John Wright - Fugitives of Chaos

On the lintel of a distant door, there were bottles of various designs and sizes, fantasy-shapes of crystal and glass. In each one was a transparent fish, with huge blind eyes, nightmare things whose faces were clusters of teeth. Their skins glowed pale, or they held little dots of light on the end of antennae. These dim lamps lit the wide, shadowy space of the gold-floored chamber.

I sat up on the edge of the clamshell. I was floating, but for some reason, I was not actually buoyant.

Were my lungs filled up with water? Why wasn't I dead?

I put one foot to the cold gold floor, and noticed that there was a slipper made of small glass beads, patterned like the scales of the snake, on my foot. A white garment like a cloud of fine mist was swirling around me, a garment from a dream.

There was a noise behind me, a small laugh of satisfaction. I turned my head, expecting to see Grendel.

There was a young and stern-looking man. Maybe he was twenty-five, maybe twenty, but there was cruelty on his handsome lips, a look of mingled dominance and pride in his dark magnetic eyes.

His eyes were sea-gray, and his hair was the color of a storm off the coast of Norway, drawn back and clasped in a pearl ring at the base of his neck. He was dressed in grand fashion, a stiff collar made bright with lace and a long coat of shining pearl buttons. The fabric swam and flickered with sea-blue colors.

He wore a wide cummerbund of emerald silk, and powder blue knickerbockers clasped his legs.

No, not legs. His leg. His left stocking was a pale viri-descent hue, tucked into a dark sharkskin leather shoe with a mother-of-pearl buckle. His right leg ended at the knee, and a peg of pale whalebone held him up against the mild weight of this gloomy undersea palace. He did not have any cane or crutch in his hand. Perhaps he needed none here.

He stood with his arms crossed on his chest, looking down at me. He had been watching me sleep.

The face was so familiar. I tried to picture his cheek less lean, his hair fallen out, his face pitted and wrinkled by years of labor. And I saw, in his eyes, how that look was the same, This thin, young, hawk-faced lordling looked at me as if I were his most prized possession, the dearest of all the things he owned.

I said in soft awe, "Grendel… ?"

"Aye. 'Tis I." His voice was an octave lower than it had been on land. There, it had been a thin skirl of cracked pipes. Here, it was the hum of a bass viol.

"How is it possible?"

" 'Tis my true self you see, not as I am on land. In my mother's place, we are, here, and how she sees me, so I am."

When he moved, the gold floor chimed softly, like a gong, beneath his peg leg, but he moved with the grace of a moon astronaut. Underwater, the missing foot was less of a hindrance to him.

He moved forward and put out his hand, as if to help me up.

I put my hand out. I wasn't sure what else to do. Fight? Run? Scream? No option seemed very appealing. And I wasn't even sure how it was that I could be alive.

Young Grendel's lightest touch on my hand brought me floating to my feet. Only then did I see how I was dressed.

It was no fabric of Earth. It was some fairy-stuff, lighter than cobwebs and whiter than snow. There was a pinch-waist bodice set with many tiny pearls, long floating sleeves of film, a skirt of gossamer with a train of smoky dandelion fluff. A belt of translucent blue-green links hung low on my hips and came to a low V, and from there trailed down the front like a shining serpent with bright scales. On my feet were the tiny slippers made of translucent blue-green beads.

Like running smoke, the fabric of the dress changed moment to moment, growing dim and transparent, or white and translucent by turns, as it swayed and folded weightlessly around me. At no point did the fabric actually hide anything dresses are supposed to hide.

I was not even sure if the neckline was high or low. The fabric faded into existence somewhere between my neck and cleavage, becoming slightly more opaque as it curved around my bosom. The substance looked something like a spiderweb at dawn, gemmed with night dew. The strands of pearl flecks floating in the bodice fabric formed converging lines from the bustline toward the crotch, creating the optical illusion that my waist was thinner than it was.

I covered my breasts with one forearm and put my other hand between my legs, turning away from Grendel. You know the pose. Botticelli's Venus holds her hands this way when she steps from her clamshell to the shore. Of course, she is wearing a dreamy smile. I wasn't.

I caught my breath (or whatever it was I had instead of breath) when I turned. There was an antique silver mirror, something from the wreck of a Spanish galleon, propped up against the barnacle-rough side of the chamber. To either side of it stood amphorae of paper-thin ivory. Whatever phosphorescent sea monster was inside those urns could not be seen, except as moving shadows of light, but the ivory glowed and cast light from the silver mirror.

There was my reflection. I was beautiful. And yet…

I don't know what it was; perhaps it was a combination of many tiny changes. My lips were redder, and my hair shone, and maybe my cheeks were a trifle more pronounced. My skin seemed fairer, with no sun-freckles, bug bites, or moles. As if I had been airbrushed. I seemed almost to glow.

This was the way Grendel saw me. There was something more than flattering in this. It was almost awe-inspiring. As if I had been transformed into a goddess.

And yet I had been altered while I slept. The idea was a repellent one.

There was something jarring about the dress while it swirled and floated about me, shining. On the one hand, it looked like something an elf-maiden in a fairy tale could wear, glass slippers and all. Something too aetherial for Earth. At the same time, it was somehow all too Earthy, tawdry, almost tasteless, a combination of a fishnet body stocking and a wet T-shirt. A cross between what a princess and a professional harlot should wear. It confused me to see it. I didn't know what to make of it.

At my neck was a choker of glass links, matching the belt and shoes. It reminded me unpleasantly of the collar I had worn for Grendel; the one no one but he could remove.

A collar no one can remove. Now there is a thought to give a girl claustrophobia of the neck. Or what is fear of choking called? Victor would have known.

My hair was gathered into a net, finer than a silk web, set with pearls and phosphorescent dots. The dots were clustering thickly about my brows and ears, as if I wore both earrings and a tiara.

Again, it seemed both attractive and repellent. It was beautiful to have little stars caught in the net in my hair; but it also looked too much like cobwebs, over which glowing insects from some sunless mold were crawling.

"How come I'm not tied up?" I said.

In the mirror, I could see him smile, a cruel quirk of his lips on his narrow face. He put his hand gently on the top of my head, as if to pat me. The little lights webbed into the fragile snood exhaled a soft luminous twinkle at his touch. "This cap keeps you alive, allows you breath, lets your words come out, unstoppers your pretty little ears. If I yerk it from your head, you die. As long as you love life, what need have I for chain or rope to keep you by my side, princess mine?"

I reached my hand up as if to touch the cap; he slapped the wrist away.

I said, "What is it?"

"Always curious? Always so bright at your lessons, eh? This cap, I'll tell the tale. This cap, it is from my mother's loom, woven of my dead father's hair, and there are so few of them left. They told you that you weren't not able to breathe water, eh? They told you the cold would kill you. That was lie. All they say is lie. This cap makes those lies have no more hold or grip on you, my pretty princess. Let it leave your head, my golden one, and you are but one more drowned maiden of all the many maidens who have drowned at sea, and only the crabs will love you then."