City of Miracles

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  But come to what? Some wound in reality itself? He doesn’t know. But he steps out of the auto and starts off.

  At first this feels like many operations he’s done in his time: creeping through the woods with his torch in his hand and the fortifications on his left, guard towers black and skeletal in the night. He comes to the ravine, and he passes over that, and into the woods on the other side. He walks, and walks, and sees no problems, and certainly nothing extraordinary.

  But then things feel…strange. The space between the trees gets bigger—very slowly, but eventually he notices it. The brush on the ground gets sparser, as if it’s been deprived of sunlight. But that shouldn’t be, as the trees this high up in the hills should be short, stubby, crinkly things….

  He looks around, flashes his torch on a few nearby specimens, and sees that the forest is now very different. The trees are now tall and straight. Quite tall, in fact. He looks back, and though he can see the polis governor’s quarters in the distance, it feels as if he’s passed into someplace very far away.

  That is…very odd, he thinks. Though perhaps this is a good sign, suggesting he’s headed in the right direction.

  Sigrud walks on through the woods. The air changes: it grows drier, cooler. The trees continue to get bigger, and bigger, and bigger, though he steadfastly ignores this alteration.

  Finally he comes to it.

  He had thought that the boundary Malwina mentioned would be subtle, unnoticeable: so many Divine works are invisible tinkerings with all the rules that underpin reality. But what is in front of him is decidedly not invisible, or subtle.

  A blank, rough-hewn, black stone wall abruptly splits the woods in two. It is about twelve feet high, too tall for him to climb, continuing north and south as far as he can see. It bears no mark or insignia or suggestion of who made it or why it’s here.

  Sigrud scratches his chin, thinking. He reflects that this forest could be very similar to the sanctum for the Divine children, in that it might not be a part of normal reality. The idea is not comforting to him.

  He walks along the walls, but sees no way in. Finally, reluctantly, he holds the torch under his left arm and pulls the glove off his left hand. The scars on his palm shine in the light. He looks at it, remembering Tavaan’s hurt face—There is something nasty living inside you—and wonders if he really wants to try this.

  He sighs, and realizes he must try something—even if he has no idea what that something is.

  Feeling absurd, he walks up to the wall, holds his breath, and places his left palm against the stone.

  He expected (or perhaps hoped for) some burst of energy or Divine ripples in reality—but instead there’s nothing. The wall remains the wall, implacable and indifferent, cool to his touch. His hand is just a hand.

  Sigrud frowns at his palm, like the scars there might hold instructions as to what he needs to do. But of course they say nothing, just as they have for so much of his life.

  He grumbles. He reflects on how this was really a very bad plan; his response to the Divine has always been to hit it with something very durable as hard as he can, preferably in the face—if it has a face.

  He slams his hand on the wall, hoping brute force could make a difference. It doesn’t. The wall remains solid.

  Sigrud sits back and rethinks his approach. He reaches out into the air, concentrates, feeling for it…

  Then suddenly the sword is in his hand again, the short little golden blade—Flame, they called it. He knows they said it would do nothing against Olvos’s works, but perhaps the sword could tell him the nature of the wall. It’s the only Divine thing he has access to.

  He is immensely loath to test the blade against stone—dulling a good edge is a tremendous sin to Sigrud—so he gently pokes the surface of the wall with the sword. There is no reaction whatsoever, no indication that the two items are in any way Divine. He considers hacking at the wall with the sword, or perhaps testing it on a tree branch—but, again, he can’t bring himself to mar the blade.

  Growling, he puts the sword away, placing it into that curious pocket of air that seems to be hovering around him. Then he presses his palm against the wall again, hoping in vain that it might do something—but of course it doesn’t.

  Sigrud stands in the darkness, feeling foolish and frustrated. He knows the seriousness of the predicament, knows that lives rest upon whether or not he succeeds here. But what could they have expected from him? Why send the most primitive creature in their ranks up against what is likely the most advanced being in the world? It was all so idiotic, and now here he is, with a blank wall and a torch and not much else.

  Something inside Sigrud begins to simmer and churn. He rubs his mouth with the back of his hand, glaring at the wall. He hates this, despises this—feeling so helpless, unable to affect the lives of those who so desperately need him.

  This is what I have always been, he thinks. A savage alone in the wilderness, fearsome but worthless.

  Sigrud lashes out, striking the wall with his left hand, a blind, stupid gesture of pure frustration. His hand aches with the impact, and he turns away, shaking out the pain. Then he glares back at the wall as if it’s muttered a personal insult at him—and stops.

  There is a very small crack in the wall. Right where he hit it. The impact mark is slight, like someone threw a pebble at a thick pane of glass—but it’s there.

  He peers at it. “How…How did I…”

  A voice behind him: “What are you doing?”

  Sigrud turns, expecting an assault. He reaches for the sword, fumbling at the air, but he can’t manage the trick under pressure. Instead he’s left facing the intruder—who, now that he sees them, doesn’t seem to be intruding at all.

  A small, bald, oldish Continental woman sits on a stone bench under the trees, smoking a crude pipe. She’s short but broad, bordering on tubby, and she watches him with a look of quiet, detached contentment.

  Sigrud sheepishly begins to realize that she might have been sitting there all along, and he simply missed her. (Though a voice in the back of his mind pipes up, saying: Shouldn’t you have smelled her pipe? Noticed its flame? Noticed the bench?)

  Sigrud says, “What?”

  The woman puffs at the pipe. “What are you doing?”

  Sigrud looks at her, looks back at the crack in the wall, and turns back to the woman, mouth open as he wonders what to say.

  “It looks,” says the woman, “like you were hitting the wall.”

  “Uh,” says Sigrud.

  “Is that what you were doing? Hitting the wall?”

  He scratches his neck. “Yes.”

  She nods, as if she’s heard of this quaint pastime before. “Doesn’t seem like a very productive activity. But perhaps productivity isn’t the point. Is it?”

  “Is what?”

  “Are you hitting the wall,” says the woman, “because you want something?”

  “I…suppose.”

  “Oh. Well then, no, hitting it doesn’t seem productive.” She puffs on her pipe, contemplating the issue. “At least, not to me.”

  “Who are you?” says Sigrud.

  “I am an old woman,” she says, “wondering why this big man is out here in the dead of night hitting a wall as if it kissed his mother on the mouth.” She looks at him keenly. “What are you here for?”

  “I…I want to get through the wall?”

  “Oh.” She sits up. “Well then. Why didn’t you try knocking?”

  “Try what?”

  “Knocking,” she says, but this time much slower, as if trying to explain a math problem to a student. Then she points down the wall with the stem of her pipe. “At the door.”

  “There’s a door?”

  “I hope so. Otherwise something is wrong with my eyes.”

  He shines the torch in the direction she was pointing in and sees that, yes, there is indeed a door: a short, round wooden door, one low enough he’d have to duck to get through.

  That is odd, he think
s faintly. I was sure I looked there and saw only more wall….

  Sigrud looks back at the woman. Some part of his mind is vaguely wondering why he doesn’t feel pressed to ask her more questions, such as what she’s doing here, why she stayed quiet for so long, or how she knew where the door was. But though he wonders these things, he feels a curious but powerful urge to simply accept the woman’s presence, much as he would a tree or a rock in this landscape.

  “Just…knock on the door?” he says.

  “It seems easier than knocking on the wall,” she says. “Less painful. And louder, so someone inside can hear. Come. Let’s try it, shall we?”

  She hops off the bench and walks with him over to the door. Feeling quite awkward, Sigrud lifts his hand and knocks at the short wooden door three times.

  Silence. Nothing.

  “Oh,” says the old woman. “That’s right. I forgot. I’m supposed to be over there….Whoops! One moment.” She clears her throat, twists the knob, opens the door—Sigrud glimpses nothing more than dark woods on the other side—steps through, and shuts it, leaving Sigrud alone.

  Her voice comes floating through the wood of the door: “All right—try again.”

  Sigrud blinks, feeling confused and very stupid. He lifts his hand and again knocks three times.

  The door opens just a crack. One bright eye peers out at him. “Yes?” says the old woman.

  “Can I…come in?” he asks.

  “Why?” demands the old woman. “Why do you want to come in?”

  “I…” He awkwardly looks around, like he’s worried he might be overheard. “I need to speak to Olvos.”

  “Is that so?” The eye narrows. “Why?”

  “It’s…It’s a matter of great importance.”

  “That is a tremendously subjective term. What would you hope for? What do you hope to accomplish?”

  Something in her voice changes. It sounds deeper, more resonant. There’s a glimmer of firelight through the crack in the door. And her eye gains a curious orange sheen to it….

  Things feel strange. Dreamy. Odd. Sigrud blinks, trying to focus. “We need her help,” he says. “To save us. To save everything.”

  “You say these words,” says the old woman’s voice. “And this might be what you feel obliged or compelled to do. But is this what you hope for? If so much were not at stake, would you still be doing it?”

  “Are you going to let me in?”

  “In the sanctum,” whispers the old woman, “what did they name you?”

  “Name me? What do you mean?”

  “They gave you a gift. They made you think of a memory. And in doing so they named you.”

  He frowns as he tries to remember. Everything suddenly seems very thick and close and very loud. Thoughts drip through his mind like they’re made of molten lead, and his tongue feels swollen and hot. “They did?”

  “That they did. There was a name that went with that memory. What was it?”

  “A…A refugee,” says Sigrud. “A lost child.”

  “That is what you were,” says the voice. “But it is not what you are.” The door begins to open. “Not what you truly are, in your deepest heart. You know that name, mortal creature. You are the man without hope.”

  The door swings open. There is no one on the other side. All he sees is a small glen. In the center of the glen is a huge bonfire with four logs serving as benches around it, and beyond that a stone table. Shadows leap and caper in the trees with the flick and flash of the flames.

  Sigrud walks in. The door shuts behind him. He barely notices.

  He keeps walking toward the fire, drawn to its radiance, its warmth. He must go to the fire, because it’s suddenly so cold in here, isn’t it? Yes, it is—he can see snowflakes pouring through the trees in the distance, turned into shifting white pillars by the light of the distant moon.

  Sigrud steps over one of the log benches and holds his hands out to the fire, eager for warmth. His right hand grows hot, yet he notices his left does not.

  A voice echoes through the glen, low and purring and warm, coming from no specific place as much as from everything, as if the glen itself is speaking: “Welcome, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson. I’ve looked forward to meeting you for some time—the man who has been touched by darkness twice, the man who lingers without hope. This, I think, will be a most interesting discussion.”

  Sigrud looks through the flames and sees there’s a woman sitting on the log bench across the bonfire from him. She is short and thick and bald, naked from the waist up, wearing a skirt of firs and nothing else. She smokes an old bone pipe, long and skinny, which she lights by holding it over the fire.

  “And it was nice of you to knock,” she says. She sniffs and takes a puff from the pipe. “None of the others did.”

  Ivanya Restroyka tries to stifle a yawn as she stares at the mirror before the window. It’s a trick Sigrud taught her before he left: you put a light veil over a window, set up a mirror before it at an angle, and that way you can look out the window while making it very hard for anyone outside to see you. Currently the window faces the main path up through the Votrov estate—but this is but one of many ways of accessing the main house, which might be why Ivanya is gripping the rifling in her lap very tightly.

  Taty sighs across the room as she reads her book. “I can’t bear it.”

  “I know,” says Ivanya.

  “What are we waiting for?” she says. “It’s been hours. Will he call? Will he send a messenger? How long should we wait?”

  “He said he didn’t know. I believe him.”

  “Believing him isn’t the problem. The problem is that he hardly knows what he’s getting into any better than we d—”

  She pauses. Ivanya keeps her eye on the mirror, determined not to look away. “Taty?” she asks.

  Silence.

  Ivanya looks over her shoulder at the girl. Taty is seated in the chair in the corner, book in her lap, but she’s not reading it: she’s staring straight ahead, eyes dull, mouth open.

  “Taty?” Ivanya says again.

  Still nothing. The girl slowly blinks.

  “What’s wrong? Taty? Say something!” Finally Ivanya stands and walks over to the girl. She kneels before her and shakes her shoulders. “Are you all right? Taty? Come on now, girl, don’t do this to me now….”

  Taty takes in a rattling breath. Then she softly says, “Fox in the henhouse…”

  “Fox? What?”

  “There’s a fox in the henhouse,” she says again. Another slow blink. Her eyes widen, her pupils dilate, and suddenly Ivanya gets the feeling that Taty is seeing something she herself cannot.

  Ivanya’s only seen this once before: in the train station in Ahanashtan, right before Taty somehow predicted that they were being watched.

  “He’s going to get in,” she murmurs slowly. “He’s found a way in. They can’t stop him. He’s going to gobble them all up.”

  “What?” says Ivanya. “Who? Who’s they?”

  “And Mother,” Taty whispers. “Mother…She’s going to die. She’s going to die again….”

  “What? Taty…Taty, you…” Grimacing, Ivanya rears back and slaps the girl. She’s not sure if she’s doing it to wake Taty up or because she’s scared as all hells and wants Taty to stop it.

  Taty blinks rapidly, her eyes now focused, and touches her cheek. “I…I…”

  “Taty,” says Ivanya. “Can you hear me?”

  Taty looks around like she’s surprised to find herself here. Then she looks at Ivanya, terrified. “There’s a park!” she says. “A big park, here in Bulikov! A girl’s there, and…We have to go there, now!”

  “What? What are y—”

  “I don’t understand it, so don’t ask me to explain!” cries Taty. “Just listen! There’s some big park, and a tollbooth there, and a girl outside it—we have to go there, to warn them to get them out, get them out! They’re not safe and he’s coming for them and we don’t have much time, Auntie!”

  “
A big park? There’s so many that could…” She pauses. She knows that’s not true. There’s only one really big park in Bulikov. “The Seat of the World,” she says. “But who’s there, Taty? Who are we going to try to save?”

  “Everyone!” screams Taty. “All of them! We still have a chance, but we need to go now, now, now!”

  Deep in the sub-reality of their sanctum, Tavaan walks down the rows of beds, looking out on all her sleeping siblings. Some look peaceful while others look concerned, dreaming with faint expressions of pain on their faces. Tavaan looks at all of them with some sense of wonder—for though she is the Divine spirit of slumber, she herself never truly sleeps, or dreams. Much as a fish does not understand water, Tavaan has no concept of rest.

  She walks up to Shara Komayd’s overstuffed chair and sees the old woman is awake, sitting slouched with her eyes half-open. She somewhat resents Komayd: it was Komayd’s idea to build this place, and while Tavaan is in many ways the god of this sanctum, she is also its prisoner, babysitting her sleeping siblings as well as this half-second of an old woman’s life that Malwina has twisted and distorted well past its expiration.

  Tavaan watches Komayd for a moment. “Will it work?” she asks.

  Komayd draws a rasping breath. “Olvos can be unpredictable. But she is also resolute. It will not be easy.”

  “Resolute?”

  “She is principled,” says Komayd. “I suppose a god can afford to be principled, if no one else ca—”

  Komayd never finishes her sentence. There’s a noise from the other side of the huge wooden doors on the far side of the room: a tremendous, dreadful clanking, like some massive machinery has just irreparably broken, gears being stripped and rods snapping in two.

  The noise echoes through the room. The sleepers all stir in their beds, shifting and moaning.

  Komayd and Tavaan sit still, listening. No other sounds come.

  “That doesn’t sound right,” says Komayd. “Is…Is that right?”

  “No,” says Tavaan quietly. “It isn’t.”

  Sigrud looks across the fire at the woman. She is the exact woman who met him outside the walls, yet now she looks strangely different. Besides her change in garb, looking at her feels queerly dizzying, like walking up to the edge of a cliff and looking down.