Auraria: A Novel

by Tim Westover

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  On the day of the gala, while cooks loaded loaf after loaf into the ever-hungry oven, and employees set the tables, and drapers hung the cloths, and the carpenters laid the stage, and banjos and dulcimers tuned themselves, and animate spools made sure their threads were tangle-free, Holtzclaw slipped away to collect Ms. Rathbun. He put on his costume for the gala, which he thought would be a more gallant way to meet her. No one else was in costume yet; Holtzclaw felt, briefly, special.

  When he climbed aboard, he did not take any love-apples with him, though the bush was drooping with fruit. The overplump red globes strained at their skin; one had burst into a mess of juice. Holtzclaw kicked it into the lake before the other love-apples started to complain.

  The Maiden of the Lake still only had one and a half funnels. The covering to the common area was clouded over with moisture, inside and out. A fuzzy verdancy bloomed in the corners of the dining room. But this mattered less now. There would be time enough for these little concerns, because the Queen of the Mountains was at full capacity, and the gala would win over even the bleakest hearts to the charms of Auraria. After the Queen of the Mountains was flush with tourists’ cash and the dam made rock-solid, there would be an infinite time for Holtzclaw and Ms. Rathbun to complete their project and make it perfect in every detail.

  Lizzie Rathbun reposed at the top of the grand staircase, waiting for him. She wore a yellow summer dress and a wide-brimmed hat. Beside her was an overstuffed canvas sack.

  “It’s time, Lizzie!” called Holtzclaw. “You’re not in your costume!” He gestured with exaggerated hands at her modest clothing and at his elaborate dress.

  “Holtzclaw, you look a fool,” said Ms. Rathbun. “What are you wearing?”

  “It’s a fancy dress gala,” said Holtzclaw. “Everyone will look a fool.”

  “Yes, but there are costumes that highlight foolishness and costumes that highlight elegance. One can be a princess or a queen or other regal figure, or one can be a clown or a … whatever you are.”

  “I’m a pharaoh. One of the oldest and noblest monarchs.”

  “They wore bedsheets and headdresses?”

  “It was the best I could manage,” said Holtzclaw. “I rather like it.”

  “You didn’t have to wear it here,” said Ms. Rathbun.

  “Well, what is your costume? Is it in your bag? Let me get it for you.”

  Ms. Rathbun hefted the bag over her shoulder and angled her body away from Holtzclaw. “I can manage. I won’t wear my costume between here and the hotel. It’s too delicate. I’ll want a few minutes to sort myself when we get back to land. Besides, I don’t want to be the first partygoer to arrive in the empty room. There’s no fashion in it.”

  “There’s a dressing room ready for you,” said Holtzclaw. “You can choose your moment to make your arrival. It is all as you would like.”

  “I am not used to such cheer out of you,” said Ms. Rathbun. “It’s wearisome.”

  “I have no reason to be sad.” Holtzclaw beamed as broadly as Amenhotep III on the box of Pharaoh’s Flour.

  As Ms. Rathbun descended the gangway, slumping under the weight of the bag she carried, she lost her footing. Holtzclaw arrested her fall, indecorously and instinctively grabbing at her waist, but that only served to put him in jeopardy as well. The heavy bag swung backward like a pendulum and pulled the pair back onto the plank. They skittered onto land, their feet failing and stumbling beneath them, and then came to rest in the branches of the love-apple bush.

  “You see why I didn’t want to put on my dress too early?” said Ms. Rathbun, extracting herself from a precarious prison of limbs and over-ripe fruit. Ms. Rathbun heaved her cargo onto her back and set off down the path. Holtzclaw hurried to keep up with her but kept throwing backward glances toward their empty ship.

  “She’ll be all right unattended?” said Holtzclaw.

  “If it sinks, it’s insured,” said Ms. Rathbun.

  “Yes, but insurance would not pay if we just abandoned her without a captain or crew. It’s negligent.”

  “Then we’ll say that you went down with the ship, Holtzclaw.”

  •

  Holtzclaw was among the first gala-goers to arrive in the ballroom, and the automatic instruments struck up a jaunty swing. Behind him came a parade of costumes: Swiss girls and Scottish lassies, shepherds and highlanders, fishermen and brides, Ceres, Apollo, sailors, the Spirit of Young America, bumpkins, and enough Morning Stars and Evening Stars to white out the firmament. Holtzclaw’s pharaoh costume was well received, but no one recognized the source—the box of Pharaoh’s Flour. Holtzclaw had tried to make his costume a perfect copy, down to the fold of the loincloth and the pharaoh’s laughing eyes.

  The members of the Billing, Wooing, and Cooing Society, who had donned formal wings and plumed crests, were most distressed. They lamented that they had not issued stricter guidelines regarding costumes. Too many rich guests were dressed rustically as squaws and maids and miners; too many of the Auraria natives were princes, viziers, and courtiers. Dress was meant to distinguish the higher strata of society from the lower, but the gala threw the whole ordered nature into disarray.

  A quadrille was completed with acceptable, if not flawless, timing. Fire-bees on strings orbited a bowl of punch, their green lights blinking in rhythm with the opening strains of a mazurka. Three men and a woman, dressed as descending ranks of spades, from ace through knave, were overtaken by rivals, dressed as hearts, in a human-sized game of faro. A turkey wearing a man’s hat strutted into the center of the dance floor and partnered with a woman who resembled a hatchet with a gleaming blade.

  When Lizzie Rathbun entered the hall as the Queen of the Mountains, Holtzclaw’s pharaonic heart flooded. She was arrayed in gold, the only suitable attire for her chosen theme. Her hat was a series of interlocking rings, polished to a high shine. Her golden hair tumbled below her shoulders in cascades. The dress was a marvel of workmanship, with fine silk interwoven with threads of real gold, so that it flashed as she turned. Holtzclaw caught her hand; she danced a turn with him and then spun away. She entered into the whirl of the waltz, leaving Holtzclaw behind.

  Her every footfall landed on a precise beat as she greeted barons and baronesses in demotic French. She bowed to pashas and princes, dripped disdain onto the squaws and maids and miners. A mass of admirers filled the space around her with flesh and noise. She held a champagne flute against her forearm. Effervescent bubbles tickled at her skin, and her laughter rang like money above the plunk of the automatic banjos.

  At last, Holtzclaw was able to approach her near the concessions table, where the current of people gathered into eddies in front of the sweetest treats.

  “Hello, Lizzie!” he said with as much brightness as he could muster. “You are a charm, my dear. A perfect, rich delight.”

  “Oh, thank you, Holtzclaw. What is it that I can do for you?”

  Holtzclaw leaned closer to her. Perhaps she hadn’t heard him; perhaps she’d misunderstood.

  “Well, I had hoped to have a dance. Or rather, all the dances. We are here together.”

  “That is rather presumptuous, Holtzclaw. I’m flattered, but we haven’t even been properly introduced.”

  “Introduced? What about the Maiden of the Lake!”

  “That is one sort of partnership. What occurs here, in front of all the crowd of the beau monde, is another.”

  “There was an understanding between us,” said Holtzclaw. “I invited you.”

  “You invited all these people. By name.”

  “But I invited you especially, and you accepted. And what about the … and you grasped my hands …”

  Ms. Rathbun laughed. “Why, you can’t expect me to honor such hasty commitments when there is finally some high society here. You’ve brought the life of the old capital into Auraria. Too bad it’s only a one-night engagement.” Between them emerged the round face of a great pasha, grinning from underneath an e
ggplant-colored turnip.

  “What about your dance card?” protested Holtzclaw. “Look at your dance card. You let me sign my name for each of the dances. The quadrille, the molasses boiling …”

  “That’s paperwork. It’s meaningless.”

  Her hand was caught by the silk-gloved paw of the pasha. She let herself be spun away into the sweep of the crowd. In the whirl of faces, Holtzclaw saw that the pasha was Bogan, the old miner who had frequented the Grayson House. Ms. Rathbun had forgotten her own regulars. To see her dancing with a poor miner rather than a rich idler was only a very, very small salve to Holtzclaw’s wound.

  So it had all been a hullaballoo. She’d spun out her wiles when they were alone, to tie his feet to hers and make him dance. And when they were not alone—when she could hope to loop in some grander gentleman who paid even better—she was quick to cut him off. She did not even give him the courtesy of a spectacle, only a quiet laugh and a sweep of her hand.

  She did not care in the least about that floating hotel. Then, neither did Holtzclaw. The heavy folly settled upon him like so much sediment, without the currents of Ms. Rathbun’s motion to keep them in suspension. What an impossible idea that boat was. It was ludicrous to float his hopes on a lake that wasn’t even meant to be here. Of all the places in the world to put one’s trust in water, Auraria was the least predicable. At least Shadburn had built on dry land.

  Maybe Holtzclaw could make a little deal in scrap metal. That would be just enough money to start somewhere else.

  Shadburn clapped a hand on Holtzclaw’s back in silent camaraderie. He was dressed in his sharpest suit, trying to look like an oil man or marquis. But the suit had become ill-fitting over the months, and Shadburn now resembled the worst sort of codfish aristocrat. His pant legs were too short. His cufflinks were tarnished, which proved that they weren’t gold, as Holtzclaw had once thought. Shadburn couldn’t fasten the jacket around his middle, on account of hash browns and mushrooms. It was evident that Shadburn was roaring drunk. The miasma of peach homebrew hung about him.

  “Fabulous stuff, Holtzclaw. Simply fabulous. And never fret the women. Where the females are fickle, the food is filling. That’s what I always said. Never really forgot it. Come on, let’s eat.”

  Holtzclaw followed Shadburn to the buffet table. The many-tiered cake was already half consumed, and the remainder was at risk of falling over, supported only by certain load-bearing buttresses of icing. A spring of sugar syrup started at the summit of the cake, became a running river brûlée, and then tumbled into a lake of caramel on the lowest tier. A deposit of ice cream oozed slowly into fields of red velvet cake. A layer of bittersweet chocolate morsels and smashed cocoa biscuits was studded—or spoiled—by frequent deposits of golden raisins. Only Pharaoh’s Flour could have accomplished such culinary wonders. Holtzclaw winked at the cake, pleased with what was wrought. He moved to take a piece for himself, but a farmer and his milk cow barred his path. They persisted so long in slack-jawed astonishment that Holtzclaw gave up on getting a slice. He didn’t need to taste the cake to know that it was splendid. The tourists would believe only their tongues. And Holtzclaw feared that the bitter taste left from his reversal of fate and fortune would ruin the pleasure of the dessert.

  An Oriental dowager empress turned away from the table, having eaten her fill. Holtzclaw blinked several times before he understood that beneath the heavy makeup and layers of luxuriant silk was the widow Smith Patterson. Behind her, carrying her carmine parasol, was a new paramour, dressed in short pants; he was the inheritor of a vegetable-canning enterprise, a strapping young fellow that the Billing, Wooing, and Cooing Society had been sorry to lose. The widow Smith Patterson, holding her weighty headpiece in place, bowed to a plump hen—Mother Fresh-Roasted’s costume was an immense coat of feathers. She withdrew egg-shaped confections from a hidden pocket to give to children.

  Animated spools unwound their threads, catching gala-goers and knotting them together in complicated lines. When the automatic orchestra, accompanying a living fiddle player, struck up a melody for a molasses boiling dance, the threads were pulled tight, and the complex dance was executed precisely along the guide wires. Holtzclaw found himself pulled into the whirl of the dance, and then he was face-to-face with Ms. Rathbun. She beamed at him; perhaps, in her happiness, she’d forgotten the hurt that she’d dealt him. Under her eyes, she’d rubbed a powder of gold, and her cheeks were flushed the color of love-apples. He tried to summon the right words, to show that he was wounded but proud; a bit of cutting sarcasm would have been excellent. But his mind was filled with the squeal of the fiddle and the rhythm of feet on the ballroom floor, and he could not make even the faintest meaningful grunt.

  The automatic banjos skipped when Princess Trahlyta entered the ballroom, and the color drained from Lizzie Rathbun’s face. The princess’s dress was the trump to Ms. Rathbun’s, whose claim was at once recognized as pale pretension. Princess Trahlyta’s dress shared the same excellent cut and ideal proportions, the same geometric wonder of a hat made in interlocking rings of gold, but rather than being merely adorned with golden thread, it was pure gold, worked so fine and thin that it draped like silk and shimmered as she walked. She was the color of an egg yolk, of a sunrise. Her skirts billowed into a mountain of pure wealth. Green lights surrounded her and pulsed with urgency and glee, following the electricity of her movement.

  Ms. Rathbun pressed her lips so tightly together that her mouth disappeared into the tension of her face. Kicking her feet, she broke the threads that guided her feet and stormed from the ballroom. Only Holtzclaw remarked her departure; the rest of the gala-goers, native and tourist, did not seem to notice.

  The ballroom floor was upheaved by a jet of steam breaking from under the mountain and a cold spring of water that shattered a corner of the stage. Thirsty revelers caught the spring water in their hands—they said that the water tasted like wine. So many liquors were flowing out from the hotel that the waters could not help but absorb that flavor. Children wandered exhausted among deposits of poppy rocks and honeybun confections. Dancers fell into the laps of sofas. Three curious consumers were knocked senseless by bright bowls of moonshine. White lightning shivered and cracked overhead, exploding electric lightbulbs and loosing the fire-bees that had been trapped inside. A rain of tiny ice crystals started to fall, a result of atmospheric tumult in the high ceiling of the ballroom. An immense silk tablecloth unfurled itself above the gala-goers and was buoyed aloft by breezes from turning skirts. Hulen, the headless plat-eye, lumbered across the dance floor. A dozen children shrieked with delight, clinging to his legs. Around him was a cluster of admirers who had all dressed up as their favorite resident eccentric; it was an easy costume to make and yet effective.

  Abigail arrived at last, and she was a matchstick set alight. Her red curls were aflame; tongues of fire were rising from her hair. She’d persuaded some old fire spirit to nest for an evening on the crown of her head, though no doubt certain tourists thought it was only a simple trick of converting animal fluids to vapor and thus preventing the chemical fluids from mixing with the solids. Wherever she went, the crowd cleared before her, astounded. She knelt to permit marshmallows to be roasted above her curls. The rain of ice crystals melted above her; she was a bright streak of red and life.

  The traces of Holtzclaw’s hurt were salved away. Lizzie Rathbun was a pale pretender. Even Princess Trahlyta would concede that, in this aspect, Abigail was the true Queen of the Mountains. Who else could flourish, no matter the fortunes of the valley? Who else was as close to the land, its people, and its visitors, yielding and yet unmoved? Among the natives, the spirits, the tourists, she was the bright fire of wit and industry.

  The band had stopped playing; they were looking at Holtzclaw. The hour had come for him to introduce the special guest, the evening’s crowning entertainment. He clambered on stage. The babble of conversation flowed around him, passing from tourist to native to spirit and around again. There we
re yelps of surprise, discomfort, and happiness. The pyrotechnics of Abigail’s hair thrilled the crowd; the storms in the upper atmosphere of the ballroom soaked and chilled them; Hulen’s headlessness made them laugh. Yes, they were ready. They could meet the guest of honor.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, people of Auraria, esteemed guests from Milledgeville, Charleston, Chattanooga! Welcome to my gala!” He threw his arms in the air. Some people turned to listen; others were too enraptured by local wonders. That was all right, even better. “Ladies and gentlemen, some of you have been in the finest concert halls in the world. You have seen performers with great talent, long histories, and classical repertoire, who have performed before kings and queens. But you have never seen such a one as this, who has performed for moon maidens! I myself was skeptical of this performer; I was skeptical of the whole valley. But I have been here a year now, and I have set down roots, and I believe there are unique charms. Spirits and pursuits that will call you back, season after season. And the Queen of the Mountains will be here to welcome you.”

  “Get on with it, Handcow!” said someone from the back of the ballroom, his voice cutting through the noise of conversation.

  “I will! I am! I wish to present to you a performer that most of you have never met …”

  “Not Dasha Pavlovski?” called a stable boy near the stage. His paramour, a fabulously rich scullery maid, clutched at the stable boy’s arms. Her eyes welled with tears.

  “You can hear Dasha Pavlovski in any palace from London to Lisbon!” said Holtzclaw, swelling with pride. “But only here at the Queen of the Mountains can you witness a spectacle like this! A sensation for the eyes, the ears, the heart, and the mind that will leave you breathless and thoughtful and eager to return again and again for encores. Without further ado, I introduce to you, ladies and gentlemen—Auraria’s native star, our own singing tree!”

  Holtzclaw burst into a frenzy of applause, which was not echoed by the audience. Perhaps the crowd hadn’t heard him clearly. But they could not fail to remark upon the coming wonder. A tree leaned its branches from the wings into view of the audience, and a rustle ran through its leaves. Its roots skittered across the stage gracefully as it pulled itself up to the spotlight. The branches dipped low to the ground in an imitation of a bow.

  The sound that the tree produced was like the call of birds or, more precisely, the gurgling noises of drowning turkeys on the hillside. Then it shuddered, pardoned itself for the inauspicious start, which it blamed on the misty and chaotic atmosphere of the ballroom, and lit into “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss” in a rich baritone voice. It was not one of the Old Songs; Holtzclaw had thought a jaunty folk lyric might be a more tempered introduction.

  The tourists had seen many remarkable phenomena at the Queen of the Mountains. And yet these happenings could have been artifice. The purple fire that burned over the kitchen the previous night could have been a chemical trick. Strange rains of peaches and fish could have been dropped from hot-air balloons or shot out of cannons. The flying tablecloths, dancing in the air, could have been controlled by wires. The automatic instruments and roving spools could be clever clockwork automata. Even the Great and Harmless and Invincible Terrapin could have been a sham—it was large enough to host a team of puppeteers.

  But those who tried to find the artifice in the singing tree were challenged by the thinness of its limbs, the grace of its swaying movements, the skittering of its roots, and the way its leaves shuddered in perfect anticipation of every swelling note. It had the purity of a living, musical creature. It was simple, guileless, beautiful, and beyond this sublunary world.

  “Burn it with fire!” called an enraged baroness from beneath shepherdess trappings. Other blood-filled shouts joined with her battle cry. A wet thud hit the stage; a love-apple burst into juice. Table legs were broken into torches, lit from candelabras and sparking electric lights. Contrary calls to peace and quiet were overruled—Abigail and her allies could not quell the tourists’ rising rage. The tree uprooted itself and fled for the door, swaying to avoid missiles and embers.

  “Wait, please!” said Holtzclaw, lifting up his hands.

  It had been too much, too soon. The tourists, addled by moonshine and claret, were now called upon to believe in something truly supernatural. They had endured a molasses boiling dance and spouting springs and automatic banjos and all the other tricks for the sake of novelty. But they could not forsake their beloved Dasha Pavlovski for the strangeness of a singing tree.