Ascendancies (33 page)

Some of the crowd, those whose homes were being devoured, were weeping and counting their children. But most of the crowd was in a fine holiday mood, cheering for their favorite fire teams and laying bets.

Onogawa spotted Encho's silk hat and plowed after him. Encho ducked and elbowed through the press, Onogawa close behind. They crept to the crowd's inner edge, where the fierce blaze of heat and the occasional falling wad of flaming straw had established a boundary.

A fireman stood nearby. He wore a knee-length padded fireproof coat with a pattern of printed blocks. A thick protective headdress fell stiffly over his shoulders, and long padded gauntlets shielded his forearms to the knuckles. An apprentice in similar garb was soaking him down with a pencil-thin gush of water from a bamboo hand-pump. “Stand back, stand back,” the fireman said automatically, then looked up. “Say, aren't you Encho the comedian? I saw you last week.”

“That's me,” Encho shouted cheerfully over the roar of flame. “Good to see you fellows performing for once.”

The fireman examined Onogawa's ash-streaked frock coat. “You live around here, big fella? Point out your house for me, we'll do what we can.”

Onogawa frowned. Encho broke in hastily. “My friend's from uptown! A High City company man!”

“Oh,” said the fireman, rolling his eyes.

Onogawa pointed at a merchant's tile-roofed warehouse, a little closer to the tracks. “Why aren't you doing anything about that place? The fire's headed right for it!”

“That's one of merchant Shinichi's,” the fireman said, narrowing his eyes. “We saved a place of his out in Kanda District last month! And he gave us only five yen.”

“What a shame for him,” Encho said, grinning.

“It's full of cotton cloth, too,” the fireman said with satisfaction. “It's gonna go up like a rocket.”

“How did it start?” Encho said.

“Lightning, I hear,” the fireman said. “Some kind of fireball jumped off the telegraph lines.”

“Really?” Encho said in a small voice.

“That's what they say,” shrugged the fireman. “You know how these things are. Always tall stories. Probably some drunk knocked over his sake kettle, then claimed to see something. No one wants the blame.”

“Right,” Onogawa said carefully.

The fire teams had made good progress. There was not much left to do now except admire the destruction. “Kind of beautiful, isn't it?” the fireman said. “Look how that smoke obscures the autumn moon.” He sighed happily. “Good for business, too. I mean the carpentry business, of course.” He waved his gauntleted arm at the leaping flames. “We'll get this worn-out trash out of here and build something worthy of a modern city. Something big and expensive with long-term construction contracts.”

“Is that why you have bricks printed on your coat?” Onogawa asked.

The fireman looked down at the block printing on his dripping cotton armor. “They do look like bricks, don't they?” He laughed. “That's a good one. Wait'll I tell the crew.”

Dawn rose above old Edo. With red-rimmed eyes, the artist Yoshitoshi stared, sighing, through his open window. Past the telegraph wires, billowing smudge rose beyond the Bricktown rooftops. Another Flower of Edo reaching the end of its evanescent life.

The telegraph wires hummed. The demon had returned to its tangled nest outside the window. “Don't tell, Yoshitoshi,” it burbled in its deep humming voice.

“Not me,” Yoshitoshi said. “You think I want them to lock me up again?”

“I keep the presses running,” the demon whined. “Just you deal with me. I'll make you famous, I'll make you rich. There'll be no more slow dark shadows where townsmen have to creep with their heads down. Everything's brightness and speed with me, Yoshitoshi. I can change things.”

“Burn them down, you mean,” Yoshitoshi said.

“There's power in burning,” the demon hummed. “There's beauty in the flames. When you give up trying to save the old ways, you'll see the beauty. I want you to serve me, you Japanese. You'll do it better than the clumsy foreigners, once you accept me as your own. I'll make you all rich. Edo will be the greatest city in the world. You'll have light and music at a finger's touch. You'll step across oceans. You'll be as gods.”

“And if we don't accept you?”

“You will! You must! I'll burn you until you do. I told you that, Yoshitoshi. When I'm stronger, I'll do better than these little flowers of Edo. I'll open seeds of Hell above your cities. Hell-flowers taller than mountains! Red blooms that eat a city in a moment.”

Yoshitoshi lifted his latest print and unrolled it before the window. He had worked on it all night; it was done at last. It was a landscape of pure madness. Beams of frantic light pierced a smoldering sky. Winged locomotives, their bellies fattened with the eggs of white-hot death, floated like maddened blowflies above a corpse-white city. “Like this,” he said.

The demon gave a gloating whir. “Yes! Just as I told you. Now show it to them. Make them understand that they can't defeat me. Show them all!”

“I'll think about it,” Yoshitoshi said. “Leave me now.” He closed the heavy shutters.

He rolled the drawing carefully into a tube. He sat at his work-table again, and pulled an oil lamp closer. Dawn was coming. It was time to get some sleep.

He held the end of the paper tube above the lamp's little flame. It browned at first, slowly, the brand-new paper turning the rich antique tinge of an old print, a print from the old days when things were simpler. Then a cigar-ring of smoldering red encircled its rim, and blue flame blossomed. Yoshitoshi held the paper up, and flame ate slowly down its length, throwing smoky shadows.

Yoshitoshi blew and watched his work flare up, cherry-blossom white and red. It hurt to watch it go, and it felt good. He savored the two feelings for as long as he could. Then he dropped the last flaming inch of paper in an ashtray. He watched it flare and smolder until the last of the paper became a ghost-curl of gray.

“It'd never sell,” he said. Absently, knowing he would need them tomorrow, he cleaned his brushes. Then he emptied the ink-stained water over the crisp dark ashes.

The Little Magic Shop

The early life of James Abernathy was rife with ominous portent.

His father, a New England customs inspector, had artistic ambitions; he filled his sketchbooks with mossy old Puritan tombstones and spanking new Nantucket whaling ships. By day, he graded bales of imported tea and calico; during evenings he took James to meetings of his intellectual friends, who would drink port, curse their wives and editors, and give James treacle candy.

James's father vanished while on a sketching expedition to the Great Stone Face of Vermont; nothing was ever found of him but his shoes.

James's mother, widowed with her young son, eventually married a large and hairy man who lived in a crumbling mansion in upstate New York.

At night the family often socialized in the nearby town of Albany. There, James's stepfather would talk politics with his friends in the National Anti-Masonic Party; upstairs, his mother and the other women chatted with prominent dead personalities through spiritualist table rapping.

Eventually, James's stepfather grew more and more anxious over the plotting of the Masons. The family ceased to circulate in society. The curtains were drawn and the family ordered to maintain a close watch for strangers dressed in black. James's mother grew thin and pale, and often wore nothing but her houserobe for days on end.

One day, James's stepfather read them newspaper accounts of the angel Moroni, who had revealed locally buried tablets of gold that detailed the Biblical history of the Mound Builder Indians. By the time he reached the end of the article, the stepfather's voice shook and his eyes had grown quite wild. That night, muffled shrieks and frenzied hammerings were heard.

In the morning, young James found his stepfather downstairs by the hearth, still in his dressing gown, sipping teacup after teacup full of brandy and absently bending and straightening the fireside poker.

James offered morning greetings with his usual cordiality. The stepfather's eyes darted frantically under matted brows. James was informed that his mother was on a mission of mercy to a distant family stricken by scarlet fever. The conversation soon passed to a certain upstairs storeroom whose door was now nailed shut. James's stepfather strictly commanded him to avoid this forbidden portal.

Days passed. His mother's absence stretched to weeks. Despite repeated and increasingly strident warnings from his stepfather, James showed no interest whatsoever in the upstairs room. Eventually, deep within the older man's brain, a ticking artery burst from sheer frustration.

During his stepfather's funeral, the family home was struck by ball lightning and burned to the ground. The insurance money, and James's fate, passed into the hands of a distant relative, a muttering, trembling man who campaigned against liquor and drank several bottles of Dr. Rifkin's Laudanum Elixir each week.

James was sent to a boarding school run by a fanatical Calvinist deacon. James prospered there, thanks to close study of the scriptures and his equable, reasonable temperament. He grew to adulthood, becoming a tall, studious young man with a calm disposition and a solemn face utterly unmarked by doom.

Two days after his graduation, the deacon and his wife were both found hacked to bits, their half-naked bodies crammed into their one-horse shay. James stayed long enough to console the couple's spinster daughter, who sat dry-eyed in her rocking chair, methodically ripping a handkerchief to shreds.

James then took himself to New York City for higher education.

It was there that James Abernathy found the little shop that sold magic.

James stepped into this unmarked shop on impulse, driven inside by muffled screams of agony from the dentist's across the street.

The shop's dim interior smelled of burning whale-oil and hot lantern-brass. Deep wooden shelves, shrouded in cobwebs, lined the walls. Here and there, yellowing political broadsides requested military help for the rebel Texans. James set his divinity texts on an apothecary cabinet, where a band of stuffed, lacquered frogs brandished tiny trumpets and guitars.

The proprietor appeared from behind a red curtain. “May I help the young master?” he said, rubbing his hands. He was a small, spry Irishman. His ears rose to points lightly shrouded in hair; he wore bifocal spectacles and brass-buckled shoes.

“I rather fancy that fantod under the bell jar,” said James, pointing.

“I'll wager we can do much better for a young man like yourself,” said the proprietor with a leer. “So fresh, so full of life.”

James puffed the thick dust of long neglect from the fantod jar. “Is business all it might be, these days?”

“We have a rather specialized clientele,” said the other, and he introduced himself. His name was Mr. O'Beronne, and he had recently fled his country's devastating potato famine. James shook Mr. O'Beronne's small papery hand.

“You'll be wanting a love-potion,” said Mr. O'Beronne with a shrewd look. “Fellows of your age generally do.”

James shrugged. “Not really, no.”

“Is it budget troubles, then? I might interest you in an ever-filled purse.” The old man skipped from behind the counter and hefted a large bearskin cape.

“Money?” said James with only distant interest.

“Fame then. We have magic brushes—or if you prefer newfangled scientific arts, we have a camera that once belonged to Montavarde himself.”

“No, no,” said James, looking restless. “Can you quote me a price on this fantod?” He studied the fantod critically. It was not in very good condition.

“We can restore youth,” said Mr. O'Beronne in sudden desperation.

“Do tell,” said James, straightening.

“We have a shipment of Dr. Heidegger's Patent Youthing Waters,” said Mr. O'Beronne. He tugged a quagga hide from a nearby brassbound chest and dug out a square glass bottle. He uncorked it. The waters fizzed lightly, and the smell of May filled the room. “One bottle imbibed,” said Mr. O'Beronne, “restores a condition of blushing youth to man or beast.”

“Is that a fact,” said James, his brows knitting in thought. “How many teaspoons per bottle?”

“I've no idea,” Mr. O'Beronne admitted. “Never measured it by the spoon. Mind you, this is an old folks' item. Fellows of your age usually go for the love-potions.”

“How much for a bottle?” said James.

“It is a bit steep,” said Mr. O'Beronne grudgingly. “The price is everything you possess.”

“Seems reasonable,” said James. “How much for two bottles?”

Mr. O'Beronne stared. “Don't get ahead of yourself, young man.” He recorked the bottle carefully. “You've yet to give me all you possess, mind.”

“How do I know you'll still have the waters, when I need more?” James said.

Mr. O'Beronne's eyes shifted uneasily behind his bifocals. “You let me worry about that.” He leered, but without the same conviction he had shown earlier. “I won't be shutting up this shop—not when there are people of your sort about.”

“Fair enough,” said James, and they shook hands on the bargain. James returned two days later, having sold everything he owned. He handed over a small bag of gold specie and a bank draft conveying the slender remaining funds of his patrimony. He departed with the clothes on his back and the bottle.

Twenty years passed.

The United States suffered civil war. Hundreds of thousands of men were shot, blown up with mines or artillery, or perished miserably in septic army camps. In the streets of New York, hundreds of antidraft rioters were mown down with grapeshot, and the cobbled street before the little magic shop was strewn with reeking dead. At last, after stubborn resistance and untold agonies, the Confederacy was defeated. The war became history.