Beneath Ceaseless Skies #73 Read online

  Her hands moved as smoothly as if they belonged to someone else. One quick slice, and she had opened her palm again; as the blood welled up, she held out her hand and said, “Black bull of the north, come to my blood!”

  Hoofbeats drummed in her ears.

  Launrad sighed. “He won’t ever turn against me—”

  The ballroom was gone. She was back in the darkness, but this time in the very far distance—she knew it was the north—faint light glimmered at the horizon. The hoofbeats pounded closer, jarring her bones, but she still couldn’t see him—

  Until his breath burned along the back of her neck. Suddenly Zéphine felt very small and unworthy and afraid. But this was the Bull, who granted wishes even to people who didn’t deserve or mean them.

  “Lord of the north,” she whispered. “Father of my house. Grant my wish.” She turned then, and saw the great hulk of its body, the two burning red eyes whose fire concealed infinite depths. The air shivered out of her lungs, but she drew another breath and said, “Take my heart for your price.” All her impure heart. All her desires, foolish and hateful and kind alike. All her hopes and hates and fears. “Take it and give me in return a heart that is pure enough for the unicorns.”

  For one heartbeat the eyes stared at her; then the darker void of his mouth yawned open and rushed down, swallowing her—in the belly of the Bull, everything was fire, burning and devouring—

  She heard a noise that was something like an earthquake and something like a chuckle, and she knew that it meant, Granted.

  Then la Demoiselle la Plus Pure opened her undefiled eyes and gazed at the enemy of her country. She curved her hands in the gesture used by every princess and queen since Ysonde, and she whirled into the maiden dance. Around her men shouted and drew their swords, but they didn’t matter; they were nothing, shadows, as the walls grew filmy and vague and the ever-living unicorns walked out. She remembered that she had once feared these creatures, but as they nuzzled at her palms and whinnied, the soft noises tearing at her throat with longing, she could hardly imagine why.

  Among the glimmering crowd, she could faintly make out human faces—slender, ghostly girls, naked and unashamed, clinging to the backs of unicorns, their faces half-buried in their manes. She remembered one part of her purpose and she held out a hand, calling, “Marie!” There was no response, so she called again, “Marie!” and a third time, “I call on my sister Marie!” Still nobody answered—one girl blinked at her with puzzled eyes, and she recognized her.

  The Demoiselle grabbed her wrists and pulled her off the unicorn. “Marie,” she said. “You are my sister. Remember.”

  The girl blinked slowly again. “Yes,” she said. “I remember you. Are you happy now?”

  That question didn’t have any meaning, so she ignored it and said, “You are a princess. Do you remember that too?”

  Marie’s hair swirled in the still air, like a handful of confused thoughts. “...yes.”

  She cupped her sister’s face in her hands. “If you could be happy here... would you protect us?”

  Suddenly Marie smiled, looking immeasurably human. “You know what I always wanted. All of it. Of course I will.”

  The Demoiselle let go of her and looked at the unicorns.

  The unicorns gazed back, and knew themselves in her eyes. And she finally understood them. She understood that they needed a demoiselle: a creature they could recognize, yet who was other. This need had driven them to princess after princess, ever since Ysonde first gazed on them and woke them; it drove them to devour the unicorn brides. She understood why they demanded the pure in heart: because, being creatures that did not know choice, they could only recognize someone for whom need and desire had fused into absolute certainty.

  And she understood the strictures of Retrouvailles. The people had been desperate for princesses pure enough to dance before the unicorns. So they had created the walls and the spells and traditions to ensure that each princess would grow up unable to imagine any choice or outcome besides her maiden dance. Only in this way could they guarantee that every princess would be pure. But they had also guaranteed that no princess could ever change anything.

  Until one weak and foolish girl had ripped out her heart.

  “Listen,” she said, for she was still just human enough that she needed to speak. “I am giving you a new covenant. You will heal the Kyrlander prince. You will destroy the Kyrlander king and rout his men. And then—” her fingers twined with her sister’s “—you will permit this one to remember her name, and she will be your pure-eyed demoiselle, to guide you and reflect you as you guard our country.”

  The unicorns looked into her heart and they believed her.

  * * *

  She turned away from the light of the unicorns and walked back towards the clumsy human forms. One of them was the Kyrlander prince she had determined to save. On either side of her, the unicorns streamed away to kill. Someone screamed, but it was not anyone she meant to protect and so she ignored the sound.

  One unicorn followed at her back, and when she knelt by the Idrask’s side, it leaned over her shoulder and gently tipped its horn against his wound. Light glimmered across the blood; he drew a shallow breath, then a stronger one. He opened his eyes. For one moment the light of the unicorn was reflected in them, and she smiled at the gleam, but he blinked and it was gone.

  “Zéphine?” he breathed, sitting up.

  “Our people are safe,” she said.

  “Our people,” he repeated blankly. He pressed a hand to his middle, as if still unable to believe he was healed.

  “The unicorns have seen you and accepted you,” she explained. “That makes you my king, and my people are your people. I will help you protect them.”

  Around her, the gleaming forms of the unicorns began to fade, and she turned to watch them slide back into the shadows. Her eyes stung and watered with the need to follow them, but she knew she would dance with them every full moon; once Idrask had died of old age and there was another princess for her people, she could persuade them to devour her.

  Idrask touched her face. “Zéphine, are you all right?” His palm was sticky with blood.

  “I told you. Our people are safe. You are alive. No more princesses will be sacrificed.” She thought maybe her tears had worried him, so she smiled. “What more could I desire?”

  His mouth pressed into a line. “Right.”

  There was no more time to speak, because the room was full of clamor. A few of the Kyrlander guards had survived, and many of the Retrouvées had broken out of where they were kept and come searching for the cause of the disturbance.

  The Reine-Licorne stood, pulling up Idrask with her, and went to tend her people.

  * * *

  She was crowned three days later: the first Reine-Licorne in nine hundred years to rule in her own right, with Idrask Yfir-konungr as her consort-ally.

  For the first month she was very busy, and there was little time to reflect. Sometimes she dreamed of her sister begging her to wake up. Though Idrask often smiled at her, sometimes she woke in the night and found he had been weeping into her hair. She understood why. The Bull had taken none of her understanding, so the facts were very clear to her. But they were also distant, like stars on a cold night. To some degree, she could regret causing Idrask pain, because she was determined to protect him. But even that was only a wisp of a sorrow that burnt away when she looked into sunlight and saw a unicorn glimmer back.

  She was the Reine-Licorne. Her duty was her delight, and she desired nothing but the safety of her people. That Idrask could not accept this was unfortunate, but it was not her concern.

  One month after Launrad’s defeat, the moon was full and it was time for her to dance before the unicorns again. She did not need to, now that Marie rode with the unicorns and knew her own name, but—she explained to Idrask—she wanted to. It would have been more accurate to say that she was Reine-Licorne, and therefore she was one who danced, but the word “want” made
him quiet and stare at her for a few moments. Then he kissed her fiercely and let her go without protest.

  She went to the Great Dome and knelt in the moonlight. As the unicorns began their slow, inexorable stride out of the shadows, she rose and danced.

  * * *

  Zéphine woke on the floor of the Great Dome. She stared lazily up at the curve of the dome, painted like a night sky with gold-and-silver rays coming out of the eye in the center, and wished that Idrask was here with her.

  She sat bolt upright. She wished. She was full of desires and hunger and fear.

  There was only one power that could have given her old heart back again.

  In a moment she was running out of the Great Dome, past the ceremonial guards, back to the Royal Chambers—and there was the royal physician at the door, pale-faced and stammering that the Consort had made them swear she was not to be disturbed—

  She pushed past him without a word. Idrask lay still on the bed, and for one moment her heart felt like it had stopped. Then she saw the bloody bandage over his eyes and remembered that no one bandaged a dead man. She saw his chest rise and fall, and she felt dizzy with relief.

  Then she realized what that bandage must cover.

  Zéphine stalked to the edge of the bed. “How could you?”

  The edge of his mouth curved up. “They weren’t nearly as enchanting as yours. Didn’t need them anyway.”

  “I told you not to summon the Bull.”

  “I told you not to become that pure.”

  She supposed he was right, so she sat beside him on the bed and silently took his hand. His fingers tightened around hers.

  “I’m not sorry,” she said.

  “I know. I’m not either.”

  She closed her eyes with a sigh. She was happy to be restored: to be alive and holding his hand. But part of her keened at the memory of the unicorns, and the thought that she might never dance with them again.

  When she opened her eyes, though, she saw a unicorn gazing at her through the garden window. It was not so crisp and blindingly real as she remembered; it seemed to have shaped itself out of the pale morning light and the slanted shadows between the leaves of the rose-bushes. When she blinked at it in surprise, it blinked back in silent recognition, then faded.

  To restore a heart was not to make it forget. Perhaps there were some desires that could be chosen, after all.

  If she tried, she could forget every desire besides the unicorns again. If she tried, she could lose the sight of them once more. If she tried very hard, she thought that she could even learn to both love her husband and protect him.

  Idrask’s breathing had evened out into sleep again. Zéphine sat by his side and waited for him to wake.

  Copyright © 2011 Rosamund Hodge

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  Rosamund Hodge is a graduate of Oxford and Viable Paradise. She lives in Seattle, Washington. Her story “More Full of Weeping Than You Can Understand” appeared in BCS #53. Visit her online at www.rosamundhodge.net.

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  WALLS OF PAPER, SOFT AS SKIN

  by Adam Callaway

  Tomai awoke to whispers. Hundreds of whispers. All whispering at once. A whirlwind of soft sound. Whispers in a dozen different languages. On a thousand subjects. Whispers of dark demands. Of heady passions. Of dread and hope. Whispers of anguish and of ecstasy. Whispers so inconsequential as to be forgotten the moment they were whispered. Tomai rolled over and went back to sleep.

  * * *

  He awoke to silence. Silence, and the sound of Ars Lacuna waking up. Autocarriages growled. Book vendors hawked hardcovers. The city was as it always was, and so was he.

  Tomai sat on the edge of his bed. His apartment was small. Ten feet on a side. No windows. Layers of parchment enclosed the room. Walls yellowed and tearing. Ceiling shedding like a lizard. Floor worn through.

  Opposite his bead was a door. Next to the door was a wash basin. Above the wash basin was a cracked mirror.

  A photo hung from one corner. The photo held a girl. Skin the color of hazelnuts. Purple birthmark staining her left cheek. A circle of dark rouge. She was smiling. Tomai stared.

  The sun moved, and he grunted. A tall pile of blank pages served as a bed stand. Tomai grabbed a cigarette from the bed stand. He put the paper roll in his mouth. He used his tongue to roll it around. Across his upper lip. From one side of his mouth to the other. Tomai would do this until the cigarette disintegrated. It was what he did every day.

  He opened the door. A small pail of water sat in front of him. Small pails of water sat in front of every door. In every hallway. On every level. He grabbed the pail and washed himself in the basin. Spat out the bitter tobacco grit.

  He only had one shirt. One pair of pants. No shoes. He brushed his hand along one wall. The parchment was soft with age. He closed the door, walked down the hall, down the stairs, and into the street.

  Parchment Run was four blocks away. Nothing to see in between but beggars. Nothing to hear but rapids running. And logs thunking. And blades screeching.

  The pole workers shared a common room, a tent, outside of the pulping section of the Run. Poles twenty feet long. Made of a variety of trees. They took up one wall. Misshaped boxes for valuables took up another. They were always empty.

  Tomai walked in through a flap.

  “Tomai. Did you hear Tomai? An entire debarking team swam into the termite’s jaws. On purpose Tomai!” Kork said pulling at Tomai’s frayed shirt. Kork stood waist high on his tiptoes.

  “I can believe it,” Tomai said. He looked for a pine or birch pole.

  “Really Tomai? I can’t. Debarkers have sickle bone arms. They can swim better than any trout Tomai! Who’d want to kill themselves with features like that Tomai?” Kork made wild hand gestures.

  “I can believe it.”

  “Even if they decided, ‘Okay, let’s do this girls,’ they could have come up with a better way. The autoblades would have made short work of them. The paper sizers down the way too. But being hacked up and digested by a bug the size of a city block though! Really Tomai? Can you believe it Tomai?”

  Tomai spotted a curved pine pole under a stack of oak. He grabbed it.

  “I can believe it.”

  Kork squinted. “I’m not talking to you anymore today.”

  Tomai dragged his pole through the inside flap. Into Parchment Run. Where the river exchanged a canopy of sky for corrugated tin. Dozens of pole workers were straightening sawn, debarked logs to enter the jaws of the bug. He took an open spot.

  “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it,” Kork muttered next to him. Kork’s pole was special. The only reserved pole. It was thin. Very thin.

  Hours passed. Tomai didn’t miss a log. Kork didn’t miss a log. Kork didn’t miss a moment to speak. Tomai didn’t miss his mind.

  Above the corrugated tin that enclosed the Run, the day fled. Darkness replaced the light that trickled through holes in the tin. Tomai hardly noticed. The lamps were working tonight.

  A woman approached Tomai with a dozen loaves of stale brown bread. She stood between him and Kork, tearing the loaves into chunks and throwing them at the debarkers.

  “Tonight,” she said. “Behind Xerro’s. Bring coin.”

  The woman walked back the way she came. Further down the Run. Tomai sighed.

  * * *

  Hours passed. Tomai and Kork dragged their poles into the common room.

  “Want to go get a drink? Bleeding Antons are only a brass a’piece tonight.”

  “No.”

  Kork left without another word. Tomai was thankful. He walked back into the Run.

  Xerro’s was downriver. After the pulpers and shapers and cutters. Before the printers and binders and dealers. It sold stationary.

  Tomai saw the woman from earlier. He knew this woman. She had helped him before. Every time, a different disguise. Always the same smell of resin.

  Ms. Resin was dr
essed as a secretary. A Brothers Publishing House secretary. Floor length gray skirt. White blouse. Auburn hair loose to the shoulder.

  “Coin?” she asked, holding out her hand.

  “Parchment?” he asked, holding out his hand.

  They exchanged items. Tomai gave her two square copper pieces. A month’s wages for a pole worker. She gave him a dozen blank pages.

  “I’m running out of people parchment. There needs to be a new plague. Don’t you miss the brittle pink skinflakes?” Resin disappeared through a tear in the Run’s tin.

  It was dark. Staring down, Tomai couldn’t even make out his bare feet. He tucked the pages under his arm and left.

  The way home was similar to the way there, but different. Two moonbeams instead of two sunbeams. A dead cat. Someone eating it.

  He opened his door with a key he kept on twine around his neck, and bolted it once inside.

  Tomai grabbed a candle and a metal pan from under his mattress. He placed one on the other. With the pages still under his arm, he sat down on the wooden floor, lit the candle, and set it in front of him.

  The pages were blank, and they weren’t. Color gradients shifted across each page, from cream to tarnished gold. Small lines, like paper veins, crossed and recrossed. A watermark stained the third page.

  The watermark was a light purple. Shaped not entirely unlike a circle.

  Tomai shook. “My girl,” he said. “My beautiful girl.”

  Copyright © 2011 Adam Callaway

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  Adam Callaway is a freelance baker, avid ping ponger, transdimensional neosurrealist, and a dedicated writer. He lives in Superior, Wisconsin, where summer is blissfully short and mild, with his wife and two dogs. He has had stories published in AE and Flurb. He can be found lurking at http://adamcallaway.blogspot.com.

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