by Tanith Lee
“Demand it then, aloud, of the labyrinth. How else did you get in and out before?”
“It seemed … easy,” she said.
“It is easy. Yes,” he added, “of course, it must all be wrong. The heat of the torch will finally spoil the ice – what then? We have to decide, Smara, where we want to be.”
In the labyrinth they did not run, but walked briskly, she striding and he slightly checking his pace, to stay in step with each other.
A glowing thing bloomed in the wall.
“Look!” she said.
He saw it too, presumably the same vision. A child watching a tiger in a cage. It was a horrible child, sneering at the incredible and flawless animal, which, if the bars had not been there, would have destroyed the child fastidiously and at once.
Then the image dispersed.
They had come suddenly into the oval heart of the labyrinth.
On the floor was a fruit, an orange fruit.
Felion let go of Smara’s hand, bent down, and picked the fruit up. But Smara was gazing at the bird-headed thing that had risen above out of the ice. If anything it was now more clear, more like the statues on her uncle’s terrace.
Felion tossed the orange fruit up at the ice statue. The fruit struck it a weightless blow and sailed on, and over into nothing, whence, surely, it had come.
“I’m not afraid of that now, either,” said Smara. “It’s only a shape.”
Felion took her by her hand again quickly.
“Let’s go on.”
A sound rose, the oceanic breathing roar of the labyrinth.
Smara moved reluctantly. “I thought it would crumble a little, when I said it didn’t frighten me.”
Beyond the heart, keeping to the left, they strode forward.
“Remember,” he said, “the outside of the woman’s house. The street there.”
“Are you still holding my hand?” she asked.
Felion hesitated, and as he did so, the torch flickered as if a wind rushed through the maze. And Smara slid away from him.
It was as though she were moved away on runners. She did not seem to notice. When he called out in alarm, she only nodded. “Outside the house,” she repeated.
And then she was furled aside into the ice wall.
Perhaps Felion had been pulled aside in this way as he followed his uncle, or the man who resembled his uncle, those months before when he had come back here alone.
Felion was appalled nevertheless. He tried to approach the wall, but it was solid, ungiving, and Smara had gone.
He had no choice, it seemed to him, but to proceed to the labyrinth’s extremity. Maybe, anyway, he would find her there.
When he reached the end of the tunnels, the torch was fluttering sickly. Ahead, in the opening, lay a cloudy void.
Felion spoke aloud to it, telling it harshly what he expected it to become, the street outside the artist’s house. But even when he walked right up to it, the exit from the labyrinth showed nothing but formless clouds, save far away, he seemed to glimpse a shape like a mountain.
“But it’s easy,” he said. He dropped the torch by the exit point, and plunged his hand and arm out into the cloudy aberration.
Perhaps the tiger’s cage was there, and his hand had gone in through the bars.
Felion drew his arm back. It was whole.
Then he shut his eyes, lowered his blond head, and jumped through the gap straight into the cloud.
Smara stood on the golden bank of a malt-dark river. She was not distressed. She had not been so before, when she had lost Felion and arrived in another world. Not to be distressed was possibly distressing.
And this was not the other City. Assuredly not.
The air had an exceptional brightness and lucidity. Distant mountains embraced the sky.
Below, on the honey strand, tigers and lions were feeding on something among the onyx boulders.
Above, a city did line the bank. High, white, pillared buildings, glistening with metal. Huge trees which might have been palms, but their fronds curved to the ground.
Around Smara was a garden, and everywhere in it girls in white were watering the flowers. Probably Smara had not been noticed for this reason, for in her hand was a bronze dipper filled by water. Smara went quietly up the slope of the turf and came out on a walk. On the horizon was a marble palace of extreme tallness. Nearby, a queen or empress was seated under a white sunshade. She was beautiful, more beautiful even than Smara’s mother. Around her throat was a rope made of twenty or so chains of enormous pearls. Her black hair fell from a starry coronet to her feet.
A man sat at her feet.
He was tanned almost to leather, and in his ears winked diamonds. He was telling the beautiful queen boldly about a voyage he had made in a timber ship. He showed her on a map that was stretched over the grass.
“But she ran aground, Majesty. We lost the strange fruit and the priceless glass vessels. I was there ten days, with my men, before the king of the land heard what had befallen us and sent his chariots to our assistance.”
“I have never known luck like yours,” said the queen. “Maque, you know you’re worth more to me than any cargo. But who,” she added, “is that girl, listening?”
“Your favorite handmaiden, surely.”
“No, she has hair like ginger spice. This one has hair like cream. Who are you, young girl?”
“Smara,” Smara said, and she bowed. But then the dipper spilled all over her skirt.
“She’s in search of some other country,” said the queen. “Be careful,” she added, “not all of them are good.”
“Madame,” said the sailor, who had been called Maque, “in a way, it’s true of us all – that we search for other countries. Of the mind, the heart, and the soul. And sometimes even we search for hell on earth.”
The queen smiled. She laid her hand on his arm. “Where are you going?” the queen asked Smara.
“To Felion, my brother.”
“Do you love him?” asked the queen.
“Yes.”
“Love can do anything,” said the queen.
Smara turned, and a cloud was there behind her. She dropped the dipper on the grass, and then –
And then it seemed she was her mother, falling, falling from the whirling tower, into the stony mist.
The sun was beginning to set, and for a while he forgot even his sister.
Felion was high up, above the City, the wonderful City that had not been corrupted by mist. He could see all of it. The scales of its million roofs, like plates of a crocodile’s back, its towers and domes, and far off the loops of its river, tiger’s-eye, catching the rays of the extraordinary sun.
But then he wanted her to see this, this fabulous City, beautiful beyond any dream or wish. Oh, he wanted Smara to be here with him. He wanted to live with her, here.
A flight of pigeons passed over the disk of the sun.
Tears streamed down Felion’s face, and dried. He had never before, not once, known such joy.
And then Smara came walking toward him, out of a brick wall just down the street, which was not the street outside the artist’s house. She looked about shyly, but when she saw him, her face lit with more than the glory of the sun.
He took her hand again, and not speaking they stood together on the height, and watched day move down below the curve of the earth.
Every architecture rose black against its shining. And then the disk was drawn away, and a wonderful softness closed the air, and a magical nocturne of dark, and stars burned up as if nowhere, not in a thousand worlds, had there ever been stars before, or eyes to see them.
“Smara – where did you go?”
“A garden. Not here.”
“And I came out miles from that house. Who cares? What does she matter, our mad uncle’s artist?”
Hand in hand, they walked the streets as the night filled them. Lamps lit on poles. A breeze blew, sweet with the smell of blossoms from a spring that maybe had not yet begun.
Higher up, they reached the cathedral. The great door was carved with saints and devils, and stood open. An owl flew over their heads.
They entered, and the church was like the stomach of a cliff, it went up for miles. Some service (they had heard or read of such things) must have taken place, for hundreds of candles had been left alight. In the aisle, paper flowers had been scattered.
Felion and Smara separated and went about the body of the cathedral, where no one else was.
Above the altar, a book lay spread on a stand, but when she approached it, Smara could not read the prayer.
Felion, however, found another book in an alcove over a granite tomb. And somehow he read this: “And the names of the three, who are jointly this demon, are OBLATIC, SAMOHT, and TOLEHCIM.” Which for some reason made him laugh. And after that the words blurred over and became nonsense, he could not make any phrases out of them.
He and she kneeled under the altar.
“What shall we pray for?” he whispered.
“What is ‘pray’?”
He could not answer. He said, “I love you. I always have. If we stay here, we can be lovers.”
She turned to him with a look of wonder and happiness. “Could we? Oh Felion, how I’d like that.”
They got to their feet and left the cathedral.
Outside, the night was as black as ink now, and the stars had paled before the street lamps, but the big white moon was up, horned, asking only a sky to find its way.
“Where shall we go?” she asked.
“We can go where we like,” he said.
So they walked the City.
Paradis has been many things, but seldom heaven on earth. No, Paradys is a venue of shadows, its own books tell us so. But not now, not for these hours. That is the madness of Paradys. It can be also holy, benign, bountiful, and tender.
Outside a café lit by lanterns, Felion and Smara are randomly but charmingly summoned to join in a bridal feast. Delicious food and drink are given them, gratis, food without stones in it or serpents – and wine, not hemlock.
Later they stray up into a park, and here there is a masquerade. Beings with the heads of beasts and birds, deities, and imps. Smara is given a mask of black feathers tipped with nacre, and Felion a sun mask ruffed with gold. They discover that though they cannot read as yet the writing of Paradis, they know its dances, as if taught in childhood.
All night they drink and dance, and later, under a panther black cedar tree, they kiss like the lovers they wish to become, timidly, sensually, carelessly, caressing each other’s hearts in surprise.
“We can stay here now,” he says.
But Smara is abruptly startled. Perhaps the nightingale singing in the tree has interrupted her thoughts.
“But – not yet.”
“Why not? What do we leave behind?”
“We must go back, one last time.”
“Why?” he says. “Why?”
“I don’t know. But don’t you feel we must?”
“Yes. I feel it.”
“How can we live there?” she says.
“This City takes care of us.”
“Tonight it has,” she says. “But will it, afterwards?”
They stare across the park, from whose grassy floor one or two absorbing graves rear up their slabs. (Those of whom Paradis has not taken care?)
“Our uncle,” Felion says, “trusted himself to this City. I think, in more than one time. He gave himself to it. Let it be cruel, and kind to him. As it wanted.”
Smara sat up. She shivered. “I want to go back.”
“To what?”
“We were born there.”
“All right. Yes. We must.”
They left their masks lying, the bird and the sun. There on the grass among the graves.
It was cold before the dawn, the stars were going out.
“Look,” he said, “down there, there’s the bitch’s street after all. Do you see?”
Smara frowned.
They did not, now, touch at all.
On the grass a cloud had formed, showing them, like a temptation, the way back into hell. But they knew hell. They had got used to hell. They went into the cloud.
The labyrinth was freezing and both of them ran through it.
It took a long time, it seemed like hours, to reach the oval heart. And there, panting and dismayed, they halted.
“Has it gone?”
“The ice bird? No, still there.”
“I don’t mind. It’s nothing.”
They stood on the glacial floor and he let the guttering torch droop.
“I know how we can be safe in the other City,” he said. “We’re the heirs of our uncle. And so is she, this artist. We must kill her, Smara. Then we’ll have her place.”
“Yes,” Smara said. It had seemed to her they would never kill again. But she had been in error. “We’ll poison her,” Smara said, deciding.
Through the labyrinth something roared, and sighed.
They went slowly now, Smara walking just behind Felion. Not careful, not afraid. They were exhausted. The banquet, after starvation, had been too much, for there are those who have died from something like that.
TEN
Paradis
What’s the use of worrying?
It never was worthwhile,
So, pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile.
George Asaf
Brassy chrysanthemums were bursting from the flower bed. Black ivy had climbed the pedestal of the Medusa, but not reached, or had avoided, the neck and straining mouth, the protruding tongue of stone, and the petrified snakes.
Thomas the Warrior was tying up flowers to sticks.
Leocadia stood over him. Suddenly, intrusively, he reminded her of her infantile memory of her Uncle Michelot.
“On your feet,” she said briskly. “Soldier.”
And Thomas rose, and stood to a stooped, cramped attention, his chin raised, hands quivering.
“Madame.”
“I want a report, Thomas.”
“Yes, madame. The chemical attack is over. The losses were slight. The suits held up.”
Leocadia raised her brows. Chemical weapons were illegal. Where had they been used and what was he recalling? But it was not this past that mattered. Perhaps he was trying to sidetrack her.
“That’s good. Now tell me about the asylum.”
Thomas relaxed a little, and looked down at her.
“When I was very young,” said Thomas, “a child was eaten alive in the zoo, by a tiger. No one knew how the tiger escaped. Its bars, they said, seemed to melt. It was supposedly destroyed, but not in fact. Someone took it away, it lived in a private house. God knows what meat they fed it. Children, perhaps.”
“That’s marvelous, but not what I asked you, soldier.”
“I am,” said Thomas, “a voluntary patient. This is my cage, but I don’t mind it. I need a cage. I went mad in the service of my country.”
(Oh! Uncle!)
“But are you mad?”
“Yes. I have a paper to prove it.”
“And I’m mad too, am I?”
“Don’t you have a paper?” asked Thomas. “You should ask for one. Then you know where you are.”
“I know where I am. In the madhouse.”
“Not at all. And anyway, that doesn’t make you, madame, a correct candidate. Although you may be,” Thomas amended, respectfully.
“I believed you thought I was.”
“Well, madame, my opinions alter. Part of my condition, of course. Everything does change, here.”
“Yes?” Leocadia scented some element of interest, tart as the tang of citrus zest.
“The buildings, for example,” said Thomas the Warrior, “move. As the continents do. Slowly. But now in one direction, now another. The hothouse, for example. I recall it was farther off.” He indicated the elder asylum. “Gradually, it crept this way. Perhaps to evade capture.”
“Who knows?” asked Thomas.
She saw suddenly through him, how he had been young once. And had he ever been a tiger of a man?
“Tell me about,” said Leocadia, “the gin bottles. The brown glass ones with the penguin on the label.”
Thomas smiled. His teeth were good.
“Penguin Gin,” said Thomas. “It’s an old rhyme. A corruption of the original slogan of advertising.”
“And how does it go?”
“Penguin Gin, Penguin Gin, drink it up, it’ll do you in.”
“Ah,” said Leocadia softly. “And did it?”
“I expect so. Poisonous, apparently. Lead and copper in the pipes, if such there are in the making of gin. Modern gin is completely wholesome and without additives.”
Leocadia said, at her sweetest, “So it poisoned them.”
“Oh, there was a story I read once,” said Thomas, untying a flower from a stick. The stick but not the flower fell down. “An actor, quite famous, from the era of the gin. His name – Martin. He visited the asylum and charmed the patients with recitals from the plays of the great. But later his brain was curdled from the experience. He began to drink gin in low dives of the slums over the river. One evening he died, in a shocking way.” Thomas did not look shocked. Nor did he elaborate. He retied the flower to another stick, and breaking the stick that had fallen, he tossed it over the lawn. Then checked. “I always forget. My dog grew old. Have you ever kept pets, madame?”
“Animals are too good for me,” said Leocadia.
Thomas seemed pleased by her reply.
He said, “Johanos Martin was killed by Penguin Gin.”
Leocadia said, “You’re a mine of information today, Thomas. Tell me some more.”
“Today I am,” said Thomas the Warrior. He pointed at the Medusa’s head. “That was a statue of Madness, once. It crawled or hopped here from the old asylum. I found it in the flower bed one morning. The dew was on it.”
“Oh, the dew,” said Leocadia. “I’ve not seen it often. And the leaves are falling now. Will there be snow?”
Thomas stared at her, and through her, and away to his chemical battleground which ought never to have been.
“I remember black snow,” said Thomas. “Go away. Our conversation is over.”