Blazing Bodices (4 page)

The smell of incense wafted up as I hobbled down the steps, clumsy in the high heels of the boots I was wearing. I kept one hand on the iron railing along the stone wall at all times, bracing myself in case my balance faltered.

It turned out to be a long way down. I counted twenty steps, then thirty, then forty, screwing ever downward into the underground. Always, the red light grew brighter, the incense stronger as we descended...and a clamor of voices rose to greet us, the sound of a crowd. Strange music also swirled up from below, a swell of skirling pipes and fiddles and instruments I couldn't identify.

By the time we reached the bottom, I'd counted ninety-nine steps. Thus ensconced in the bowels of the earth, I stepped forward, casting my eyes over the startling scene before me.

How many times had I set foot in utterly strange settings far removed from everything I knew and held dear? How many times had my heart shuddered in my chest as I gazed upon a bizarre tableau that cast a queer new light on all my assumptions about the universe?

Yet here I was again.

Lady Crenshaw and I stood on an elevated rim at the edge of a vast cavern hewn from the rock. The bowl-like floor of the cavern was filled with an enormous crowd of people, stretching from wall to wall.

All of them, from what I could see, were women...women of all shapes and sizes and colors and nationalities. Women dressed in every style of feminine garb I could imagine, from the corseted dresses of London and Western Europe to the sarongs of India, from the kimonos of Japan to the fur coats of the Eskimos, from the bowlers and serapes of South America to the buckskins and feathers of the American Indians. It was a veritable international
army
of women, all of them suffused with the crimson light that had drawn us from above.

I could not hope to count them all in that moment, but I estimated that there were thousands, tens of thousands, all encircling a distant dais in the center of the cavern. All watching a single figure on that dais, a woman, all listening to her voice as it echoed throughout the vast space.

At first I thought she might be Countess Calypso, but no. I couldn't be sure if she was anyone I'd ever known. I couldn't understand a word she said, either. She was speaking some kind of foreign language, one I didn't recognize. That alone amazed me, because I'd thought I'd known every language on Earth.

Not that the women in the cavern seemed to have any trouble understanding. As the woman on the dais shouted rapid-fire jumbles of alien words, the crowd around her clapped and cheered and shouted back at her using the same language.

Bess was no exception. I saw her up ahead at the edge of the crowd, alongside Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan. As I watched, Bess clapped her hands overhead and called out in response to what the woman on the dais was saying. I shuddered, unaccustomed to hearing the words of an alien language emerging from my own dear wife's ruby lips.

I turned to Lady Crenshaw at my side and leaned close, speaking into her ear. "What are they saying? I don't understand a word of it."

"You wouldn't, would you?" Lady Crenshaw raised one eyebrow and looked at me with a considering gaze. After a moment, she seemed to come to a decision, and her expression softened. "
Lingua femme,
we call it. The language of women. A way for women to communicate no matter where they come from or what the dominant language of their homeland might be."

I scowled at her, taking it all in. "This
lingua femme
...you've
known
of it all along?"

Her smirk had a trace of playfulness around the edges. "Among other things, darling."

My mind was working overtime as things started falling into place. I was afraid to ask the next question that occurred to me, afraid to hear the answer from her lips. "Undine." A bitter chill pervaded my body. Cold sweat trickled between my shoulder blades and down my back between the corset and my skin. "Have you been to this place before?"

Lady Crenshaw giggled. "Now, darling." She hooked her arm around my elbow and led me toward the crowd. "How many times have I told you about asking
questions
when you already know what the
answers
will be?"

 

*****

I did not resist as Lady Crenshaw pulled me forward. I was, of course, concerned that Bess would find me out, but a part of me actually hoped that she would. I felt in need of another ally against this army; Bess might be a part of it, but I still held out hope that she would take my side when my true identity was exposed.

As we drew near to Bess and Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan, the speaker on the central dais began to sing an eerie, keening song. The strange music that had been playing through the cavern rose in pitch and tempo to match her, and the army of women sang along.

As the priestess on the dais (for that was what she seemed to me, a priestess invoking an ancient rite) raised up her arms, so did every woman in the cavern except for Lady Crenshaw. The singing grew higher and faster with each passing second.

"What on Earth are they
doing?
" I had to shout for Lady Crenshaw to hear me. "Some kind of
incantation?
"

Lady Crenshaw didn't answer. As we reached the crowd, she too raised her arms and sang along with the priestess.

The red light in the cavern pulsated like pumping blood, growing alternately brighter and darker. Above the priestess, the air swirled with thickening pink mist.

"Undine!" I shook her by the shoulder. "What's happening?" But she ignored me.

Suddenly, the swirling mist above the priestess compressed, snapping into a solid form. It was a form I knew well, one that had been foremost in my mind since the day I'd caught my wife coming home late from the market.

It was the same elongated eyeball mounted inside a pyramid-shaped Egyptian symbol as the one that had hung from the silver pendant Bess had tried to conceal. Instead of silver, it looked as if it had been shaped from rippling red plasma, coursing with crackling tongues of energy.

And as I watched, I saw it
blink.
A lid of scarlet flame swept down and back up within the triangle.

It was then I realized, with a sickening lurch, that this eye belonged to something
alive.
Something that was gazing down at us all from somewhere
else.

Something, I could have sworn, that possessed an intelligence most
malevolent.

Why weren't the women in the least bit alarmed? Was I the only one in this vast underground vault who perceived the potential for
danger?

"Undine!" With increased urgency, I grabbed Lady Crenshaw's arms and shook her hard. "I need you!"

It was enough to draw her attention and make her stop singing. "Whatever for?"

Suddenly, a great shrieking cry emanated from the hovering eyeball, so loud and so shrill it set my teeth on edge. Another followed, even louder, even shriller.

The piercing shrieks sent me reeling in a circle with hands clapped over my ears. "God save us!" I saw my wife turn and frown as I cried out, doubled over in pain. "What's
happening?
"

Lady Crenshaw crouched in front of me and took my head in her hands. "Quid pro quo, darling."

I gazed at her through tear-filled eyes. "What's
that
supposed to mean?"

"You're a very lucky boy, Algie," said Lady Crenshaw. "You get to witness the start of a new
era.
"

 

*****

The fiery eyeball swiveled in its pyramid socket, and the red light in the cavern pulsated faster. The army of women from all corners of the globe danced with increasing abandon, wailing an otherworldly song in twisted counterpoint with the eyeball's ear-splitting shrieks.

Only Lady Crenshaw and I remained still at the fringe of the frenzy...and Bess, too, who was suddenly quite interested in watching us both.

"You should be
happy
for us." Lady Crenshaw smiled. She still held my head in her hands. "We are
free
at last."

I felt dizzy. Was it the shrieking, the incense, the pulsating light? "Free of what, exactly?"

"Think for a moment," said Lady Crenshaw. "If you were
truly
a woman, what one thing would you most desire to
rid
yourself of? What one part of your
life
would make it
least
worth living?"

"Corsets?" I was having trouble organizing my thoughts. "High heels?"

Lady Crenshaw shook her head. "One great burden has darkened the lives of women since the beginning of time, shadowing our every moment of existence." She leaned close and kissed me on the forehead. "The pain of
childbirth,
of course."

The shrieking rose in intensity. The red light flashed faster, ever faster, until it created a strobing eff
ect.

Lady Crenshaw's face flickered like something out of a nightmare. "We have only ever had two options: bear the pain for the good of the human race or forego the pain and stop producing children.

"But now, we have negotiated a
third
option." Lady Crenshaw smiled. "We have introduced a third category of 'parent' who will change the equation."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bess lean down to stare at me, her image stuttering in the strobing red light. She cocked her head to one side, and her frown deepened with fascination.

Lady Crenshaw kept my own head fastened between her hands as she spun out her tale. "Think of them as
gods
, darling, from
elsewhere.
A level up and over, if you will." Her eyes widened with feverish enthusiasm. "Becoming as
one
with us, they will infuse our systems with divine
energies.
Thus united, we shall possess the power to remove the
agony
from the childbirth process.

"We will still
feign
it for the benefit of
your
kind, of course." A look of disdain flickered across her face. "Mustn't let the men know our
suffering
has diminished. Not that keeping you in the
dark
is much of a
challenge
, is it?" Her laughter was cruel. "For all
your
vaunted skill as a wanderer and puzzleventurer, have you ever
guessed
that the members of the
'fair sex'
are the true
masters
of the world?"

More of her cruel laughter rained down upon me. As I stared at her, I wondered if she'd been like this the whole time I'd been with her. If she'd always nursed this secret loathing even as the two of us had nurtured our covert romance. Had she
ever
felt love toward me?

Perhaps I could still appeal to her sense of reason. "Bonding yourself to these
creatures
from
beyond
. What's to
stop
them from assuming
complete
control of you?"

"We have a
deal."
Lady Crenshaw nodded smugly.

"What if this
foothold
is the precursor to a full
invasion?
What if you're opening the door to the end of the
world?"

Lady Crenshaw's eyes narrowed. "It will be worth it."

The shrieking of the god-thing and the women continued to grow louder. The strobing of the red light picked up speed. If the deal were about to be consummated, I had a sense my time to thwart it was swiftly expiring.

I decided to try one last appeal. Pulling my head free of Lady Crenshaw's hands, I grabbed her wrists and locked them in an iron grip. "What about the
children
, damn you? Have you stopped to think how this will affect
them?
"

Lady Crenshaw shrugged. "There may be added...permutations. A
darkness
, I'm told. A slight
shadow
on the souls of future generations.

"But honestly, what can it
hurt
? If anything, it may
strengthen
our descendants for the challenges of the 20
^th
Century. We can hardly do
worse
than the 19
^th
, can we?"

I felt a sudden surge of clarity and self-righteous rage. "What you're proposing is
unnatural.
" I shook her by the wrists in the strobing light, giving rein to my indignation and horror. "We must call a
halt
to this
wicked
transaction!"

Just then, a single hand fluttered down like an autumn leaf and landed on my forearm. Shooting a glance in the direction from whence it had come, I saw my wife looking back at me.

The expression on her face was one I had not seen there before: deep sadness entwined with unyielding firmness like ivy on a wall. The aspect that made the strongest impression, however, was what was missing. Perhaps it was the flickering of the red light distorting her features, concealing what I thought should be there...but I could see no trace of it.

No trace of affection in her gaze when she looked at me. Had it ever been there at all, in all the days and nights I'd known her? Thinking back, I couldn't be sure.

Or had I willed it there, as I'd willed all good things in my life into being? As she and these thousands upon thousands of women had willed a new destiny for their sex?

Bess gazed at me in my wig and makeup, my dress and corset and bloomers, and squeezed my arm. I would have liked to have seen a smile on her face, but she gave me none of that. Recognition only, and resignation, and resolution.

And when she spoke, the words were all the more terrible for the absolute lack of regret in her voice.

"It's already done, my Algernon," said Bess as the shrieking and strobing and dancing reached a frantic crescendo around us. "Your own child in my womb is among the first fruits of this new arrangement."