by H C Turk
No more unnatural was I than silence, a trait found only in the sinners’ realm. In the deepest caves are scurrying creatures’ feet or water dripping from cracks in the stressed but stabilized, irregular roof. No forest is without a variety of unsilent animals; every desert has a wind. And have certain oceans not been violated by the sounds of witches’ feet dragging, dragging along their floors? In my dreams, every sea is defiled by this noise. But only in a sinners’ construction have I heard utter silence. Only in a site free of life’s activities did I begin to understand the lives of sinners.
The tremendous buildings of London I first saw in a daze, a dull delirium of living wherein my life of forest and family was exchanged for a land of city and enemy. The sea voyage from Man’s Isle to England remains to me a poor memory of vague aching. That additional journey up the River Thames then deeper into London I recall no more clearly, my memory tainted by a death to last a lifetime and dreams to corrupt my recollection by becoming real.
Days after my arrival, I was scarcely more comfortable or actively alive, not speaking nor eating, feigning no interest in Rathel’s world, which had been reduced to her townhouse, a massive construct that seemed a city itself. A chamber was provided as my own, a bed, and thereupon I remained. A place for eating in that house-city was mentioned, but only the living need eat, and I seemed deceased from my mother’s death. Upon that bed surface I slept for constant hours, dark and light, until one morn when Lady Amanda stepped from my chamber and left me an exit. Having said something I ignored, Rathel vacated my chamber through a door, a door left open so that she or one of her countless servants could come with ease to speak with me fruitlessly. Since even witches know doors to be temporary holes in walls, after Rathel departed, I followed. Achieving my best awareness in this sinning world, I understood that more than one door existed in the house, and surely one to lead outside. Therefore, I searched until finding a door in a wall with a window that revealed the exterior. Since the door was locked, I waited behind drapery like an animal in the wilds, one hiding for prey or from a predator. Wait I did for the first person to quit the house through that exit I observed. Then I brazenly ran outside, past the departing Rathel.
Being no expert in counting, I knew not how many days I was gone. Being no specialist in surviving within a sinner’s world, I was too weak to struggle with the constables in drab doublets who returned me to Rathel’s house, her city. Then I consented to eat rather than starve, consuming uncooked food that would not sicken me, thereafter returning to that chamber designated as mine, returning for more sleep, further vagueness.
Sense enough had Lady Amanda to wait for my strength to increase before again speaking to me through that open doorway. Her next suggestion I reasonably heeded, for the woman offered to reveal London so fully that I would learn of quitting the realm. Of course, I agreed to travel with her through the city.
That day, I experienced my first coach journey. Surely, I had been delivered to Rathel’s house in a similar vehicle, but my vague pains shielded me from the sensations. Now I felt everything. I felt an odd guilt for being dragged in a wooden box by horses that should have been free in the wilds; but were they harnessed any less than I? At least I felt relief that I would never reek of sinners’ contact as did these animals, because I was being shown an escape. But the Rathel lady lied. Her true goal in this journey was to display her world as so vast and complicated that one ignorant witch would never leave alone, and that to promote my own continued living I should remain with Rathel until. Until I somehow killed for her as she had mentioned on Man’s Isle.
During that lengthy voyage, I came to understand that London had infinite directions, all of which led to one another. The buildings were so massive and varied that the accumulation seemed an artificial seashore with abrupt, stone cliffs. Though different from the structures of Jonsway as the barrow vine is from the silkwood tree; nevertheless, the roofs and walls were recognizable as constituting a village, one whose mass and might changed its very species from town to city. No part of Jonsway was so dense that the wilds could not be sensed beyond, but London was terrifying in having no end. The very quantity of buildings and paved streets and the accompanying populace was so ponderous as to temper my reactions. Not then was I capable of contemplating such a bulk of new experience, my perceptions reduced by the remnants of my former life, inundated with past disasters. But I understood that there was no leaving London, only being in London. Therefore, my reaction to this endless city was a sense of being both lost and trapped within its midst. Invoking this response was the lady’s intent, but succeed she did beyond her plans; for whereas Rathel meant to intimidate me with London, she did not predict that I would also find an achievement of her people to inspire regard.
The sight to astonish me was St. Nicholas Cathedral. The largest building seen, St. Nicholas was the most excessive yet least possessive of constructions, being both extravagant and selfless, this contradictory grandiloquence inspiring my awe.
Obviously a place of worship, the building seemed fit for Satan as its deity. The complexity of stone levels and probing spires, multiple peaks and curves thrusting upward, seemed endless rude jabs toward the sky, stone gesticulations denoting not calm worship but a type of passion; and is not passion a type of torment? Those acute roofs, complicated facades, and gaudy flashes of colored glass implied that the evil of excess was being worshiped.
A fog veiled the air between rocking coach and damp cathedral, a structure that even when obscured seemed superior to such meager elements as moisture. But what influence made God’s creation of airborne water seem subservient to piled stone? And why did the cathedral’s distance from me seem greater because of the drooling sky? I then felt dismay that all the passing sinners found concern in only their own movement, as though their individual progress could compare in import to their massed religion’s greatest manifestation. But no sinner displayed such enthusiasm, only London’s single witch.
Beside me on a stuffed seat that seemed luxurious to no witch, Lady Amanda viewed her companion, noting my interest, which drew her own. After tapping the coach partition between sheltered passengers and exposed driver for the latter to halt, Rathel spoke.
“Alba, your attention is unhidden. The honesty you display in not concealing your interest is typical of your people. But I find your concern with architecture surprising.”
“My regard is not for this construction’s being an edifice, but due to its being a church,” I replied. “My concern is not for builders, but for God.”
“And how is it you understand with no prior knowledge that this edifice is a church, and not a…a university?”
“No grander building have I seen,” I returned. “Even sinners are sensible enough to save their greatest efforts to promote immortality.”
Evidently, the cathedral had caused my life’s energy to return, for although I had previously muttered to Rathel, now it seemed we had shared a conversation, one whose lack of animosity implied that I might soon accept this sinner’s presence as though enduring a hard winter. All my sensitive comprehension was disheartening, however, because I would reject the need to become accustomed to this lady—I longed for my natural life to be returned. But I allowed no clear thoughts of such desires, for they were impossible to manifest.
“This is St. Nicholas Cathedral,” the woman told me, “a structure built three centuries past.”
I could smell her attempt to enthuse me with longevity, but since the cathedral was scarcely older than my mother, the sinner failed to impress.
We would enter. Immediately after the lady’s suggestion, I found myself walking toward a mountain, a natural entity never seen by the white witch. But this mountain was a sinner’s imitation. The structure seemed to grow as we approached, looming as though about to fall, about to crush me with sensation. Approaching with Rathel, I could smell more than the odor of sinners: I could smell the stone fragrance, smell that rare scent of glass seldom experienced by witches, s
mell dried resins applied to seal the timbers, smell the metal portions on the windows and doors, the forged and heated and beaten metal that had first frightened me in Jonsway and would ever be distressing. But these odors all became secondary as we gained the entry, an appropriately grand set of doors. Rathel opened one with some needed heft, its sound all mass and movement. Then we were inside.
The entrance chamber was as voluminous as the entirety of any home in Jonsway, but beyond I could sense the vast space of the cathedral proper. All around me were intricate surfaces the sinners had oversimplified. A deep frieze’s rolling shapes of vines and flowers lacked the subtleties of an actual plant perceivable on endless levels. Unlike any natural mineral, the hard floor was flawlessly flat and glossy, without life. Woefully had the sinners failed to improve upon nature: here a leaf’s shape, there the sheen of mineral, the colors of fruit, all superficial.
I waited to proceed from this chamber, waited for a superior experience, for I presumed that grandeur lay beyond. Lady Amanda for a moment spoke with men dressed in the manner of the Bishop Dalimore I had known. These folk I ignored more than that man of scant reverence, for beyond was the hollow heart of the cathedral hopefully filled with spiritual things. Rathel and I first filled the building with sound, our footfalls as we entered a corridor enveloping the air. The sound preceded us, becoming lost in an inner atmosphere more sizable than hearing. To either side were additional, smaller rooms; but at this corridor’s end was the greatest cavern of this cliff, the main nave, which expressed so profound a volume as to define space as another of God’s elements. True, the floor was covered with pews as though a larger version of the common Jonsway church I had attended, but this hollow heart was filled with centuries of the sinners’ finest attempts at holy grandeur, and I was moved by the sincerity of their worship.
The far wall was so distant that I sensed a faint haze, the cathedral encompassing such a space as to form its own weather. But this impression vanished when I saw that the same wall held a crassness turned sublime; for the heights of the vast surface were filled with elaborate panes of colored glass depicting scenes of Jesus and his cohorts. The characters, however, were of no import. The clarity of the hues extending toward me in the form of light, sheer light, was a true accomplishment of the sinners. This complexity of crystals seemed a sky itself instead of a mere usage of the atmosphere to transmit glassy hues, and the high sight led me higher. There went my vision and my breath, for the ceiling’s reaching dome was another sky, a curve of sharp arches leading to the dome’s center, a round row of glass shapes each larger than I, clear but colored connectors between God’s sky and His witch below.
No Rathel existed in my world, for alone with God I stood in the center of His nave, enraptured by silence beneath the glass wall, the arched ceiling a clear cavern to house me. Then, without the unneeded intermediary of perception, I came to sense the concept of this edifice. Without sight or smell, I achieved purest intellection, comprehending a most important aspect of sinners. Though I had known of their obsessions since Jonsway, the sinners’ need to verify themselves to Lord God revealed their similarity to witches; for whereas no witch is obsessed, both mortal and well-souled love God and love to worship Him. As I stood in the sinners’ building, which was their worship incarnate, I was filled with a contradictory grandeur appropriate for sinners; for even as they damaged their world, they worshiped the God Who made it. I thereby became more understanding of God’s sinning people, who by this edifice were shown to be imperfect in their sinning. As I stood motionless within this new universe, the experience affixed within me a change of living. And I could read the sinners’ hearts in this machination, their edifice device not a vain display of craftsmanship, but a selfless expression of gratitude for expected salvation.
• • •
What inspiration was St. Nicholas Cathedral to Lady Amanda that following our visit there she changed her ways by changing mine? During my early days in London, I remained clothed in that dress lent by some Jonsway lady. After St. Nicholas, however, Rathel determined that I would be punished for my interest in London by dressing as did the city women. A servant would therefore educate me in the discipline of elaborate attire. Most of Rathel’s slaves, however, seemed less than enthused with my presence, offering me neither smile nor kind word; but what was rudeness to a girl stolen from her mother’s world? As for my response, what regard did the hirelings of a murderess deserve?
I gave them the regard of offense. A particular slave woman habitually entered my chamber to speak too often. With her, I supped in a manner, achieving a social insect—a cockroach—that I retained until the servant came again for chatting. I then ate the creature, which resembled a beetle but tasted like sinners. The woman departed at once with the reddest face and tightest jaws.
All the servants thereafter ignored the new girl, this mutual disregard appropriate in that we presented no danger to one another. Especially safe the servants seemed in being female, none having the energetic smell of their mistress, though often they attempted to order one another about to no fruition. The one sent by Rathel to instruct me in dressing was named Elsie, a solid but not large woman who smelled less than young but appeared less than old. Significant was that Elsie had been audience to my roach repast. With no mention of bugs, Elsie approached me in that shadow aspect of my individual room, come to aid me, so she maintained.
“So I’m here to be helping you learn proper dressing, lass,” she offered with uncertainty and insistence, a combination stemming from her desire to aid a youth who had proven herself distasteful, so to speak.
Elsie spoke with an odd inflection, a distinctive manner called an “accent” by sinners, who speak differently according to their locale of origin. In this manner were the sinning regions demarked, not by the natural delineation of glade and valley, but of suburb and estate, of wealthy homes and the dirt streets of workers.
“Not being one of your windows, I require no obsessive draping,” I told the servant. “Attired enough I have been, and shall remain.”
“Not attired enough, I’m saying, for a lady of any age,” the woman retorted, “with no underthings below to hide your figure which one day might be womanly, though not if you don’t start eating more properly than you’re dressing.”
Characteristic of Elsie was her turning sentences into speeches. Therefore, she elaborated:
“And the purpose, now, is for you to become a lady, and none of them are wearing a shift worthy of a servant. Aye, and your hair is fit for some wild critter—even a servant is proper enough to be combing her hair.”
“If Lord God had desired his people to comb their hair,” I replied as though some clerical expert, “He would have made our fingers thinner and more numerous.”
“If He’d had wished His lovely girls to seem ugly,” Elsie retorted, “you’d be looking like me all along.”
Yes, she was ugly, her only charming characteristic. Though nearly as short as a crone, the servant had none of the subtle nuances of skeletal structure that delineate witches as a different race. Nevertheless, she lacked the pretentious odor of her employer, and required no titular addition to her common name as did ladies and bishops. Though she lacked sophistication, a positive attribute, Elsie was a sinner nonetheless, not animal enough to provide me with pleasant company.
Within my (my?) chamber we stood, a site the servant would have me emulate by covering us both with fabric, on our seats and extremities and every vertical surface. Regardless, I had yet to determine why this servant’s own attire was inferior to Lady Amanda’s, since each seemed similarly rich. Of course, the gaudier the better was the rule of sinning clothiers. Elsie’s frilly, white apron was servants’ wear never seen on a lady, not even Rathel, who dressed mildly compared to some. And here was the basic difficulty of our conversation: not appearance but emulation.
“Learning to be a lady is not something I need accomplish and thereby become as calculating as the Rathel person,” I declared t
o Elsie. “No witch would choose to live as bizarrely as she, not even one as odd as I.”
Standing firmly before me, arms straight at her sides, Elsie reeked of patience as she looked directly to my face and replied.
“And I’m hearing from our mistress of your delusions, child, but you’d best not be calling yourself a witch, for it’s unbelievable with your fine appearance and without your causing the first palsy.”
“Only sinners bring plagues,” I retorted. “Witches are a healthy folk who require no doctoring. Instead of commenting as to my ‘delusions,’ Rathel might have explained to you that the common sinning notions of witches are as fantastical and false as tales of elves and fairies.”
“What Mistress Amanda is explaining to me,” Elsie added patiently, “is of your former life tainted by evil. So I might be pitying your past, child, but since your present will be fine as soon as you allow it, I’ll just be on with me job.”
Then she approached to aid in my ladylike dressing. But between us women, only I understood that the true delusion was the false life being forced upon me.
“So I’m showing you, girl,” Elsie added, “the difference between petticoats and pantaloons.”
Elsie opened large, elaborate wooden objects and removed fabric items that she placed upon the bed, complicated apparel with crinkly edges that she would have me apply simultaneously.
“The proper order I’m telling you, and an aid in donning them as well I’ll be,” she concluded, and stepped toward me with moves implying direct contact.