Anna Smaill - The Chimes

The claws inside my chest are strong and tight. They have stalked bone by bone up my back and gripped my brain there. My brain is both terribly big and terribly small at the same time. It shakes hollow like a walnut and it grows and pushes fleshily at my skull. At some point I throw up whatever is in my stomach, and then I feel Lucien tip my head and shoulders with the edge of his para-covered foot to avoid the mess as he pulls me through.

As he does it, I blink. And then I blink again because my brain has not obeyed this instruction. And then I try to spit to clear my throat so I can scream. Because my eyes are open and I cannot see. I am blind.

I come to in darkness. It is cold. I don’t know where I am. I blink, but the dark with my eyes open is the same as the dark with them closed. I am lying on a hard surface and every bone and muscle in me aches and pulls. I try to focus my hearing, but my brain is bruised, seems no longer the right size for my skull.

Then I try to make a sound, any sound, to hear my bearings. All that comes out is a dry sort of moan. The noise should be loud enough to get some hold on the size of the room, but there is nothing. It is completely silent. I try to hear beyond or underneath the silence, but it is dead, closed, shut. And then there is too much pain in my head and I give up.

Off behind me is the sudden sound of loud, violent retching. Lucien. Because of the deadness of the room, I cannot tell where he is. I lie still, as I have no choice but to do, and gradually things come back. I remember the running river of silver. I remember a tunnel made of pure. I remember happiness and harmony beating right through me from head to foot. I remember my parents, shining and healthy. And then, from foot to head, I remember the creep of the sickness that is still inside me, that remains as a brittle twitch in my joints and the horror feeling of something pressing on my ribs.

I understand then. Lucien has brought me here. Lucien has exposed me to something that has made me sick — sick like my parents, like Steppan’s father, like he himself the other night.

I test my limbs. My arms move slightly, but they are tense and tight, caught in the numb grip. I cannot move my legs at all. I can feel them, though I almost wish I couldn’t, as the pain is worst there, like ice. I lie still and try not to think.

After a long time the ache of pressure inside my chest and ears eases a bit. I try to concentrate again, to focus my energy enough to move. Begin at my chest, let my thought move down my arm, trying to remember its network of muscle and bone, to will it back into being.

‘Wait.’ And the falling feel of a memory trick jolts me. This is how it always starts. Lucien’s voice speaking to me out of the dark, sounding me through the questions — always detached, always a step ahead. The voice that knows more than I do always. More even about my own story. But that means something else too, I realise. If someone knows all there is to know about you, isn’t that a kind of forgiveness?

‘It’s easier if you wait until some of the feeling comes back. You’re going to be all right. You’ve had the worst of it.’

I shape the one word that I have in my head and somehow push it past my lips with the hope he will understand.

‘Eyes.’

I can hear him shuffle toward me, maybe on his knees. Then I feel cold fingers on my face. The fingertips of two hands touch just at my cheekbones, just under my eye sockets. I try to flinch away. The touch moves on to my eyelids and then to my chin and forehead. Then there is a cool, distant feeling, almost unrelated to me, where I think my hands are. I feel movement as Lucien picks them up and places them on my chest. Both of them lie over my heart, and I can feel their outline and relief.

‘There shouldn’t be any lasting damage to your eyes. You’ll start to regain sight soon. But it’s dark in here. Hold on.’ I hear rustling and Lucien’s hands pat at my shoulders. ‘Do you have the lighter, the one your father gave you?’ he asks.

I hiss an approximate ‘yes’.

‘Can I get it?’ he asks.

I hiss again and feel him tug my shoulders to remove the pack. I want to tell him it’s in the outside pocket, but he finds it presto and I hear the rolling burr-bite of the wheel and see the blue para in my mind. The flint sparks and I strain to see through the dark.

‘Anything?’

There is only blackness.

I muster a grunt and then wait to hear the wheel bite again. Still just blackness. Grainy, world-ending, silent dark. This time Lucien waits without speaking. I feel the touch under my eyes again, and the cool pressure on my forehead and chin, and a small segment of melody that I do not know.

‘Come back, Simon,’ Lucien says, and he strikes the flint a third time and I see it haloed in the black, a small, dull orange glow of flame.

I try to lift my head. I want to tell Lucien that he has to let the light burn, that it is very, very important to do so. I have never felt so alone, not even on my first arrival in London. But the light flicks off and I am blind again. Helpless.

Then he begins to talk.

‘It wasn’t meant to go like that, Simon. Please believe me. I knew it was a risk bringing you here, but the wind was from the south all day and I didn’t think it would change.’

He pauses, waits, as if he’s listening for a response. Then he whistles. It’s a few notes from the start of our usual comeallye, and it sends a jolt of homesickness through me. But the notes behave strangely. They enter the room and then they stop. Each note stands dry and separate and dead. There’s no resonance at all. Nothing like the silver hush that comes off the Pale Lady. This is as if sound had ceased to exist altogether, even while it’s occurring. The silence climbs right into your ears, packs them full like wool, or something even drier: cotton, sand, dust.

So many questions that I can’t put them in order, so I start with the most obvious.

‘Where are we?’

‘In the under, near to Batter Sea. The pipe I rescued you from just now runs straight, roughly east to west. If you imagine the scar is the centre of the wheel, there used to be a series of pipes that moved off it like spokes. We were in one of those. As far as I can tell, the scar must have been the site of a forge, where the pressure was generated. They must have needed a huge amount of power to get the airflow.’

None of it makes any sense.

‘You mean the scar from Allbreaking? Where the weapon of dischord was destroyed?’

‘Yes, I do. But it wasn’t destroyed. Not completely. We’re inside what’s left of it.’

Onestory gives you meaning. It helps you understand what it means to live in the time of the Order, and it helps you understand your place. This must be why Lucien always sounded it with us, I think, even knowing what he did. It helps you keep going ahead. But we follow it like we do the weather. It’s always there and it’s always coming, but it’s also distant. When you spend most of your life in the under, the weather doesn’t make much matter anyway.

And now, somehow, the time we’re living and the time of Onestory have come hard up against each other. As if Onestory has erupted right out of our downsounding and into the night. Here is the weapon that destroyed cities, that brought down Parliament and London Bridge, that put the Thames into a standing wave. It is here and now and real and not just song. And we are sitting inside it.

My breathing gets calmer after a while. I hold up my hands and I can see them clear at last. The knuckles a raw, violent pink. There’s no pain yet because they are not yet fully part of me.