The Underwater Ballroom Society

by Y. S. Lee

  Abby looked at the tray. “You’ve not eaten much for someone who’s slept for two days in a row! Is there something else you fancy? Warm porridge, perhaps? Or congee?”

  Syrus didn’t know the congee she spoke of, though she looked hopefully at him as though he should. He shook his head. Then, because he wanted to be honest with this girl, he said, “Meat. If you could bring me meat, somewhat rare, I would appreciate it.”

  She smiled as she picked up the tray. “I think I can find something as will satisfy you. My Edward, he also…” Then she shifted the tray to her hip and put one hand over her mouth. Blushing, she said through her fingers, “I’m chattering on again, aren’t I?”

  He smiled briefly. “Chatter often drives away dark thoughts. I’m in sore need of their banishment.”

  “Well, I’ll fetch your meat and then chatter at you as much as you like,” she said. “That’s one thing Mum says I’m good for, at least!”

  Abby whisked the tray away and, it seemed, all the light in the room. He sighed again. He knew he should not wait for her. He should leave now and trouble these kind people no more. He had promises to keep.

  But when she returned, he was still sitting there, gazing at the fire, unable to bring himself to leave. It had been so long since he had lived without fear. So long since he had lived as himself.

  The odor of meat roused him, and he turned gratefully to the tray and the pile of nearly rare mutton he found lying there. It was to his specifications, and thankfully fresher than the rancid roast from below.

  He could not help salivating, and he wished Abby would not watch him so intently as he tucked in.

  “You like mutton, then?” She laughed.

  He nodded, resisting the urge to wipe his mouth on the cuff of the unfamiliar shirt he wore and using the napkin on the tray instead.

  “Why do you stay?” he asked, when he was sated. “Do you not fear the talk that will come from your dawdling in a strange man’s room?”

  “You as good as said you wanted company. And my chores are done, leastways all that I know about,” Abby said. She backed closer to the wall, hugging herself as if his words wounded her.

  “I am sorry for my sharpness,” he said. “I just do not want to cause more trouble than I already have.”

  “It’s no trouble. Taking care of people in situations like yours is what we do, Mum and me.”

  “Oh?”

  And she was off. She told him of her father Ah Chen, how he and her mother had founded the Oriental Quarters so that men like Syrus could find meaningful work. Eventually he drew himself up against the headboard, arms clasping knees over his baggy trousers, the tray discarded beside him. Eventually, she came closer and sat tentatively against the footboard as she talked, waving her hands around her head as if she juggled a flock of bright birds.

  He liked the sound of her voice. The rise and fall of it reminded him of his Nainai telling stories in the clan train car to keep the little ones from noticing the cold…

  Nainai. The memory of his grandmother pierced him to the core, deeper even than Olivia. He saw again her death, the Raven Guard slitting her in half as they meted out their retribution on his clan for his foolishness. He gasped, gutted anew. He pressed his forehead to his knees and wept.

  “Have I said something wrong again?” she asked.

  When he didn’t answer, she moved closer and took him in her arms. He folded into her like a child. He felt no shame over being grown and weeping—it was the mark of a grown man to weep for those lost—but a distant part of his mind worried that she might find reason to fear him mad if he kept up such strange behavior. Still, resting his head against her shoulder, at last having someone warm and alive to hold, burying his face in the wild rose scent of her…it eased him even more than the meat that filled his belly.

  When he could speak again, he took the handkerchief she offered him. “Forgive me if I frightened you.”

  He felt her reluctance as she released him. “No trouble. Sure as sure, you’ve been through more than most. What happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I fear to tell you, Miss Abby. I don’t want to put you in unnecessary danger. I promise to leave as soon as I’m well.”

  The light dimmed in her eyes a bit; he watched her struggle to hide her feelings.

  “I also fear you might not believe me,” he admitted.

  “Try me.”

  It was his turn, then, to tell her of a land she’d scarcely heard of except in the wildest tales, a land where their common ancestors had been welcomed long ago, only to be cast out by marauding Londoners; a land where magical beasts held sway and kept the world in balance, where sylphs served as advisors and automatons as generals. He told her of the Winedark Sea and the song of mermaids under a full moon, and the Kraken that haunted the deeps. There were still gaps in his memory, but he told her what he knew of the present—that he’d been enslaved as a sideshow freak in this world for at least a year, that he’d tried to escape before, but this was the first time he’d succeeded.

  And now he was here, and all he knew was that he had to free the rest of those who were being held captive.

  “And after that?” she said.

  Syrus chuckled bitterly. “I didn’t imagine I’d survive long enough to find out.”

  “Well, you’ve made it this far with a little help. Think what you could do with a little more.”

  The way she just accepted everything he’d told her stunned him. He’d hardly believe it himself if it hadn’t happened to him. But he knew he could not let Abby help him more than she already had. Taking her to where he knew the Ringmaster and Switchblade Sally would wreak their vengeance on him would not be fair to her.

  “I wish I could say yes, but your mother would surely not take kindly to your offer.”

  “She’s got nothing to do with it!” She glared at him, and he couldn’t help but smile at her passion. “I’m a woman grown. I—”

  The door creaked open and Abby abruptly stood. She glanced at her mother, who glared at her, and Ah Yue, the Chinese doctor, whose gray changshan swished around his black cloth shoes as he entered.

  Ah Yue took one look at Syrus. To the women he said, “Please leave.”

  He escorted them out and shut the door behind them.

  “Abby,” her mother said in a warning tone as they descended the stairs.

  “I know, Mum.”

  “Then why do you never listen? I told you to be careful. You’re still in mourning, girl! People will talk! The last thing I need is for people to think I’m running a brothel. They already think I’m running an opium den! Think of our reputation, if nothing else.”

  Cook called, and her mother hurried down the stairs.

  Abby knew it was useless to argue with her mum. The facts were incontrovertible. Still, she was tired of facts. Facts had led her to this endless round of chores, marketing, and, more likely than not, spinsterhood.

  She wanted something different. Something as wild and unpredictable as her heart had apparently become.

  That afternoon, she volunteered to go to the market. She needed what passed for fresh air to clear her head. She was angry at herself for being in such a tizzy over a man she barely knew, a man who’d been through far more than seemed possible. She was angry at him for refusing her help. He’d had the look of a wild animal about to flee, and it was likely he would be gone by morning. The thought made her heart pace in her ribs like a caged wolf.

  Her mother was right: This attraction made no sense. She’d known Edward for a few years, first seeing him at the ostler’s in the market square, then every day as he’d started working for himself making deliveries. He’d rented the room from her mother when things were at a pinch for many, and it’d been all Abby had ever dreamed. And then six months ago, all those dreams had ended in a matter of days when he’d contracted a strange, incurable disease and died.

  Coming to the point of wanting to be with Edward had taken years. Why, then, did she find
her affections rising so suddenly for a man she’d only just met?

  It was bleeding stupid, as Cook would say.

  And yet, she thought, pulling her shawl tighter against the chill—the shawl that still smelled of him despite a thorough washing—here she was, still thinking of him. Here she was, worrying over him because he had spoken of danger but would not allow her to help him.

  Afternoon fog was rolling in, and the lamplighter was already making his rounds when she arrived at the market. Sellers were packing up their wares, so she hurried first to buy the vegetables Cook had requested, and then onward to the Chinese apothecary to purchase a list of herbs Ah Yue had sent down before she left.

  Some of them she knew—she could read a little Chinese, courtesy of her dearly departed father—but others she questioned. The scales of a dried gecko? A shark’s tooth? They sounded more like components of a magic spell to her than medicine, but Ah Yue was renowned for his healing skills; she’d seen him heal many men left for dead.

  Except Edward, of course. Ah Yue had taken one look at him, shaken his head, and, over Kitty’s protests, given his patient an opium pipe.

  “He may as well spend his last days in peace,” Ah Yue had said. And that had been that.

  The laden basket dragged at her arm, and who knew whether the shop would close early in such dense fog, so she cut through an alley to shave off some time.

  As she approached the thoroughfare again, something dark and slick nearby caught her attention. Fascinating green light sparkled around its edges. Her inner mudlark could not resist.

  She stepped toward it. The thing tittered and sidled away from her feet, inviting her to follow.

  One more step and she could reach it, she thought. As her bootheel clicked on the cobble next to it, the thing erupted. Sticky black vines looped out of it, reaching like tentacles up the walls and wrapping firmly around her ankles. A pulsing black stalk pushed up from the center of the writhing mass while the vines whipped up Abby’s thighs and torso, closing her mouth before she could scream.

  As she watched, helpless, a bloated flower the poisonous color of night pushed out from the stalk. It spread over her, its petals yawning wide as she looked into the green-toothed depths of its blossom.

  Then, in one gulp, it swallowed her whole and collapsed again into an innocuous bit of shale.

  A harlequin in a domino cloak, dressed as if for a costume party or an engagement with Death Himself, entered the alley. He scooped up the deadly nightshade and banished it into his sleeve.

  That night, Syrus woke as the fire burned low on the hearth. Something had changed. A darkness deeper than night had crept in with the fog.

  The medicines Ah Yue had made for him grounded him; he felt less like he was trapped underwater. Though Ah Yue had insisted what Abby would bring from the market would make him feel even better, the powder he’d drunk made him feel more himself than he had in ages. The dream-songs of the mermaids had all but vanished. His sharper senses and clearer thoughts made him realize that when he heard the rapping against the window, he should not open it.

  The wise doctor, recognizing him for what he was, had also spread a circle of protection around him, including hanging ba gua mirrors in the windows to ward off bad energy.

  Still, Syrus drew back the curtain. He did not flinch when he saw what hung there—a slack-jawed circus goon hanging upside down by its feet, joints all twisted and sticking out at impossible angles.

  “I will not let you in,” he said, as the goon attempted to dig out the windowpanes with its elongated, hooked fingers. It could get no purchase on the edges, and they seemed to burn it, for the goon drew back, hissing. From the glimmer reflecting off the mirror down the panes, Syrus knew the doctor’s magic was protecting him.

  When the goon realized it would not succeed that way, it worked its jaw and serrated tongue frantically, trying to make words. At last, it growled, so low that Syrus could just decipher the words: “The girl. We have. You want she lives, you come.”

  He grimaced. “Where?”

  The goon sighed, working its slavering jaws again. “Lea Park. Godalming.” The thing twisted its head to look at him; he realized the gruesome expression it made was meant to be a smile. “Special show. I take you there.” It spread the wings from its twisted forearms to show it was capable of flight.

  Syrus sighed. Slowly, he took down the ba gua mirrors and opened the window.

  The flight was painful, damp, and uncomfortable. The goon’s talons dug deeply into the old waistcoat Syrus had taken from the wardrobe, and by the end, it struggled to keep them both aloft.

  But at last, it began descending into the drifting mist. Syrus glimpsed a sprawling manse hard by a lake. From that lake rose the still form of a god who had once ruled the Winedark Sea—but he had disappeared before Syrus’s birth, and since then the seas had been lawless and filled with Umbrals who had escaped their confines in the deep.

  Syrus peered at the god as he passed over. It was a sculpture, nothing more. The mirrors in this world—of the London which was not the London he knew, of a culture that was rooted in the same as his and yet was not his—confused him. Magic worked here, yet it did not quite work the same, and the use of dark magic seemed to have no effect on the world in the way it had in his own.

  The goon set him down in a wood. Its wings folded into its back and its gnarled legs lengthened, the talons shrinking into things approximating feet. It gestured with a knobby finger. This way.

  It kept one talon firmly lodged in Syrus’s bicep in case he tried to escape. He smelled the others faintly and yet nearby, as if they were being held somewhere beneath the earth. And there was also food, much food—the smells of a feast. He frowned.

  They came to a strange tree in the wood. The tree was vast and ancient, but it looked as though it had been struck long ago by lightning, for it was hollow at its core. The hollow was faced by an oaken door. The goon inserted a talon in the lock, shivering at the pain caused by the iron.

  As the door swung open, Syrus caught another scent—wild rose mixed with fear.

  Abby.

  The goon hurried him down the iron staircase, for it stung both of them in equal measure. The goons had always hung from the wooden rafters of the train cars to keep as far from the iron wheels as possible. No one cared if the iron caused any other being pain.

  At the bottom of the staircase, the moldy throat of tunnel disgorged into a soaring underwater ballroom. From the cracks and brown runnels of water along the walls, Syrus realized they had somehow gone under the lake, and now he stared up through a dome that ascended through the lake’s murky depths.

  His breath caught at what transpired before him. Around one side of the dome, a lavish banquet had been laid amidst towering sprays of hothouse flowers. The smells of frangipani and freesia, of roast suckling pig and pheasant, nearly drowned the thread of wild rose he’d smelled earlier. At various places around the dome, certain circus acts were chained on pedestals or in iron cages—the harpy bent her head at him. A unicorn he’d been unable to save knelt on its pedestal, its head twisted downward by iron shackles so that its horn could be safely touched by circus-goers.

  It rolled an eye at him in terror. My king.

  King. He heard again the mermaid song: Little king, little king…

  And then he knew.

  He had been sitting on a throne watching the Ringmaster and Switchblade Sally perform. He had done that because he was King, chosen by the ancient Tinker King Blackwolf to renew the kingdom that had been stolen from their people.

  The two had presented themselves to him as performers, and they had woven an intricate spell around him in his sorrow. They had caused him to dismiss Olivia from the throne room, for he could not bear the sight of her. He had not seen the trap until it was too late. They had swallowed him with the deadly nightshade and brought him to this world as part of their evil act. They had made him forget everything he had ever known, as they had with all the others they’d
captured.

  But now their power was diminishing. The prisoners were remembering.

  He was not entirely human; he was not entirely wolf. But he was King.

  For as much as he had shied from, even despised, the notion of royalty once upon a time, now he knew that the Elementals here were not just his fellow prisoners, but also his people. They depended upon him for their protection and safety. He had always felt that he must free them but realizing his true responsibility to them made his situation all the more desperate.

  The three rings of the circus were represented in miniature at the center of the dome. Seats on risers surrounded the rings. In the middle of the rings rose a dais with two thrones. One of the thrones was outfitted with shackles. The other was not.

  Syrus knew for whom the shackled throne was meant. His wolf hackles rose, and he shook himself. Though every tendon and muscle screamed for him to take houndshape and run, he knew he had to play the Ringmaster’s game just a bit longer.

  Red velvet curtains hung over the other tunnel mouth entrances, and he scanned them, searching for a familiar face amongst the growing crowd of servants, circus goons, and the few remaining Elementals as he was pulled relentlessly forward.

  One of the curtains was thrown back, and the Ringmaster emerged with Switchblade Sally on his arm. Behind them, a couple of goons dragged Abby, who was close to twisting out of their grip.

  “SYRUS!” she shouted when she saw him.

  Her shout echoed through the dome. Everyone stopped to look at him.

  Switchblade Sally turned and lifted a finger. “Quiet,” she said, the menace of her voice echoing around the dome. One of the goons turned itself inside out, becoming a fleshy gag that stuffed itself around Abby’s head and into her mouth. At the terror in Abby’s eyes, Syrus moved to throw off the goon that held him, but when he saw the slow smile on Sally’s face, he stilled.