John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

But trying hard was not my paradigm. For Colin, for Grendel, wishing made it so. Not for me.

“Stand up, please. I do not think you want to sleep in that dress.”

I opened my eyes. “You did it to blind me.”

“Stand up, please.”

I stood up. Even normally, I was taller than she was. In heels, I was practically Boggin.

I said down to her: “You were so mean to him. Didn’t you see how bad this made him feel? I know you think I am an evil monster. But isn’t he on your side?”

She could not raise her eyes. “He and I are kin. He is a male member of my species.”

“A male Siren? He sings?”

“He does not sing. He dances on the waves, and the waves turn to fury and swamp ships and pull down houses near the shore. He is one of the brood of Echidna, who cannot die, but lives forever to work harm to mortal men. The business of his kind is to slay mariners lost at sea, so that their widows back ashore will never know the hour or fashion of their death. Grendel is not a kindly person.”

“So I am only supposed to feel sorry for kindly people? Who exactly does that leave? Besides Jesus Christ and babies who die at birth?”

That was the wrong thing to say, because it stiffened her backbone and drove away whatever shame she felt. “Your comments are inappropriate, and impertinent. They may even be blasphemy. Nor need you be overly concerned with Mr. Glum. He does his duty, as do we all, whether he will or no. Some duties are pleasant; some are unpleasant. We who serve are given the ability, if we kick against the goad, to make the pleasant ones less pleasant. We cannot make the unpleasant ones more pleasant. You are a dangerous and super-human being, child, and we must take what steps we can.”

Then she said: “Turn, please, so I may undo you. We must have that dress off.”

“If you answer my questions. Otherwise I’ll rip the dress in half!”

“Oh, come now, Miss Windrose. What earthly good will it do you to rip a fine dress?”

“You come now! What earthly harm will it do you to answer me? I’m curious, it’s not hurting you, and you’ll get me to cooperate.”

“Very well. Turn around and suck in. Let me get these laces. Let’s hope Grendel’s power has not made them fast.”

I tried to hold my breath while speaking, and my words came out all squeaky. I said, “What is the range of his power? In his paradigm, how far away can he be and still affect me?”

“Breathe. If you know enough to ask that question, you have nearly deduced the answer.”

The dress fell down around my legs. The silk caressed me on the way down, like a ghost.

I said, “This was a fantasy of his, wasn’t it? To see me all chained up like a white woman kidnapped by Moors, for their sultan’s harem. To see me in all my girlish, female glamour. Why?”

Miss Daw looked away, her eyes becoming distant, as if staring at an unseen horizon. The ashamed Miss Daw was gone, and the remote, dispassionate, polite Miss Daw was back. “Please step. I am really not supposed to be talking to you at all, Miss Windrose. It is possible I will fall under some penalty for it.”

“His power works by desire. You had to enflame his desire.”

She did not look up, but began to blush again. Dispassionate Daw was losing ground. “Your shoes please?”

Suddenly I was short again. But still taller than her.

“But why make it so sick? So weird? Handcuffs and high heels…?”

The ashamed Miss Daw carried the day. She knelt to roll down my stockings. She spoke toward the floor stones in a haunted voice, as if reciting an old lesson, “Desires which are constantly frustrated are stronger. Men who desire wives, children, a hearth and home, all the wholesome things I shall never know, they can know contentment. But men who have unnatural desires, or who dream sad, unfulfilled and unfulfillable dreams, their impossible desires bloat up beyond all bounds, huger than kragen from beneath the sea. See sadistic Grendel, who desires a wife, but only if she is forced with whips and chains to love him; and he dreams only of having a woman he knows he is never worthy of, and to beat her gives him the pleasure other men have from caressing her. Like a man at a feast table, who gnaws the wood and leaves the food to rot, a pervert starves, for what he thinks will sate his hunger never does, but leaves him hungry still. He has lost all taste for wholesome food.”

“I don’t think he wants to beat me. I think he just likes rope.”

“You have a very generous heart, Miss Windrose, which is a credit to your innocence.” The distant, detached Miss Daw was coming back. “Your stockings?”

They were down around my ankles. I had to sit to get them off my feet. I sat on the cot, as the stool was too high. I had to tease them off my heels and toes; they were as sheer as smoke.

I said, “You didn’t really answer my question.”

She straightened up, stockings in hand. “I thought I had done. Grendel’s power, if his desire is strong enough, works both by day and by night, whether he sleeps, or whether he wakes. The distances mean nothing to him, if and when he believes they mean nothing. His greatest desire is to see you as he saw you now: beautiful and enchained, a fair prisoner, unable to escape. His belief will make it so that you are unable to escape.”

I put on my nightgown. Supine once more, I could see the snake of the iron links reaching up to the staple in the ceiling. There was something odd about it.

Miss Daw swung the grate shut and locked it.

I said, “Can you douse the light?”

She did.

It went dark. Into the dark, I called, “What about my friends?”

Miss Daw knew exactly what I meant by the question, for she said, “None of them has been treated as badly as you. Mrs. Wren put the handle of the axe Mr. mac FirBolg used to attack her under his bed, and that stole the power from his limbs. Dr. Fell gave Mr. Nemo an injection. I introduced a disjunction into the nervous system of Mr. Triumph, so that he cannot activate the sections of his brain that control his mattermanipulation abilities. Mrs. Wren and I cooperated, to set up blocks to prevent Miss Fair from activating her attention-energy gathering faculty, from which her tesseract-creation power springs.”

I said, “Vanity can tell when people are looking at her. When she finds an area of space-time where no one is looking, such as inside a wall, she can fold space, and negate the distance, create a shortcut. Space is merely the interval measuring the energy needed to cross it: when the energy level is unknown or undetermined, the space-interval is not fixed. Isn’t it?”

“That is basically correct, Miss Windrose.”

“But some intelligence must act to fill in the details, to make walls and floors that preserve visual continuity, that fit in to the general picture of the surrounding space—something like Descartes’ demiurge: a spirit. That is why you need the help of a witch to stop the Phaeacian power. You don’t really understand what Vanity does, and can’t understand, because it is not your paradigm. Am I right?”

“You were always a very clever student, Miss Windrose. Perhaps too clever. I can see why the Headmaster had Mr. Glum come by to enforce your security.”

Her footsteps receded in the dark.

Then I noticed what was different. The strangling weight that had kept me half-awake with fear and coughing was now gone.

The collar. It didn’t hurt anymore.

I touched the collar with my fingers, but I could not see it, even had there been a light, without a mirror. But it felt lighter and stronger in my hand. It did not chafe, and my sores were gone.

Glum’s fantasies about harem girls did not admit of the slave collars hurting them.