Кейт Форсит - Relics, Wrecks and Ruins - Anthology of Speculative Fiction Short Works

“Come on.” Clera’s words tugged Nona from her contemplations. She hadn’t been musing on tricks of the eyes—rather she wondered if the mind worked similar distortions. Did Ara see her so differently now? The mirror of her thoughts distorted beyond recognition by the ripples of a single kiss? She turned from the reflections and followed the others.

Further on, the mists revealed the iron frame of a great wheel at least a hundred feet in diameter and supported vertically by a frame that would allow it to turn with its lowest edge just a yard above the ground.

“Are those seats?” Nona frowned at what looked like benches set at regular intervals around the perimeter.

“How does this not all rust to nothing?” Ruli asked in a more practical vein.

As they watched, an iron creature that seemed designed along the lines of some large crab worked its way around the edge of the wheel, unrolling a bright ribbon of color as vivid as the finest silks from Alden.

“What’s going on?” Clera made a slow turn, taking in the ongoing labors all around them.

“There!” Ruli pointed to lights twinkling through the mist. Lights that Nona was sure had not been there moments before.

“This is the work of the Missing,” Ara said. She and Nona had seen lights as bright as these in the Ark. Lights brighter and whiter than any flame. Though these ones also twinkled red and green and blue.

“Duh.” Clera walked off towards the illumination.

Nona hurried to stop her. She had heard of lights among the mists of moonlit bogs tempting unwary travellers to a slow death sinking in the mire. “Wait!”

“You can’t wait forever, Nona.” Clera shook her off. “Sometimes you’ve just got to go for what you want even if you know you’re not going to get it. Even if it causes trouble and hurts the one you love.”

Nona hesitated, unsure for a moment whether Clera was talking about the lights.

“Come on.” Clera pulled away sharply, moving forward, and Nona followed with Ruli at her side.

“Music?” Ruli cocked her head.

There did seem to be a faint music in the air, though produced by no instrument that Nona had ever heard. If Nona had been asked to predict what music might play amid the mist-haunted ruins of the Missing, she might have guessed at some kind of ethereal plainsong that the nuns’ chants in Sweet Mercy Convent were merely imperfect echoes of. This was not that. “It sounds rather…”

“Jaunty,” Clera said.

“I think it’s magic.” Nona turned back towards Ara, still standing where she’d left her, a shadow in the mist. “A kind of magic.” She didn’t feel any sense of danger. There was something here, ancient and strange, preserved against all probability, maintained over centuries by the dedication of the Missing’s metal servants. She took a few paces towards Ara and held a hand out, wanting to share this moment of mystery and wonder. “Come on.”

Ara’s tight mask twitched and for a second Nona thought it would crack and return the old Ara to her. Instead, Ara turned her eyes towards Clera’s retreating back and her gaze hardened. She swept past Nona without a word, and the mounting, unexplained sense of joy ran from Nona like blood from a wound.

Nona followed the other three. The lights ahead were moving, flying through the air, and the alien tune jangled through the mist. Slowly the structure took shape below the shifting illumination. An island of light amid the fog.

“It’s a…” Nona joined the others.

“Thing,” Clera said.

The lights were set across a peaked circular roof that revolved on a central column. Beneath it, a circular platform just inches above the ground and yards below the roof also revolved around the center. And studding the platform were a dozen or more bizarre, brightly colored animals, no two the same, each sporting a saddle and moving sedately up and down on the silver pole that supported it.

As the four explorers approached, open mouthed, caution abandoned, the whole structure slowed and halted, the animals all coming to rest at the bottom of their poles.

“That’s a rabbit.” Ruli pointed to the nearest one. “A giant rabbit.”

“With a saddle,” Clera added. “They’ve all got saddles.”

The music had slowed with the platform, and grown more quiet.

“That one’s a snail.” Ara frowned as if furiously searching for meaning.

“A horse… with a horn.” Ruli pointed to another. “And a… thing… with two saddles.” This latter one looked a bit like a horse with two humps on its back, each sporting a saddle.

“A… dragon?” Nona fixed on a scarlet beast and tried to match it to a dim memory of a picture Jula once showed her.

“Keep back!” Ara drew her sword fast enough to make the air hiss, levelling it at the dragon. “I don’t trust it.”

Nona kept her sword in its scabbard. The dragon was no larger than a small mule and somehow, like the music, it had a jaunty air. Its large yellow eye seemed to regard her as if it knew a joke that she did not.

“They’ve all got saddles,” Clera repeated herself, stepping past Ara. “It’s for riding.”

Ara kept her sword pointed at the dragon’s heart. “I don’t trus—”

Clera spun on a heel and penetrated Ara’s non-existent defense to plant a kiss square on her lips. Nona gaped. A moment later Clera was on her backside, shoved violently away by Ara.

Ara wiped at her mouth. “What in the hells—?”

“There! That’s how long it took. And how it happened.” Clera, still on the ground, cut across Ara. “ You don’t trust . That’s what you said. You don’t trust.” She was angry now, passion shaking her words. “And you should trust. I kissed Nona and she pushed me away. Not quite as hard, admittedly.” She got to her feet, rubbing her shoulder, the anger leaving her as quickly as it had flared. “You didn’t stop me either. And she told you. She didn’t have to, but she did. That’s trust right there. She trusted you to trust her. So, take that stick out of your backside and make up with her before your fear of losing her really does make you lose her. Because I’d take her away in a heartbeat if she’d let me.”

Clera turned and pointed to the platform. “The Ancestor has kept this for us. For a thousand years maybe. Trapped beneath the ice. Ice that only melted because of what Nona did. Who she is. Trust her.” She singled out one of the beasts impaled on its silver pole. “Get on this… giant frog… and ride like a woman!”

Following her own advice, Clera sprung forwards, leaping into the dragon’s saddle. Ruli, infected by the same madness, chose the horse with the horn.

The music seemed to pause along with Nona’s breath. She prayed that here, where the ice of millennia had thawed, the hurt that had frozen what was most precious to her would also melt. For a long, painful moment Ara stood, trapped by forces that Nona didn’t fully understand. Then, with a noise that was almost a gasp, she turned to Nona, eyes bright, and reached out her hand. “Ride with me?”

“Always.”

They chose the not-horse with two humps and seated themselves either side of the pole. The music swelled and, somehow knowing that it had as many riders as it would get, the platform stole into motion, each animal beginning to rise and fall as the whole structure rotated.

And all around them, in the glowing mist, the patient servants of the Missing worked at their tireless rebuilding, secure in the knowledge that what brings joy is always worth mending.

There are those who believe that we of the fay are immortal.