Authors: Felix Gilman
By the time she reached the depths of the quarry it was evening. Torches burned between the tents. A few square prefabricated offices hunched in the shadows. Gravel crunched underfoot. Cranes leaned overhead, looking down into the quarry like children leaning over a rock-pool. The motorcars gleamed in the dark, black and sleek as panthers. Their hoods and fins were adorned with skulls and furs.
A circle of bony and ragged men and women sat cross-legged on the dirt, around a low wooden stage, where once the local foreman of the Juno Combine would have stood to supervise the quarry-workers. Now the Beast paced on the stage in the firelight, gesturing madly with its hands. It wore the scarred flesh it had stolen from Wantyard, and nothing else. It was a white map of stitches. Between its legs was a sealed wound. It lurched from side to side of the stage, speaking in different voices. Its hungry followers watched silently, adoringly.
It seemed some kind of theater was under way. Ruth sat down at the back of the crowd and watched.
C
rouching, rubbing its stolen hands together in a cruel parody of fear, speaking in a wavering and ethereal voice, the Beast said:
—What crime am I accused of? What have I done that is not in my nature?
And leaping to the other side of the stage, the Beast stood erect, arms folded, and said, in stern and judicial tones:
—It is your nature that we cannot abide. Your weakness. Your changeability. Imperfect creature!
And cringing again:
—What will become of my children? My children’s children?
And stern again:
—They will be provided for. We will set lights over them, to make them mad. We will build a labyrinth around them, so that they will always be lost. They will never see the bars of their prison.
Cringing again, the Beast suddenly stood, flailed dramatically, and fell, crying out. It was not an elegant fall—the body it had stolen was not athletic. It lay still for only a moment. Then it leaped up and stood at the front of the stage. Demonic firelight lit its scarred and drooping flesh. In its own voice it said, “Do you understand the lesson? If I ever told you differently before, I was lying.
This
is how it began. I should put out your eyes so you can see it better. This is the story of Man. Is it any wonder I hate you all? We, the vermin in your cell, never had any choice in our confinement.”
It paused. There was clapping from the crowd—uncertain at first, then tumultuous, obsequious.
The Beast waved for silence. “Our story—our story continues! Our story continues sometime later, how much later we cannot say, for that was
before
and this is
after.
Now we are in the first district, when the city huddled at the foot of the Mountain, the engine from which it was made, and the energies of its making were always present, and now, being stupid, your kind forgets the nature of its confinement. The energies of making and meaning were like lights and music. Our story continues with one very stupid young man.”
The Beast bowed. Then it lurched across the stage, and began prancing, a stupid expression on its face, apparently fixated on the lanterns. The crowd laughed. The Beast stopped by a lantern on a post, craned its head, and said, in a voice that sounded like an unkind mockery of Arjun, “Will you stay with me always and guide me?” It stroked the lantern, sizzling its own skin. “Will you love me and sing to me?”
The crowd’s laughter was infectious; even Ruth smiled a little.
She was surprised to notice Silt sitting beside her, staring intently at her, waggling his bushy grey eyebrows significantly.
On the other side of her, Flitter stood, inched forward, and dropped the sack over her head.
S
he struggled as they dragged her away. One of them cinched a rough cord around her wrists, behind her back. The voice of the Beast and the rustling of the crowd receded. She stumbled and skinned her knee on the flinty earth.
A door opened in front of her. They pushed her to the ground. She sat on a concrete floor, with her back against a wooden wall.
Flitter said, “Clever little thing, ain’t ya?”
His voice echoed a little—they were in a small, low-ceilinged room. A foreman’s office?
“Shush,” Silt said. “Shush, Mr. Flitter. Don’t talk to the creature. It is not a pet. You know you get too easily attached to the strays.”
“Nearly got away from us, she did.”
“No harm done, Mr. Flitter.”
“She’s a pretty one.”
“That’s hardly important, is it, Mr. Flitter? She belongs to the Beast now. He’ll make something finer out of her raw material.”
“Are you sure we should be doing this, Mr. Silt? She’s not— she’s not like the other strays, is she? She was looking to follow the Beast anyway. “
“Not in front of the client, Mr. Flitter. United front! If she offers
herself up
, who’s going to get the credit for the catch? Not us! We shall present her in the morning, all wrapped in a bow. See, Mr. Flitter, I’ve thought long and hard about this. I’m an educated man—not like the rest of you. The master, for all his undoubted spiritual excellencies, doesn’t recognize the value of my mind. His surgeries fail—for all his genius, all his struggles, he cannot create true speech, or mind, or soul. Is the fault in
himi
Blasphemy! The fault is in his raw material. Rats and vermin! Ridiculous! The client here—I mean to say, rather, the stray—is more promising material. As you may have noticed she
already
has something like speech, she already stands erect. I mean to say, rather,
it
has those qualities.”
Ruth tried to get to her feet—someone’s hands pushed her down.
“Go on, then, Mr. Flitter.”
“I don’t catch your meaning, Mr. Silt?”
Silt sighed. “It’s very simple, Mr. Flitter. If the creature is presented as a live catch, our master is apt to become confused. You know how easily he gets distracted from his purpose by pretty young things that find him fascinating. How he loves to be adored! But every seer and visionary has his foibles. It is for us, the earth-bound, to manage his affairs and appetites. I do the thinking; you get your hands dirty. Which is to say, Mr. Flitter, you must take the knife and kill her. “
“Doesn’t seem right, Mr. Silt.”
“Flitter! What have I told you?
Never
in front of the client! Come here, come over here …”
The two men scuttled away into a corner of the room. Through the muffling cloth of the sack, Ruth half heard them bicker—Silt peevish, condescending; Flitter stubborn. “… at least take its tongue, Flitter, or is even that too much to ask?” The argument seemed to go on for hours. Silt’s arguments for murder became increasingly sophisticated and elaborate; Flitter grew monosyllabic. “No, Mr. Silt. Won’t. Because.”
It was dark in the sack, and hard to breathe. It smelled of terrified animals. Dust and fur and loose threads caught in Ruth’s throat and clogged her nostrils. To her amazement, despite her fear, she nearly fell asleep. And then she did.
I
n her dream she stood on the edge of a very tall building—no, on the edge of a cliff. Under her feet were sharp black rocks. The wind sang in her ears. The night was alive with noise and motion. Far below were trees, below the trees was black earth, and the earth swarmed with life. Behind her, her father and her sisters sat at the kitchen table. Warm morning light and the sound of conversation spilled at her back, distracting her.
Shh
, she said.
I’m listening.
She walked away, leaving the sounds of human speech behind. She went carefully down the cliff-top path, switchbacking down between jagged rocks, down through the treeline that swallowed her like green water. Under the trees, in the murmuring darkness, tiny creatures moved. The branches shivered with their fragile weight. The earth turned. The leaves rustled.
Two bright eyes like twin moons watched her from a high branch. Wide wings like black clouds opened. Hooting like a steam-whistle the fierce owl came swooping down as if from a great height, growing immense as it descended. Ruth turned and ran. Her heart beat hot and wild. Something impossibly bright and fast and sharp struck her …
R
uth jerked awake, gasping into the sack, breathing dust.
The room was nearly silent. One of her captors snored; the other muttered in his sleep.
The cord round her wrists was sloppily tied. With a few minutes’ struggle she was free.
She tore off the sack and breathed deep.
She was in a small sparsely furnished office. Silt sat in the room’s only chair, his feet on the desk, his head lolling, snoring. Flitter curled at his feet.
Where was her rifle? They’d taken her rifle. She couldn’t see it anywhere.
There was a small pile of tools in the corner of the room. She picked up a long wooden pick-handle. She hit Silt quite hard on the back of the head, making him grunt and fall silent. She tied Flitter’s hands behind his back, and as he woke and cried out in alarm, she put the sack over his head.
Her mouth tasted of dust and sackcloth and animal fear.
She opened the door and went out into the night.
T
he camp slept.
Next to the prefab office there was a tall contraption of rusting iron and concrete—a kind of scale? A large black owl perched in it, watching her. Its eyes were like moonlight. Through its indistinct shape she could see the stars.
“Poor thing,” she said. “What did they do to you?”
Its voice was a tinny buzzing little thing. It sounded as if it came from a cheaply made device in its breast. The stresses fell oddly, senselessly. Monotonous, malfunctioning, it said,
who’ll sieve into the veil the veins of these visions?
“Does it hurt? Do you know what you are?”
It shuffled its sharp talons on its perch. Its wings were misshapen—broken and badly reset. It said,
Can they hive and thrust the heather? The theater? The thrum? The?
“Can you understand me? Come here—I won’t hurt you.”
Was his war? Are we? Or we? Our way. Are we?
It opened its wings and twisted its head around, and around, and as if unscrewing itself from the world it vanished.
Ruth shook her head. Too much—too much for one night. Too much for one lifetime. Enough.
She walked dragging the heavy pick-handle behind her like a child trailing a stick in the sand. All around her rose the high walls of the quarry—black, unthinkable, like the walls of the universe. The Beast’s sleeping followers were scattered across the floor of the quarry. They reminded Ruth of skeletons, left behind by a fire. Stepping over them, stepping past two quietly slumbering motorcars, Ruth approached the Beast’s soaring tent. Scarlet and gold by day, it was blood-red and bone-white in the night. The flap hung open. As she stepped through a thick intoxicating scent touched her—acids, alcohol, blood, and electricity.
“Ruth Low,” the Beast said. “Middle child. I’ve missed you.”
I
t stood in the far corner of the tent, hunched over a table. It worked without light—as Ruth approached, it struck a match and lit a gaslamp, apparently as a courtesy.
On the table lay blades and a skinned animal. Cat? Ferret? Ruth looked away.
The floor was littered with jewelry, silk cushions, bedsheets, velvet curtains with the rings still in them, marble lawn ornaments, grandfather clocks—all haphazardly jumbled together, as if the Beast’s caravan had simply swept through an executive’s abandoned mansion and picked up everything not nailed down. Tall cabinets, lacquered and ornate; a heap of musical instruments. The Beast didn’t seem to understand luxury. The effect was claustrophobic, obsessive, and unhappy.
The Beast wore its stolen flesh unclothed. It wasn’t naked, exactly—it moved with an unself-conscious disdain of its own scarred and mottled skin, like an animal.
Its hands were bloody. So, before the tongue flickered, were its lips.
Its body was that of a stocky middle-aged man, bearded, well fed, wealthy looking, respectable, and dull: Mr. Wantyard, first name unknown and now irrelevant, former Chief of Operations for the former Holcroft Municipal Trust. White scars and yellow bruises mottled its skin. Its eyes were dragon’s eyes.
She wasn’t sure what to say to it.
“Your people outside are mad,” she said. “And they’re starving.”
It blinked, and smiled. It said, “Who cares?”
“I wondered if you knew. Or if you cared.”
“Not really.”
“Why do you keep them around? I thought you’d be … different, somehow.”
“They can go if they like,” it said. It smiled again. “They love me. For a hundred years I was worshipped, for a hundred years crowds adored me, and for a thousand years I was alone in darkness. It’s nice to be loved again. It’s terrible not to be loved the way one deserves—wouldn’t you agree, Ruth Low?”
“So you’re cruel, then.”
“Ruth, you saw me eat my way into a man’s skin,” the Beast pointed out. “You do have some real questions, don’t you? I’m full of wisdom. Try me. I even know who lives on the Mountain.”
“No more lies—please, no more lies. Yes, I have questions, of course, I do. The Mountain? I don’t know. Who made you? What’s happened to the city? How do we stop it?”
The Beast wiped its hands on a bloody towel, and offered an expression that might have been meant to be a smile. Insubstantial shapes slunk around its ankles. The ghosts of vermin and strays. What was the Beast making?
“What are you making?”
It smiled again—yes, it was a smile. “Ruth Low! So many questions! Always lost. You have been treated cruelly, though not nearly so cruelly as I. You are too full of questions, and I am too full of answers. Sisters, under the skin. Would you change places with me?”
Ruth was too tired to stand, too exhausted to argue. She sat in the scarlet cushions. Soft sheets caressed her. She might have been dreaming—the moments drifted past her with a lazy inevitability.
The Beast sat across from her, on a cloud of golden cushions. The shapeless strays drifted anxiously between them. Casually, the Beast said, “Is Flitter dead?”
“No. I tied him up. Silt may be—I hit him very hard.”