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 Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2012 7:22 pm
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 OF SUTURES AND STRINGSWherein Nicholas has two young visitors and makes an ominous discovery
It was well past sundown and Nicholas was sitting by his small fireplace, beginning to doze off over a disappointingly outdated article on arterial ligation, when a quiet knock came at his door. At first he wasn't certain what the noise was; he rarely had visitors this time of night, and the tentative sound might have been nothing more than a twig dropping onto his roof or the shack's ancient beams snapping in the cold. A few seconds elapsed before it came again. This time Nicholas sat up. "Hello?" he hazarded. "Please let yourself in, I'm afraid I'm somewhat indisposed at the moment."
Which was true—the doctor liked to cross-reference, and he had three open volumes on his lap alone. The floor didn't warrant mentioning. He tried to dismiss a flash of embarrassment at the state of his home, a task which became considerably easier when his guests proved to be a pair of local children: Isobel, nine, and her brother Simon, four. The latter was stunted for his age and often looked poorly, but tonight more than usual. Where Isobel was stocky and ruddy, her hair coarse from the salt wind, Simon was so pale that his veins often showed through the skin of his face as if it were as thin as paper, and he constantly had dark shadows beneath his eyes. Nicholas found this worrisome. A delicate child like him might fare acceptably in the upper class, perhaps even thrive under the right circumstances, but his outlook in a poor fishing community seemed grim.
"Simon slipped and cut his arm open on the dock," Isobel announced, never one to mince words. She shepherded her brother inside and closed the door behind them.
"I was trying to catch the fish," Simon said, looking unreasonably cross about her report. "I didn't do it on purpose."
"That's why I said slipped," Isobel replied loudly.
Simon brandished a canvas bag. "We got you some crystals."
"Chrysalises," his sister corrected. "Crystals are something completely different."
"Chrystalisies."
Isobel sighed, exasperated. Nicholas could tell, however, that her behavior stemmed more from worry than irritation.
"Very well," he interjected hastily, before they could start arguing about something else. "If you could hand that to me, thank you, and in the future always come here first—the moths aren't going anywhere, particularly like this."
Nicholas took the bag once he'd struggled free of the clutter and transferred its contents beneath a glass bell jar with a ring of tiny holes drilled in the top. Simon came up close behind him to watch; he could hear the boy's loud breathing.
"Are they the right ones?"
"Oh, I should think so. We won't know for certain until spring, but their size and color are promising. You're very good at spotting them. Now, may I see that arm of yours?"
Simon merely stuck it out in his direction, so Nicholas rolled up the boy's sleeve himself to expose the wound. It was worse than he'd expected. The cut ran nearly half the length of Simon's forearm, jagged and dark against his pale skin. It was bleeding sluggishly—not from the initial event, but from being torn open sometime in the past few minutes.
Nicholas sighed and adjusted his glasses with the back of his hand. "This needs to be stitched. Is there anyone…?"
"Our mam was hoping you'd do it," Isobel said. "She's worried it'll fester otherwise."
"Your mother puts too much faith in me," Nicholas replied. "Someone else would be better off, but with a length of catgut, mind you, not thread. That's where the rot sets in. I can give you—"
"You know your work. You're a proper doctor!"
Nicholas looked up and sighed. Isobel's mouth was set in an obstinate line. But she was right to be concerned about her brother, he conceded. A bad wound could rob Simon of his arm, if the fever didn't take him entirely; he was an alarmingly fragile child. Considering they were compensating him with moth pupae, the family's ability to afford a practicing physician if Simon's condition took a turn for the worse was doubtful.
"Fine," he said finally, defeated. "Isobel, you'll have to help me, I'm afraid. There's a basin of fresh water on the nightstand, yes, if you'd please—and there's needle and catgut in that drawer there. Simon, take a seat."
Nicholas gave Simon a few drops of laudanum (one supply he never ran short of), cleaned the area around the wound, and waited for the drug to set in before having Isobel thread the needle. Simon stared the whole time in dismay. It took Nicholas a moment to realize that he was looking at the catgut, not the needle, and even longer to understand the unusual nature of his distress.
"Don't worry, catgut isn't made from cat intestines. They're usually bovine in origin, I believe; no worse than having stew for dinner." Simon didn't look convinced, so Nicholas added, "And it's used for string instruments as well. I'll let you have a look at my old violin after we're finished if you'd like. It's rather the worse for wear, but some of its strings are still intact."
Simon paused, lip trembling, and then nodded.
"You'll practically be a violin yourself in a moment. I don't think there's a greater thing to aspire to."
The boy finally relaxed and gave Nicholas a wan smile.
"Isobel, could you put your hand here? I'll need you to help me with the knots as well…"
As far as patients went, Simon was an especially forbearing one. Every once in a while he made a small noise, but for the most part he remained silent, staring fixedly at one thing or another to avoid looking down at his arm. Nicholas wasn't particularly surprised. Simon's poor health assured that he was accustomed to enduring discomfort, though this was likely the first time he'd gotten sutures. Unfortunately the process was taking much longer than it should have, even with Isobel's help, and in time Simon's breath was drawing in and out with an audible tremble. Nicholas paused and followed his gaze to the bell jar across the room. The furry white lozenges of the cocoons were clearly visible against their backdrop of leaf litter.
"The outer covering of a moth's pupal stage is referred to as a cocoon, not a chrysalis—those ordinarily belong to butterflies. You can usually tell the difference, as chrysalises tend to have a hard coating."
Simon drew in another breath; his eyes were glassy and Nicholas wasn't sure he'd really heard him. Then he asked, "Why?"
"That's an interesting question. Perhaps you can help me answer it one day."
"Can I see them come out?"
"Oh, certainly. It shouldn't be too long now, possibly even a matter of weeks instead of months if the weather holds. I'll be sure to alert both you and Isobel when they start emerging."
Simon nodded resolutely and drew a firmer breath. The distraction had worked. Nicholas returned his attention to the stitches and smiled weakly at Isobel, hoping her brother would spend the remainder of the procedure thinking about Lepidoptera instead of the pain.
It wasn't long before the last stitch was tied, the wound bandaged, and Nicholas attempting to uncover the painted violin under a dismal layer of clutter. He knew it was buried somewhere in this general… region, at least.
"You need a woman in your life," Isobel said, in the serious tone of a child repeating advice overheard from an elder.
"If you meet one who would tolerate my habits, don't hesitate to send her my way," Nicholas replied. "I'm sure she'd be a fearsome and novel specimen. Ah, here we are."
He had excavated a hole in his medical papers and the violin lay at the bottom of it, its scrollwork gleaming faintly in the lamplight. He frowned and leaned closer.
"It smells," Isobel whispered. A shadow fell across the instrument; she was crouching next to him for a better look.
A slow revelation was creeping over Nicholas, horrible and fascinating. He heard his voice as if from a distance when he said, "Wait—keep back, don't touch it." The violin's glistening beneath the papers was strangely sinister: the white of an eye turning unexpectedly in one's direction, a beetle's carapace half-buried in soil. It radiated a sense of what Nicholas could only describe as intent. And then there was the darkness beneath its peeling paint, a stinking, oozing substance…
The painted violin was Plagued. |
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Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2012 11:12 am
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ELEVEN DROPS OF LAUDANUMWherein Nicholas receives a letter and reflects upon the nature of Plagues
Nicholas returned late to find a small wooden box on his stoop. He opened the door first, wedged his foot inside, and then gathered up the box and tucked it beneath his arm, finding it surprisingly weightless. He completed this process just in time; as soon as he entered, he heard the first falling droplets of a late winter rain outside.
The interior of the shack was enveloped in deep blue shadow, but a bit of prodding at the ashes of his banked fire kindled enough light for Nicholas to set the box down on a relatively unoccupied section of his worktable. He glanced between his few remaining tallow candles and the small bottle sitting on the stool next to his cot. Surely the contents of the box could wait until morning -- yet its packaging confounded him. It wasn't likely to be the papers he'd requested before leaving Briham (too soon) or the additional laudanum he'd ordered (too light), and he could see no reason for simple correspondence to be transported in a crate. The mystery had to be solved.
He was, he found, partially incorrect on that third count, for after he'd gone through the lengthy process of lighting a candle, prying open the box's slats, and excavating his spectacles from the general clutter, all hindered by the fumbling numbness of his cold fingers, he indeed discovered a piece of parchment resting atop a bed of straw. He leaned forward into the wavering light and held his breath for a moment, so that it would cease rising in clouds in front of his face.
Dear Nicholas,
I'm sorry to hear of your injury, but I confess that I was more glad than anything else to finally receive another letter; I had begun to suspect a worse fate had befallen you. A plague ship was burned outside Mildell's harbor a month ago and I've heard reports of more in other ports. News can be difficult to come by in these times, as I'm sure you well know, and reports of The Lady's welfare have been months outdated and scarce. I am most happy to hear from you and hope that your work prospects have seen an improvement since you wrote me. I would ask you to visit now that you're once again terrestrial, but I understand if you cannot.
Few things of importance have happened in Mildell; I am well, the plague situation remains more or less unchanged, and both of your parents are in good health. Having arrived at the conclusion that the plague is beyond earthly aid, your father no longer makes house calls. He goes to great lengths to protect himself and your mother from harmful miasmas. Some are angered by his seclusion, but given what he has surely witnessed, I cannot find it in myself to share those ill feelings.
I am surprised and relieved that your area has experienced so little of the black death thus far -- your conjectures seem likely, though I fear that the plague's course is only delayed. By now you must be well aware of the state of Clearbarrow next door. I will think of you often, and pray that your village remains safe.
With affection,
Eliza
Nicholas lifted the letter aside and found several small cloth-wrapped bundles nestled in the straw beneath. The smile that followed felt stiff and unfamiliar on his face. It was very much like Eliza to send him specimens and not say anything about it -- when they were children, she had often silently slipped caterpillars into his pockets on the days his mother had forced him to dispose of his collections. It was, he suspected, her way of telling him to stop acting morose.
Not for the first time lately, Nicholas tried to imagine what life would be like if he had married Eliza after all. Certainly marriage wasn't the worst thing that could happen to a person. They had been friendly with one another, which was enough to sustain an agreeable partnership, and she would have tolerated his habits. They might have had children. He wouldn't have traveled, but there would be warmth, companionship, stability -- instead of this, an empty cot and a cold, dark shack creaking in the winter rain. Yet it wasn't quite fair to Eliza, he suspected, to only wax romantic about such things now that he was alone and had so few options left to him. Also…
Hairs rose unbidden on the back of his neck. He looked over his shoulder. The violin rested behind him in its open case, light flickering dimly over its surface. The darkness of its tainted parts seemed impenetrable. He had grown accustomed to the faint odor of putrescence that now filled his shack no matter how many times he aired it out or set fresh bowls of charcoal nearby, but he had never managed to recover from the feeling of being watched when he was alone with the violin, or make peace with the notion that it might quicken and come alive at any moment. That, he supposed, was what caused the worst of his apprehension. Every time he turned his head he did so with the foreknowledge that the instrument could be gone and something else in its place. Would it sit and watch him, as silently as it had as a violin, while he failed to notice for minutes that it had changed?
And what manner of Plague would it be? The Council meeting, which he had departed for in high spirits and with great hopes of elucidation, had only left him with a lingering dread for things to come. He was no stranger to gore, but the images haunted him still: an Infitialis, looming over a bleeding throat in the shadow of the stage; another Anhelo, sucking the life from men as effortlessly as a child snapping dandelion heads; Erasmus, driving fingers into its eyes like knives while it screamed. If his violin were confiscated by the Empire (a matter delayed, but not, to the best of his observation, abandoned entirely) would he be outraged? Relieved? Relieved, he thought. Yet also bereft, for the violin was a wellspring of change in his tedious life, tainted though the waters might be.
He remembered it clearly: the violin glittering sleek and whole on the shelf of an Ardenian trader, resting on a scrap of cloth, and then again on a beachcomber's table, warped and twisted, sandwiched between driftwood carvings and baubles of sea-glass. Nicholas did not believe in ghosts, or fate, but the unlikelihood of the coincidence shook him. It was, of course, a coincidence. He refused to allow himself to imagine what might happen if the violin were taken away again now, by the Empire or anyone else -- if it were stolen -- if it were lost -- if he threw it back into the sea --
(If it returned --)
He dropped the lid of the box shut, the sudden noise overloud in the nighttime quiet. This was nonsense. Everyone knew stories of people who lost a childhood toy or a family keepsake, only to find it again years later in the most distant and unexpected of places. These happenings were rare, surely, but not impossible. If one tossed a buoyant object off a ship, logically it would eventually find its way to shore. That it found its way to shore here was the only marvel, and even then but a small one. And for Panyma's sake, he studied organisms that began life in one form and changed into another -- he kept them in his own dwelling for observation. He was the last person who should be driven to terror by a Plague's encroaching transformation. Ridiculous. He would unpack Eliza's specimens in the morning, and perhaps some of them would turn out to be viable specimens of Ampiphyra pallens...
With these deliberate thoughts crowding his mind, Nicholas measured eleven drops of laudanum onto a spoon, snuffed out the guttering candle, and let the silence prevail. |
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Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2012 11:22 am
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 THE ROAD TO BRIHAMWherein Nicholas is formally inducted into the Council of SciencesQuote: To the esteemed Doctor Nicholas Glass, It has recently come to the attention of the Council that you may be seeking admission into our cadre. As a former Trisica graduate and a Grimm both, we are most eager to interview you about membership and pave the way for your induction. As you live so far from Gadu, and in such relative isolation, however, we must kindly request that instead of making the journey across the continent, please visit Doctor Phineas Steele in our Briham base. He will make all necessary arrangements, and if all is clear for your induction, the matter will conclude there. Though Trisica graduates are normally easily accepted into the Council, due to your long absence from the mainland, and your somewhat unfortunate handicap, we must sadly request that you discuss your intentions with the Council with Doctor Steele, and also present a body of work that illustrates what research you have done since you last left Trisica. This should be nothing more than a fail safe, and I do hope you will not be offended by the formality. If you are still willing to seek membership, please attend on Doctor Steele in Briham, preferably with a body of research for him to examine. Sincere regards, Doctor Amory Kempe
"Thank you, Simon," Nicholas said, carefully lifting the case from the ground. Simon stood and followed it up, holding onto one side. Discarded papers rustled underfoot.
"I had better help," he replied solemnly, "to make sure it doesn't tip over."
"I very much doubt it will. You've done an excellent job packing; it seems very well-balanced. Far better than I could have managed, I'm sure." The doctor paused and looked down at Simon's serious face. "Even so, I'm grateful for your extra help."
"Body of research!" Isobel exclaimed triumphantly from across the room. She was standing in a square of bright sunlight beneath one of the windows, holding Dr. Kempe's letter aloft. Lazy dust motes floated around her face and settled in her hair. The paper itself glowed translucently yellow, the silhouettes of her fingers showing clearly through from behind. Isobel had been grimacing at it for the past several minutes, her lips moving as she silently sounded out the words. Nicholas was gratified by the evidence that his attempts to school her in her letters, which he'd previously deemed an utter failure, had at least partially sunk in. "What's a body of research? Is it something gross?"
"I'm sorry to disappoint you," Nicholas said, as he and Simon shuffled crablike past with the case held in between them (Simon hindering more than helping, but Nicholas wasn't about to say so). Having never had any previous exposure to children, the doctor was now rapidly learning their ways. Their enduring fascination with all things macabre was one of his newer discoveries. Indeed, the look on young Isobel's face was much more hopeful than disturbed. "It means the whole of something, or at least the main, most relevant parts."
"Hm." Isobel looked unimpressed. She cast Nicholas's still-cluttered work area a dubious glance with which Nicholas privately agreed.
The most relevant parts of his research had turned out to require three large cases, several heavy boxes and folders stuffed with papers, two baskets full of specimens at the larval and pupal stages (as he didn't quite trust Simon and Isobel to keep them alive in his absence), and a wicker cage housing his live dowager moths. His personal effects, in comparison, were somewhat pitiful: one small trunk and the violin. And even with all of this packed, he'd spent the last half hour agonizing over the things that were left.
"It will suffice," he encouraged himself. And then, to Simon, "Up high now -- away from the chickens, if you please."
The only transportation he'd been able to secure to Briham came in the form of a rickety, mule-drawn wagon already carrying a cargo of brooding hens. The momentous arrival of the third case incited a great flurry of agitated clucking and shuffling among them. It was not enough to distract them from the moth cage for long, however; they resumed inspecting it momentarily, turning their heads first this way and then the other with avarice glittering in their little black eyes. Nicholas anticipated having a minor panic attack each time the wagon jounced over a rut in the road, threatening to knock over the chickens' cages and set them free.
He caught a glimpse of the scar on Simon's arm as they shoved the case into position, now healed into a long white puckered line that he would likely carry for the rest of his life. Nicholas didn't allow himself to imagine how much more neatly it would have healed if he'd had the use of both his hands for the task. If he'd had both his hands, he reminded himself, he wouldn't have been here to help the child in the first place.
"There! Almost done. I'll just fetch my trunk and you and Isobel will finally be rid of me." Isobel, at least, was showing clear signs of boredom, despite being the one to have volunteered herself and her brother to help him pack in the first place.
Simon's only response was to look down at the ground, his expression grave. It often was, but Nicholas thought he seemed more subdued than usual today.
"You did a very fine job packing," he added, perplexed. "I haven't been so organized since, well. Since my mother last packed for me, I suppose. A bit embarrassing." Simon was, after all, only five. One would think Nicholas could aspire to better.
The boy murmured something unintelligible at the grass.
"I'm sorry?" Nicholas said, stooping down to listen.
He was taken aback when Simon -- instead of clarifying -- flung himself bodily at Nicholas and hung on for dear life. Glasses askew, Nicholas stood frozen for a moment and then awkwardly patted him. When no explanation seemed forthcoming, he gave another one, in a prompting sort of way.
"You're coming back, aren't you?" Simon asked finally. Nicholas noted with dismay that his voice sounded teary.
"Certainly I am," Nicholas said. When Simon only sniffled, unconvinced, he added in an appeal to reason, "I did leave most of my things here, didn't I? Do I strike you as the type of person to leave specimens behind?"
This elicited an uncertain shake of Simon's head.
"Well, there you have it. I'll be frank with you: whatever happens in Briham will decide whether I eventually move to Gadu. But I should be here for another two or three months at the very least."
"Alright," Simon said, with the stupefying abruptness of a child, and detached himself from Nicholas.
Nicholas watched Simon knuckle surreptitiously at his eyes, feeling both uncomfortable and relieved, and wondered what precisely had brought this on. A sad suspicion eventually crept up on him: He knew Isobel and Simon's father had died a year ago during a storm at sea. Perhaps the departure had been much like Nicholas's, with or without the promise of an eventual return. The fact that Simon had mentally correlated Nicholas with his father -- even superficially -- was something the doctor avoided contemplating too deeply. It wouldn't be healthy for the children to grow too attached to him; he had never intended his residency here to be permanent, and his decampment from the village, whether it happened sooner or later, was inevitable. He sighed and rubbed his forehead.
Fortunately he was spared from the necessity of having to think of something else to say by Isobel, who chose that moment to come scuttling backwards out of the shack with Nicholas's trunk in tow.
"I left your violin inside," she said, as he took charge of one of the trunk's handles and they hefted it aboard. "Not like I wanted to touch it anyway. You sure something didn't crawl in there and die?"
Nicholas wasn't fooled by her nonchalance. Isobel's strategy was to pretend she cared nothing for the violin at all, in the hopes that her studied disinterest would eventually grant her access to it. She took great care to express her complete indifference two or even three times every day.
"Again, for perhaps the thousandth time," Nicholas replied, patiently, "it is Plagued, and therefore it might be very dangerous for you to touch it."
"My mam says the plague's spread by ill humors," Isobel said suspiciously.
"Perhaps one day I shall be as informed a physician as your mam," Nicholas said, as he returned to his shack for his Plague.
* * *
The weather held out during the journey, full of blue skies and scudding, rainless clouds that reminded Nicholas fondly of being at sea, but over two weeks of intimate proximity to chickens left the doctor eager for a glimpse of Briham. Finally the terrain grew hilly, then mountainous, and the dirt road transitioned into a paved one. When Nicholas limped out onto the city streets at long last, he was feeling distinctly victimized by the wagon's sole rooster (it had spent the last handful of days staring at him, for reasons he could not fathom) and wondering, reluctantly, if he could somehow persuade a mage to transport him back to Clearbarrow.
Obtaining a room at an inn nearby the Council building proved no difficulty, though it did strain his dwindling funds more than he was comfortable with. While he waited for results from his inquiries about Dr. Steele's schedule, he set about trying to make himself smell less like a poultry farm and attempted to figure out how on Profugus he was going to carry all of his research to the man's office.
Slowly, it turned out, and with great forbearance. By the time he identified the correct room and staggered inside, he was so accustomed to being stared at that Dr. Steele's look of alarm barely registered.
"Doctor Glass?" Dr. Steele asked hesitantly, as if he half-expected Nicholas to be instead a porter expecting a very large tip, or perhaps a wayward luggage golem.
"Ah, yes. I'm sorry to spring this upon you so suddenly, but is there anywhere…?"
"Certainly! Certainly," Steele replied, shoving papers from his desk. Nicholas gratefully tottered over and allowed his burden to collapse as gently as he could manage under the circumstances. "It's very good those cases come with shoulder straps. Otherwise I don't see how you could have, with, er," Steele went on, awkwardly, while Nicholas disentangled himself. Steele raised his hands ineffectually every once in a while as if uncertain whether or not to help, and looked greatly relieved when Nicholas finished on his own.
Nicholas had, he admitted, been expecting someone who looked more like a Doctor Phineas Steele: tall, graying, austere, perhaps with an aquiline nose or a melancholic disposition. The actual Steele was none of these things. He was more cherubic than ascetic, and his hair -- though thinning prematurely into a downy blonde thatch that made him oddly reminiscent of a baby -- showed no signs of age. He wore a permanent almost-smile on his face, holding it at the ready like a nervous florist preparing to offer a rose to any passers-by who came near enough to proposition.
"I have to admit, my correspondence with Dr. Kempe left me somewhat apprehensive," Steele said. "Your history, you know -- I had no idea what to expect. I'm very relieved to see that you are a man of science, after all," he added quickly, evidently becoming aware, too late, that he might accidentally cause offense.
"I understand completely," Nicholas replied, suppressing a grimace. He couldn't blame the man, however; if he'd received a letter describing someone who'd barely completed his education at Trisica before haring off onto a third-rate merchant vessel and barely touching land for the subsequent decade and a half, losing his arm in the process, he likely would have had similar concerns. He wondered if Steele had been expecting a half-crazed, crippled vagabond, and felt a bit sorry for him.
He continued, "Natural biology is a common pursuit of learned ship's surgeons, given our -- their -- unique position to observe and record a range of exotic fauna. Are you very familiar with…?" Steele shook his head. "Ah, well, it is an emerging field. If I were to work within the Council, I would be primarily concerned with taxonomy, that is, the classification of living organisms, since there's so little available on the subject currently. Training as a physician -- anatomical knowledge, dissection -- is an excellent basis for work as a naturalist. My role as a doctor, however -- well, I suppose I would still be able to consult or teach, but it goes without saying…"
"Of course, of course," Steele said hastily. "So that's your main focus now? Taxonomy?"
"In a broad sense, certainly. I specialize in lepidopterans; I've been doing some interesting work with the dowager moth the past few months. A common species, to be sure, but the wider implications are fascinating."
"And these here are the dowager moths, I take it?" Steele leaned forward to peer into the cage with polite but not, Nicholas thought, altogether genuine interest. "Oh, there are two sorts."
"Both Ampiphyra pallens, the same species -- merely different colorations. Typica, the white variety, and carbonaria, the black or nearly black. Carbonaria moths have been overtaking the typica population for some time now…"
Steele's eyes began to glaze over as Nicholas went on, but as he neared the end of his explanation, he noticed, encouragingly, that Steele seemed to perk up a bit, even though he was throwing frequent odd glances over toward the edge of his desk.
"With the lichen dying out, typica specimens are no longer able to hide themselves as effectively from predators, while carbonaria specimens are nearly invisible against the trunks of the bare trees and more regularly live on to reproduce. Ultimately, this seems to suggest that the dowager moth is actually changing as a species to better survive in its environment. While typica was the dominant form fifty years ago, it may no longer exist at all another fifty years in the future. Imagine -- certainly such speculation is beyond the scope of my own research, but imagine if this same process might be found to occur in other organisms!"
"But what about the violin?" Steele asked impatiently.
Nicholas blinked, distracted. "I'm sorry?"
"The violin! That one you have sitting over there in the case. At first I thought to myself that it was very peculiar, you having brought a violin with you, but then I began to notice the smell -- it's Plagued, isn't it!"
"Yes, I thought you had been informed--"
"This changes everything! You ought to have mentioned it immediately. We'll arrange your passage to Imisus as soon as possible. It's somewhat irregular, to be sure, but tomorrow or the next day might even be…" Steele continued to mutter arrangements to himself as Nicholas looked on, trying in vain to formulate a response in light of this sudden turn.
"Surely it would more sensible for me to leave some of my research here for you to read over while you deliberate?" he asked finally.
Steele dismissed this idea with a wave of his hand. "You're a Grimm, Doctor Glass. Of course we'll admit you into the Council."
"Oh," said Nicholas, "well," and realized that for the first time in months, he was on the verge of losing his temper. It must have shown, because Steele stopped gesticulating and looked at him warily. "It's a good thing that I went to the trouble of transporting my life's work nearly a thousand miles across Mishkan," he went on, unable to stop himself, "on a chicken cart, only for it to be set aside in favor of, of, of a diseased violin!"
"I never meant to suggest that your expertise wasn't valuable to the Council," Steele protested, looking about as horrified as Nicholas felt.
"Ah. Certainly not. Clearly, however, it isn't nearly as valuable as a Putesco." He stood up and began gathering his things, which ended up not quite being the swift, righteous departure he had envisioned -- minutes later he was still fumbling with his belongings, feeling abjectly humiliated, while Steele looked on in silence, his horrified expression unaltered.
"But," Steele said finally, "the Council…"
Nicholas sighed. The intervening moments of struggling with the strap of one of his cases had left his anger seriously diminished, if not his frustration. "I -- yes. It would be wholly unreasonable of me to turn down the offer. If possible, I'd like to travel to Gadu before winter, but not immediately; I would prefer not to meet my Excito for the first time while I'm busy settling in to a new residence and job or, Panyma forbid, in transit."
Steele made a stifled noise of relief. Nicholas wondered how poorly it would have reflected upon him to personally lose the Council a Grimm. "We'll stay in contact, then. Please inform me when your Putesco grows, and we can figure things out from there."
The last arrangements were made, and in no time at all Nicholas found himself standing in the street, keeping a newly hopeful eye out for one very familiar wagon. |
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Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2012 11:36 am
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 Claune grows to excitoQuote: The world receded. Claune looked around the barren shack. He turned and looked at the trees clawing each other in the wind, at the cold, hard, uncaring eye of the full moon, at the clouds whipped up and strewn bleakly across the sky in tatters. There was no beauty or longing in it any more; he wasn't sure how he'd ever found it so. He went to the table and climbed up, nimbly despite his numbness and trembling, and began to unpin Nicholas's hateful specimens and tear them apart. Nicholas loved them, but he had left without them still. How could he? Claune would turn them into dust.
PLOT SUMMARY
Nicholas, still living in an impoverished fishing village outside of Clearbarrow, struggles to build a relationship with his strange, fickle Plague, who grew from the painted violin near the beginning of autumn. Meanwhile, Claune befriends two children named Simon and Isobel. The night after Nicholas and Claune take a short trip to Clearbarrow for supplies, Claune discovers that the plague spread to the village during their absence; it has already taken its first victim, Simon and Isobel's mother, and moved on to her children. Claune is troubled, but his inexperience with the concepts of death and loss prevent him from grasping the full implications of the situation. Only after watching an agitated mob burn the house down—with Simon and Isobel inside—does he understand what the plague truly is, and what it does to everyone it touches...
[SOLO] ocean deep, ocean vast SUMMER 1412
[SOLO] nightmares of the sea AUTUMN 1412
[SOLO] metamorphosis AUTUMN 1412
[SOLO] a house of leaves AUTUMN 1412
[PRP] the smell of change WINTER 1412-13
[SOLO] ashes, dust WINTER 1412-13   |
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Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2012 6:57 pm
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OCEAN DEEP, OCEAN VASTWherein the violin's side of the story is finally told
The violin was cast from the ship and vanished beneath the foaming sea. A moment later it bobbed back up, buoyant and glistening merrily. It dipped into the trough of one wave and rode up the crest of another. It rocked from side to side. Water sloshed against it with lively sucking and lapping sounds and made white froth when it slipped past the strings. The ship moved on ahead. The violin grew smaller behind, a pale speck in the featureless ocean, indistinguishable from any other piece of flotsam. By the time it was carried up and over the last outward-spreading ripple of the ship's wake, there was no one left to see it.
The sea grew calm. The glaring white sun baked salt into the violin's creases. Its paint cracked. Its wood warped. One string broke, and then another. Their remnants recoiled and tangled up against the pegbox and tailpiece like the legs of dying spiders. The violin rolled listlessly in the water.
Darkness, now. Strange clicks and moans began to rise from the deep. Tiny creatures with dozens of fluttering swimmerets ascended silently, like snow, from the blackness. They clustered around the violin and picked at a tuft of seaweed stuck to its neck. Soon they were pursued by ghostly globes with light pulsing in channels down their backs and long, hairlike tendrils cascading behind. Larger things arrived, things with teeth. And a monstrous shadow as large as the ship silently passed below before it sank into the dark and vanished.
The ocean was indifferent.
A storm blew through on the third day, and afterwards the violin was no longer alone: a peculiarity of the tides ushered it close to a shred of rope, a plank, and two human corpses, all knit together in a cluster of bubbly sea wrack. The violin knocked monotonously against one of the corpses until it was driven up under his arm and lodged there. A single eye stared over, gelatinous and filmy. It was not long before this strange flotilla, the only feature on the waves for miles, drew visitors. Gulls squabbled, and long, sleek predators with eyes like buttons snatched at the other corpse from beneath, twisting to and fro until pieces came away. They nudged the violin, but found it uninteresting. Diminished, the debris floated on.
The sun swelled angry and red on the horizon in the manner of an overripe fruit or an infected sore. It burst and sank. As its light faded, new lights winked on in the depths. The strange, silent pageant of unnamable things devouring one another and being devoured in turn began anew.
On the sixth day, land. The violin and the remaining corpse tumbled in the surf. The water shoved them ahead, then pulled them back. Eventually the violin scraped against wet sand. Each scrape pushed it inches higher on the beach until the tide receded and it was stranded and left to dry. Rancid brine dribbled out of it. A little crab crawled over it. What was left of its cream-white paint shimmered merrily in the sun.
It waited. |
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Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2012 12:31 pm
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NIGHTMARES OF THE SEAWherein Claune grows to Excito
Light does not reach the ocean floor. It is a dark and sterile place. If one were to illuminate its expanse, one would find only a long, gray, empty plain of silt ribbed here and there with the interminably slow passage of marine invertebrates. The lives of the invertebrates are strange and isolated. They creep along the vast dark colorless flats, under crushing pressure and in deafening silence, barely a centimeter per day. They feed on the sediment that sinks down from miles above: crustacean shells, eyeballs, fragments of scales.
Here, however, there is something new: an entire whale carcass has found its way to the bottom. Even deflated into a rubbery heap, it is gargantuan. It has attracted a swarm of hagfish, and the carcass is covered with them, like leeches on a bare leg. They burrow and twist and writhe. When pieces of the whale's flesh slough off, the material is the same gray color as the silt. The whale has been dead for a very long time, but here in the cold and dark, it does not rot. It merely fades in color and substance. Perhaps it will even last forever, a forgotten mound at the bottom of the sea.
Good. The violin will need company.
Claune awakes screaming.
* * *
"What am I?" it asked.
"A Plague," the being replied. "An Excito. I'm sorry, I'm not precisely—"
"Which one?"
"Oh. I'm sorry?"
"Am I a Plague, or an Excito?"
"Well, you see, an Excito is a Plague. It's simply a more specific category. For instance, I'm a human, but I'm also a man, which is a type of human. That's a gross oversimplification, of course—"
"Is a Plague a type of human?"
"That depends on who you ask, I suppose. It's a complicated question."
"I'm different than you."
"Yes."
* * *
The Plague started shrieking again when Nicholas stood up, holding it, and it caught sight of the ocean for the first time. The sound was dreadful and disturbingly familiar: a violin bow sawing tunelessly across strings. How could something so small make such a loud noise? Nicholas turned so that he was blocking the view, and the shrieking came to an abrupt halt. The Plague held onto his thumb like a lifeline and gazed sightlessly through his chest, shaking. Nicholas didn't know what to say.
"Don't put me back there again," it whispered.
"I won't," Nicholas assured it, gently.
Its eyes narrowed in suspicion.
* * *
Darkness came. Night infused the shack with a horrifying lack of color. The clutter on Nicholas's desk grew formless and full of shadow, and seemed to move if the Plague stared at it too long, to pulse slightly, like it was breathing. The Plague began to envision things drifting back and forth in a tidal current: seaweed, invertebrates. It shuddered.
Nicholas had decided that it should sleep in its old case, which was soft and lined with velvet. The Plague didn't like it here. If felt as if the case should fit, but it didn't. And Nicholas had put it here and left it alone, which it liked even less. For a while it considered screaming, but the silence in the shack was too complete—it seemed that something terrible might happen if it were disrupted. So the Plague sat for what felt like an eternity gazing at the dark room, paralyzed with indecision, trying not to make even the faintest sound.
Finally it couldn't stand it any longer, so it got up, gathered its bells in one hand to silence them, and crept noiselessly across the table. When it reached the end, it stared across the empty void between itself and Nicholas's bed. Nicholas's face was turned the other way. He was asleep. The Plague watched him, hoping that perhaps if it watched him long enough, he would wake up on his own. Nothing happened. Entire minutes passed, and the Plague shifted silently from foot to foot. Making a sound would be unbearable, but it seemed the Plague would have to do it anyway.
"Nicholas," it managed finally, a whisper. "Nicholas?"
Nothing.
Its back prickled; it looked over its shoulder at the piles of clutter. It stared at them for a long time.
Sliding down the table leg was easier than the Plague imagined it would be, as was scaling the corner of the sheet. It surveyed the terrain until its gaze fell on Nicholas's left shoulder. Was that right? It was seized by a growing certainty: it used to rest on that shoulder and sing while Nicholas stroked it. Both of them were very happy then. The Plague had no clear memory of this, but knew it had happened nonetheless.
Now all it had to do was get back there.
It scurried quickly up the side of the pillow and slid down. The crook of Nicholas's neck formed a warm hollow into which the Plague fit easily. Nicholas made an indistinct noise and shifted beneath the covers. The Plague held very still, waiting. Things were back to the way they used to be. They would be happy now. Everything would make sense soon.
Nicholas lifted his head up a little and turned it. When he saw the Plague standing directly next to his face, watching him intently, he froze. It took him a moment to say something. "Are you," he began in a strange voice, and paused to clear his throat, "are you all right?"
This wasn't how things were supposed to be. The Plague considered its answer (no) carefully. "Yes," it said finally, with an air of defiance.
"Do you want anything?" Nicholas ventured.
"I don't like the case. I'm not going to sleep in it. Rather, I shall sleep on your shoulder, like I used to."
Nicholas stared at it. "You used to… you remember sleeping on my shoulder?"
"Yes," the Plague snapped. "Of course I do." Why wasn't this going the way it should? The Plague abruptly became so filled with misery that it sat down and began wailing.
"Please stop," Nicholas said helplessly. The Plague wondered whether he requested this because he was concerned or because his ears hurt. Either one was good. Hopefully both. The Plague had a nice, loud wail. But it stopped for a moment so that it might hear what else Nicholas had to say.
"What's wrong?" Nicholas asked.
You're unhappy, the Plague thought. You aren't stroking me. I'm not singing. "You did something to me," it said instead, feeling suddenly very sly. The feeling of slyness lanced its misery and brought relief. "There's something wrong with me, isn't there? And it's your fault."
There, on Nicholas's face: he was hurt. It disappeared quickly, but the Plague saw it anyway. It savored its victory. It wasn't the only one who could feel miserable; it could make Nicholas feel miserable too. Now Nicholas knew how it felt.
"There isn't anything wrong with you," Nicholas said. The Plague scowled. It would have preferred for Nicholas to get angry or, even better, to start crying. "You used to be something else—a Putesco. You've grown, like a Plague is supposed to."
The Plague stood and marched across Nicholas's chest to his other shoulder, the one without an arm attached. It threw itself down petulantly. This was better. "I'm going to sleep now," it declared. Then, because it wanted the last word, it made good on its claim by instantly going limp and still.
Nicholas, however, remained awake for a very long time, staring up at the ceiling. |
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Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2012 11:48 am
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METAMORPHOSISWherein Claune tries to sing, breaks a jar, and receives a name
Nicholas was warming his hands by the fire when the quiet sounds of autumn -- the rustling of the leaves outside in the wind, the popping and crackling of the flames -- were pierced through by a note of indescribable beauty. He turned to look in disbelief at the Plague, who was sitting on the end of the worktable, its legs swinging idly off the edge as it sang. It seemed unaware of what it was doing; it looked like a child humming to itself to pass the time. But it was the most sublime thing Nicholas had ever heard. A musician might strive his entire life to produce such a soaring purity and clarity of sound and still die unsatisfied, yet this creature, only inches tall, a frightful-looking Caedos, made it effortlessly.
It had been so long since Nicholas had heard music. Without thinking, he put his hand to his shoulder.
The Plague registered the movement and looked at him. It seemed to read something in his face and stopped singing; a wariness stole over it. It waited for Nicholas to say something, and the doctor received the strange impression that it was expecting to be punished.
"That was beautiful," Nicholas told it -- kindly, despite the ache in his shoulder.
The Plague's serrated mouth pressed into a thin blue line. Its eyes were large.
"If you would like to keep singing, please do," Nicholas went on, grasping at straws now. The Plague continued to watch him. "I very much enjoy listening. Do you know anything with words?"
The Plague hesitated and then nodded. "A great while ago the world begun," it sang sweetly, but after another line, its voice began to change. Its notes soured and dropped like rotting fruit. The melody decayed. By the time the Plague reached the last line it was producing little more than tortured squealings and scrapings, its throat grasped in its long fingers and an expression of horror dawning on its face. It whispered something that Nicholas couldn't hear.
"Are you all right?" he asked, starting up from his chair in concern.
The Plague's expression drew inward, then grew sharp and strange. "Leave me alone," it hissed, and shoved one of Nicholas's precious bell jars off the table.
* * *
A great while ago the world begun
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain.
But that's all one, our play is done,
And we'll strive to please you every day.
* * *
The Plague -- he now, no longer it -- had grown bored again, which he seemed to do extremely easily, and was performing cartwheels and somersaults across the worktable. Nicholas adjusted his glasses and tried to ignore the constant jingling and flutters of movement at the periphery of his vision, but this eventually proved impossible, so he set aside his sheaf of notes to watch. The Plague instantly righted himself mid-cartwheel to give Nicholas a flourishing bow. Nicholas received the distinct impression that the Plague's goal had been to get his attention the entire time.
"Have you ever seen someone do a cartwheel before?" Nicholas asked, curious despite himself.
The Plague had not righted himself from his bow; now he slowly tipped forward until his head was touching the table, fell, and neatly tumbled back upright. "Oh, is that what it's called?" he asked, vaguely.
Nicholas knew the real answer was "no" -- the Plague was less than two days old and had been with him every moment of his life so far. Even so, he'd wondered what his answer to that question might be. The behavior must be innate, then; a part of his design, much like his desire to sing.
The Plague turned around so his back was facing Nicholas and made a show of meticulously dusting himself off. His bells tinkled merrily. "I would like a name," he said finally, in his high, peculiar voice. "Give me one."
"I thought we could come up with one together," Nicholas replied. He'd never named a single thing in his entire life, aside from a few uncategorized species of order Lepidoptera.
"No, I want you to give it to me."
Nicholas set down his quill and thought. "Claune?"
"That will do," Claune said curtly, tapping one of his feet.
"Do you like it? Don't you want to know what it means?"
Claune came over and looked down at Nicholas's painstaking notes, written in a slanted and unsteady hand.
"No," he said.
* * *
A gelatinous eye peers out from a nest of bubbly sea wrack.
Claune awakes screaming.
* * *
"Metamorphosis: a profound change in an organism's form coinciding with the progression of its life cycle. Here, you see a caterpillar -- here is the pupa, a cocoon -- and here is an adult moth. Entirely different in appearance, yet all three are the same creature."
Claune stared at the moth's glittering eyes and twitching antennae. "I want things back the way they were," he said.
"I know," Nicholas said, "I'm sorry," and Claune knew that he wanted the same.
* * *
Nicholas hadn't been able to clean up all of the bell jar. There were tiny pieces of it still left here and there, scattered underneath loose papers and wedged in the cracks between the floorboards. Claune picked them all up, one by one, and left them in a neat pile on the worktable.
When Nicholas found the pile, he looked briefly confused before sweeping it summarily into the trash. |
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Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2012 9:07 am
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A HOUSE OF LEAVESWherein Claune makes new friends and is given an unexpected gift
"You're really small," Isobel said, looking unimpressed.
"There you are mistaken. I am of a normal size," Claune replied. "Alas, it is you who is afflicted with a curious and unnatural height. However do they manage to feed you?"
Isobel continued to look unimpressed.
Claune then reached out and pinched her, eliciting a start and a frown of thoughtful approval.
* * *
"Let's play pirates," Simon suggested, picking up sticks, looking them over, and discarding them as they went along. Claune supposed the art of stick-picking was a delicate one.
"What are pirates?" he asked.
"They go around on ships and attack other ships," Simon explained. "They've got swords. Parrots sometimes too."
"No," Claune replied airily, trying very hard not to turn around and look behind them, where he knew the ocean was. "Let us play something else."
"Bandits and guardsmen?" Isobel said hopefully. Claune was riding on her shoulder. It was narrower than Nicholas's, but he was able to clutch handfuls of her hair for balance.
"How tedious," he said. "We'll be a group of traveling performers instead, and I shall teach you both to cartwheel."
Isobel proved promisingly facile at acrobatics, but Claune eventually decided that Simon was a lost cause. "Perhaps a musician, then," he said dubiously, and they spent the next half hour attempting to fashion a primitive flute out of a stick. Simon couldn't get it to work and gradually grew increasingly upset until he began to sniffle loudly and then, to Claune's dismay, leak.
"There, there," Claune said, reaching up to pat his scabby knee.
"I'm not good at anything!" Simon said. He threw the stick down onto the ground.
"Ah, a terrible fate," Claune said solemnly.
"You aren't supposed to agree with him," Isobel said, rolling her eyes. "Simon, you're good at fishing, okay? You're really good at learning how to read. You're practically as smart as Mr. Glass."
Simon glanced between Claune and Isobel uncertainly.
"I wouldn't aspire to that last one," Claune said.
Isobel made a noise of exasperation and knocked Claune over, even though, Claune thought, with mild affront, she almost certainly didn't know what the word "aspire" meant to begin with. He rolled with the fall and popped back up a few inches away, jingling. When she went to push him again, he did a somersault and landed on Simon's foot. Simon began to chuckle through his tears. Claune struggled with a strange mixture of gratification at cheering him up and disgust at the snot bubble that was forming out of one of his nostrils.
"This was a dumb game anyway," Isobel declared, with finality. "Claune, why don't you ever want to play bandits?"
"Perhaps because I am not large enough to menace you with a sword?"
"You're a Plague. You're supposed to kill people when you get bigger, not join a circus."
Claune stilled. "I'm supposed to kill people?" he asked neutrally, fiddling with one of the bells on his hat.
"That's what grown-up Plagues do," Isobel said. She sat her chin on her hand and regarded Claune intently. There may have been sympathy in her gaze; he looked away from it. "Didn't you know that?"
"Nicholas has never told me such a thing," Claune replied. He had stopped fiddling with the bell.
"Well, he's a grown-up himself, isn't he?" Isobel said.
"And I'm not a child," Claune snapped. He got up to leave.
* * *
Nicholas came home to an empty house and experienced a brief moment of panic before he caught sight of Claune sitting in the corner, on the floor. He had something on his lap; it took Nicholas a moment to realize that it was a cocoon, undoubtedly stolen from one of his specimen baskets. Claune was uncharacteristically motionless.
Nicholas went over and crouched down in front of him. "What's this, then?"
"I wanted to see how it went from a caterpillar to a moth," Claune said, glancing down at the cocoon. He'd ripped it open to expose the dark, sticky mass inside. "What happens if you take them out? Do they stop growing?"
"Ah. Well, they die, unfortunately. Once the process begins, there is no way to reverse it."
Claune stood up quickly; the cocoon fell off his lap. "I've killed it?"
"It's quite all right," Nicholas assured him. "It's just a moth, and I have plenty more."
Yet Nicholas had the disquieting feeling that Claune had been talking about something else entirely.
* * *
"Make sure that no one else sees you," Nicholas said, placing Claune on Isobel's shoulder. The Plague bowed dramatically in response and swept Isobel's hair in front of him like a theater curtain. Simon giggled.
Nicholas sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, sensing an imminent headache. "It's very important," he insisted. "We might not be able to stay here if people find out about Claune. Promise me you'll be careful? And that you won't go far?"
The childrens' expression sobered, and they nodded -- Simon first, eagerly, then Isobel, more reluctantly. Claune gave a faint jingle from within her hair; there was no telling what that meant. Nicholas would have to hope for the best. As much as he disliked letting Claune out of his sight, the Plague's friendship with Isobel and Simon was undeniably good for him. Discouraging it now might spell disaster. He watched them vanish down the sunlit lane and sighed.
* * *
It was a beautiful fall afternoon, surprisingly warm, with a cool breeze that sent golden leaves spiraling softly to the ground. Claune found for once that he did not mind the quiet, and fell asleep to the sound of Isobel and Simon talking nearby. He woke up a few minutes later with a shriek. Simon was watching him curiously; Isobel was nowhere to be seen.
"Do you have dreams?" Simon asked.
"Of course I do," Claune said tartly. "Doesn't everyone?"
"What do you dream about?" Simon resumed digging gouges in the dirt with a twig.
"What do you dream about?"
Simon frowned. "I asked you first."
"Oh, very well," Claune said cheerfully. "All sorts of things. Candy, Nicholas. Moths. Tentacled horrors. Death."
Simon scrunched up his nose.
"Yes, that went downhill very quickly, didn't it?"
Isobel chose that moment to reappear and dump a pile of leaves next to Claune. "We're building you a house," she announced.
"With leaves?" Claune asked uncertainly.
"It's only for a little while," Isobel replied. "I thought maybe we could make you a real one later, though. And some furniture, too, since you're so small."
Claune leaned forward to peer at the leaves. They had been thoughtfully selected: all were intact and rich in color. Isobel had carefully gathered an equal number of yellow and red ones. The Plague felt a strange feeling, a quick, sharp pang in his chest, and wondered (not for the first time) if something was wrong with him. "Oh," he said.
A few minutes later, his house was complete. Isobel and Simon had created a triangular framework with twigs and woven the leaves throughout it like a basket. Claune obliged them by crawling inside. He fit snugly, with enough room for him to sit upright if he kept his head in the very center. Muted sunlight filtered through the ceiling and set the leaves aglow. Claune could see every tiny vein. The breeze made the edges of the leaves flutter.
Claune sat inside it for a long time. This house had been made just for him.
Finally a clump of dark hair came down, and Isobel's giant eye appeared at the entrance. "Are you alive in there?"
"Yes," Claune said, "as you can see." And then, struck by a sudden impulse, he added, "No one's ever given me anything before."
Isobel's eye wrinkled up as she smiled. |
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Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2013 10:22 am
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ASHES, DUSTWherein two people die; and another leaves, but comes back
Nicholas and Claune returned home from Clearbarrow at dusk. Nightfall this time of year wasn't very late at all, but tonight, Claune thought, it seemed that way. The sky had already dimmed to onyx blue and a wind was rising from the north. It tore through the trees with a fierce, hollow rushing and made the interlocking silhouettes of the branches overhead shudder back and forth. It almost sounded like the roaring of an ocean surf. Claune stared fixedly ahead and tried not to think about that.
Nicholas's lantern threw a wan yellow light ahead of them, barely enough to see by. The light slithered over hillocks of moss and loose stones like salamanders, illuminating them briefly before abandoning their indistinct shapes to shadow. The darkness was profound enough for Claune to see the blue glow of his eyes shining on the edge of Nicholas's collar. It was a marvel Nicholas hadn't tripped over anything yet—but then, his Grimm had spent a decade dispensing medical services aboard a moving ship. People tended to assume he was clumsy, for reasons Claune couldn't fathom. Perhaps it had to do with the missing arm.
"It might snow tonight, I think," Nicholas said, with a glance over at the Plague, as if he knew Claune had been thinking about him that very moment.
"Ah," Claune said, after a pause. "I hope you aren't expecting me to play in it." The first time he'd seen rain he had shrieked 'it comes out of the sky?!' and spent the rest of the day in hysterics.
"Oh, just warning you," Nicholas replied. He smiled absently. Claune stared at him through slitted eyes.
"You aren't going to put any of it on me, are you?" he asked suspiciously.
"What? No," Nicholas protested, sounding genuinely surprised. "No, of course not. I was just remembering something."
Claune continued to regard Nicholas steadily. "I suppose you would have trouble pinning me down and putting snow on me with only one hand."
Nicholas exhaled through his nose. They spent the rest of the way home in silence.
The shack was dark and unwelcoming. On the floor, scraps of paper and moth fragments eddied in the wind coming in through the cracks between the boards. Small piles of them had accrued in the corners. It also smelled like wet coal, which was somewhat puzzling until Claune realized the wind must have driven down the chimney and scattered the remnants of the fire. Nicholas seemed to realize this at the same moment, because he cursed. Claune glanced at him. It hadn't sounded at all offensive in his warm, mild, tired voice, but it had been a curse all the same. Nicholas rarely ever used language, especially over something so trivial—he must be upset, then, about something else.
Claune discovered what several minutes later, after Nicholas had changed and was preparing to go to sleep. He reached to snuff out the lamp, then hesitated. His face was very grave in the stark light. Claune was struck by how pale his eyes were, how serious the set of his mouth, with a twist of pain vanishing and reappearing on it at intervals; concerned wrinkles had materialized on his forehead. Eventually the Plague couldn't bear to look at him any longer and looked down at the blanket on the cot instead.
"Do you really think I would ever hurt you?" Nicholas asked finally.
Claune continued to stare at the blanket until Nicholas sighed wearily and the light went out.
* * *
A branched scraped against the roof. Claune sat in the darkness long after Nicholas's breathing had evened out and listened to it, imagining it abrading itself raw. Boughs creaked and snapped. Outside air trickled in; it was cool, but not yet cold. Claune crept across the blanket to put his face closer to a crack in the wall. So he hadn't imagined it, then: a faint, familiar, tantalizing odor, almost undetectable beneath the fresh, wild smell of the wind. He felt a catch in his chest, an indistinct yearning, as if someone had planted a small fishhook there and given a sharp tug. He watched the trees tossing to and fro. He imagined the wind hurtling forward from hundreds of miles away, across fields and mountains, carrying strange promises with it. He felt as if he were missing something important.
He cast a glance at the bottle of laudanum next to the bed, visible now only as a faint smear of moonlight on glass. Nicholas wouldn't wake up if he left. He didn't even bother to muffle his bells as he slid down one of the cot's legs, slinked across the floor, and made his exit through the crack under the door.
The night was alive. The wind thundered; the grass was damp underfoot. Claune almost imagined he could put his palm against the soil and find a pulse there. Instead, he set out in search of the smell. It led him behind a series of shanties and lean-tos, past overturned boats and nets placed out for mending (he shuddered and avoided these), and through a narrow, moss-grown alley, where he found, to his surprise, Isobel and Simon's small house. He had only been there once, hidden inside Isobel's hair, but he remembered it well. There was a strange symbol painted on the front door that he could only halfway make out in the moonlight, and the door was nailed shut with planks of wood. The smell was, without a doubt, emanating from inside.
How interesting.
He crept inside and looked around. It was dark. Simon was in the bed against the wall, breathing harshly, and Isobel was sitting in a chair against the opposite wall, her back as straight as a rod, dark hair falling in tangles around her face, staring straight ahead. The smell was everywhere, but it arose most powerfully from a room just to Isobel's left. The doorway gaped with shadow and Claune couldn't see inside. He headed straight for it.
"Don't go in there," Isobel whispered.
Claune drew to a halt with a theatrical jingle. "Why?" he asked, slyly.
Isobel's eyes unfroze and slowly drifted down to fix on him. Always dark, they now shone like pools of still water, cold and depthless. Claune couldn't read any expression on her face. "Just don't."
"Very well," he replied, disappointed. "Is Simon awake?"
"You could go check on him if you want to."
Claune sighed at her unhelpfulness and scrambled onto Simon's bed. He marched up Simon's chest and halted before his face, hands clasped behind his back. Simon returned his stare through slitted, glassy eyes. Claune could feel the heat radiating from his body. He paused, and then leaned forward and sniffed.
"Does Simon have the plague?" he asked finally.
Isobel nodded.
Claune digested this information. "Do you have the plague?"
"Our mam got it first," she whispered.
Claune's eyes drifted over to the silent, gaping doorway, which now looked even more silent and gaping than before, and back to Isobel again. "When did it happen?"
"While you—while you and Nicholas were away. Mam was feeling poorly the day before you left. We thought it was nothing, at first." Claune wasn't accustomed to hearing her speak like this. Her voice sounded like mice feet rustling over dry paper.
"I shall fetch Nicholas," he declared. He had seen the scar on Simon's arm where Nicholas had sewn it up; surely this task, which required no stitches at all, would be inconsiderable.
"No," Isobel said. She stopped to swallow before she could speak again. "No, he wouldn't be able to get inside."
Simon made a slight noise, so Claune turned to look at his face. His lips were moving. Finally he said, in a dry trickle, "I'm sick."
"I know," Claune replied. "Would you like me to tell you a story?"
The sheets gave a shifting sound, which was the only way he knew Simon had tried to nod.
"What kind of story?" Claune pursued.
Simon seemed to concentrate all of his effort of will into producing a "P" noise.
"Ah," Claune said. "Pirates. I should have known." He hesitated, tapping his foot on Simon's sternum. He could not tell Simon a story about pirates; even thinking about doing so made him feel mildly ill. Nevertheless, he thought that perhaps Simon deserved something to do with the sea, as he had lived beside it and on it his entire life and loved it, as some people inexplicably did. It then occurred to Claune that Nicholas had tuned him recently. He'd been saving his music for a special occasion, but he supposed this qualified. "I shall sing you a song instead," he decided, for he could sing songs of the sea if he had to. He supposed that, knowing the words already, he was not forced to think about them overmuch.
He began:
"A girl strode the shore on a fair summer's day,
Her hair dark and wet, and her silver skin bare.
The old sailors, they say, watched her walk from the quay;
And one old sailor fell in love with her there."
It was a slow, plaintive song, the sort of song to raise hairs on the back of one's neck, and Claune sang it true. His voice rose thin and high and alone over the roaring of the wind. Outside, a dog stopped barking. He imagined the dark, jostling sea glittering its approval just out of sight. Shivers crawled up and down his spine until he was finished.
Simon's eyes had closed most of the way. Only a narrow wet seam of sclera remained visible beneath his lashes. His breathing was shallow. Claune turned around and found Isobel watching him. They stared at one another in eerie silence in the dark room for a very long moment without being able to look away. Then shouting came from outside, and the spell was broken. Claune thought he smelled smoke. Isobel stood up unsteadily and advanced on him. At first he did not know what she was going to do, the look on her face was so strange, but she only picked him up and placed him near a rat-hole at the back of the house.
"Go," she whispered. "Claune, you have to go."
"I want to stay," he whispered back. Why was he whispering too?
Isobel looked over her shoulder at the door. "We got it from our mam," she said, when she looked back at him.
"I know," Claune replied, a bit tartly, but Isobel didn't seem to hear him.
"We got it from our mam," she repeated, "no matter what they say."
And then she shoved him through the rat-hole.
Claune watched what happened next from on top of the hill.
There were a dozen or so men, and they were all carrying torches. The red glow illuminated their faces from beneath, casting queer and unflattering shadows over their features and making their teeth gleam when they talked. Claune couldn't hear what they were saying, but they seemed to be arguing; then one abruptly heaved his torch up onto the house's thatching. It caught quickly and began to spread. A scream came from inside: Isobel. After her awful whispering, Claune barely recognized her voice. It sounded inhuman—high and moaning, like a cat—and he thought she might be screaming Simon's name, in long, drawn-out vowels, over and over.
Claune felt as if he had been plunged into the ocean. His face prickled. He couldn't feel the rest of his skin, and the cold depths yawned sickeningly beneath him. A faint, silvery ringing filled the air; he eventually realized that he was shaking.
He turned and ran.
He could not escape the smell of smoke. People were everywhere. He had to dodge beneath bushes and piles of scrap, mindful of the glow of his eyes, whenever voices and bodies loomed out from the shadows. "Annie says she seen it riding on the girl's shoulder not a week ago," a voice rumbled above him. And another: "The doctor brought it here!"
Nicholas! Claune struggled through the netting and past the overturned boats. He ran up the lane to their shack. The door hung open, swinging in the wind, and he stepped inside just as it shuddered and knocked once against the outside of the wall. Claune had never heard a more desolate sound of abandonment. Some of the shack's contents were missing, hastily removed: Nicholas's journals and papers, his physician's supplies, the laudanum. The bedclothes had been untucked but still lay in a heap on the cot. Many of his specimens remained.
Claune couldn't stop shaking. Nicholas had left him—he had done it, as the Plague always knew he would.
Annie says she seen it riding on the girl's shoulder not a week ago, he thought. We got it from our mam, no matter what they say.
A girl strode the shore on a fair summer's day.
The world receded. Claune looked around the barren shack. He turned and looked at the trees clawing each other in the wind, at the cold, hard, uncaring eye of the full moon, at the clouds whipped up and strewn bleakly across the sky in tatters. There was no beauty or longing in it any more; he wasn't sure how he'd ever found it so. He went to the table and climbed up, nimbly despite his numbness and trembling, and began to unpin Nicholas's hateful specimens and tear them apart. Nicholas loved them, but he had left without them still. How could he? Claune would turn them into dust.
Knock, knock, knock, went the open door in the wind.
And then it stopped.
"Claune," Nicholas said, his voice barely a croak.
Claune had nearly reached the last specimen and ruined it. After that, he hadn't been sure what he was going to do. He slowly turned around. Nicholas was standing in the entry, holding the door and staring at Claune and the table and the moth fragments fluttering on the floor. Yes, Claune thought, with a rush of exultation as vengeful as it was relieved.
But Nicholas didn't yell, or cry, or even give an unsatisfying curse. He just looked old in the moonlight and somehow wrong. He looked like a water-skin that someone had punctured and drained, with nothing left in it. Claune had lied; he didn't want to see Nicholas like this after all. He felt the sea begin to rise and drown him.
"Isobel and Simon," he whispered. "It wasn't my fault."
"Oh, Claune, I know," Nicholas said hoarsely. Had he been yelling? "Come along—that's it. We're off to Imisus now."
The Plague found himself folded in Nicholas's warm hand and placed upon his shoulder. He wrapped his fingers in the weave of Nicholas's shirt as they went back outside, where a wagon waited in the shadows up the lane. Three cases were left empty and open on the wagon-bed. The wind had grown very cold. The red reflection of firelight burnished the houses down the lane, a pocket of warmth in the deep blue of the enclosing darkness, and as they got on the wagon, Claune saw soft white flakes begin to drift from the sky.
"Snow," Claune hissed, shrinking back against Nicholas's neck.
Nicholas brushed at one of the flakes where it had landed on his shirt. It left a gray streak. It was not snow, but ash.
Claune watched the town recede behind them as the wind swept the ash out to sea. |
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Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2013 10:23 am
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A girl strode the shore on a fair summer's day,
Her hair dark and wet, and her silver skin bare.
The old sailors, they say, watched her walk from the quay;
And one old sailor fell in love with her there.
When the moon gilt the water she returned to the spray
And slipped away in the waves beneath the moon's stare.
Each day the old sailor dared stop her to say:
I love you—I love you—and you do not care.
I do not, she would say, and I never will stay;
I will never come forth and there share your salt air,
For my home is dark, and cold, and deep, far away—
It is there that I sleep, where the tide pulls my hair.
So it went thus on a fair summer's day:
An old sailor grew tired of the quay and salt air;
His life had grown spare, and his heart had grown fey;
Now he sleeps in the deep, where the tide pulls his hair. |
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