Fugitives of Chaos Page 7

  I told myself I was older than this; too mature for jealousy. I did not believe myself, however. Myself knows a bald-faced lie when she hears it.

  Vanity saw the look on my face. "What's wrong?" She looked sidelong at Victor and Lilac. From the blank look on her face, I could tell she was not seeing what I was.

  I saw a young demigod, pure and handsome, and an oozy, giggling little presumptuous harlot touching him with her monkey-paws. I saw something sacred being blasphemed. I saw degradation. Grendel had spoken of his feeling that he dare not touch me for fear of leaving a dirty fingerprint. I did not know what he meant, then. I knew now.

  5.

  And I saw, as if my life flashed before my eyes, pictures of Victor as he was now, as he had been last year, five years ago, ten. Victor was brave the way a fish is wet; it was so much a part of him that he was unaware of it. He was unable to imagine living any other way. As far back as I could remember, he had been the leader, the strong one, and the one who never doubted, never gave up hope, never knew fear.

  He never cried, even as a child.

  He was the one, back when we were small children, when we were Primus and Secunda, who held my hand and told me the secret, the secret too enormous and wonderful to be true.

  He told me that this world was not our home; that these people were not our people; that our real parents were still alive; that somewhere, someday in the shining future, we all would escape, and find the place where we were meant to be. Someday, we would find our home. Someday, we would be happy.

  We had been sitting on the brink of the Kissing Well when he had told me that, looking out over the sea.

  It was raining, rain coming down in silver sheets, beating the grass into mud, and the little peaked roof of the well, like a witch's hat, was drumming with rain, and the noise echoed from the well.

  I had been crying about something. I do not recall what. Quentin being given the strap because he would not eat meat, perhaps, or Tertia (as Vanity was called then) being forced to spend the night in another room, because we whispered too much at night.

  Primus took my hand and told me the secret. And I put my head on his shoulder, because it was so strong. I stopped crying, because Primus was there.

  And I thought he meant we would be happy together. I thought he meant we would make a home together.

  I suppose I had the vague idea that him and me, the older ones, would be taking care of the three little kids. Together, a family. Us.

  Husband and wife.

  6.

  When he picked his name, I thought he was picking it for me: Victor Invictus, Victor the Unconquerable, Mr. Triumph. It was a promise that we would prevail, a promise that we, together, would overcome our enemies. When I picked my name, I thought about how good "Amelia Triumph" sounded, and I thought he had selected his name with an ear to how mine would sound alongside.

  And, as he spent every day with me, every afternoon, every hour, I knew that we were the ones meant for each other. We were the special people, the Uranians, the children of Chaos. Everyone else was the enemy. Even Vanity might not be fertile with him. I was the one, the only one.

  And it took only one lipstick-smudged smile from Lily Lilac, daughter of a fish cannery man, to show me I was not the one. I was not anything.

  7.

  Vanity steered me by the elbow over to the punch bowl and got me a ladleful of eggnog. I think she sneaked me a cup from the adults' bowl; it tasted bitter and filled my head with a warm lightness. I coughed, and she patted my back.

  Boggin must have noticed something, for his eyes traveled between where I gagged on a stolen drink and where Victor was arm in arm with a girl propriety would forbid him to be alone with, for he cleared his throat and said with gentle firmness to our host, "Why, Mr. Lilac, I fear my charges may be growing somewhat beyond control, perhaps a bit too, ah, jolly, there is the right word, too jolly, even in a season as holy as this one. I must wish you a most Merry Christmas, sir, and the happiest of New Years, and we must be on our way. Long walk back through the snow!"

  Boggin smiled and Mr. Lilac shivered.

  8.

  It was a two-mile hike back; neither the longest walk, nor the coldest, but I thought it the dreariest of my life. Mrs. Wren had been given a ride back in the new car Mr. Lilac was so proud of. The rest of us walked, following the bobbing light of Miss Daw's electric torch.

  I will not bore you by reciting my circling thoughts. If you have ever had your heart broken and your dearest hopes betrayed, you know. If not, you no doubt imagine you would handle the matter with a stiffer upper lip than poor Amelia Windrose. For all I know, you might very well handle it better than me.

  I doubt you could handle it worse. At least I did not cry out loud, and the cold helped me keep all expression from my face.

  The line of us spread out a bit as we marched.

  I suppose, as the fearless leader of a bold band of escape artists, I should have been examining the situation for possible escape routes. I did notice Colin glancing at the deserted woods left and right and looking at me impatiently, as if I were any moment about to give the signal to club Boggin over the head with a rock and skip away laughing over the snowy hillocks. Colin may have somehow sensed what he did not consciously remember: that Mrs. Wren was the one who countered his power, and she was absent. But I had had bad experiences braining Bog-gin, and I was in no mood to skip.

  Once only, Vanity tried to cheer me up. She put her hand on my arm and leaned close to whisper. Her breath made a white plume in the cold night air. "You can't have ever been serious about Victor! Not in that way. He thinks of us as his sisters. His little sisters. Can't you tell?"

  This was not exactly what I wanted to hear. I shrugged her off my arm without answering, and trudged onward, watching my boots make one mushy step after another in the gloomy snow.

  I saw the lights of the main house in the distance, rising above the stony walls that paralleled the road, when Victor fell into step behind me. He said only, "Done."

  I turned my head to glance at him, but he had already slowed his gait, and so was a pace or two behind me.

  Opening one of my higher senses, I saw something in his coat pocket; a slim plastic case with earphones and control buttons, one door for the battery, the other for the discs. It was a compact disc player.

  1.

  I lay awake that night, watching the stars moving through the northern window. Charles' Wain circled the polestar like a cycle, moving against the little etched lines and dots of the star-dial Victor had made for us. The Septen-trion, they called those stars in ancient days, and they said the wheel they made, which neither rose nor set, was the Table Round which Arthur kept in heaven, till the time, in England's hour of need, when he and the sleeping champions shall wake from where they slumber in Avalon.

  I recited their names to myself as they turned, the seven who never set: Dubhe, Merak, Phecda, Megrez, Mizar, Alkaid, and Alioth.

  No names in Greek or Latin. They come from a time when the Arab astronomers, sitting by starlight atop minarets tall above the hushed desert, counted and watched the stars, noting them with an advanced mathematics, of which the West knew nothing, perhaps with the De Caelo of Aristotle or the Almagest of Ptolemy open on their laps. Eternal names, written in the sky, to remind the proud Western peoples, and perhaps those in the East as well, that no victory, no supremacy, endures.

  Nothing lasts forever. But when you are waiting for hours to pass, waiting for the stars to turn, everything seems to.

  Vanity (snuggled up in my bed, for warmth) I had hoped would keep me awake, talking. But she did not know tonight was the night, and I dared not tell her.

  Also, she was not kept in doubt, tormented by hopes, and by fears that those hopes were false. Victor had only kissed that horrible Lilac girl to get her disc player, right? He didn't really like her. But on the other hand, what kind of coldhearted cad would toy with a girl like that? I knew how she would feel if she learned he had played her f
alse; it was how I felt now.

  Vanity slept soundly, little sighs from pleasant dreams escaping her soft lips.

  I also thought of things I might have done, or done better. I did not know for sure that Mrs. Wren was curled up around a bottle of booze, singing Christmas carols, and love songs popular fifty years ago, while she huddled beneath three quilt blankets in her rocking chair, rocking herself to sleep and oblivion. I wished I had been able to get a bottle of something strong into her hands.

  I did not know whether Miss Daw, seeing us all, plain as paper cutouts on a chessboard, move and leave our rooms, would turn in the alarm. I wished I had spoken to her again, to stiffen her resolve, if not to betray Boggin, then, at least, not to aid him.

  I was not sure where Grendel Glum was tonight. I wished I had made a point of checking. I could have spoken to Lelaps the dog, who seemed friendly, and arranged some sort of signal-bark when his master slept.

  And I wished I had checked more clearly which windows were where. Through the wall, through my higher senses, I could see a splash of light from the window of another building reflected from a snowy oak tree. But the building itself was too far away (through the murk and heaviness of higher space) for me to see whose window it was. Was Boggin up late? Was ap Cymru?

  At one o'clock, the light was still on. It might have been the porch light I was seeing.

  At two o'clock, it was still on. I was not willing to wait longer. Boggin, no matter how fine his hearing, no matter what alarms and charms of watching he had on us, still must sleep. Two in the morning on Christmas Day was one time he certainly must be asleep, unless he was still trimming the tree, which I doubt.

  I shook Vanity by the shoulder to wake her. She mumbled and tried to turn over. I shook her more and whispered in her ear: "Merry Christmas! Today is the day! The day we escape and get away!"

  She raised her sleepy head, her red hair all tousled, her sleepy eyes half-lidded. "Sun's not up yet…" And she flopped back down onto the pillow.

  I yanked the covers off her, exposing her to the cold air. She curled up slightly, sticking her bottom in the air, but pouted and did not open her eyes or stir.

  I then saw what the appeal was for Boggin and Colin and so on. I put one hand over her mouth so she wouldn't yelp, and swatted her bottom with the other.

  She jumped, and tried to bite my hand, but did not make noise beyond a shrill mmph through her nose. It makes you feel like you're in charge, when you can spank someone.

  I hissed, "It's time! Time! D-Day! Zero hour!"

  In my mind's eye, I pictured a stopwatch beginning to tick. I had spoken the words aloud. If there was a mechanism, a spirit or a spell listening to us, it had heard. It was only a matter of time till pursuit came.

  "You didn't have to hit me! This leader stuff has gone to your head, Melly."

  "By dawn we'll be aboard your silver boat. By dusk we'll be anywhere in the world we like! Will you get up?"

  "Okay, I'm up. I'm up! But I still say you've gone mad with power."

  "I'll retire in an hour, and go join Cincinnatus on his farm, okay? I want you to touch the door and see if you can feel anything odd about it."

  "You woke me up to feel a door?" But she padded over to the dark iron-bound panels.

  "Well?"

  "I feel something!"

  "What?"

  "The door is really damn cold, Amelia."

  "Come on! Be serious!"

  "What if I don't feel serious?"

  "Dictatrix Amelia knows how to deal with recalcitrant subjects. I'll get Colin to spank you."

  "Hmm. I might like that."

  "Vanity! You like Quentin!"

  "Quentin the Quiet… ? Mr. Ignore-me, you mean. I'd like him fine if he'd grow up and do something.

  He's never done anything like the act Colin pulled in church. Colin is annoying, but that took guts." Vanity closed her eyes and listened at the door.

  I thought to myself that it was true. No matter what they had erased out of Colin's conscious mind, a certain strength of character was present that had not been there before. He no longer feared them. For a grown man, the penalties that can be inflicted on a boy at school are not really that frightening.

  But it seemed grotesquely unfair. Quentin had faced the Lamia, and even under threat of immediate and bloody death, he had not flinched. He did not remember that trial; did that mean he lost the virtue that harsh tempering had given him? Or was it merely hidden, quietly beneath his mild surface, where Vanity did not see?

  Vanity opened her eyes. "There is something watching the door. It doesn't blink or get distracted, so it is not a living thing. It doesn't listen when we talk, so it is deaf, or looking through a camera, or something.

  It is also paying attention to you, but sort of in a remote way. It is checking your location."

  Checking my location. I did not like the sound of that.

  I said, "It's a promise I made Boggin. I said he would not regret leaving my door unlocked, so I could use the bathroom."

  She put her hand on the door again. "But the door is locked. I get that not-this-way feeling."

  I blinked. "What 'not-this-way' feeling? What is a 'not-this-way' feeling?"

  Vanity said, "I thought everyone got them. In the Gothic romances they do. You know when the heroine is the only one awake at night, and she is only wearing a filmy, flimsy nightshirt, and she is standing at the top of a dark, deserted stair, which leads into the one cellar her mysterious husband warned her not to go into, and all she has is one stub of a candle that is sure to go out? She puts her foot on the top stair, and all of a sudden she shivers… ? You know. Not this way."

  I pointed to the wall beneath the seventh goblin face. "Try over there."

  She did. Vanity walked over and pressed her cheek against the stones. Her eyes popped open. "Hey.

  This way. But it's a brick wall."

  "Secret passage. Don't you read the Gothics?"

  And I handed her the candle snuffer and told her about the switch in the mouth of the goblin on the wall.

  Vanity poked the hook into the wall ornament. It clicked. The panel in the wall slid open. "Oh my gosh!"

  exclaimed Vanity. "That is sooo cool! How did you find out about this?"

  "You found it."

  "Gosh!" she said, shaking her head in delight. "I can't wait to get my memory back. It sounds like I am a really cool person."

  2.

  We dressed quickly. The fabric of our blouses and slacks was ice-cold from the drawer. I had not thought of Vanity's trick of sleeping with our clothes in the bed; even if I had, I might not have done it, for fear of alerting the watchers to our plans. In a minute or two, we were in the tunnels, crawling. I had her go first, since she was the one (I thought) who might be bending time and space to make these corridors possible. I also wanted her to give me a signal if she got the not-this-way feeling, or the being-watched feeling.

  But this time, I was looking out through the walls at the surrounding rooms. I was expecting to see the space-time sharply curved in the fourth dimension, perhaps in a toroid.

  3.

  Some of the walls had the rooms and chambers of the Manor House behind them, much as you'd expect.

  But other walls had strange things behind them. Strange beyond description.

  Odd things. Spiderwebs with mushrooms growing under them; tiny men armed with stings from bees and wearing acorn caps for helmets; grinning gnome faces hanging in midair who winked at me; women made of smoke, whose hair streamed in swirls behind them, looking over their shoulders as I passed.

  Other walls had forests beyond them, or starry night skies of alien constellations, mountains with carved faces rising from the sea, or fields of flowers luminous with moths and fireflies. Here were windowless domed houses, inhabited by squat, sluglike creatures, blind and slow, who oozed gelatinously across a landscape of gray ash and silent craters of black oil. There were forests thick with hanging orchids, flowers larger than parasols, and troops
of albino elephants trooping through the moss.

  I saw squat trolls dancing waltzes with fairy maidens with wings of ice; I saw myself and Colin and Quentin, dressed as lords and ladies, crowned with flowers and candles, riding winged horses; I saw a city of basalt towers, above which coffins as large as church steeples loomed, as if a race of pygmies had erected their town at the feet of monuments in the mausoleum for giants. I saw a dark place from which the sound of bones rustling against bones issued, and horror, and fear, and panic seeped from that darkness like a colorless light.

  I saw a Lady, huge and very fair, like a mother might seem when seen from a child's eye. Her eyes were kind and her hands were soft. To either side of her sat a metal hound, one of silver and one of gold.

  I saw a man with red hair; he was very thick through the chest and broad at the shoulder, and a sly half-smile played at the corner of his mouth. He was dressed in beggar's rags, but beneath the rags came a glint of rich armor, such as a warrior-prince might wear. In his hands was a bow made of rhino horn.

  Dreams. I was seeing Vanity's dreams. And what I saw was affecting me: Fear and longing, touches, soft sounds, memories, were floating through my brain.

  I closed two or three of my higher senses and just kept an eye on Vanity. I could not see her, but she was my guide, and she was the person I needed most in all the world, at the moment. In my usefulness-detector, she glowed like a star.

  4.

  There was no reason not to talk while we crawled.

  I whispered, "Do you actually like Colin?"

  She said, "He's a fathead. I might like the man he'll grow up into. If he loses his baby-fat-headed-ness."

  "When did you stop liking Quentin?"

  "I am just getting tired of waiting for him to make up his mind. There is such a thing as too quiet, you know. What has he ever done?"