Under the Pendulum Sun

by Jeannette Ng

  “You remember who I am, do you not?” said the fae.

  I nodded, not entirely trusting my own voice.

  “It’s ever so exciting to see you here. And your brother too,” said Penemue. “The markets always need something new, the old simply isn’t enough.”

  Kasdaye glided over, her hair fanning out behind her like the tail of a goldfish.

  “I don’t believe you’ve introduced us to your brother,” said Kasdaye. Her ruby-red tongue passed over her golden lips as she eyed him. “And you really should.”

  “He’s not–” I said.

  “Oh, of course, I forgot. It’s always unfortunate to lose family.” She reached a hand towards Penemue and leaned her head affectionately against his shoulder. I remembered that flash of envy I felt at their closeness.

  “I’m the Reverend from Gethsemane,” said Catherine Helstone’s brother. He took a step forwards, an edge of confrontation in his voice as his hand tightened protectively around mine. “And my sister, you already know.”

  “Humans get so cagey about names,” said Kasdaye airily. “I do know who you are. I was just trying to be polite.”

  “As was I.”

  “Oh, you are defiant.” Kasdaye gave a bubbling laugh. “Is this how you talk to Mab? No wonder you aren’t getting anywhere.”

  “You’re looking at my sister as though you’re about to devour her,” said Catherine Helstone’s brother.

  “Oh, hells forfend!” she exclaimed. “My interest is largely academic. Her stars and her blood are of interest to me.”

  “You shouldn’t tease them so,” said Penemue gently. He stroked her hair with the lightest of touches, making the cascade of orange gold ripple around his fingers.

  “Only because you ask, dear brother.”

  “I- I want to ask,” I said, half stuttering, interrupting their all too intimate reverie. “The words written on you. You said last time that you knew how to read them.”

  “We did.”

  “Can you show me how?”

  “That would be far too easy, fragile little thing,” said Penemue. “They’re secrets that can break mortal minds.”

  “Breaking one mind doesn’t mean all minds,” reprimanded Kasdaye.

  “Two.”

  “But it wasn’t just the secrets, now was it? It’s also the sins…”

  Penemue shook his head and looking me very directly in the eyes, he said, “Those who don’t understand should ask those who can’t understand. Sometimes the mute make the best teachers.”

  He let the words sink in before shifting his attention back to Catherine Helstone’s brother. “Now then, I know that isn’t what you’re here for.”

  “Cathy’s memories,” came the reply. Catherine Helstone’s brother spoke before he thought and the moment he did, I regretted it. My courage had been spent already.

  There was a glint in their fae eyes. Of course there was.

  “We could help…” said Kasdaye.

  “Much as I do so love crossing Mab,” said Penemue. “And it has been a while since I’ve watched my sister read the bloody entrails of the constellations…”

  “I could hunt them across the firmament and cut their dark, full bellies,” whispered Kasdaye into her brother’s ear. She drew a nail against the skin of his jaw. “Gut them, make them spill me shining secrets.”

  “Much as that would be delightful,” he continued, “I’m not sure we should interfere in this particular case.”

  “Then we should take your leave and find someone who could intervene,” said Catherine Helstone’s brother. “You seem aware of the fact that we should not be here, so you should equally be aware that we haven’t much time.”

  “We shouldn’t, but we will,” he said. “Because we are more alike than you may think.”

  “We are nothing alike,” spat Catherine Helstone’s brother.

  Penemue raised a single eyebrow. He allowed a potent moment of silence before saying, “Regardless, I will freely tell you who will sell you your answers. But it will not come cheap.”

  Chapter 34

  The Moth in the Jar

  For it may as rationally be concluded, that the dead body of a man, wherein there is to be found no more appearance or action of life than there is in a statue, has yet nevertheless a living soul in it, because of its shape; as that there is a rational soul in a changeling, because he has the outside of a rational creature, when his actions carry far less marks of reason with them, in the whole course of his life, than what are to be found in many a beast.

  John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

  Penemue’s instructions led us to a stall leaning against an ostentatiously classical facade. Marble nymphs held aloft an eroded scene of lounging gods.

  There was indeed a merchant with silvery skin in the shadow of the facade. His stall was stacked high with glass jars that reminded me of those Catherine Helstone’s brother and I used to kill moths with in our childhood collecting. Each of the jars held insects of some kind, each fluttering gently.

  “Yes,” said the merchant after surveying his jars. He held each to the wavering candle. The ghostly white moth inside pressed its delicate limbs against the thick, distorting glass. I could see its furry feet. “I have what you want.”

  The light glinted off the glass, and the eyes on the moth’s wings seemed to stare back at me. The little brown paper label read: Lost Truths.

  “But the question is, do you have what I want?”

  “I can pay you,” said Catherine Helstone’s brother.

  “But what?”

  “Name a price.”

  “I could take your skin,” said the merchant. He took off his spectacles and held them to his forehead whereupon the creases there opened into a row of eyes that peered appraisingly at Catherine Helstone’s brother. “But I would need all of it. Guilty secrets are cheaper, but you don’t want those. So all of it.”

  “All of my skin?” he echoed in confusion.

  “Yes… yes, your skin.” The merchant’s eyes blinked. Meticulously, he emptied one of his pockets and pulled it inside out. He then cleaned his spectacles with the insides of his pockets before putting them back on again. “I think that is fair. Memories aren’t cheap.”

  “But–”

  The merchant sighed in exasperation. The barbels around his fishy lipless mouth curled and uncurled. “I suppose you would need something to keep your bits in. I probably have a bearskin somewhere.”

  “Would that make me a bear?”

  The merchant shrugged. “Don’t know. I suppose. You could always take it off? Humans are so fiddly sometimes.”

  Catherine Helstone’s brother was considering the deal far too seriously. It was written very plainly on his face, even as his brow furrowed and he folded his arms in thought. I had seen him haggle before and he had always been terrible at it, but this was no present bought on a whim.

  “No? Well, I could take your eyes.”

  “My eyes?”

  “Yes, the globe-y squishy gems in the front of your face. You call them eyes, right? If I could take them and an arm and a leg? Is that fair?”

  “You shouldn’t have to pay that,” I said to Catherine Helstone’s brother, tugging at his sleeve.

  “But your memories, the truth… it’s worth it, surely?” He was so eager.

  “I don’t think–”

  “So,” interrupted the merchant. “You are willing to pay?”

  “My eyes, was it?” He did not falter, for all the fear I saw in his face. His hand was in mine and I tightened my grip. He anchored me, in this madness.

  “Just one.” It was smiling, or at least, it was showing teeth. “And one arm, one leg. That is to say, I want half of you.”

  “Half?” He echoed the word.

  “Yes, half.” It gesticulated vaguely. “Give or take. I’m not greedy, I wouldn’t ask for all of you. You want half of her back, so I ask for half of you.”

  “Half of her?”


  “Does she not feel like half herself? This is what we are talking about, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.” He turned to me and smiled. I was frowning but I returned his smile the best I could, my uncertainty and my fear getting the better of me. “You aren’t half a person.”

  “But I am not real,” I said, firmly. I could not abide by his delusion.

  “Real to me.” He gave my hand a quick, affectionate squeeze.

  Catherine Helstone’s brother returned his attention to the merchant, but I wouldn’t let him. I dragged him from the stall. He followed me reluctantly, stumbling slowly, the crowds barely moving to make way.

  “No, you can’t,” I said. “I won’t let you do this.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s your eyes! And your leg and your arm.” I glanced nervously around myself, fearing the fae overhearing us. They continued seeming oblivious. “This isn’t the place for this conversation.”

  “Then we needn’t have it. I can just make the deal.”

  “No, you can’t. I won’t forgive myself and I certainly won’t forgive you.”

  “But you wanted to know. It’s what we’re here for,” he said. “You keep saying you’re not real. I can’t–”

  “This won’t make me real,” I said, quite ruthless. “This can’t change that.”

  “But it might help.” He gave me a gentle, mournful smile. His hand brushed against my cheek; I pulled away. “I love you.”

  “And?” I demanded.

  “What do you mean?” His brow knotted in confusion.

  “And what… I mean,” I fumbled for words. “Your sentence. It’s not complete. You don’t mean that. There are more words.”

  He laughed at that, a sudden rush of lightness in his expression. “No, there are no more words.”

  “What–”

  “Cathy, I love you.” Unlike his earlier declarations, he said it quite plainly as though it were an observation about the weather. The tumultuous passions that he had poured out at me before still lurked beneath that tranquil surface, not so much hidden as sublimated.

  “Don’t say what you don’t mean.”

  “I’ve loved you, adored you, desired you for as long as I remember. I made it an obsession, a curse, a torment. I made it all sorts of things and it’s still true, I suppose. But you were right, I made it all about me. And it shouldn’t be. We are in Arcadia and a thousand Arcadian souls need to be redeemed. The Pale Queen still toys with us and the hunt and…” He shook his head. “I didn’t want this to be complicated. It has been complicated for too long and I made it that way for longer.”

  “I-I don’t understand.”

  “I love you,” he said, his blue eyes piercing mine. “As a sister, as a lover, it doesn’t matter.”

  “But–”

  “I want you to know whatever it is that you need to know. That you want to know. You doubt the truth of your mind and your memories, and if this can give you answers,” he said. “Then I’m willing to pay the asking price for that.”

  I watched him stride towards the merchant. He was all squared shoulders and steely determination.

  I did not hear him speak as I heard nothing but the beating of my own heart, deafeningly loud inside my ears. An anxious drumbeat as I saw him lean towards the merchant, and the fae rubbed its hands together.

  “No, Laon!” I called after him. “Laon!”

  He turned.

  His name felt like a stranger’s in my mouth. I had not used it for so long.

  But then, perhaps he should feel like a stranger. He was not my brother and I was not his sister. It was a thought that brought a pang of loss within me, making me all the more desperate to hold onto him, onto whatever it was between us.

  “Laon,” I said. “No. I’m not willing for you to pay that price.”

  “But your memories…”

  “I don’t want you to. Because…” I hesitated. Guilt and shame warred within me, both seeking to stay my hand. Accusations filled my mind and for a moment I lost my own words to those doubts. Was I simply trying to recreate the closeness of our childhood with perversion? Was I succumbing to an ancient sin? Was I giving new meaning to our past or had I found a hidden part of ourselves? Were these true secrets of my own heart or forgeries?

  He waited. I watched his throat tremble as he swallowed.

  For all the crowds and the bustling market, we were alone. He was the only real thing here.

  “Because,” I said. “Because I love you.”

  Which of us closed the distance between us didn’t matter, only that we became entwined.

  The mist twisted into writhing, copulating figures as we walked that interminable path back to Gethsemane.

  We chased each other through the mists, like we were children again, playing on the moors. But this was not the innocent games of our past selves, even as I wondered how innocent our games had been. Was I imagining now how much I had relished his closeness then? Was it simply newfound desire that was igniting all past memories or had I always flushed warm under his gaze?

  The curling mists darted around us, constellations of mating dragonflies and twinned birds in courting spirals.

  We laughed, momentarily forgetting where we were.

  The mists did not forget, though. They danced around us, luridly realising what we both wanted. They tangled and tangled, cresting upon one another like waves.

  He caught me and I felt his breath against my neck as our arms entwined. I breathed to him the words that I had so long denied the both of us.

  Chapter 35

  The Note on the Bed

  He was alone, in the beginning, though I should not like to think Him always lonely. Perhaps it was all too new to be dull, even that endless, amorphous mass of the Beginning. It would entertain enough a magpie mind like His with its possibilities. I imagine it would be like being in an ever-moving kaleidoscope, a dreamscape of inconsistency, with Chaos billowing, rolling cloud-like. I think of all the pieces, swirling like sunlit dust as they cluster and constellate, forming fleeting images of maybes, mayhaps, perhaps, perchances.

  I’d like to think that He glimpsed the world there, in the ancient nights of chaos, and smiled at the adventure that would be. I’d like to think that He glimpsed me there.

  But what would I know? It could be that what they said was true. That there was indeed nothing, a nothingness more empty, more cold, more void-like than the darkness we call night. Perhaps my mortal mind cannot disgorge itself enough to conceive of such emptiness, such darkness, and I have thus reasoned that it is impossible.

  But I was not there; they were not there; only He was.

  Translated from Enochian by Rev Laon Helstone and Catherine Helstone

  By the lineages of creation, the dragon is as much my brother as Mankind ever was. We were both made of God’s substance, after all.

  He saw in me a true equal.

  They would know me as a creature of night and named me accordingly. They would know him as a bringer of light and named him accordingly.

  Our children they would call the Fair Folk, the Pale Folk. Each child would be unique, mixed of two equals, beautiful and infinite in their oddities. They are unlike those of Mankind, for he mated with his own shadow.

  I am, of course, their Queen.

  Translated from Enochian by Rev Laon Helstone and Catherine Helstone

  Sunlight woke me and I was beside him.

  Blushing, I remembered how we had tumbled into the bed of the tower room, onto the lists of sigils, Enochian texts and unfinished translations. It was perhaps only apt that kisses were exchanged between the scribbled sheets and the ink of our words was blotted onto my skin.

  I regarded with pride the blue and black that stained my wrists, like the mottling of bruises. Briefly, I tried to read the smudged words before turning my attention to the sleeping Laon.

  Sunlight flattered him. It gave his skin a warm glow and made his eyelashes cast shadows upon the planes of his cheeks. Hi
s hair was a beautiful tangle. Sleep smoothed and soothed much of the cares he carried, making him seem younger. I remembered watching him sleep as I waited for him to wake when we were young. I had rarely been the first to rouse myself, but that had only meant that I resented being the only one awake all the more and would impatiently leap upon Laon until he agreed to play with me. I had counted his each breath and then tried to match his rhythm.

  I did it again now, tried to breathe with him, breath for breath.

  Remembering the night before, I thought of sin, of love and of marriage. But more than that, I wondered at what claim I had on the real. Since I was not real then what sin he committed upon me could not be any more real than I was. For all that he felt as solid as day, what lay between us was but as real as a dream.

  But it was a very sweet dream.

  His eyes opened and he smiled at the sight of me.

  A frown of confusion crossed his features, his eyes glancing over to the paper nearest his face. I let out a giggle at the bed of papers we lay on, remembering how I had once teased him for being inappropriately Byronic in his demeanour.

  “I suspect we should copy these out again if we were to ever give them to a publisher,” I said.

  “I doubt Lord Byron had to.”

  “I was thinking that.”

  “Though I suppose he would also have more opium,” he said, as he squinted at the page.

  “Or goblin fruit, at least.”

  “Cathy, this isn’t your hand, is it?” said Laon.

  Lethargically, I sat up to take the page from him. It was only then that I realised my state of undress. I clutched the bed sheet to my chest.

  “I have seen you naked already,” said Laon, even as he turned around to regard the wall. “I’ve even dressed you.”

  “That’s not the point.” I disentangled myself and shrugged on my dressing gown.

  “And I do intend to see you naked again,” he said dryly.

  “I intend to let you, but it’s still hardly proper,” I said, further swaddling myself in both my shawls before settling back on the bed.