Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

But I did not see her. Except for Dr. Silverthorn’s insistence that she was here, I had no reason to believe she was still alive. Still I looked for her everywhere. I forced myself to search among the faces of the dead in piles by the bonfires, and among those who scuttled with averted eyes past the iron gates of the Children’s Chapel where I sat through endless twilit days and nights. I never found her.

Fury whined restlessly. I caressed his forehead, felt the short hairs bristling as his voice deepened to a more threatening note. I looked to see what alarmed him.

At the edge of the scaffolding were three figures, black and foreboding. Tast’annin’s favorite lackeys, the aardmen he had named Blanche and Trey. Between them the Aviator himself lay upon a makeshift litter. At his feet crouched a smaller form, shining as a venomous lily: the traitorous jackal who had led my captors to me at the Butterfly Ball and then fled to join the Madman. They watched as two tiny figures struggled across the scaffolding. One child swayed, seemed to plunge from the narrow planks. But she caught an unseen rope, plummeted until it grew taut, so that it seemed she jerked and twisted in the empty air. She hung from the bell’s black mouth, turned back to scream something through her sobs.

“I can’t watch this,” said Oleander. His footsteps pattered up the spiral stairs to the tower. At my side Fury whimpered, eyes furrowed as he stared at the tiny figure hanging limply from the rope.

“Master, master,” he whined, tail thumping the floor. “Why?”

“I don’t know why,” I replied, and crouched beside him.

Sweat ran down my arms despite the cold, and I shivered. By now the other child had also shimmied up a rope. The two dangled from the ancient blackened bells. As we watched they kicked at the air and began to swing, back and forth, until the clappers struck metal and a harsh knell echoed through the Cathedral, first one clanking peal and then another. The figure seated amid the ruins of the Gloria Tower began to recite, pausing to wait for the clappers to swing back and strike once more.

“Master?” Fury turned to regard me with puzzled eyes. Throughout the nave small figures began to stir from the rubbish heaps, raising themselves to watch the macabre drama overhead.

“It means nothing,” I said. “Nonsense he has made up, an invocation to the Lord of Dogs.”

“Bad, master,” he said. I nodded in agreement, then glanced up at the belltower. The Aviator droned on, the bells continued to peal. My heart had hardened in the past weeks, but still I pitied those children. “I must go, Fury,” I said, and entered the column. The aardmen raised their freakish heads: bestial jaws and teeth and fur, but with human eyes that watched me take my leave, and human tongues bidding me farewell.

Inside the column all was silent, the air close and smelling of burning wax. I walked slowly, circling higher and higher, the icy metal stairs biting through the soles of my boots. On the uneven surface of the walls words and names had been scrawled in places, written in oily smoke or with the burnt end of a stick: “ Baldassare Persia died here”; “death to baal death to miramar”; “I loved Crescent Illyria tell Her.” In one spot had been scratched a crude stick figure with circles for eyes and open mouth, hanging from a tree. I did not pause to examine it closer.

At last the stairs ended. Most of the wall had fallen away, leaving a jagged gap through which I saw the miserable cluster of bodies I’d glimpsed from below. They were all children except for two: a girl unknown to me, tall and angular, with long straight blond hair and wearing a short blue tunic, like a Curator’s gown but of different cut. The other was a young Paphian woman captured a few days earlier near the Rocreek. A Persian malefeant with eyelashes dyed carnelian and poppies tattooed upon her cheeks, she had been trysting with a Naturalist. Now the Naturalist sprawled outside the Cathedral, where he had tripped over one of the deadly parasitic trees. His face was still twisted into an expression of dazed alarm, his eyes staring at the blackened earth. I had seen him there, and stepped carefully around him. The dull buzzing that emanated from his body revealed that his corpse had been completely invaded by the animalcules.

His luckless consort stared wild-eyed over the void, clutching the shoulder of the louse-ridden child at her side. I thought with mean satisfaction how a week earlier she would have fled shrieking from that poor boy. Now he afforded her the last shred of human comfort she would know. I tugged the hood of my woolen cloak about my head, pulling it to shadow my face.

Above us soared the broken cusp of the Gloria Tower. The roofstones had long since fallen away, leaving it open to rain and snow and viral strike. Clouds raced across a pewter sky, so close it seemed the edges of the tower might snag them. The wind howled, tearing at my cloak and the children’s rags. One or two of the lazars glanced at me as I slipped between them, then returned their attention to the two children who still hung from the bell ropes. I saw Tast’annin and his lackeys at the front of the small crowd, Oleander a few steps from the aardmen and eyeing them with distaste.

The Aviator had grown silent. He stared at the bells, the broken boards leading to the skeletal remains of the tower floor. Without warning he turned, cast his glance upon the children huddled behind him, and pointed at the Paphian woman. She shrieked and grabbed another child at her side, as though she would put him between herself and the Aviator. A few steps away the blond girl watched with amusement, her hands twitching at the hem of her tunic. Tast’annin nodded, continuing to regard the malefeant with an almost gentle expression as he leaned forward to stroke Anku’s back.

“Gelasia Persia,” he murmured at last. “See, I remembered your name! Gelasia, come here please.” He gave Anku’s fur a last fond tug and extended his hand to her.

Gelasia Persia shook her head. Her hair—still neatly braided—whipped the air like the Aviator’s quirt. She shoved one of the children forward. The boy gave a small squeak, scrabbling at the empty air; then tumbled from the edge of the platform. The Consolation of the Dead watched, perhaps with slight disappointment. Beside him the aardmen growled and Anku whined. The blond girl covered her mouth, snickering. The children murmured and rustled and whispered, and a few of. them peered down after the unfortunate boy.

Gelasia Persia stared stupidly at the nave floor far below. Then she turned and pushed her way through the crowd of children.

Her eyes lit upon me in my gray Curator’s cape. “Help me, sieur!” she cried, grabbing my arm. “My lover was Friedrich Durrell, a Naturalist, please help me—”

The Aviator drawled a command to Blanche and Trey. The lazars pressed close together as the aardmen loped across the rickety flooring. The malefeant stared back at them, her fingernails digging through my worn cloak.

An arm’s length from us the aardmen stopped. They raised themselves upon their hind legs. One stroked his jaw, puzzled, while the other looked at me with dispassionate golden eyes.

“Girl, master,” he snarled, indicating Gelasia Persia with a flick of his head. I shrugged and tried to push her away. Staring terrified at the aardmen she clung to me, panting. My hood dropped. The aardmen crouched and warily approached us. Gelasia turned to me with wide mad eyes, her gaze settling upon the sagittal dull-gray about my wrist.

“Miramar,” she gasped. She snatched her hands back. “Dear Mother, it’s true—”

I pulled the hood around my face. The aardmen grabbed Gelasia Persia and began to drag her to the edge of the platform. The lazars scrambled away. Some gazed at me with sudden recognition; one boy crossed his hands before his breast. But the blond girl beside him looked at me boldly, then to my amazement burst out laughing. Before I could get a closer look at her she turned and, glancing back to make sure the Aviator did not notice, disappeared down the spiral stairs.