Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

Gelasia Persia only stared with utter loathing, mouth working silently, too overcome with hatred even to curse me.

At the edge of the scaffolding the aardmen halted. The children clinging to the ropes dangled exhausted, hundreds of feet above the floor of the nave. The boy’s head was hidden by the bell’s mouth. The girl had slipped so far that only a few measures of rope remained for her to grasp. She clung with eyes tightly shut, her bleeding hands sliding bit by bit down the hempen cord.

With pursed lips Tast’annin surveyed the bells, pale eyes darting from one to another. Finally he pointed at one, an immense black shape with glints of gold showing through its patina of smoke and filth. It hung at least ten lengths above the maze of rope and board, and a good twenty from where the aardmen held their prisoner.

“That one,” he said.

Gelasia Persia stared in disbelief. “I can’t reach that!” she cried. The tattooed poppies burned against her white skin.

The Aviator shook his head and repeated, “That one.” He leaned forward on the litter, his scarred mouth more hideous now as he smiled at her.

I looked down to see that lazars had already dragged off the other child’s body. A small group remained standing, staring up expectantly at the bells.

Gelasia Persia shook her head. “I will die.”

“You have nothing to fear from death, dearest child,” said the Aviator. “Such a beautiful girl, the Gaping One will be glad of such an offering.” His smile twisted into a horrible rictus, his eye bulging as though he enjoyed a lewd joke at her expense. He pointed at me. “See: there is his envoy, the one who has been consecrated to Baal- Phegor the Lord of Dogs.”

“He is no lord!” spat Gelasia Persia. “I know Raphael Miramar—he is a traitor, a monster and murderer!” Her eyes flashed beneath their scarlet lashes. “He murdered his Patron and another Naturalist and my bedcousin Whitlock High Brazil, may our Mother’s hands embrace him—”

The Aviator stared at her, still smiling. “But if your Mother will embrace you what have you to fear, beloved cousin?”

“Please—I don’t want to die,” she pleaded. “I am of the House Persia, I could serve you well—”

The Aviator shook his head. “But haven’t you seen all my servants?” He spread his hands, indicating the restless lazars, Anku watchful at his feet, the aardmen Blanche and Trey and last of all myself standing aloof. “No, Gelasia: you go to serve a mightier Lord. I am but His servant; you may be His handmaiden.”

A shriek pierced the air. I turned to see the little girl slide from the bell rope, her face crimson with weeping. Several of the lazars cried out. Then the other boy yelled, let go of his rope and plunged after her.

Gelasia Persia screamed and looked away, tried to bury her face in her shoulder. The Aviator grew stern. His voice rang out as he pointed to the ropes strung from the edge of the scaffolding.

“Ring the changes, Gelasia. I will console you in your need.”

The aardmen pushed her shrieking toward the platform’s edge. I turned away; but then heard the Consolation of the Dead command, “Watch her, young Lord Baal. Tell her she has nothing to fear. Tell her she goes to meet the Gaping One.”

As I lifted my head she flailed and kicked desperately at her captors. The aardmen drew back, snarling. Blanche let go of her arm. Before Gelasia could grab one of the ropes she tripped, and screaming, plunged over the edge. I had a glimpse of her face, eyes livid and mouth contorted as she scrabbled helplessly for the ropes. As she fell her voice wailed above the wind:

“ She will destroy you, Miramar!”

“SHE REFERRED TO YOUR sister, of course,” the Aviator repeated softly.

It was much later, perhaps days later. I thought it must be evening. When I answered the Aviator’s summons a window like a gash in the Crypt Church had shown me a sliver of cobalt sky peppered with stars. I had returned to the Children’s Chapel and slept for a few hours after my sojourn in the Gloria Tower; awakened and slept again, and again, until once more Oleander appeared in the chamber to bring me here to the very heart of the Aviator’s stronghold: the Resurrection Chapel of the Cathedral Church of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel.

“She spoke of the Magdalene,” I said for the third or fourth time, and coughed.

He reclined upon a dais, originally part of an altar, surrounded by massive blocks of granite fallen from the ceiling and scattered like so many broken tombstones. At his side was Dr. Silverthorn’s black bag. The floor was littered with broken capsules, torn adhesive pads, half-empty tubes of morpha and octine and frilite. And everywhere were piles of trinkets brought him by the lazars—dolls and gowns and dead flowers, stones and bundles of twigs, a prosthetic arm and a scholiast’s head. Scattered among these were braziers that burned damp green wood and old cloth.

At the base of each tripod were carefully placed three objects, particolored as though overgrown with moss or lichen. Stones, I thought the first time I had come here. But they were not stones. The lank stuff hanging like yellowed chaff was not dried moss but hair; the glints of silver were bits of glass and metal pressed into empty eyesockets. The sight no longer sickened me. They were dead now, whoever they had been, and at play in that green country I had glimpsed in Dr. Silverthorn’s dying eyes.

In the midst of all this Margalis Tast’annin reposed like an effigy from one of the Museum’s dioramas: his skin waxy and moist from the fevers that plagued him, a pallid yellow; eyes black pits from smoking uncured opium. In the firelight the scars upon his face appeared darker, and seemed to follow some pattern unknown to me; as though they had been scored there purposefully. Sometimes they seemed to move, writhing black characters etched upon his skin.

Set into the wall behind him was a window of colored glass with several panes broken or missing. The ones that remained formed a picture, the image of a woman draped in blue and carrying a lighted torch. In the chill winter sunlight her figure shone pale blue and white. Now it was dull, flat black and gray, the woman almost indistinguishable from the random patterns of glass and empty air. I stared at it with dread, this likeness of the Magdalene in such an awful place; and wondered who could have placed it there, aeons ago when the Cathedral was raised upon Saint-Alaban’s Hill.

At Tast’annin’s feet panted the white jackal, ruby eyes alert as ever. I had realized some days before that I had never seen Anku asleep. Now I believed that he did not sleep, that he was truly an immortal creature, one of the Egyptians’ ancient demons somehow awakened by the Aviator; or, Magdalene forbid, awakened by me. The Aviator’s shadow fell across his shrewd foxy face as he leaned’ over to poke at a brazier with a long white bone, clumsily carved and bound roundabout with strips of skin. Tast’annin wore the remnants of his Aviator’s uniform: heavy breeches and a jacket of red metallic cloth, emblazoned with the yellow triangle of the last Ascension. The jacket was hung with teeth and small bones, broken blades of knives and strings of glass beads all sewn neatly across the leather. Oleander had done this; Oleander who sat patiently at Tast’annin’s side, piercing a pair of leather trousers with a needle made of a finger bone, and stitching bright ribbons culled from the braids of dead Paphians, up and down the trouser legs in waves of gold and green and blue.

“This Magdalene, then—”

The Aviator paused, the carven bone poised in the air. He smiled at me with complicity: he would take another tack. “Your sister might be the living image of the Magdalene, as you represent the Gaping One.”