A knock at the door.
“Come in,” she said and stood up from her chair. In walked Tugboat with Chelsea Revan, his bulging arms juxtaposed to her spindly freckled limbs. She cowered behind his body trying to be cool, but her shaking cigarette betraying her. “Thank you, Tugboat. I’ll be fine from here,” said Isabella, gesturing with her hand that Tugboat should go. Tugboat exited and shut the oak door.
“So you have made your way to see me after all, Lady Revan?”
Chelsea Revan made her way to the couch and scooched into one of its corners. She was a timid aggressive little beast. She lit up another cigarette in adolescent defiance and seemed as though she were talking to the wall. “I am spying for Auntie. Don’t think I came for a social call.”
Isabella grabbed a crystal ashtray, walked across the room and set it on the edge of the couch. She walked back to her chair and turned it to face Chelsea.
“Not a very clandestine spy, are you? Your techniques are quite brazen.”
“So I have been told,” replied Chelsea. “Quite a party you throw here. I didn’t realize it was the same stupid party I had been hearing about for some time.”
Isabella winced at the comment—her disdain for the little runt coming back in a flash. This time she wasn’t sick. These frantic rich kids. Nothing stuck in Isabella’s craw more than entitlement. She detested it like a fart. She walked over and grabbed Chelsea’s overly made up face with her little hand. The muscles in her hand scared Chelsea instantly.
“One more insult, little girl, and I will make you realize why your aunt was so afraid of me. I will hurt you, Chelsea Revan. I will enjoy it as well. I find your antics quite worthy of punishing. Now behave.”
Isabella stared into Chelsea’s eyes and saw pools of fear in there. She let go and walked back to her seat. Chelsea’s tone did in fact change from there on.
“Who are you? Aunty wants to know.”
Isabella looked closely at the nervous girl. She spoke with great effort. Each word a brave desire to push back her primary emotion of fear. Sometimes the bravery to overcome one’s self, the ability to utter a single word, could be more heroic than any wartime effort or sporting act. For Chelsea, her interior struggles manifested visibly on her freckled visage.
Isabella could tell quite quickly that Chelsea’s aunt, Minasha Darkglass, had not in fact asked Chelsea to visit. Chelsea couldn’t help herself. She was curious beyond words. She had arrived on her own, stealing out into the night from a back window; the scrapes on her arms still visible from the branches of the tree she made her way down from her bedroom window; the mud on her shoes, a sign of her journey out across the backwoods to the gate; and the faint hint of horse hair, the sign that she had ridden a steed out of the Elegiac Hills into town. The tips of her fingers still were red from the hair dye that she had applied in a mad desire to go undercover (but also, of course, to enjoy changing her hair color). Isabella had a renegade on her hands.
“Answering who I am may prove most difficult as it is a rather large question, but let me make a deal with you. You tell me a few things and I will tell you a few in trade. Some would call it getting to know each other. That sounds rather civil, doesn’t it?”
Chelsea continued to stare at the wall and proceeded onto her second cigarette. “I’m here for Aunty,” she said. “What family do you come from?”
Isabella had to laugh inside. When it came to her life, all the simple questions proved difficult and all the large metaphysical ones were answered with alacrity and grace. Perhaps the truth would be the quickest road.
“My family? It may come as a surprise to you, but in all honesty, that is a question that is hardest for me to answer. I have a brother my age who is rather precocious. I have a stepfather who is a most awful man. But my lineage is unknown to me. I suspect my stepfather may know it, but he bottles it up inside. That said, we don’t come from any great line or anything like that. Most certainly not like you. If anything I would hazard to say we are refugees.”
Chelsea nodded absent-mindedly. It was hard to tell if she was listening at all. Isabella spoke up. “I want to know about your aunt. I don’t need to know anything super serious. Just basic things like what is on her mind. I find her most fascinating.”
“She is, isn’t she?” said Chelsea, looking over at Isabella. She looked so tired.
“She most certainly is,” responded Isabella. “She seems unafraid of the world. A rather defiant figure. She doesn’t look back. She doesn’t trouble herself with the stupid antics of the monarchy and invests her time in larger questions. She isn’t afraid of seeming strange.”
“Exactly.” Whispered Chelsea.
“So, what is on her mind of late?” asked Isabella. “Can I offer you something to drink?”
“One thing that people don’t understand,” said Chelsea, still looking at the wall and ignoring Isabella’s second question. “If anyone, Aunty is the only one actually trying to save the great Houses. They think she is a renegade but she is actually the biggest patriot. Lord knows why. That is the part I don’t understand. Who would spend so much time on people that vilify you? The kind of bile she has to tolerate. Makes you sick. But that is her way. She is actually the only one with enough sense to be preparing for the war to come. Is this your office?” Chelsea Revan got up from the couch and walked over to the bookshelves. She placed her red stained finger on the spines and read the titles.
“Yes. I am an avid reader. Books are mutators. Without them, power uses us as a vessel. Well, at least that is my opinion.”
“Power uses you as a vessel without books.” Chelsea stopped to think about that. “Is that my problem? Perhaps I should read more!” She laughed. “I will take a small glass of red wine if you have it.”
Isabella went to the cabinet and poured the girl a glass. A girl like this could get most strange with a little alcohol in her.
“Aunty knows about you. She says you are dangerous and destructive; that you are moody and that you are not dependable; that you are powerful and that you are stupid. She says that people like you are important to us but that as soon as we depend on you, you betray us. She says I should stay as far away from you as possible. Haha.”
Not a bad description thought Isabella. “I’m not the enemy she makes me out to be,” said Isabella.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” replied Chelsea.
“Judge as you like, Chelsea Revan. What is this war that is to come?” Isabella couldn’t tell if it was a euphemism or a reality. Yosune Persembe had mentioned that Minasha was being used because the great Houses were in trouble. That they believed she is 'talking to the other side to assist House Revan in their time of need'—because the great Houses were faltering.
“Ha-ha! I don’t know. Aunty senses a war. She hints at it all the time. She says we are all in danger and that the enemy is in our midst—that the houses are asleep and that we are heading quickly into a state of war. That we must prepare.”
“A war with who?” asked Isabella. Surely that is a piece of information worth knowing.
“Really? You ask me that?” laughed Chelsea Revan, throwing herself on the couch. “I thought it was with you!”
The comment caught Isabella off guard. She didn’t know what to make of it. What bothered her perhaps more than anything was her inability to get a full read on this girl. She could play games with words and sometimes said them just to try out how they felt on her tongue. Rolled them around and then spit them out into the world, a raw pulp of syllables playing alongside the bass from the dance floor in the other room. It might be best to discount the interpretations of this mentally unfit lass.
“If you had a war with me,” smiled Isabella. “You would know.”
Chelsea Revan laughed at that. “What a strange little creature you are—all confident, proud and sure. You sit on your high throne and beckon the world like the Queen of Sheba. What on earth makes that possible? Hee hee. A war with you. A war with you! I don’t even know what tha
t might mean. Do you have a secret army you could summon to fight off our high guard? Do you have some evil spells that you could cast like Aunty and turn us all to rot?
“Actually, I think if a war did come, I would run. I’m not ashamed to say it. I don’t even care if the families go down in flames. What is it to me? They had me locked up in that loony bin and they all eat pheasant and friseé. I can’t stand them. If a war comes, we should both escape. Even if you have crazy spells, that isn’t the point. You should run because there would be nothing in it for you either. You have no dog in the race as they say.”
Chelsea got up from her seat and poured herself more wine. She was feeling energized. She waltzed across the room, caught her foot on the rug, and fell headfirst on the floor, wine going everywhere. Isabella shook her head. Perhaps the visit with Chelsea Revan was coming to a close. Isabella clapped her hand and Tugboat entered briskly. He went across the room and attempted to help up the small princess.
“Let go of me!” she squealed and squirmed. She seemed to want to stay lying on the ground. Tugboat looked at Isabella for a hint of what to do.
“Throw her out,” said Isabella flatly. The rich girl had soiled her rug. It was time for her to go.
Chelsea looked over at Isabella from her supine position on the floor. “You can’t throw me out. We are compatriots in a world of idiots. I haven’t told you about Aunty and the war.”
Isabella gave a flick of her wrist and Tugboat hauled the young girl over his shoulder and had her carted out of Isabella’s chambers. Chelsea Revan let loose a bone-chilling scream and did her best to beat on Tugboat. Her punches falling like rolled up socks.
Isabella turned her back, as the door closed. She smiled to herself. She had enjoyed throwing the girl’s presumptions back in her face. It gave her pleasure. She rang a bell and the cleaning man Bucknut came to the door.
“Could you clear away this wine? I will be heading out for the night.”
She went to a small dresser and found a pair of diminutive black gloves. She placed them on her hands and bounded straight up to the ledge at the top of her room. She unlatched the window and exited onto the roof of Le Chateau de Crawler. The wind had picked up and the clouds were growing in the sky—a moody night for a sojourn, the hint of rain like garlic on a pre-dinner wind. She had best get moving if she were to get back to the cave before light. She ran to the roof’s ledge just in time to see the final muddy shoe of Chelsea Revan enter her carriage. The driver whipped the horse and it began to make its way along the docks and out of the Calliope District. Isabella launched herself off the edge and glided across the wind, a flying squirrel, and landed ever so gently, on the carriage roof. The roof made a slight thud. She gripped onto the edges and prepared herself for the ride.
Isabella let the carriage bump her around and she smiled to herself at the ludicrous nature of her mission—following this hyena of a girl toward Castle Yog Goth Makal, the home of the Revans. She watched the city pass by in the growing mist: so many adults with the mentalities of zombies—walking and bitter, torn asunder—their dreams a stain that shivered them as they walked, their agitated whispers falling dead as a groan in the ambivalent mess that was this manufactured age. Above, the smoke belched out of brick by brick industrial chimney stacks where the furnaces of the mighty engine of oil refinery ignited, blended and shook the contents of the earth’s inner fluid.
These buildings too had begun to appear. These engines of the city that belched up black and made the city smell of coal. A metallic taste on the wind. These furnaces of energy were part of the gas lamp victory that felt slightly less than heroic. Isabella could see the lines of men heading out of work in the middle of night. Their bodies were bent over and exhausted. They were fuel as much as the coal that came loading in on the tramways—fodder for the grind. She could sense the workload, the cruel logic of it, sense the exhausted nothingness that hummed silently in their minds. This building was yet another water stealer, an evaporator. With each turn of its massive turbines, another body was cracked, another dream gone fallow. Barrenwood was under a spiritual assault. She knew. She could taste it in the saliva on her tongue.
Out toward the edge of the Mortestrate, she watched as the inner tensions of the populace became more frantically physical. She could feel the twisted anger of a group of drug addicts ambling on the unpoliced corner. The faint glow of streetlights illuminated the shadowy figures of people lost in agitated time—their mouths agape, their limbs loose. They walked in tight circles under the streetlights, mumbling to themselves with the pale blinking of the pharmacy sign above their heads, spasmodic muscle movements hinting at a physical revolt of bodies doped up beyond their sagging capacity—the sidewalk a runway for the mentally deceased and physically challenged.
The carriage ambled on, heading out across the back way toward the farmlands. Watching the city’s sidewalk dollar stores shift to abandoned strip malls and then shift to large porches owning white Victorian homes with impressive yards to then, eventually, just green growing land—the stalks of the corn rising out of the earth like a waving gesture from the earth’s body. The corn swayed in the wind, waving at Isabella a hello as she made her way toward the entrance of the Elegiac Hills, the overlooking ridge where the monarchy stared down at the mess they ruled over.
The gate that guarded the long road was golden and guarded. Carved gryphons and shields adorned the massive gate with the crest of House Revan. Standing before the gate were men with red shiny metal helmets with white feathers, leathers straps made a tangle across their chests, white leather boots, and a long ceremonial sword hung low across their hips—plumes of adornment for men who had become a symbol of the work they no longer knew how to do.
“Stop!” they said.
The carriage came to a halt and Chelsea Revan poked her head out. The men shook their heads, opened the gate and waved them through. Isabella’s body melted like ink into the carriage rooftop and she slid on by without a hitch.
The road up the Elegiac Hills bent this way and that with increasingly steep cliffs falling off the edge of the road, a windy journey across the lips of Barrenwood’s territorial boundary. As they gained elevation, Isabella, for the first time that she could remember, could actually look down on the city from high above. This was not a rooftop. Something about staring down at the city gave it a boundary and a boundary gave it humility. Yes, it was a labyrinth but it was a labyrinth with exits and entrances—rivers that flowed out toward the sea, railroads barreled straight out toward the horizon without regret, a marsh that abutted the city and gave its northern edge the cushion of Manzanita and moss.
As it turned, House Castle Yog Goth Makal was the last of the great Houses on this journey. At first she encountered the guard houses that dotted the roadside with their gated entrances and men at arms. They stood staring out with faces most severe, cheeks drawn hard against their faces, in little shanty huts from which they monitored the guests and comings and goings of the town’s elite.
As the road reached the top ridge, it wound its way into hilly garden homes of the minor houses: House Percy with the dandelions and marigolds, the gingerbread-style homes propped up on tall stilts with teakwood and the faces of their laughing mascots, the bird cages on the porches with the brilliant blue feathered Toucans and squawking Bumblebee Parrots; House Gent with stretched long ranch houses with horses grazing out in the yard, wood fences barricading the house so one had to look down the long gravel road to their massive Texas-style mansion simmering with bar-b-que and rotgut; House Nero with its neo-classical columns and its billowing large red banners; House Netherton with its overgrown front yard and gothic cathedral with gargoyles and black liquid belching front yard fountain—frogs, fireflies and honeydew made the tattered front yard their home.
“That could be my home,” Isabella said to herself.
House Chillbach arrived with little fanfare—just a simple series of wood houses that littered the grounds, a central fireplace, the comings
and goings of people dressed Shaker-style, wagons full of cheese, eggs and goose liver. The final minor house was that of House Calliban, a series of brilliant white alabaster domes, a land for looking at the night sky with the look-outs at the top of each dome opened up for the instruments of magnification and illumination.
After the numerous minor houses, the carriage headed up another ridge to the major houses. The road opened up with large oak trees lining the way—a parade of giants leading one to the final series of four estates. Deer, rabbits and the occasional fox appeared, stared and disappeared.
The first estate to present itself was that of Tacsim Station, the home of House Persembe. The rectangular hedges lining the property cut the view in half where one could see a large plot of green up to the massive Byzantine architecture on the horizon. Minarets towered into the sky and even from the long distance Isabella could spy the elaborate mosaics that decorated its exterior. She imagined the sisters growing up there causing trouble in the large field of grass and housing the amazing humanity that could get bored with anything.
Next came House Ellington with its modernist rectilinear homes. Again the hedges provided only the faintest view with another large plot of grass that stretched out toward the modernist homestead that worked its way into the very side of the mountain. Large glass windows combined with straight lines that moved across each other—a three-dimensional constructivist painting to live in. Then came House Imbetta whose imperious black-as-night front gates allowed little view of their home. The guards, dressed in black with the white-eyed monkey emblazoned on their chests, stood guard and denied entry to most.
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