Under the Pendulum Sun

by Jeannette Ng

  But you do, because you must, because one day you will be able to drink poison of broken glass and not feel it, not feel the pain, not feel anything, be able to say: “I have forgotten and this is no longer pain, because I feel it so much, because it is like second nature to me, as natural as breathing, and I no longer remember what it is like when it was whole, when I was not feeling this, when it doesn't run through me.”

  And when you bleed, you will bleed broken glass, bleed poison, but you will not bleed, not really, because you will be so used to bleeding inside, you will not feel it.

  And then, then, you will be stronger.

  Written in an unidentified hand in the Journals of Rev Jacob Roche, undated

  I awoke assuming I had forgotten to pull closed the curtains or shutters as moonlight flooded in. Cold, clear and silver-white, the moon seemed to fill the tower room and there was a strange, almost underwater quality to the light. The lethargic flutter of curtains added to the illusion of being suspended in water. I wanted to breathe slower, to drift like dust.

  The moon of Arcadia, being an orb that dangled off a fish, did not wax and wane like the earthly moon. Its unchanging roundness gave the illusion of time staying still, of a world holding its breath. As the arc of the pendulum sun grew shorter, midnights were getting brighter and midday darker. It was easy to believe that soon my days would be nothing but this watery twilight.

  I rubbed my eyes, gritty from sleep. The room came into focus.

  My pulse stopped. A gust of cold air cut through the haze of sleep and I could feel myself sweating in fear.

  The door to empty air was open.

  It was through that doorway that the moon’s silver light poured in. The moon and its fish were swimming very close. I could see now that the pole that dangled from the moon was fleshy and twisted. I could see the mottled colours of the moon, blotchy and white, like the belly of a fish. I could see the glinting teeth of the moon fish, curved and brown as rusty sickles.

  The fish rippled and it swam forwards. I glimpsed the round, staring eye of the moon fish. It blinked before flicking its tail and pushing away. Cold prickled my skin like a scatter of needles. I feared its unseeing gaze.

  Long moments passed before I could force myself to close that door and latch it shut.

  I leaned against its oaken surface, heart rattling to a woodpecker rhythm. Deliriously, I thought it would break soon, shatter as wood does under the beak of the stubborn bird.

  It was then that I heard a clatter. My eyes snapped over to the writing desk.

  It was a woman in black.

  She stood by the writing desk. A veil and shadow hid her face from me.

  “Wait,” I said.

  Her red eyes darted like flame to the door. Her gloved hands snatched Roche’s journal from the desk and she fled.

  I scrambled to my feet and, trailing my shawl, I raced after the woman in black. Down the twist of the stairs and along the corridors. Bolting through the castle, I lost track of where we were, as she turned another corner, pushed aside some heavy drapes and unlatched a door.

  We were on the roof. I did not remember stairs.

  The night was no longer still. The wind had picked up and stripped the sky of clouds. The light from the moon shone steady and unimpeded. It swam close.

  “Please, don’t run,” I called hopelessly after her. “Come back.”

  The woman in black clambered across the shingles. Her veil thrashed like a caged beast and she streamed long ribbons from her arms like a Morris dancer.

  The wind caught her veil and tore it from her hair. She reached a hand after it, but it was too late. The wind had claimed it for its own, and the lace veil fluttered away.

  She turned her face to the moon, and I caught her fine, English features. The wind tore at her hair until it became a tumble of dark ringlets. I saw her mouth curse as she pushed her hair from her face. She had a straight, long nose and rounded chin. Though her lip was split, I was certain I recognised her from one of the portraits in the long gallery.

  “I need that book. Please, I want to talk to you. I need the book…” I knew she could not hear me with the wind as it was. It filled my lungs as I spoke and threw my voice back at me.

  She stooped down and climbed into an open window.

  I did not glance down, for I knew the sight of the ground would only fill me with fear. I pulled my shawl tighter around myself and with wind howling in my ears, I followed.

  Laon always said I was as surefooted as a goat, after all.

  I was glad of my slippers against the shingles. For though it was outside, the softness of the slippers allowed me a better sense of whether a step should be trusted or not.

  The wood of one cracked under my weight and shifted. My racing pulse skipped a beat. Swallowing, I moved my foot to another tile and tried that.

  Panic swelled within me. My tongue felt thick with fear. I knew I had to move faster. The woman had surely fled tracelessly by now.

  The wind caught my shawl and it slipped from my hands. I tightened my grip but it unbalanced me. The shingle snapped and shifted under my foot. It skidded, and I could hear it clatter onto the courtyard below.

  I fell forwards, though, onto the roof.

  My hands and arms took the weight of my fall. I scraped them against the shingles, and the wind was raw against them. I tasted blood in my mouth.

  The open window was close, though. She had not closed it. Trying not to sob in pain, I crawled forwards. I had scraped my knees as well and they complained at having to take my weight.

  Gracelessly, I scrambled inside.

  I was in a very small, narrow room. It had within it nothing more than an unmade bed and a travel trunk with leather handles. It was very new and bore a pair of brass initials.

  There was only one way she could have gone: the door.

  Through that was a stairwell so tight that my skirts brushed against both walls as I squeezed down it. Imagining the walls crushing in on me, I feared that the passage was narrowing.

  As I descended, I could hear a low, keening sound, somewhere between a moan and scream.

  My brother’s warning echoed in my mind. Don’t try to solve this place, he had pleaded. I remembered the pain written in the lines of his face. It won’t end well.

  The woman in black stood beside a small, lit fireplace. I recognised it as one that was used for baking the Eucharist wafers. The rosy light illuminated the small chapel, dancing red upon the pews and the high altar. I recognised the scattered candlesticks and dishes.

  We were in the other chapel. The one in the white tower in the garden.

  The far door that opened into the garden remained latched shut. That must have been why she needed to get in through the window in the tower room.

  “Hello?” I took a step closer to her. She was no taller than me and seemed about my age. Her eyes were swollen and her split lip was bleeding again. A cobweb of healed and healing scratches covered much of her exposed skin. A silver cross glinted at the hollow of her throat. Her wrists were bandaged, and I saw now that what I had thought to be trailing ribbons were but bandages around her wrists.

  We were right by the altar. The gilded altarpiece with faceless halos loomed over us, watching.

  The woman in black watched the fire with an avid expression, darting her fingers in and out of the flames. She had shed her gloves. Her throat shivered in that low keening.

  She had at her feet an array of curling scrolls and folded papers. I spied the dark spine of the journal.

  The keening stopped and she looked right past me. Her eyes settled on the space behind me and stared at that for a moment before returning to the flames.

  “Who are you?” I asked. “Why did you take the journal?”

  She did not answer my question. She covered her face with her hands and her chest shook with sobbing, but she made no noise.

  Ignoring the dull thud of fear in my veins, I took another
step closer. The sight of her distress pained me. I wondered if I should try to comfort her, but at the sound of my movement her head snapped back up. Her eyes were dry.

  She picked up one of the pages and leaned against the stone wall to read it, tilting it towards the fire for light. She gave another long, shivering wail. I watched her as she pawed at the wall and dragged her jagged nails against the stone. She tugged at the bloody bandages at her wrist and turned those long nails onto her own skin, marking it.

  “Don’t! You’ll hurt yourself.”

  She turned to me and gave me a glassy-eyed stare. She finally spoke: “It’s not real. He can’t see you, so it’s not real.”

  “Don’t hurt yourself,” I said. I licked my wind-chaffed lips and tried to swallow my fear. I wanted to reach out to her but floundered for how. “Please.”

  “Does it matter?” she whispered, voice hoarse with disuse. “He can’t see any of us.”

  “Of course it does.”

  “It’s not real, don’t you understand? None of this is real.”

  “Real? How so?”

  “I stand here, I think it a place. A real place, but it is nothing more than a painted set of a puppet box. Patchwork curtains and all. Except that we are the puppets.” She glanced down, seemingly distracted, the blue irises of her eyes following the rapid flickering of her fingertips as she tapped them against each other. “And what the word did make it I do believe and take it.”

  “What do you take? Come with me–”

  “He was the word that spoke it. I believe. He took the bread and broke it. I believe that too.”

  “Come with me.” I reached out my hand to her. “I could wash your wounds and bring you some–”

  “No!” she snapped, interrupting me. “None of that. I will not be stolen away again. The gloved hand will strike; it holds the power. That within will speak truth and I fear, I should not fear.”

  “Can I help you? You’re in pain.”

  “The fire looks after me. The fire loves me. But even that’s not real. Nothing really is around here.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No one does. They built it all in a day and a night. You don’t know where you are. You don’t see because you’re blind. I don’t see because I don’t have eyes.” She picked up a bundle of paper from the floor and cast it sheet by sheet into the fire. I recognised Roche’s hand upon the pages. They were letters. I needed to stop her, but I couldn’t just snatch them from her hands.

  “But then you weren’t wrong.” She pressed one of the letters against her lips in a reverent kiss. “The worst lie.” Another kiss. “The best lie.” Another. “The only lie… it is always the truth.”

  “Why are you burning it all?”

  “I can’t kill me quickly, so I just have to do it slow. Slow, slow. So slow,” she said. “I won’t kill her slow, though. Bringer of dreams. Hate. Hate.”

  “Can I… Can I take the letters? Since you don’t seem to want them…” I crouched down and picked up one of the pages closest to me. I felt the familiar spine of the journal and drew that close.

  “He went fast. Leapt through the door from dreams.” She was staring into the fire again and seemed not to notice me. “Fast and slow. Fast and slow. He went so very fast. But I can’t walk that way… They stops me. Says I can’t go. Says I must stay here.” She wrapped her arms around herself and her voice dropped to a whisper. “Lost but found. Stolen but safe.”

  “Are you a prisoner? Who keeps you here? Who are you?”

  “The original,” she whispered. “I am the original.”

  A knock echoed through the chapel. I heard the doorknob turn. The woman in black flinched and curled inward, pressing herself against the wall.

  Fear filled my lungs and I could barely breathe. My heart was in my throat.

  Clutching the new papers, I picked up my skirts and ran up the stairs. Glancing back, I saw a figure, tall as a poplar, fill the door of the chapel and I heard the low keening of the woman in black.

  Returning to my room, I breathed a long sigh.

  Long did I lean against the closed door, the wood hard against my forehead. My ears were still echoing with the keening of the woman in black. I threw my tightly balled fists against the door in frustration and mirrored her low whine of pain. My mind was a jumble of theories on her identity and that of her mysterious captor. She seemed human enough but it was not impossible for her to be a changeling. She also said that she was the original, a word that meant too many things and too few.

  My hard-won papers littered the floor but I could not bring myself to pick them up.

  Chapter 17

  The Owl at the Sermon

  Those longest associated with them, and most intimately acquainted with their character and habits, never expect an Arcadian to speak the truth when there is a chance for them to tell a lie. Yet this very people will tell you by their own laws, and by their own lips, that it is a vile sin to lie and deceive. Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate (unchaste), nor abusers of themselves with mankind (Sodomites), nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

  We are safe in concluding that the Fae, without exception, are guilty of some or all of these sins.

  William Finkle & Hildegard Vossnaim, The Arcadian Voyages, Embracing Diverse Accounts of First Travellers, With Notes on the Culture and

  the Climate

  Morning made so much of the misadventures of the night before seem like a dream.

  I woke, an aching heap on the floor by the door of my room, and for all the scrapes on my hands and knees, I could barely believe it all happened. With deliberate slowness, I pressed a damp washcloth to my wounds and daubed away the light dusting of dried blood.

  There was a madwoman half wild, half imprisoned in this castle and I had no idea by whom or why. I wasn’t even entirely certain that she was human. It was clear to me that Mab must have brought her here with her retinue. In her rambling, the woman in black had said that she would not be stolen away again. She said that she was the original.

  Turning the word over in my mind, I thought of copies and forgeries. I thought of Ariel Davenport, the changeling, the false one.

  The original.

  Perhaps she was a stolen mortal, like the real Ariel Davenport. The original Ariel Davenport. The one I had never met. After all, I still had no idea what became of the children the fae spirit away.

  A cold chill crept up my skin. This place was too full of secrets.

  I had torn my silver-grey dress at some point during the night and it would be impossible to wear it to the service. As I plucked my plain green dress from the trunk, my vanity could not help but wish it more fashionable. It lacked the much-lauded sloping shoulders and fullness of sleeve after the elbow. A lace collar and brooch were my only ornaments.

  As I dressed and pinned back my hair, I skimmed the letters I had snatched from the chapel floor. The first one was written by the same mad, raving hand from Roche’s journal. It was part of a longer letter. It spoke of the wonders of Gethsemane, and I assumed the writer had newly arrived at the castle. It expressed bewilderment at the edifice’s architectural styles and how it reminded the writer more of a grand folly than a true ruin, likening it to James Wyatt’s Spring Hill Tower with its nonsensical turrets and balconies and gargoyles.

  It is nothing more than a painted set of a puppet box.

  It was those words that lingered upon my mind as I strode through the castle to the chapel. It was slow at first, but I began to notice imperfections in the illusion. I marvelled that I did not see it before. The long and storied history of this edifice had been forged.

  I lacked an architect’s eye and perhaps that was why I did not notice any of this at first. Or perhaps I was simply too ready to believe that this was indeed an ancient castle. I could tell now that it wasn’t the whim of an ancient l
ord that installed glass windows upon the Norman wall but that it had been built at the same time. The seams simply weren’t there for it to be a later addition.

  As I entered the chapel, I thought of the artificial infinite that the columns, ribs and arches were meant to create. It evoked the very sublime that my brother so desperately wanted to do with words. But I thought too of how the chapel leaned against the castle wall and noticed the way its bricks had been laid, not against the stonework but cunningly interwoven with it.

  As the chapel’s single bell tolled its earthy notes, the Pale Queen’s court flocked inside.

  They arrived in pairs and singly. Beaked and feathered, the courtiers had changed their plumage to darker, more sombre shades. They folded their glassy tails and strutted in, clinking musically. For the first time, I heard the rasp of their dragging against the stone.

  The cloaked and hooded creatures did not so much walk as clamber inside on all fours, flashing their misshapen limbs and talons as they moved. They did not lower their hoods when they perched themselves on the pews. Ladies with gleaming, insectoid eyes seated themselves at the back, by the men of sand who had all donned spectacles upon their featureless faces.

  It was so obvious to me now that Paracelsian theory of elemental fae was wrong. Or at least unhelpful as a model to understand them. It could still be that each of these creatures were aligned to a classical element, but it could bring no further illumination. It was a thought that made me question the assumptions I had made of Mr Benjamin or the elusive Salamander based on their alleged elemental associations.

  “I never thought I’d see this place so full of fae,” said Mr Benjamin, leaning over to me. “Baptised or otherwise.”