Clockwork Phoenix 3: new tales of beauty and strangeness

by Mike Allen

  But then the female dragon puffed smoke from her nostrils. “I am glad,” she continued. “It broke my heart that she could take no life from me and I could not bear to be the guardian of her spirit. The others have exiled me for it, but I was already as good as an exile to them.” She looked at him pointedly. Her good eye was hard, full of bitterness. The dead dragon capered around Anselm, her tail whipping him without sensation.

  “What am I to do with her?” Anselm whispered.

  “You will know,” the dragon said, looking with pain at her dead daughter. “It was men that made us magic in the first place.” She spread her wings and, tentatively, rose up to balance precariously on her one, working back-leg.

  “Where are you going?” Anselm asked, alarmed.

  “Somewhere else,” she said, in her rasping voice. She beat her wings, sending Anselm staggering back on his bare feet. He looked up and saw the sky was full of dragons. The mating season was over.

  The dead dragon leapt onto his bedding and settled down.

  “Who are you talking to?” she asked.

  * * *

  Renfred smiled slightly, seeing Anselm approaching him along the corridor.

  “I’m afraid I cannot give you an egg—” Anselm began.

  Renfred laughed. “Did you really think I expected you to? Nearly a year now I’ve watched you sweating, your fervid little dreams coming off you in waves. Most amusing!” The humour fell from his face. He leant close to Anselm. “You do not deserve Tamasine. You never did.” He stood up straight again, clearly anticipating a look of sweet pain and confusion on Anselm’s face.

  But Anselm only smiled. “If I wanted her I’d have her,” he said. And then Anselm Einarsson laughed. He turned back to carry on his way, the dead dragon bounding ahead of him silently.

  “Where are you going?” Renfred demanded, sounding irritated. “We’ve got classes now.”

  “Not me,” Anselm called back breezily over his shoulder. “I just dropped out!”

  * * *

  Despite newfound powers of persuasion and tangible confidence this move did not go down very well at home. Eventually he persuaded his mother that if he did not have a job by the end of the week then he would allow her to try and persuade the governors of the academy to take him back, passing off his recent decision as something hormonal. He found an unexpected source of support in Dowsabel, who loudly pointed out to their mother that it was about time her brother contributed something to the household: he already owed her for petrol and a car wash, she averred.

  He found a job the next day loading crates at a depot uptown. It paid just a smidge under what his mother earned at her hospital job and, outmaneuvered, she condescended to allow him his whim. The job would have been deathly boring if the dead dragon had not been at his side, an invisible companion. At night he tutored her in the ways of the world: this was how he discovered he had a voice that could tell tales well. By day she began to tell him the secrets she discovered she knew. She lost her saccharine voice quickly.

  When winter came again he put the egg in his father’s box in the study: now the dead dragon had emerged from it the egg felt brittle, light, useless. As he was just about to put the lid back on the box his eyes fell on the journal where his father’s odd curate’s egg of fiction was written. He slid it out again and sat at Einar’s desk, reading it. The dead dragon crawled onto him. Anselm began to read it aloud and comment upon its merits, the strange flavours and resonances he suddenly realized were there. Shortly after, the dead dragon began to comment, too—making suggestions for changes and improvements: outlining possible routes of progression.

  Anselm took a pen from a little clay pot on his father’s desk and twirled it between his fingers.

  * * *

  Dragons of America was a huge and unexpected success:

  The dispirited literati of Arrowstorm hailed the novella as the emergence of a bold, new voice in a listless kingdom; politicians quoted from it, citing it as evidence of the feelings of their people, especially the young and the despondent. Anselm was interviewed on TV and radio both. Journalists made headlines from certain phrases in the book. Academics called it a polemic, an entreaty, the heartsong of a nation. Reporters from American magazines flew across the Atlantean Ocean just to interview Anselm Einarsson and take his photograph before flying home again, often on the same day.

  VI

  He was in the market when he saw Renfred Rolandsson coming along the lane. Anselm stopped to watch him cross the road and approach, suddenly remembering it was the day the academy’s year’s end exam results were posted. He murmured a greeting when the student stopped.

  “How did you do?” he asked his former classmate, nodding towards the sheaf of certificates Renfred held.

  Renfred shrugged, his face sullen and his mouth set. “I took five prizes.”

  “Must feel good,” Anselm commented. Behind Renfred a tall and skinny girl had stopped to stare at Anselm. It had been happening more and more of late. Anselm still hadn’t quite got used to this phenomenon of his newfound fame, though. He smiled at the girl faintly, taking in her straggling hair, the blinking eyes framed by her thin, gold-rimmed glasses, and her staid, traditional dress, before turning his attention back to Renfred.

  “No,” said Renfred. “I feel robbed. Cheated.” Renfred’s face was a caricature of the spoiled child, the thwarted kid. The dead dragon ran around the young student, standing up on her hind-legs and putting her front claws on Renfred’s shoulders. She peered back at Anselm, pulling faces. Anselm chuckled.

  Renfred looked at him suspiciously. “You know,” he said, “my sister,” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the tall girl, and Anselm realized with a start that the young woman was Tamasine Rolandsdottir, “has become a very respectful young woman now Father has passed, honouring old ways.” He lowered his voice. “An arrangement could still be made,” he said.

  Anselm shrugged and said nothing. Renfred’s mouth turned down. He sketched a bow and turned to walk away, oblivious to the fact that his sister had lingered: as the head of their household he more than likely expected her to walk a few paces behind him, anyway.

  “I read your book,” Tamasine whispered to Anselm. “You are altogether too forgiving when you write about the imperialists.” She shook her head, sorrowfully, snatched her hand from Anselm’s arm and moved on, head down again.

  “What peculiar creatures!” the dead dragon exclaimed.

  Anselm nodded. “But without them I wouldn’t have you,” he whispered as he watched Tamasine walking away.

  * * *

  He was in Sea-Halls the next summer, giving a series of talks at nascent writer’s workshops in the province, when he heard the news: a young woman, a fierce patriot dismayed by the American presence in her homelands and their swaggering claims about the dragons and the desert territories, had immolated herself outside the American Embassy in Arrowstorm.

  He seemed to know immediately it was Tamasine.

  Renfred was shot dead later the same day, bound for the checkpoint out of the city with a homemade bomb strapped to his chest. The group Anselm was with had a radio brought to their meeting hall for his benefit. They sat huddled around it, listening. American alchemists had dismantled the boy’s bomb, concluding it was a dud, lacking vital components.

  Anselm came home. The city felt tense. More troops had been sent from the west to man the checkpoints and the streets. The young writer was invited to the embassy. At the end of Linden Avenue he saw the blackened flagstones where Tamasine Rolandsdottir had sat down, dousing herself in petroleum and making her proclamations. People had been placing red rocks around the charred spot in memoriam. The dead dragon skipped ahead of him and ran around the place. She did not grow, that dead dragon, but her smoky form now seemed shot through with colours in Anselm’s eyes: the greens and oranges of the national flag.

  Inside, at the ambassador’s table, he was served ice-cold soda, as Dowsabel had told him he might be. Bowls of to
rtilla chips, guacamole, and salsa were laid out; plates of black and white biscuits and soft sponge fingers filled with cream. The ambassador, a black woman in an expensive pantsuit, asked after his work, saying she had read and admired his novella. She wondered if he was working now. Anselm told her things were certainly stirring. She asked the question he had been asked a hundred times in the north and he told her he got his ideas from ghosts, just as he’d said in those dusty community halls where he’d sat with the nation’s next generation of poets and playwrights, novelists, and essayists. He sipped the cold soda and smiled at her. The dead dragon sat, as still and attendant as a watchdog, next to his chair.

  “I wondered…that is to say,” the ambassador began. She lifted some papers from a file she had brought to the table. “I’ve been sent a letter from the dean of one of our universities,” she said. “He asks if you would like to visit his campus and speak to some of the students there. Would you…I mean…”

  Anselm told her he would certainly think about it.

  The ambassador walked him back down to the gatehouse at the end of their appointment. At the open gates she looked out, back along Linden Avenue.

  “Such a waste,” she said, when she saw Anselm’s eyes had been drawn back to the blackened stones. “Don’t you agree?”

  “Oh, yes.” He nodded. He wasn’t actually sure what he felt about what Tamasine had done yet.

  “I understand you knew the family?”

  “We weren’t close,” Anselm Einarsson said. He shook the ambassador’s hand, dimly aware he was being photographed by a guard at the gatehouse. The photo would be published in the following day’s papers. The ambassador’s thumb rested on the flesh between Anselm’s thumb and his forefinger. He thought about the way life glanced off him, the way he seemed to simply absorb events of late in the hope they would make sense eventually; and he felt, for a moment, like he was again in his hiding place in the desert, staring down into a bowl of fire and danger, his eyes wide and his heart open: terrified and elated.

  “And you’ll think about our offer?” The ambassador asked him.

  “Most definitely,” he said.

  * * *

  He walked home along Linden Avenue, silent and thoughtful. He went though the house to the rooftop.

  He sat looking west, turning the egg over and over in his hands.

  “Will we go?” asked the dead dragon.

  “Can we go?” Anselm asked.

  “Oh, yes,” she answered. “Most definitely.”

  He nodded, seeing she wanted to fly.

  “Maybe we will make a name for ourselves there,” he said.

  “I already have a name,” she said.

  He looked at her.

  “I am A-Ra-Ztam,” said the dead dragon. She flowed through the air to Anselm Einarsson and settled down against him. She smelt like his mother’s cooking, his father’s favourite dishes: fried doughballs, spicy and piquant; hot raisin bread and olive oil.

  She smelt like change and she smelt like home.

  That night they dreamt of America.

  WHERE SHADOWS GO AT LOW MIDNIGHT

  John Grant

  The party was still going at full swing when Kursten and I slipped out into the street. Light and sounds spilled from the upstairs windows and pooled around us, attempting to kid us the night wasn’t as cold as it was. The pair of us laughed quietly together as the plumes of our breath in the freezing air frustrated the deception.

  I pulled down a brand from the doorway and held it up above our heads.

  Kursten shivered, her dark coat moving on her shoulders in a complicated dance, and broke her gaze away from mine, turning to look toward where Giorran lay in the distance and the darkness. Her home was there, and so was mine. On this cold night Giorran seemed a very far way away. I was tempted to suggest we went back to rejoin the party and stay making noise and merry until the daylight came. What stopped me was the comfortable nervousness that hung between us, the shared awareness of two people that they may soon become lovers.

  “We take the roads or we take the fields?” she said.

  The journey was shorter across country, but in the unreliable light from the brand it could be hazardous.

  We’d come here from Giorran by road through the twilight, taking our time as we ambled. Now that it was full night, though, we just wanted to get home as soon as we could.

  Neither of us said anything about Ghosts.

  “The fields should be safe enough,” I said. “There hasn’t been rain in a week. Besides, the ground must be hard as stone.”

  She nodded. It was so cold tonight even the air seemed solid, like flakes of mica, scraping our throats as we breathed it.

  We began trotting down the cobblestones of the crooked main street of Starveling. The flame I carried had no purpose here. This was the night of the year’s turn, and not even the youngsters were in their beds. Every window was lit, giving its brightness to the street. The cold kept most everyone inside, though. On our way to the edge of the village we met one or two folk braving the cold as we were, and muttered greetings as we passed. It was almost disconcerting, the emptiness of a street we were so accustomed to seeing filled with jostling friends and strangers.

  Soon we were leaving Starveling and its lamps and revelry behind us. We stuck to the road for a short while, then climbed a bank and started to cut across the fields. Above us there were more stars than ever a person could hope to count. I fancied that the misty pathway of light meandering from one side of the heavens to the other, plunging to the horizon amid the darkness ahead of us, was a reflection in the sky of the course Kursten and I were taking to our homes. Spiky red reflections of my burning torch from ice crystals clinging to the grass completed the illusion. We were speeding across a swathe of fallen stars.

  The image made the night seem even colder, and I said so to Kursten.

  “Think yourself warm,” she said with a chuckle, bumping my shoulder amicably with her own.

  “I don’t—”

  “I said you should think yourself warm, Rehan.”

  “I know you did. I just don’t know what you mean.”

  She laughed. “Whenever I’m soaking wet in torrents of rain, I think of myself being in the middle of a desert, and that way I can make myself sort of part-believe I’m dry. Sometimes it works so well I actually get thirsty. Tonight I’m telling myself it’s broad daylight at the world’s bulge.”

  “And the height of summer,” I said, getting into the spirit of the game.

  She inclined her head. “Oh, quite definitely the height of summer. No one dares go outside if they don’t have to in case of being fried where they stand, or eaten alive by scorpions. They just stay indoors drinking cold water a lot and fanning themselves with long brightly colored feathers tugged from the tails of exotic birds that no one’s ever given a name to.”

  “Because of the heat,” I said.

  Kursten glanced at me.

  “Too hot to be bothered to name all the birds,” I explained, answering the question she hadn’t spoken.

  “You see, Rehan? You’re feeling warmer already, aren’t you?”

  I couldn’t say that I was, but I was enjoying so much jogging along here in the starlight with Kursten by my side that the cold seemed to have decided to retreat a little distance from me. Yes, she and I were going to be lovers all right, perhaps even before the next dawn.

  “What’s that?” she said suddenly, faltering in her stride.

  “What’s what?”

  “There.” She pointed.

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “Neither can I, now.” She pressed closer against me, seeking reassurance.

  “What did you see?”

  “Just something moving.”

  “A deer?”

  She shook her head. “Something that looked as if it shouldn’t have been there—that’s the only way I can describe it.” She shivered, but this time it wasn’t the half-joking shiver of sharing a cold nigh
t. “Come on, Rehan. Let’s get ourselves home to Giorran.”

  A thought hung in the frosty air that neither of us wanted to put words to. To talk about the Ghosts was to draw them to you, so people said, and while neither of us was so backward as to be superstitious we still didn’t want to tempt fortune. The Ghosts built the world, so everyone knew, and they built Starveling and Giorran too, one on top of the other up here on the table mountain. Time and the winds had crumbled the center of what was once a mighty township so that now there remained only these two separate, distanced fragments, one called Giorran and the other called Starveling, as if by giving them the two old names people could pretend it had always been meant to be this way. Ghosts built the house where our friends were still celebrating the year’s turn, and Ghosts laid the stony streets we’d clattered along after we’d left those friends there. Ghosts had done so very many things for which we were all grateful, but then they’d departed, and departed was the best place for them to stay. They didn’t belong here in the world any more.

  “Home across these desert sands?” I said, puffing my cheeks, trying to distract her from her fears. “My throat’s parched from the heat already and I’ve hardly taken a step.”

  “I’ve heard tell there’s an oasis somewhere near, a place we can get shade and water while we wait for the worst of the day to subside.”

  “But will the water be bright and cool?”

  “Cooler by far than the sand.”

  “Then it’ll do for me.”

  “I wonder,” she said as we resumed our steady pace through the darkness, “what it’s really like there.”

  “In the hot lands, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve seen the pictures, heard the stories.”

  “But I’ve never met anyone who’s actually been there to see for themselves.”

  “I have,” I told her.

  Kursten gave me a look of frank disbelief. “You’ve been there?”

  “No. I’ve met someone who has.”