Cruel Pink
Page 19
Needless to relate, I don’t miss work. I’ve taken it on myself to reorganise the library, and I have a feeling I might keep a horse in the old stable here. The exercise appeals to me. And now it’s all possible. I don’t miss London either. Though I may, eventually, go to have a look at the town here. Have a look at that coppery bridge. I wonder where it leads to, apart from over the river?
Klova:
105
After I woke up I got ready, put on best totter-heels, and then I put on the lipstick which I call after my mother, C.P.—Clover Pearl.
At Zone 48 I took the Sprint to The Leaning Tower, and in the room with the chrysanthemums, they had lots of Lantern Fruits, which are Chinese Gooseberries, flying round on their paper-lantern wings. Lovely little gold fruits with wings, playing round the lights, and never getting burned. I met a beautiful male, and we had carnal. Like it was, as is brilliant beyond brilliancy.
Saw Coal, too, and we waved to each other, but that was all. I don’t feel any much for him now. But he’s all right.
Later I had a moonshake at the Firewhirl, under the glittering sky poles, and watched the dawn coming up over the new bridge far off down the river. I love night there, and sunrise, when the bridge changes from opal to ruby to diamond.
The bank-nanny told me, soon as I was home, there were twenty thousand shots in my account.
But anyway I think I’ll steal a dress sometime today.
Just like I can.
And then I’ll go and love.
Irvin:
106
After my final success at The Obelisk, Merscilla Peck both rejoiced in me and grew jealous, which she demonstrated most ably by her antics in the tavern bed, with loving moans and exquisite connivances, and lastly by biting me, sufficiently to draw blood, in the flank. Altogether not sorry to leave the Capital and its environs, not least the wretched hole I had occupied in the hovel of the brown landlady. (The dog had taken himself back there too, on one last visit prior to his sojourn in the country with my erstwhile doctor. Horatius, as now I must call him, had found my second shirt, and eaten a great deal of it. Whether this was a token of esteem on his part, or scorn for my new life, I shall never know.)
However, my own journey took me three days, after which I find myself where I have bound and sworn myself to be, since my miraculous recovery from Sophia’s poison. It is a grim, grey stack, not quite unlike some ornamental jail, with its huge bell-tower thrusting upward into sky, and its narrow cloisters nailing down a tiny courtyard with a well.
And where and what then is this dismaying place? It is the Abbey of Fouldes Water. And here, through a tortuous and torturing process of denial and many redemptive silences, I shall freeze out from myself the glorious sins of my flesh, until I too am stone, both cold and grey, my own fine tower clamped in chastity, and my own bold heart clock-timed to a sedentary tick. Starved, flailed and chained. I am to be a priest.
I gaze on the Christ in his little niche, and through the open stonery behold that curious ancient bridge from Roman times, black as iron, and tending to the west. The sky shines Heavenly beyond, although the world is swanned with snow.
But they have promised me, I shall often read aloud the lessons, for my actor’s voice.
Dawn:
107
I saw the dog again today. We sat together by the little river. I understand, of course, that when I am ready, he will go with me over the shining bridge, and there we will be with Ben, and I will be as Ben is, and as the dog is, too. But for now I must finish all my five lives, for the sake of myself, and of the others.
While I am myself I can still recall, at last, very clearly, that I am also a young murderess, and a man who has retired early to his childhood home to keep a horse and read books, and a young girl who dances and makes love in a world of futuristic dreams, and a proud male actor who will now become a proud and sombre priest. One by one, as each, I and they, become ready, we will walk up on to the bridge of steel, or of copper, or of diamond, opal and ruby, or iron-black, or gold and silver, and cross through into the bright mist. And there we will all be one and quite different, so different from anything we have been here, ever, that I can’t imagine it. Nor any of us could.
But for now the sun gleams, and the river sparkles, and pigeons rustle in the trees. I kiss the dog, and throw a stick for him, knowing he may then run off. And, too, that he will always come back.
———cCPp———
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Also by Tanith Lee
Birthgrave
The Birthgrave (1975)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1977) (aka Shadowfire)
Quest for the White Witch (1978)
Novels Of Vis
The Storm Lord (1976)
Anackire (1983)
The White Serpent (1988)
Four-BEE
Don’t Bite the Sun (1976)
Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977)
Silver Metal Lover
The Silver Metal Lover (1981)
Metallic Love (2005)
Tanaquil
Black Unicorn (1989)
Gold Unicorn (1994)
Red Unicorn (1997)
Blood Opera
Dark Dance (1992)
Personal Darkness (1993)
Darkness, I (1994)
Lionwolf
Cast a Bright Shadow (2004)
Here in Cold Hell (2005)
No Flame But Mine (2007)
Other Novels
Volkhavaar (1977)
Electric Forest (1979)
Day by Night (1980)
Lycanthia (1981) (aka The Children of Wolves)
Sung in Shadow (1983)
Days of Grass (1985)
A Heroine of the World (1989)
The Blood of Roses (1990)
Heart-Beast (1992)
Elephantasm (1993)
Eva Fairdeath (1994)
Vivia (1995)
When the Lights Go Out (1995)
Reigning Cats and Dogs (1995)
White as Snow (2000)
L’Amber (2006)
Greyglass (2011)
Collections
Cyrion (1982)
Tamastara (1984) (aka The Indian Nights)
The Gorgon: And Other Beastly Tales (1985)
Women as Demons (1985)
Dreams of Dark and Light (1986)
Forests of the Night (1989)
Nightshades: Thirteen Journeys into Shadow (1993)
Dedication
In Memoriam
V. H.
Golden Talent. Courage of Steel.
Tanith Lee (1947 – )
Tanith Lee was born in London in 1947. She is the author of more than 70 novels and almost 300 short stories, and has also written radio plays for the BBC and two scripts for the cult television series Blake’s 7. Her first short story, ‘Eustace’, was published in 1968, and her first children’s novel The Dragon Hoard was published in 1971. In 1975 her adult fantasy epic The Birthgrave was published to international acclaim, and Lee has since maintained a prolific output in popular genre writing. She has twice won the World Fantasy Award, and been a Guest of Honour at numerous science fiction and fantasy conventions including the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa, Canada. In 2009 she was awarded the prestigious title of Grand Master of Horror. Tanith Lee is married to author and artist John Kaiine, and lives in the southeast of England.
For more information see www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/lee_tanith
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Tanith Lee 2013
All rights reserved.
The right of Tanith
Lee to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2014 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 473 20622 9
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.orionbooks.co.uk
1 Suggest this to potential readers in a footnote, as here. Maybe list a few more? Or not. Don’t want to lessen MY one.
2 Definitely not to be so classified in the final draft.
3 Not this actual name. I’m not even going to put that down here. Hang it, why not? No one will see this. Douglas – let’s leave it at that.
4 Damn it though, I will put it, here, if nowhere else, the name of Informant No. 1. D.C.W stands for Dentist Clive Woods. He’s the one.