Under the Pendulum Sun

by Jeannette Ng

  “This isn’t from any book of the Bible we know,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” said Laon, brows furrowing.

  “We’ve been working off the assumption that these pages are from known books,” I said. “Because of this line here.”

  I pointed and I heard him mutter the words to himself: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

  “But what follows isn’t the rest of John.” I braced a shaking hand against my mouth. “We’ve been straining so hard because we assumed it is. Because that other page was and… We were staring at it too closely to notice this.”

  “But I thought this was meant to be a project to translate the Bible.”

  “Perhaps somewhere that was the goal, but this… this is some sort of apocrypha. Roche may have been working on translating biblical texts into Enochian, but this is not it. This is a new book.”

  “You mean he’s translating it out of Enochian.”

  “Or trying to,” I said. “I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed this earlier. The pattern of when God is mentioned in this. It’s very similar but it’s not the same. We were too busy comparing phrases and fragments to notice the larger pattern.”

  “It could just be a very bad translation.”

  I smiled. “That is also possible.”

  “Then what does it say?”

  “I don’t…” I swallowed, unwilling to admit ignorance. “We’ll find out.”

  He met my gaze with a smile. “Together.”

  That night, I dreamt.

  I was in a perfect garden. The air smelt of mint and the earth was new.

  A man who was all mankind looked at me. He did not speak so much as command. The garden bent to his will.

  He watched as I stood in the shadow of a tree with white serpentine roots. I leaned against the tree, and its warmth embraced me. I pulled leaves from the tree and read them like pages from a book.

  The world was made with words. If I looked hard enough, I could read those words still. They flowed in the veins of the world, written on their seams.

  They told me this tree would reach the heavens. They told me nothing was forbidden.

  They told me knowledge could not be a sin.

  I licked my lips and they tasted of salt.

  Chapter 33

  The Prices at the Market

  In the matter of the renewal of the charter, for instance, the merchants of Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, and the other manufacturing towns advocate Free Trade in its utmost extent, regardless of the interests of the inhabitants of the Company’s dominions, or the risk of loss to the British revenue, should Free Trade be the means of causing a misunderstanding with the Fae.

  The South Seas Company, on the other hand, are going on the opposite tack, – they are doing everything in their power to make it appear the trade to Arcadia can only be conducted in safety by themselves; but the public, knowing the events which have taken place since the charter was last renewed, will not now receive the evidence of the Company’s servants without a suspicion that they have a strong predilection for things as they are.

  When the charter was last renewed, a parliamentary committee was appointed, as at present, to ascertain if it was likely the consumption of English manufactures would be greatly increased by opening the ports of Arcadia to private traders; and on that occasion all, or nearly all, of the Company’s servants who were examined gave it as their opinion, it would be quite impossible to extend the consumption of British goods in Arcadia.

  “Letter from a Changeling”, Blackwood’s Magazine, May 1830

  All lost things could be found at the Goblin Markets. Or so Mr Benjamin told us.

  It was one Sunday that the gnome mentioned that the Goblin Markets were going to be about. He had asked a question about the difference between the clay birds that Christ created in the apocrypha and those sold at the Markets. He was beginning to reel off all he remembered about the fae-created birds when Catherine Helstone’s brother pursued the subject of what else they sold.

  “Everything, really,” said Mr Benjamin, pushing his spectacles up his crooked nose. “And nothing. And anything. Abstract concepts are very fashionable, if not very legal.”

  “Legal?” I echoed.

  “Not all trades are ones that should be made.” The gnome grinned, lips rolling back to show round teeth. “So they hide at the edge of the light, deep into the mists. The pendulum is never overhead. Only ever night and twilight.” He gave an exaggerated shiver. “I went a lot when was a miner. Long hours easier with a pinch of dream.”

  “What about lost memories?” said Catherine Helstone’s brother.

  “As long as it’s lost. All lost things end up there.”

  “And the Markets will be appear soon?”

  Mr Benjamin nodded.

  “We can’t leave the castle,” I said. “The Pale Queen said–”

  “But we aren’t chained down. We can go,” he said. “This is important to you.”

  “We’d be risking all that we’ve been working for, the alliance with the Pale Queen and her permission for passage and…” The words came tumbling out of my mouth, half excuses, half reasons, as the fear welled up inside me. “And the translation. We’ve only just begun making a breakthrough. I know we only have a few words but it’s beginning to make sense. We can’t risk that.”

  “We aren’t risking it by going. And the Markets may even offer more answers.”

  “We are. If the Pale Queen finds out–”

  “It’ll be worth it.” He smiled winningly. His cloudless blue eyes sparkled. “Lost things find their way to the markets, we should be able to find something there.”

  “I don’t see how that would help.”

  “You’ve been craving answers.”

  “I’ve been fearing answers.”

  “Either way, we should find out.”

  It was the use of our childhood turn of phrase that got to me. I swallowed my fear and nodded.

  We left Gethsemane in the late morning, heading away from the approaching sun. The mists enveloped us, their curling tendrils taking on dying whales and dancing waves.

  “How far is it?” I said. “Don’t we need to take a horse?”

  “No,” he said. “Benjamin said we could walk. Very close, he said. As close as a childhood memory, as near as an apology.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. He said it was far from the pendulum. Where it’s never properly light.”

  Catherine Helstone’s brother shrugged. “Nothing around here makes sense. Especially distances. Journeys just aren’t measured in time.”

  We kept walking, vague as Mr Benjamin’s directions were. We stayed on the path.

  The mist thinned, the skies darkened, and we were in a glade of sorts. I wondered if this was the forest I once saw at the edges of the cliffs. The birch trees, bandaged as they were in their white bark, towered over us, each straight as a flagpole. The gashes in the peeling bark watched us like thin, slitted eyes.

  “Awful for climbing,” said Catherine Helstone’s brother with a vague gesture towards the trees. “Though I’ve seen you climb a birch.”

  “Not successfully.”

  “I thought it successful. It was definitely worth ruining that green dress over.”

  “Green? I thought the dress was–” I swallowed my words and tried to suppress the memory of my torn dress clinging to my torn legs, both red with blood.

  “I’m probably wrong,” he said gently. “I can misremember too.”

  It was very strange to walk through a forest and have it be almost silent. Despite the half light, the air had that morning crispness that songbirds favoured. But there was no chorus of finches and thrushes, no soft hum or chirps of insects, no scuttling in the undergrowth.

  “It doesn’t feel like we should be here,” I said. Fear danced goosebumps up my spine. “We should go back.”

  “No, we came for your memories.”

  We reached a sma
ll clearing in the trees. The moon shone down white and silvered the trees.

  “It’s very quiet,” I said. “Is this the right place?”

  Catherine Helstone’s brother glanced down again that the crude map Mr Benjamin had scrawled for us and said, “As far as one can guess.”

  There was nothing but trees and grass and mist.

  At the edge of the first clearing, we could see a path bordered with white mushrooms that led to a second clearing. A glimpsed row of mushrooms in the grass further away suggested another path and another clearing.

  I pulled out the compass; it was spinning without anchor. I shook my head.

  “I didn’t think it would help,” I said with a sigh.

  “I did give it to you so you couldn’t find Arcadia,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I trusted you wouldn’t want to part with it. And you need to get lost to get to Arcadia… so I thought it would prevent you from finding me.” His voice was heavy with guilt and he dared not meet my gaze. “Because you would never be lost.”

  My hand closed around it, trying to bury the pain of his confession. “I had thought it a promise. You didn’t say anything, you know.”

  “I wanted you too much. You know that.”

  “I thought it was meant to guide me to you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  It was then that it started.

  Merchants, winged and horned and whiskered, arrived. They each had a brightly coloured bundle on their shoulders. These bundles unwrapped to reveal a plethora of trinkets and, in the blink of an eye, the ground was a patchwork of cloths each laden down with an intriguing spread of wares. I saw gems that looked like iridescent animal eyes, tiny castles hanging on strings and sea-sodden bottles each with a tightly rolled scroll inside them.

  “Make way!” came a shout. “Make way away!”

  A cart came hurtling towards us, and we stepped out of its way as it scraped perilously close. The cart came to a halt and its vendor, a hunchbacked man with a veritable halo of whiskers, began unfolding it into a stall. Strings of buttons and thimbles and keys were suspended on the frame of the stall.

  Cart after cart followed, each unfurling into a stall. Shelters and stands stretched from the body of the carts. They jostled for space beside and around those that sold things off the ground. Insults were muttered, but few moved to make room for newcomers.

  “Lost dreams, old dreams, day dreams.”

  “Sweet to tongue and sound to eye; come buy, come buy.”

  “Rain by the drop, hail by the stone. Rain by the drop, hail by the stone. Yorkshire mist and London fog. Faerie air, freshly mined.”

  My hands tightened around that of Catherine Helstone’s brother. That single, cold hand anchored me. I breathed into it.

  The glade became claustrophobically full as a market square built itself around us, hemmed in by sprawling streets. Stalls laid themselves out edge to edge and then climbed ever higher. Facades of faded plaster were pulled from impossibly small boxes. Goblin hands rolled back the carpet of thin grass at our feet, opened trapdoors and pulled from the earth further rickety structures.

  “Mortal salt! Mortal salt!”

  “Pretty penny for a pretty trinket! Pretty penny, pretty trinket! Ugly penny, ugly trinket!”

  “Real mermaid tears! Fake chickens’ teeth!”

  The vendors exhorted us to buy their wares, belting out nonsensical lists. Given the growing crowd, wings were closed, tucked against bodies, and tails kept in check. It was at once like and unlike the bewildering crowd at the port.

  “Is this it?” I whispered. Glancing up, I saw no sun, and it was only when looking behind that I noticed it as a pale disc in the distance, swaddled by cloud, like the earthly moon at twilight. Arcadian travel must indeed be strange for us to have covered such a distance.

  “Come buy! Come buy!”

  “Doors to nowhere! Doors to dreams! Doors to minds!”

  Catherine Helstone’s brother wrapped an arm around me and drew me closer.

  The fear that had settled at the back of my throat gave way. I swallowed, and for all the bitterness I tasted, there was also wonder. The grandiose columns and ramshackle storefronts of smoky glass tantalised.

  I felt quite small, dwarfed by the impromptu buildings. It was then that I realised everything was just slightly too big. The doorways just a sliver too tall, the windows too wide. The tables and their contents were just a little higher than they should be for comfortable browsing.

  Fae of vaguely human shape and smaller wandered the market but none of them were of the right size for the unfolded structures. As an undine stood on her webbed toes to reach a lofty doorknob, I could not help but wonder who or what these buildings and these streets were originally for and what became of them.

  Amid the press of scaly, furry, alien bodies, I saw a flash of orange gold, like a streak of sunset.

  “Is that…” I muttered to Catherine Helstone’s brother.

  “What?” he said, distracted. Bright baubles caught his eye, and we lingered. Much as I wanted to let my fingers trail through the jewellery, I resisted.

  “I thought I saw someone familiar.”

  Ropes upon ropes of storm-coloured pearls hung from the crossbeams of the stall. Trays of rings were laid out, each gleaming with cat-eyed jewels. Some were carved into small castles atop which the tiniest people bustled. I wasn’t sure if they were powered by magic or minuscule clockwork or neither.

  “How would we find anything in all of this?” he said. “I don’t even know what half of this is.”

  “We could ask,” I said. “If there was someone to ask…”

  There were plenty of someones in the Market, though none of them seemed particularly open to questioning. They bustled about, haggling, shouting and gossiping at each other. Fishy mouths flapped open and close, beaks twittered and muzzles pursed in unnatural shapes.

  “Doesn’t that brooch look like the one you used to wear,” said Catherine Helstone’s brother.

  It was a simple pewter moth, crudely cast. I stopped myself from touching it, but I could already remember its weight in my hands as I used it to clumsily pick locks at school. I had pinned it to Catherine Helstone’s sister at her funeral. I remember it glinting at me from the front of her black gown after I kissed her ice-cold lips.

  “There are a lot of brooches like that,” I said. “It can’t be that one.”

  “Pretty penny for a pretty trinket,” said the vendor, looking up at us with glassy eyes. Her jaw clicked audibly as she spoke.

  Beaming at me, Catherine Helstone’s brother pulled a British penny from his pocket and placed it in the mechanically jointed hand of the vendor before I could protest. The vendor’s mouth snapped open and closed in some mockery of laughter and she gestured at the moth brooch.

  Catherine Helstone’s brother pinned it to the front of my dress, and my fingers played over its familiar details. I knew it couldn’t be the brooch I had buried, but it felt very much like it. My fingers found the same irregularities in the pewter, the same roughness at the seams of the mould.

  “Beautiful,” said Catherine Helstone’s brother.

  I tried to smile, but faltered. Trying to break the tension of the moment, I turned away from him and cast my eyes about the market.

  It had been nagging at me since the market had begun to build itself around us; it all reminded me of something.

  And it was then I realised: this was like Miss Lousia March’s collection. She kept an array of dolls all artfully arranged in tableaux under glass. She had taken a great delight in squinting and sculpting the various creatures and flowers, buying in glass ships to put next to her own felted birds and paper butterflies. I spent many hours helping her rearrange the wild-haired dolls around cluttered stalls and cardboard cathedrals.

  This was like that. It had the same unreality. Too many eyes shared the same glassy emptiness. The objects had that same mismatched quality, where nothing was quite the right s
ize for anything else and nothing was made from what it was meant to be. Flowers made from beeswax and birds out from felt.

  “Are you selling doors?” I asked.

  “I also sell locks, if that helps,” said the long-faced fae, shrugging the snail-like shell they wore on their back. They were hammering together a shed made of doors. “Locks are excellent things, you know, they protect the body and mind.”

  “Mind?” said Catherine Helstone’s brother. “How could it affect the mind?”

  “Doors are means of stepping into a mind. Keep them bolted shut with a cold iron cross if you want to sleep dreamlessly.”

  “All doors?” I said.

  “Depends on where the door goes,” the fae said with a shrug. Peeling paint flaked off with every knock of the hammer. “But I suppose all doors lead to somewhere. It’s the doors to nowhere that I’d worry about.”

  I thought immediately of my own door to empty air. “Who dwells there?”

  The fae squinted at us very closely, their horizontal pupils flushing scarlet. “I see her sand in your eyes still. I cannot sell you anything.”

  “Wait,” I said. “What do you mean by that?”

  The fae shook their head and shooed us from their stall.

  “You think they meant the Pale Queen, don’t you?” said Catherine Helstone’s brother. “The dream with the strange tree…”

  “More than that.” I tapped my fingers against my cheek as I thought. “I think we could use it to contact her.”

  “With dreams?” he said.

  “We could leave the door open…” I shuddered at the thought; there was something viscerally wrong about leaving that door unbolted.

  “Ah, it is always good to see a little disobedience,” drawled a voice into my ear. “There are no sins that cannot be forgiven, after all.”

  I spun around, heart leaping panicked into my throat.

  It was Penemue. He was stooping to lean into my ear, taller than I remembered him being.

  He gave a very exact bow, his golden scars gleaming against his jet-black skin. More familiar with the sigils of Enochian, the words taunted me with meaning just out of reach.