Careless gets you killed.

* * *

        Bek eat you all. Bek eat blood-smell-man and water-smell- woman and angry-short-woman and poke-Bek-with- sticks-man. Bek strong hands. Bek big teeth. Bek break moving wood cave run run eat you all.

        Day, night, day, moving. Back and forth, back and forth. Bek stomach hurt. Once Bek sick on angry-short-woman. Other man all laugh. Bek no food, day, night, day. Last good food just before all man came. Iron claw woman, hot salt blood, good good. All gone now. Not even blood left on skin. Bek hungry. No food. Man smell good good. Bek eat you all.

        Sleep, blood-smell-man. Sleep, angry-short-woman. Sleep long quiet no wake up. Bek break moving wood cave. Bek sneaky quiet. Eat you all. Eat you all. Eat you all. Then run run far away, never come back never. Never catch Bek again.

* * *

        How was I supposed to know it was a woman, for God’s sake? They said it was a troll and I swear it looked like one, all matted hair and hooked nails and those stinking hides they tie on themselves to mask their own smell from prey. It tried to bite me when I got near the cage, and the soldiers who brought it in laughed.

        “Be careful, Thibo,” their captain warned me. “It killed one of us before we caught it. And ate her. Well, bits of her.”

        I was amazed they did catch it. Troll cubs do command high prices, who knows that better than me? But you’d think if it killed one of their own there’d have been a few of them who’d’ve wanted to skewer it. Either they were better disciplined than I gave them credit for, or they were shorter of coin than they looked. I was betting on the latter, and revised my offer downward accordingly.

        Even then, the captain’s eyes lit up at the amount I mentioned. I didn’t tell him I could get four times as much from a certain man in Bannertown who trained troll cubs to fight bears and such for show. I’ve never seen such a thing myself, of course, but some people will watch any kind of barbarism.

        The purchase concluded, they left the cub and the cage and went off bragging to each other about how many butterfly-girls they’d have tonight. I sent a boy to my warehouse to fetch my cart, then sat down beside the cage to keep an eye on it. People will steal anything in this city. The troll was still muttering and growling to itself in the corner. Yes, a troll, I was sure of it. All right, a she-troll, with dugs nearly down to its waist, but I’ve seen she-trolls before and they do look like that.

        The boy came running back to tell me that my foreman, Abiru, said the cart was at the smith’s and did I want him to hire one instead? This on market day when there wouldn’t be a cart for rent in the entire city. I thought about it for a moment, then gave the boy a penny to watch the cage and went off to make some purchases.

        When I returned, it was with a waxed paper packet of raw offal from the butcher’s, into which I’d carefully poured a small vial of a certain sedative I knew to work well on trolls. I’d used it before and the apothecary had assured me of this batch’s strength. Once the beast was unconscious, the boy and I could remove it from the cage and carry it home ourselves.

        I pushed the meat through the bars, keeping my hands well clear. “Good troll,” I coaxed it. “Nice troll. Eat the nice food. That’s right.” The troll sniffed at it suspiciously, then began stuffing the bloody organ meats into its mouth with both hands. The sight made me want to vomit, right there in the street. A crowd had gathered to watch by this time, and a few of the ladies fainted at this new spectacle.

        Gradually the troll’s frantic eating slowed. It lifted its head, looking puzzled, then abruptly convulsed, howling, and collapsed to the floor of the cage and began to claw at its stomach and throat. I had never seen that happen before.

        Then, by God, the caterwauling turned to words, and I felt my own blood turn to water. “Hurts. Mama, mama, hurts, help me, help meee—” The troll was tearing great rents in its gut, its blood mixing with the mess on the floor. Trolls do not speak. Their throats are made like dogs’ throats, and they don’t speak. But I couldn’t have known, could I? It didn’t try to speak before. All it did was growl.

        I didn’t know. May God strike me dead if I lie, I didn’t know.

* * *

        Adondé vedu how I hate this warm country and all who live in him. Many and many years I have been here and in all this time I have not found one woman of honour or one man of decency. Malu vedu it is enough to make one mad.

        The watchman who buys dreams from me, and who thinks therefore that I am like one of the grubbers after coin to whom he is accustomed, brought a prisoner to me some time past noon. He was a murderer, said the watchman, a poisoner, condemned to die and therefore easy to lose. Adondé vedu how he smiled as he spoke, such as a rat clicking her teeth at bound prey. He has been bringing me the forgotten dead for two years and more, and has been as loyal as such men are ever loyal. Malé lisu how I despise him.

        The prisoner was sweating despite his nakedness and the pleasant chill of my home. He was fat not only as all in this rich land are fat, but more, a corpulence of soul. He stank of terror. I would not have thought him capable of murder, had I not known that all men are.

        “I didn’t mean to,” he was babbling. “Please, God, God, I didn’t know she was human. You have to believe me. It was a mistake.”

        “I not to judge you,” I said, and inside myself I sighed. That was not what I had meant to say, but three years is not time enough to learn this language who ties himself in knots around my tongue. He is a legged snake, a leech such as swim in the harbour here, sucking the blood from all hearts and leaving lies. I tried again. “I am not the judge. Not the watchman. Not the executioner. You understand?”

        He looked at me, and there was hope in his small round eyes, greedy hope grasping at life with fat fingers. “You’re not going to kill me?”

        “Yes, I am not,” I said. I crossed to one of my chests and removed a silver key. She was long and delicate, and the lock for which she was made was three thousand miles away (malé lisu how I weep for Veduhin many-towered, and the sun over Lisun Urach in the morning!) but when I touched her to the man’s fetters they fell away. He stumbled, uncertain as a bird in his first freedom, but no bird, even the most ungainly condor or dying wing-shattered hawk, ever collapsed and blubbered and swore fealty on foreign gods as this creature did. I have soared with birds and though they do not have pride as we know it, nor do they have—this.

        “Sit there,” I said, and pointed him to a chair, keeping my skin well clear. There was a worn rug on the chair and he wrapped her convulsively around his lap as though I could have some interest in his genitals. “Stay,” I said. “Do not to touch things. I will come back.”

        There were things I had to make ready, and when I returned it was evening and the sun lapped at the far wall of the room. The fat man was seated where I had left him, pretending he had been there all day and not disturbed the contents of the room, who quivered at the touch of a stranger and cried their outrage to me. “Soon,” I soothed them, “soon, soon,” and turning slowly in place I took the blessing of the setting sun until he vanished. As always he left peace behind him, disturbed only by the baffled presence of the murderer in the chair.

        I do not explain myself to the people of this warm country, ever, and so I said only, “Lie onto the table, please.”

        “What am I doing here?” he burst out. “Listen, I’ve been waiting for you for hours here and you haven’t even told me your name yet. Last thing I knew they were telling me I was condemned to death for killing that unnatural troll woman—” he did not, this time, add that he had not meant to, “—and when that guard took me out of the judge’s chambers I was damned sure that was it, but now I’m here and what I want to know is why? Not that I’m not grateful, you understand,” he added hastily. “But I need to know what you want of me if I’m going to help you out somehow, if you take my meaning.” He winked at me. It was grotesque.

        “Lie onto the table,” I repeated. “Things to need to be done.”

        He was starting to be afraid again, and the smell of fear made my neck twitch. “You said you weren’t going to hurt me,” he reminded me, though I had not. “You said I wasn’t here to be killed.”

        “You will not die,” I said, which seemed to reassure him. Malu vedu these rich ones lack imagination.

        But all that mattered was that he climbed gingerly onto the table and lay with his face toward the ceiling, as they always do. I have never yet seen one of them try to fight, at the end. Two years and I have not. There is something in their oily blood that makes them dogs, to cringe and lick the hands of power.

        I drew the bronze knife from out of her wards, and began.

* * *

        There should not have been pain. Pain is a thing of the body, and my body was gone; where then did it come from? I am Esh—I was Esh, and we know something of death, but I did not understand this.

        Near me the lights of the living souls shone like guttering candles, fading toward their end. One was almost spent; the other lifted a hand; the knife fell, the light began to fade.

        I reached for him and caught hold of him, not knowing what I did. He curled around me, weeping as only the dead weep. I held him as I have held orphaned lambs, as I once held my little brothers and protected them from thunder and ghosts. In memory it seemed we were all ghosts together, white and small. I longed to stretch out a hand to them; but it was illusion, all, all.

        Eventually he quieted, and drew away from me. The pain that had faded from me now returned with new force, and I felt myself recoil and fade. Not now, I told myself with what pale anger I could muster, not yet, and held on, and stayed.

        —dead, oh God, he’s killed me, I heard as I came back to awareness. Oh God, oh God, he said he wouldn’t, he promised—

        He didn’t mean to, I answered, look— and there above or below us a man whose light was both bright and dark was shouting or cursing in a strange language that nonetheless I understood, and cringed to understand. There is no language in which the words of All-that-is cannot be spoken, so the Esh know, and so every language is beautiful, but this, this—I could not bear to hear it.

        He promised, mumbled the other ghost, and I knew what he meant, knew that the promise had been kept many times in this room, over many years; the shadows of shadows were burnt into the walls, screams of souls made to walk the borderlands between here and there until they were stretched tight like plaited catgut, and thrummed when plucked to sing with power. I can see them, he said like an echo, or I said, maybe. That’s what he would have done to me. Used me for his—for whatever he’s—

        For power, I said, which was all of it, really. Don’t think of it now. Don’t think I saved you, I thought and was not sure if I was silent—because I didn’t, not on purpose, it was only instinct, a drowning man’s grab that pulls his rescuer under. Chance only, that I caught him and severed him from his body, and freed him thereby.

        Oh God, he whimpered, it’s not fair, it’s not, I didn’t mean to, he had no right—

        We will stop him then, I answered, we will do right, for us who have been wronged, for all the shadows. I do not think he understood me, but I knew that he would follow.

* * *

        Well, if I’m a traitor then so be it. You’re not the first to call me so, and though I might wish you’d be the last I don’t believe it’s likely. I will pretend not to care, I will hold my head up in the streets and at the gate and I will ignore their looks and mutterings. I have done what I have done.

        Tansy and Burdock came to me in the Gardens of Memory, barefoot and clad in white robes, to tell me that the war had started. Twins, they were reflections of each other like the frescoes on the walls of our temple, the home of all the Bound: Life and Death, one red-cheeked and joyful, the other pale, with dark hollows under her eyes. I’d known them for years and still couldn’t tell them apart by sight most days, but I knew Tansy would have wept at the news, and Burdock would have danced.

        “Rejoice, Dandelion,” Burdock intoned. “The blasphemous Kuloseppae will soon be swept from the world.”

        “Oh?” I said, pretending disinterest because I knew it would madden her.

        “Our soldiers have crossed the border and begun to burn their towns and fields,” Tansy said. “It is said they will be in Kulosep in less than a week.” She lowered her voice. “It is said the magician aids them.”

        That struck me as nothing else could have, and I sank down onto one of the Garden’s marble benches. The magician. No-one knows where he came from, though he has been coming to Kulosep for as long as anyone remembers, and for the last few years he has stayed here. He is the antithesis of all that the Bound stand for; he is not evil, no more than we are good, but he is unnatural. What he does is against the order of the world. He rarely took a hand in the affairs of our country, keeping to himself and his experiments, and even so the temple trembled sometimes at his work. Small wonder, then, that I was shocked.

        Besides, he is my father.

        We pretend we have no parents, we Bound, as though we sprang from the same ground as the plants they name us for. Most of the Bound don’t know theirs, it’s true, so perhaps that’s easier. What use, after all, to know that your mother was So-and-so the dyer of Such-and-such Lane, and that she abandoned you in the woods to be found or to die? (Or worse; there are always stories of children raised by trolls or wolves, growing up monsters. I don’t know that I believe them, but it could be true.)

        I was somewhat different. I knew my parents, I remember their faces. My mother was a crusher at the quarry near Stonegate, three hours’ hard ride from Hado-home. My first memories are of dust, dust in everything: the fine yellow dust of the road kicked up by the gravel-wagons, the white dust lying in the lines of my mother’s face. Everyone coughed, all the time. When I came to the city, later, I would lie awake in the dormitory of the Bound children and wonder at the silence.

        When my mother was young and pretty she served awhile in a teahouse in Hado-home, and there she met the magician. I don’t know why he came there then; he never did when I was old enough to hear anything of him. But he was there then and she was pretty, and she bore him a daughter soon.

        I don’t think he ever meant me to live. But his magic is the magic of boundaries and borders, of things confused with each other: dawn, twilight, the breaths of birth and dying. A baby trembles on the edge of possibility, and there’s power there for the taking. My mother had word of this from some friends of hers, sooner or later, and fled with me in her belly, and her friends laid a trail of misdirection that took him five years to unravel. When he found us at last I was a full person and no more use to him.

        He killed her for betraying him, of course, and might have killed me for spite, but when I fled our burning house—stone, but burning anyway—it was into the arms of a caravan of Esh, making pilgrimage to one of their sacred places, and Esh are old, and have their own magic. Somehow they hid me from him, and in due course delivered me up to the Bound, who take in orphans.

        So; and so there I stood in the Garden of Memory with the news of war burning holes in my heart. Tansy was watching me with sympathy, and Burdock with confusion. I forced a smile. “Well, let’s pray for our soldiers’ safe return, then,” I said.

        “And glory,” Burdock added.

        “Glory will take care of itself,” I said.

        I knew already, then, what needed doing, though not how to do it. I’d long since decided that the magician should die, but I had held off for years, questioning my motives. The Bound teach that right actions proceed only from right thought, and vengeance for my mother’s death, while it may have been justified, could not be called right thought. Not according to our rules, anyway. Now, I had another reason. It would be called treason, to destroy what aided our soldiers in this latest of our series of stupid, pointless wars, but I would not consider that. Let them earn their glory honestly.

        White-robed and hooded I made my way through the streets of Hado-home, and hurrying tradesmen and labourers parted respectfully before me. We Bound are known in the city; I would not be impeded. We are mostly anonymous too, making few friends outside our order, a fact I gave silent thanks for now.

        I headed for the magician’s home, a walled estate near the foot of Gods’ Hill, just inside the eastern gate. It was a short walk, mostly on cobblestones, and I imagined I could feel the ground thrumming under my rope sandals as I neared the profane place. Nerves only; I have no magic.

        The wall was well-built from local limestone, and was easily twice my height. There was one gate, a solid pair of iron doors worked with a tracery of vines and oak leaves. I put my eye to the crack between them, but they were so well fitted that I couldn’t see a thing. The whole construction spoke of understated expense. Hardly surprising, from the rumours I’d heard about what the magician did for money. Even if only a quarter of them were true.

        None of which helped me at the moment. Even if I managed to climb over the wall without being noticed from the street (highly unlikely) it was inconceivable that the magician wouldn’t have spells of some sort protecting his property. I thought briefly of hiding myself in a laundry basket or a vegetable-cart, and other such nonsense, and then stood for awhile, stumped. Finally I decided to return to the temple and ask someone’s help—Tansy, probably, as she was clever and hated him as I did.

        I began to turn and then stopped mid-step as a voice whispered out of the air no, no, wait—

        “Who’s there?” I asked aloud, attracting a curious glance from a passing ribbon-seller.

        Thibo, the voice said after a pause, but hesitantly, as though the speaker wasn’t quite sure and was desperately afraid of being called on it. Thibo. I was—

        We are his dead, a second voice interjected. This one was stronger, surer. You must come. You must stop him.

        “The gate—” I began.

        He will not see you. Come.

        I followed it (followed what, exactly? I don’t know) back to the gate and through it then, the twin portals swinging inward at my touch. The grass beyond was level and unbroken, and lapped at my ankles like a sea. Come, follow, the voice urged, hurry, and led me forward, until suddenly the house appeared before me and had always been there. There was a murmur of approval from the air. Steadfastly I followed the two voices, the strong one and the frightened one, through illusion after illusion, until at last I stood at the bottom of a flight of stairs, facing a copper-sheathed door.

        The door was slick and cold to the touch, and as I opened it a sudden reddish light poured over me, and I knew with sick certainty that all that had come before was a trap, that I was betrayed and had now been lost. I froze in place, terrified. Then my sight shifted, and I realized that the light was only sunset, filtered through leaded glass windows set high in the heavy walls, and that the magician sat motionless on the floor of this his workroom, eyes closed and unaware.

        “What’s wrong with him?” I whispered, my lips barely moving.

        We do not cooperate, the strong voice answered, sounding strained. He tries to make us. The other was whimpering: oh God oh God it hurts make it stop I shouldn’t be here I didn’t do it stop—

        I had to hurry, but I couldn’t think what to do. My eyes fell on a bronze-bladed knife, lying on a table near me. Kill him, then, I thought, and reached for it, but was stopped by a sharp No! from the strong voice, now tight with agony. No, he’ll—just—his power is— It broke off with a peculiar kind of grunt, and was silent.

        Magic, I thought despairingly, what do I know about magic? The magician’s shoulders were tight and his fists clenched as he bent all his energy to the control of his unruly spirits. Any moment now it would all be over. Time was slipping away from me. If I couldn’t just kill him—and I did understand what the ghost had been trying to say; if the magician’s power came from boundaries and borders, liminal spaces, then how much stronger would the nearness of his own death make him?—then what was I to do? I knew nothing about magic. I had spent almost my entire life in the temple, and there was no magic of his kind on holy ground.

        Holy ground—

        Cautiously, I bent down and laid my hands on the stone floor. There was no warning from the ghost this time, so either I was doing the right thing or he had been wholly subdued. I began to speak the holy words and I think it was only then that the magician noticed me, as I began to try to consecrate the earth on which I stood. I would make it pure and holy; I doubted few things could be more anathema to a practitioner of border magic than that. I don’t claim the supremacy of God in this; had I known a way to make it entirely unholy, that probably would have worked just as well.

        He sent his shadows against me like a swarm of biting insects, like a cloud of darkness, and in their whining voices I could hear the strong one and the frightened one, two notes in the chorus, under his control again at last. They still fought against him, though, and that blunted their attacks, and I was able to continue with the prayers and the rituals and all the rest of what makes a place pleasing to God. I kept one eye on the magician, whenever I was not blinded, but he never moved. I don’t know why. Maybe the magic prevented him, or the ghosts; I don’t understand magic and I don’t intend to. I will never be in such a place again if I can help it.

        The ghosts were fighting him as much as me, and that was all that allowed me to keep going, that and the sheer familiarity of the rituals that had been part of my life since I was given to the Bound and that I probably could have recited sleeping or dead. As a child I had chafed at the endless rounds of prayers and resented the other children who had never known anything different and so didn’t mind, but now the words flowed from me like water and I was grateful.

        It was dark outside when I finished and so the light that poured through the room, dark gold and thick like maple syrup, was all the more shocking. I had not been ready to expect a miracle. The magician lifted his head and for the first time stared at me, his face twisted with terror. His mouth shaped words I couldn’t read, and then he stiffened and collapsed forward, his face striking the stone. Blood seeped out around him, only a little.

        “What happened?” I whispered.

        He had to choose a side, the strong voice whispered, now barely more than a flutter of the air. You cannot be both alive and dead in a holy place, and we—we chose for him, dragged him with us. The light was fading, thinning. Tell my family, Priestess, if you would. I was called Tekel, before. They are Esh, near Stonegate on the Kulosep highway. Tell them what happened. Please.

        As though in a trance I stood and went out from that place. The house was quiet now in the centre of its green lawn and its walls, only an ordinary house. I would come back, I decided. I would go to the Esh family and give them the news of their son (brother? husband?) and then I would return, and build a chapel here, and spend my life in contemplation of this miracle.

        Or, more probably, I would be denied entrance to Hado-home, or arrested as a traitor. Life is strange, I thought, but I was more willing now to put it in the hands of God than I would ever have been before. I looked back over my shoulder one last time, and then headed for the city gate.

* * *

        strange cub is gone. howl, weep, cry to the hills and stones, they have taken strange cub away. followed them, followed them far, but when they left the woods, safe trees broken by scar of road, stayed. weep alone now, weep alone forever.

        dark now and under hill silence of small things, small fears running from tree to tree. hunger, blood smell. could chase but why? not enough now.

        down scar in backbone of hills one comes riding. no smell of fear. only ones with claws of iron smell brave and calm as she smells brave and calm. but she is alone and no smell of metal. do not understand.

        do not understand, should pass her by. should stay in trees, find small wet delicious, fill belly, sleep. but strange cub gone, last cub. others long dead, dead on riverbank or by claws of iron or belly-tearing sickness. wander alone until strange cub crying under tree. not food. iron claws never good to eat. iron claw woman die near once, find strange cub soon after.

        kill iron claw woman now, other iron claws bring strange cub back?

* * *

        I have never told Daphel just how frightened I am of the dark. I was born in the city amid lamps and walls, and the wide blackness of the fields and woods is fearsome to me even after thirty years of nights.

        But Daphel is ill and Nicos and Tamevall are not yet grown, and Tekel has gone for a soldier. If Daphel knew the night frightened me he would get up from his sickbed and stand the watch himself, and so I say nothing and sit here in the field, my back to the lantern so as not to blind myself and the bleating of the flock all around me. Two more weeks until the lambing is done and the dogs will be enough to care for the sheep. I am so tired.

        A sudden movement in the dark jerks me fully awake, and I stare out into the dark, lifting the lantern high overhead, careful not to look directly at it. Nothing. Shadows. The sheep mill uneasily, a few of them lifting their heads to smell at the air. The dogs lie at my feet, asleep.

        There it is again: motion at the edge of sight, out near the road. A man-high figure creeping from tree to tree. It could be a lone traveller, a refugee from the war maybe (more and more common on our highway of late), but no man or woman ever walked with that peculiar shambling gait. My skin prickles: troll.

        I nudge the dogs awake with my foot and take a firmer grip on my quarterstaff. No reason to panic, or to react even, not unless it comes into our field. We will have to get up a hunting party with our neighbours eventually if there is a troll nosing around who has lost his fear of humans, but it does not need to be tonight. No fear of falling asleep now. I watch.

        Then I hear the screams and am halfway across the field before I know it, staff in one hand, lantern in the other and both dogs yipping at my heels. Terrible screams from the road: horse, rider. I swing the lantern in wide arcs, trying to frighten the troll away, though they have been less afraid of fire in recent years. They learn, Daphel says. They are almost people, that way.

        The troll turns and flees, arms dragging, full of prizes. Horseflesh, I see as I come to the road: huge bloody chunks have been torn from the horse’s belly and hindquarters, and it thrashes in the road, screaming, still horribly alive. I bring down the end of my staff solidly on its skull. To ease its suffering, I tell myself, knowing it cannot live, but I think I might have done the same even for a lesser wound, just to make it quiet. I do not know.

        The rider was a woman, white robes stained now with blood—the horse’s only, I think at first, and perhaps she has merely been thrown. Then I shine the lantern on her face and see bloody froth at her lips, blood bubbling from the gashes along her ribs: lung wounds then, and beyond my help. Trolls kill messily but surely.

        She looks up at me, tries to form words. “Hush,” I tell her. “Rest now.” Her face is slack with pain. “It’s gone,” I say.

        “Too late,” she manages.

        I nod. “Yes.” We are Esh; we do not lie to the dying. “But I can make you comfortable at least. I’ll bring you back to the house; you can sleep by the fire.” There is little enough else that can be done; I have none of the herbs that ease pain or send souls on. If by some miracle she lives until dawn I will send one of the children for the healer then, and he can smooth her passing.

        She smiles, shakes her head. “No use.” Her lips are blue under the blood. She knows. “Esh,” she says. “Tekel,” she says, and dies.

        Shaken, I reach for her arm as though to pull her back, and feel rough skin under the robes: old scars, burns, long healed. For some reason I am reminded of another traveller, long ago, a little girl fleeing a burning house, running out into our pilgrim-train. She would have become a priestess when she grew up, I think. It is not impossible.

        Tekel, she said, and I wonder what she shares with my son. Perhaps he will come riding home along this road someday, and wonder where this priestess is. We are borne up by fate like leaves on the wind, and sometimes carried home.

Copyright © 2009 Grace Seybold

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Grace Seybold has lived in Montreal for the past eleven years, where she spends most of her time dodging oncoming traffic. She works as a copy editor for McGill-Queen’s University Press. Her fiction has been published in ChiZine, Neo-opsis, AE, Tesseracts Twelve, and twice in Beneath Ceaseless Skies,among others, and will be in the forthcoming Machine of Death 2 anthology. Her name is pronounced “SIGH-bold”.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

COVER ART

“Endless Skies,” by Rick Sardinha

Rick Sardinha is a professional illustrator/fine artist living and working on the outskirts of Providence, Rhode Island. His passion is to create in traditional oil media, however, he is just as comfortable in front of a computer and often uses multiple disciplines in the image creation process. More of his work can be seen at http://www.battleduck.com.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1046

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Copyright © 2012 Firkin Press

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