Mélusine (20 page)

Authors: Sarah Monette

BOOK: Mélusine

10.3Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

"Laurie?" Margot said. "What—"

"Dogs!" the girl yelled, waving back the way she'd come with one arm. "They're coming, upside
and
down! Run! RUN!"

Margot bellowed, "
RAID
!" at the top of her lungs. The Badgers were just starting to scatter, Margot was just turning to grab the little kids near her, when there was this wave of armored men from the
south
—Kethe, from the
south
, the fucking opposite direction and nobody apparently there to think it was worth singing out—and the Dogs were on us.

Felix

I looked for the gardens all day. I couldn't find them, though I knew they were close to me. Every time I opened a door, I expected to meet the scent of those beautiful, twisted trees. But I never did.

Brother Torquil, who never hit anyone, found me in empty rooms, at the wrong end of hallways, once struggling with the catches of a window that hadn't been opened in more than a century. Each time, he led me back to my I and scrub brush; each time, he said a prayer over me. I would have preferred him to hit me. And each time, I told myself there were no gardens in St. Crellifer's and tried to concentrate on my task.

But it was no good. No matter how I fought it, the conviction would grow on me that I could find the gardens if I looked in the right place, and I would put my scrub brush down and start looking. Trying to ignore that feeling was almost physically painful, and even though I knew it was a lie, it seemed as true as the stones and plaster of St. Crellifer's.

Brother Torquil finally gave up and sent me back to the ward, with a warning that he would "have to speak to Brother Lilburn about this." Even that didn't bother me; if I could find the way into the gardens, I could escape Brother Lilburn entirely.

The ward was all but deserted at that hour of the day. Elias was lying on his cot, staring at the bars on the window. No one knew how old Elias was—least of all Elias himself—but he had to be over eighty. He was too frail to do any work, but since his madness consisted mostly of a terrible fear of going outside, he was allowed to stay in what Brother Torquil, freshly imbued with the ideals of St. Gailan, persisted in referring to as the "Helping Ward."

"What's up with you?" Elias said when I came in.

"I can't find the gardens," I said, crossing the room to look out the window. But they weren't out there, either.

"The what?"

"Something I dreamed." I rested my forehead briefly against the cool glass.

"You must have drawn Torquil," Elias said. Elias had been in St. Crellifer for twenty years or more, and he had been a brother of St. Gailan before that. He knew St. Crellifer's inside out. "He'll tell Lilburn, you know."

"Yes. He said he would." I glanced sideways and saw Elias's grimace of sympathy.

"What's it like out there?" he asked presently, as he asked anyone who Was near a window.

"Sunny," I said. "There's a scissors-grinder across the street, and two merchants' daughters taking the air. One of them is dressed in green muslin and the other in white organdy. The girl in green has a parasol painted with violets."

"Lovely," Elias said. "Like a beautiful dream."

I realized then that I did know how to reach the gardens, even from St. Crellifer's. And maybe if I just dreamed
hard
enough…

I lay down, turning my back on Elias's fearful longing, and pushed my way down into sleep.

Even in sleep, it is hard to find the gardens. My dreams are jumbled and dark. I remember the voice of the old man who taught me to understand my dreams; although I haven't used it in years, I remember the way he taught me to map my dreaming. I call that map into being now; it is not magic, or so the old man told me, simply a mental structure, like the memory houses that traders' clerks use.

I stand in the middle of a compass rose; for a moment, I am not part of any dream. The gates of Mélusine rise around the compass, Corundum to the north, Horn to the northeast, then Carnelian, Chalcedony, Ivory, Porphyry. In my dream map, the Sim does not exist, and the northwest and south are blank, without gates or gaps.

My mind feels clearer, stronger, than it has for a long time. I begin to organize my dreams as the old man taught me. Dreams of the future lie beyond Corundum Gate, and that gate is closed. I do not want to know the future. Porphyry, to the west, rules dreams that answer questions; I leave it open. Ivory is the gate of nightmares, and I swing that shut. My imagining of my dream city is more vivid than it has ever been; Ivory Gate closes with an audible thud, and I feel the jar in my shoulders. I know with terrible relief that it will stay closed.

I was taught that south is the direction of dreams of the past, but I will not use the Sim. I give the past to Chalcedony Gate and close it. Carnelian Gate is the gate for dreams of revelation; I leave it open. And Horn Gate rules true dreams, dreams that are more than just dreams. I hope that the gardens lie beyond Horn Gate; it, too, stands open.

I look at the city and realize that there is a gate I did not imagine. To the south, there is a dark, ragged hole in the city wall, where the so-called Septad Gate exists in the real city. Keeper had a vile, obscene song about the Septad Gate, which he sang when he was drunk. I am afraid that if I think about it any longer, I will remember the words. I see that there is no way to close the Septad Gate, no way to block out the poisoned swamp that lies beyond it. The Septad Gate is the gate of madness.

I stand in the middle of the city, where the Mirador is. For a moment, I imagine I am standing on the battlements again, looking out across the squalid patchwork of the Lower City. I turn to face north, shut my eyes and count slowly to seven. Then, thinking fixedly of the gnarled trees and their white flowers, I look at what the gates have to tell me.

I look at Porphyry Gate; through it, I see water, great heaving dark masses of it. That is not what I seek; I turn, wrenching my attention past the Septad Gate and its morbid seeping. Through Carnelian Gate, I see a fox, sitting in a gray place full of cruel stones. That means nothing to me, and I turn to Horn Gate. Through Horn Gate, I see trees, twisted and black, their spreading arms full of flowers.

My breath catches in something that is almost a sob. I step through Horn Gate. I would close the gates behind me, but they will not budge. I walk into the stand of trees, quickly, wanting to get away from Horn Gate, wanting to find the Sunling.

I follow the path as it twists and meanders; though I am anxious, I find that I cannot hurry. The beauty of the place drags at my feet; I stop and stare as wide-eyed as a child at yellow-flowering bushes taller than I am, at dense beds of delicate purple flowers, at the black trees with their wide, white-clothed branches. Although my knowledge of herbs is extensive, I know almost nothing about ornamental flowers—Malkar scoffed at them as toys for the bourgeoisie—and my ignorance hurts me here, where I want to call all the myriad beauties by name.

And when the Sunling finds me, lost in contemplation of a bed of rioting trumpet-shaped, flounced flowers—brilliantly magenta and scarlet and name-red, and no more than two inches long—I ask him before I can think, "What are they called?"

His eyes crinkle at the corners with his smile, and he says, "Snapdragons."

He is as tall as I am; his hair is brilliant golden red, graying at the temples. His eyes are yellow, just as one of my eyes is yellow, and the only signs of age in his face are the crow's-feet around his eyes. I realize I am staring and look away, my face heating.

"Who are you?" he asks; his voice is gentle, and I know he is afraid that he will scare me away. "Why are you walking in this dream of our garden? What has happened to you?"

I cannot answer any of those questions. I say, in a strangled, unhappy whisper, "My name is Felix."

"You are a wizard," he says, coming near. "And our blood must run in your veins, or you would never have found this dream at all."

"Keeper always said I was a changeling child."

"A what?"

I do not know how to explain. I look up, and he says quickly, "It doesn't matter."

He touches my forehead lightly; I cannot help flinching. He steps back at once. He says, "You have been grievously hurt. How has this happened?"

Even in my dreams, the compulsion sinks its iron claws into me. I feel the gardens starting to shred around me and drop to my knees, digging my fingers into the cool, moist heft of the grass. The dream steadies.

"I am sorry," the Sunling says. "I did not mean to upset you. I would like to help."

"No one can help me. I am… I am mad."

"You are damaged," he corrects me briskly. "Damage can be mended."

"Damaged."

"We are healers. We could help you. Where are you?"

But before I can answer him, Horn Gate rears up in the middle of the snapdragons and swallows me. I am back in the dream city, but it has tilted, heaving me up in a parody of its real geography, and I am sliding south, being dragged through the Septad Gate, falling into the swamp, falling into the real world.

I woke with my cheek stinging and knew I had been slapped awake. I blinked my eyes frantically into focus and saw Brother Lilburn leaning over me. Brother Lilburn never smiled, and his cold pale eyes never lit, but we all knew he enjoyed his work.

I saw his eyes record the fact that I was awake. He said, his voice calm and level and too rational to be human, "Brother Torquil tells me that you have been shirking."

I stared at him, my heart already pounding nastily, and knew I had gotten the name of the burning flowers.

Mildmay

I'd hated the Dogs for indictions, been brought up hating them, and come to hate them on my own account, but I'd never hated them like I did that night the way they came down on Margot's Badgers like they were full-grown men instead of just kids. They were after me—I could hear them shouting my name—but they weren't giving the Badgers no time to give me up. I was just an excuse, a reason they could give if anybody asked 'em why they were killing kids. We had to get Mildmay the Fox, they could say. Those damn kids were harboring him. And nobody'd ask. Nobody cared about kids in packs. Nobody was going to ask ugly questions about how they ended up dead. If I'd thought it would have helped, I would've given myself up. But that wasn't going to stop them, and I knew, I could feel it all the way down, that I was dead the instant any of them could catch me long enough to cut my throat. Three or four of them tried. At least one of them ended up dead for it. Considering I'd seen him brain a little girl with his sword hilt—and she was dead, no question about it—I couldn't be sorry.

Kids ran. Kids got arrested. Kids got killed. I got out of the fighting entirely, got up on the rainwater cistern and just laid low. And these Dogs—I got glimpses of their uniforms, here and there—these weren't the smart ones, the inspectors, the guys who'd been sitting in my front room sneering at my furniture. These were the rank and file, the flatfeet. All they wanted was to be pointed at a target and told they could do anything they liked to get it. They didn't have the brains to
look
for anybody. So when there was nobody in sight but them and the kids they'd arrested and the kids they'd killed… they left. Back to the Kennel with those frightened, sobbing, angry kids.

I came down off the cistern. Slowly. Half the reason they hadn't thought to look there was because it didn't seem like the sort of place a person could get himself. And if you ain't been a cat burglar, you don't ever look at things with the right kind of eyes. But it was a tricky bastard. By the time I got down and could look around again, there were two more people on the roof: Carmody and Margot. They were yelling at each other.

"You
what
?"

"He wasn't one of us," Carmody said. "And we
need
the gorgons, Margot. You know how the roof's leaking."

Oh, Kethe, I thought, and stopped where I was. I didn't want to g any closer to this.

"What the fuck does that matter? Even you ain't stupid enough t think this was worth it."

"They weren't supposed to raid," he said, sort of sullen and puzzled at once, like he didn't see how his clever plan had got away from him, and he didn't see why she was pissed at
him
when it wasn't his fuck-up.

"Fuck me, Carmody, did you really think they'd just come knock and say, 'Pretty-please will you hand over Mildmay the Fox now?'"

His face said, yeah, that was about what he'd thought.

"You told them how to find us."

"I couldn't take him alone. They said they'd be backup."

"Get away from me," she said through her teeth. She actually took a step back, like she thought he might be contagious.

"Margot—"

"Get
away
from me!" She looked away from him and said, her voice tight with what might've been tears or fury or fear or, Kethe knows, all three, "If you go right now and you
run
, you might make it out of the city before the other packs catch up with you."

"But, Margot, you don't—"

"Didn't you hear me? I can't kill you myself, though all the saints know you deserve it, but right now, Carmody, I'm probably the only person in the Lower City who'd even think twice. Run, you stupid son of a bitch!"

Finally, finally, he got it. His face changed. For the first time, it wasn't sullen, wasn't scowling. He looked around, saw me. He went a dirty green color with fear, backed away two steps, then turned and bolted. He was running like Cade-Cholera's hounds were on his heels, but I knew he'd be lucky if that was the worst that found him.

Margot folded up slowly, until she was sitting on her heels. Stiffly, she was run by clockwork, she reached over to the nearest of the dead bodies, checking for a pulse, for the heat of breath against her fingers. There weren't none to find, not with a great gaping slash all through the chest like that. One of her hands kind of wandered up to touch the dead child's forehead.

Other books

The Boy Who Cried Horse by Terry Deary

Greene's Riches (A Billionaire Romance - Vol. 1) by Vela, Ana

Surrender by Brenda Joyce

Magnificent Joe by James Wheatley

The Eye of the Abyss by Marshall Browne

Stotan! by Chris Crutcher

Beginnings (Brady Trilogy) by Krpekyan, Aneta

Turtleface and Beyond by Arthur Bradford

Dealing Flesh by Birgit Waldschmidt

Muchacho by Louanne Johnson