Mayhem
Page 6
Yes, that’s exactly what I hoped you’d tell her, Margaret worked to hide her sigh.
Ramona was a mottled painting of sympathy and amusement, her eyes tipping kinder than Margaret had seen them since she arrived in Stockton, “Mayy, I’m not an idiot. The Bruja wasn’t known for her kindness. I’ve seen that in my sister. I can’t change the past, but I will always think of you as family, a Lopez. You raised us both after mother’s passing.”
Reaching for her tea, Aurora’s thin brows rose, “The suggestion of Margaret being a legitimate Lopez could be provocative. The granddaughter of Maggi Lopez saying that, out loud, could be dangerous to Margaret.”
What the hell are you playing at, Aurora? Margaret was the stiffest person in the room when she answered, “It's why your father never allowed it,” He also never saw me as a real sister. “A wise witch doesn’t name themselves.”
“Like Amy?” Ramona giggled.
“Plague Dog,” Margaret relaxed for a moment, her fists unclenching, her shoulders lowering, “no one calls her that.”
Aurora sipped her tea from the antique ceramic. “In my youth I believed I could force people to respect me with a slick name. I was angry at losing the use of my legs, angry at my husband, angry at everyone. Perhaps your sister is simply angry at someone.”
Happier now that the conversation had shifted away from her youth, Margaret reached for her own sandwich, “I’ve heard the older people call you Aurora the Bloody, I never heard why.”
Aurora Owens leaned forward to place her tea back on the table, folding forearms on her knees, “Dread Harvester crippled me for life, when I tried to capture San Francisco. I had to flee, crawling, dragging my legs for miles. By the time I returned to our operating base, I was covered in my own blood.”
Margaret held no ill will for Aurora, but she was very comfortable turning the tables and reminding the older woman of her defeat. “Dread Harvester must have been a terrifying witch, to have wounded my mother and you so grievously.”
Aurora offered the ghost of a smile, unwilling to show her discomfort. “Your mother didn’t believe in random happenstance, and neither do I, Margaret Lopez.”
Margaret tossed her sandwich back to the plate. She disliked cucumber, and her stomach was jumbled. Hearing the name Margaret Lopez bandied about so easily in this room made her queasy. “Speaking of my mother, I was told recently that Maggi Lopez had an unpaid debt. She was in possession of an ‘eye that does not see.’ I was also told that I needed to visit her grave.”
Aurora Owens didn’t answer right away. She sniffed at the air once or twice, probing at Margaret as far as she could, politely. When she replied, her tone had changed. She had ceased to be Grandma Aurora and was now Heart of House Owens.
“Who told you this?”
Margaret’s tone changed as well, a battlewitch emerging. “I don’t think it's important.”
A younger woman sat in Aurora’s place, years washing away like caked mud in the rain, wearing wrinkled and spotted skin. “Maggi came into possession of a glass eye shortly before she met Dread Harvester. Not just any glass eye, something special. Something I couldn’t identify. Magic more completely concealed than anything I’d seen before. My dearly departed husband was a surgeon, he installed that eye in Maggi’s face. She would use it to defeat the Ifrit at Carbondale.”
“Xanthous Mine,” Margaret swallowed hard at the memory, “It's a dead pit of lava rock. There’s nothing there, no hint of Ifrit. No hint of my mother.” Not entirely nothing, Margaret thought, remembering the cold air and violent wind when she visited. Something happened there, something that had damaged reality. It felt like swallowing a needle, inescapable, maddening.
“Xanthous Mine isn’t the grave of Maggi Lopez,” Aurora Owens closed her eyes. “It's the birthplace of The Beast, but not the final resting place of your mother.”
Frustration was clinging to Ramona, steaming like stew on the stove. It was common knowledge that Maggi had died for her son, for the Empire. Her fight at Carbondale was nothing short of legend now; half-truths, exaggerations, and total lies. In death Maggi was remembered a true hero, a witch who’d faced down ancient powers and defeated them with good old-fashioned Antecedent know-how. To suggest The Beast was born from the same struggle would have been alien to any Antecedent citizen.
“So where does my mother’s body rest?” Margaret’s reply was curt, truncated as the half-eaten corpse of her sandwich.
“I will tell you both a secret.” Aurora’s hands were free when she spoke, and the air twisted around them from heat. Aurora Owens never stopped being a fire eater. The very rhythm of her heart was flame, and a thousand kinds of control could not contain that, “I was there when Maggi died. I sent my soldiers down, after her glass eye. My men died, every one of them. Save Cyrus, who stayed up top with me. That night The Beast was born. I will promise you, both the eye and your mother’s remains rest with The Beast.”
Many had believed The Beast to be a myth, others swore they’d been so close as nearly to be crushed. Some said it was a garbage golem, made of scrap and refuse. Others claimed it as the very ghost of America, an industrial banshee that walked on two legs and cursed all who fell before it. Stories said it was a hundred feet tall, or perhaps a thousand feet high. Many claimed it breathed fire, others said it was clad in sooty smoke. Margaret herself doubted those stories until she personally saw the cold ruins of Federal bases it had battered and beaten into ash.
“When I first came to Stockton, you offered to take me to San Francisco,” Margaret breathed deep. “Was this why?”
“You never took me up on that offer.” Aurora Owens cooed, not chiding the small woman, just smiling sadly, “A slumbering giant watching the Pacific. Maggi Lopez rests inside. It was a manifest extension of her love, and her rage. When The Beast crossed House Owens, my generals told me it was the end, that we must evacuate. I knew they were wrong. I knew it was only a tired, old mother on her way to a long nap.”
Nap? Margaret thought this was an odd choice of words. It implied The Beast could wake. How could Aurora possibly know that?
Ramona interrupted, her voice a shrill caterwaul, “How can that even be possible? The Beast was a demon.”
Aurora Owens favored Ramona with a disdainful glance, “Did you almost die in the birth of The Beast? Did you watch it wreck destruction on the Federals? Don’t speak when you have nothing intelligent to say. That goes double for pretty girls and triple for noble ladies.”
Margaret took some delight in Ramona’s expression. Back east no one would have dared speak to her like this. “Is your offer, for San Francisco, still good?” Margaret spoke in the void, softly, carefully.
Aurora Owens shook her head, an enormous flood of sadness cooling her hands and drawing back the fire that was burning in her chest, “I can no longer travel.”
“Mayy,” Ramona pretended she’d sustained no insult, “to whom did Maggi owe this debt?”
And what does Aphrodite have to gain in satisfying that debt?
Margaret had no intention of answering Ramona’s question, rather she deflected, “My mother made plenty of deals with old gods, who could guess?”
Aurora Owens chuckled, “The Beast isn’t hard to find, you know. It still stands hundreds of feet above the Bay, in San Francisco. The two of you could visit together, make a day of it. I think you’ll find the city herself to be a charming vacation.”
Margaret had known Aurora long enough to never trust old-lady Owens’ smile, a twinkle in her eye that promised fresh baked muffins and perhaps a sugar tea for dessert. The days were not far past when she was the most dangerous witch on the west coast.
“That doesn’t sound like a bad idea, we’d have some more time together too.”
Ramona’s smile was far more insidious. It reminded her of the little girl she’d once raised, and the woman that Margaret all too often forgot wasn’t her daughter.
“Yes, I think it's time we visited San Francisco.”
Antioch Queen Sunrise Special, California
“So, Grandma broke your nose?”
Ramona asked the question in a chirping rhythm, as if this was a funny anecdote that she could enjoy and cherish. It surprised Margaret and she slowly rolled her eyes away from the window to favor her niece. “Yeah.”
“What’s the story behind that?” Ramona’s lips parted upwards, she was showing the smallest hint of her front teeth and it was hard to find her rude. Margaret felt her chest flutter for a moment as her own memories rose up, a tide groping at the world she’d built for herself.
“Your grandmother was drunk. She drank to forget, and she was a mean drunk.” Margaret hesitated, second after second, counted and timed by the click-clack, click-clack of Antioch Queen’s roll. “She didn’t just break my nose when I wrote my name, she kicked the shit out of me. I ran away from her that night, I sought help from the only friends Maggi had, the only friends I had. Her assault team, hard men, soldiers and mercenaries. They took care of me, asked me who did this? They were angry. I lied, so I could spare them the ache of betraying me when they realized they could never raise a hand to the immortal Maggi Lopez.”
Ramona nodded, as if all this was fodder for a grand biography she planned to scribe. It rubbed Margaret the wrong way and she regretted speaking.
“Did you hate Maggi?”
Margaret shrugged, “Yes,” then quickly bit back, “No. I hated her at the time, but I still crawled back to her. She saw my face in bandages, and black eyes and then she demanded I tell her who had done this. She didn’t even remember. I had to sit through hours of her schooling me on self-defense. I let her keep that.” This too had stung, being reminded of her own physical inferiority. Margaret knew she could never brawl like Maggi, it wasn’t a lesson she needed.
“Why didn’t you tell her?” Ramona challenged, an elbow braced on window seal. Black lacquered wood flexed and shifted around her as the passenger coach flowed, twisting to follow the engine, nails and joints breathing with the beast’s pace.
“Tell her what?” Margaret laughed, “You didn’t know Maggi Lopez. There’s nothing you could tell her about anything, especially if you were a child. The next day I decided to become Mayy.” It was a shrill and aggressive name, a wordless poem dedicated to all of Margaret’s rage. When Lady Mayhem walked the battlefield, she allowed that rage to slip loose, tied tight to her fingers and toes, a marionette allowed to sing and dance for her audience. Mayy was the woman who tamed that rage with a smart little smile, and a twist of her hips. Mayy was Maggi’s student, a textbook battlewitch modeled after her mentor.
“‘Mayy’ is a better name. ‘Margaret’ sounds like an old spinster from Cleveland, someone irrelevant, someone who doesn’t matter,” said Ramona.
Margaret smirked back at the younger woman, “It means ‘pearl,’ and it's not for old spinsters. It's a pretty name.” Margaret remembered glimpses of her childhood. She could hear the voice of her father, reading a book to her, laughing about her name, and stroking her hair.
“All right, Pearl,” Ramona gestured, “are you mad at Maggi?”
Margaret sighed, a deep press of oxygen in her throat, more like a growl than anything else, “What is there to be mad over?”
Ramona offered up her hands, sunlight dancing off her wrists and the fine hairs of her forearms. “Amy is still mad at you.”
“That’s a fine sack of shit,” Margaret laughed, licking her lips, “She was a darling until the age of five, then she couldn’t be contained. If she wasn’t your sister, I’d have disowned her.”
“That’s a bit much, Mayy.” Ramona’s playful expression faded. Her brows furrowed and her eyes told a story of disapproval, “I seem to remember all the times she begged for your attention, how often you ignored her.”
Margaret didn’t want to discuss this, and after matching Ramona’s gaze, let her eyes wander back to the world outside their coach.
Antioch Queen Sunrise Special was beginning to slow. Lush greens of the Bay Area Reach began to thin, trees and shrubs falling away, offering glimpses of the bay itself, deep blue and gray water flirting with a sky the same color. Even inside the passenger cars, the ocean scent was thick and heady with salt.
Another passenger sat across the center aisle with bunked bags and a book. The sound of his thoughts, repeating printed words, etched a strange melody into the air that Margaret could hear, no different from a droning hurdy gurdy.
They had traveled close to one-hundred miles west of Stockton, rolling into the growing metropolis of San Francisco, perched like a crown on the Bay Area Reach’s northern tip. With no functioning bridges to cross the Bay, train, petrol and wagon lines ran south to San Jose, almost the full length of the Reach. The city had spent much of the Collapse as the desolate, abandoned, home for a mad witch known to travelers and scavengers alike as Dread Harvester. Children’s rhymes warned of her brutality, and tales around countless camp fires recounted the terror she inflicted on any visited her city. In all these old tales, Harvester had never spoke with her own voice; she sang and rhymed her threats through the lips of dead, croaking corpses.
After Dread Harvester’s death, Lady Owens had committed unreal resources to the restoration of San Francisco. New iron tracks were laid, stations built, and vast construction up and down the peninsula was commissioned. The city was a key hub of commerce and trade, connecting southern territories along coastal sail and steam routes. From Mexico and the Southern Americas, into the cold clutches of Canada and Alaska. A city had to exist here, if House Owens was to flourish.
Disembarking from the train, Margaret and Ramona waited on the station, deep in a massive pre-Collapse excavation. They were surrounded by towering concrete and steel supports, covered in scaffold, as construction teams built new structures up and down the tracks and carved platforms for disembarking cargo. The air was cool and dry, full of swill smoke and wet steam. Several other locomotives waited nearby, all of them antique, all of them a unique personality of their own evolution. These were mirthful, fitful, and even an adjacency to madness.
A flowing torrent of humanity threatened to drowned Margaret, a sizzling flux of living traffic, so very loud in the great pit. Their voices churned up to a hum, random words popping in and out of the noise. Many of the laborers spoke a kind of low-English, as if they mumbled, their words caught in their mouths like too many bites of mashed potatoes, syllables dull and lazy. Their minds whipped up a froth of different energies around Margaret and her stomach moiled to maintain equilibrium. She was forced to bar and reinforce her barriers, block harder and harder against the press.
For certain, a city was loud, but the impact of open and clumsy uninclined minds was spread out, a veneer that existed only at the back of the eyes. This was chaos, like falling into the center of a vast ocean, hopeless and helpless on waves as steep as moving buildings.
Margaret licked her lips, mouth full of cotton. Her ears rang with clatter. Ramona’s barriers snapped a few sparks of red light as she struggled to keep footing in the crowd.
“Back off a little,” Margaret spoke, her words almost lost, “keep it hidden.” Ramona nodded, knowing full well that she’d exposed herself as a witch.
It took little time for Margaret’s valet to join them on the platform. He was pushing a hand truck with two small trunks. Both belonged to Margaret, made from thin steel and brass, painted red and white, locked and wrapped for transit. Ramona had traveled light from Crafton, choosing to purchase most of her clothing and toiletries in Stockton.
“The Occidental Hotel, Lady?”
Margaret’s valet confirmed. He was a stout boy in his mid-twenties with a big mouth and narrow eyes the shade of a dead fish.
“Yes, check two rooms, Antecedent accounts. Both under Margaret, no last name.” Margaret was best known as Mayy, in the former House Owens, so it was easier for her to hide. Ramona Lopez was another challenge entirely. She was the daughter
of a tyrant, walking free in the jeweled city of a conquered state. Bandying about her identity invited no end of trouble.
Margaret’s valet nodded and departed towards the western cargo ramp. Passengers on foot could disembark and climb many sets of stairs to the southern highways, seeking their fortune and fame in San Francisco. Closer to the surface a chilly breeze cut to bone, a silver and heather sky pressing down into the heart of a city that erupted.
San Francisco lacked the expansive, colorful, murals of Stockton. Art still wound against plaster walls and wooden doors, but with nowhere near the capitol’s intensity. Wide, long, cursive words etched across wooden fences and tall brick facades, advertising everything from Doctor Dick’s Flu Remedy, to the Wanton Ladies of Wade House.
A boy of perhaps twelve or thirteen, rushed past Ramona and bumped her left hip. Margaret could smell the machinery about him, a clockwork of fingers, hands moving, his energy a quick summer breeze against the frigid kiss of San Francisco. Margaret’s mind spun out, curling around the boy’s brain, pressing deep and seeing glimpses of his breakfast and a litany of all the girls he’d ever had a crush on. She was inside every crevice, and if Margaret wished it, she could show him horrors beyond reckoning. This wasn’t a battlefield; she didn’t want to harm the child.
Instead she simply froze him where he stood, casually approaching him.
“Tell your friends, your smart-boy gangs,” Margaret leaned in to whisper, making sure her lips brushed his ear, “Stay clear of us both. I won’t be so kind next time.”
Margaret’s hand, tightly clad in shiny, black leather, removed Ramona’s coin purse from the boy and released the urchin. A flow of people swirled around the scene, horseshoes clicked and clacked on cobbles, wagons squealed and whined, rolling on uneven pavement and the child vanished into the storm.
“What happened?” Ramona looked confused.