Wonderblood
Page 3
That night he didn’t touch her. She slept in a pile of blankets on the ground and he slept alone and once when he woke he yawned and said, “Aurora, you’re killing me, come here.” But she didn’t and he didn’t make her. He slept on his back all night and when dawn came, he bent down and kissed her eyelids.
That morning, the servant returned with her things. He brought the magic book and the black amber brooch and Cosmas’s Head and laid them before her like a meal. Then two men dragged Argento, twisting and spitting, into the tent and pushed him to the ground also. Her heart sank. They held him there with long knives, smashed his face into the dirty rug. He was so frightened he could not stop panting, and a bead of spit slid over his lip and hung like ice. O, why didn’t he have the sense to be dead? “That’s my brother,” she whispered. It was the first thing she’d said.
Mr. Capulatio, who was eating a shank of goat while sitting at an oversized desk, calmly gazed at her. She was still in her blankets, folded as small as she could get. “What a pretty voice,” he said. “Truly. I’m so overcome.” He sauntered across to Argento and turned him this way and that, inspecting him as though for parasites. He upturned Argento’s head with the very tip of his index finger and scrutinized his neck, then said, “This is your brother? Astonishing. They told me so but I simply couldn’t believe it.”
The servant nodded. “We found him at the girl’s tent.”
Mr. Capulatio’s face pulled into a smile, but not like his other smiles—it seemed mechanical, a curtain raised on an empty stage. He wheeled on his heels and knelt beside her. “Your brother, really? But you’re so young, a fetus. And that”—he flicked a hand at Argento—“is ugly. And you’re so darling.” He snapped his fingers. “You there, Her Brother. What’s her name?”
Argento always did the wrong thing—he was the kind of man who’d do anything, as long as it was wrong. If it was saner to die, he wouldn’t. Though it would’ve been kinder to leave her with his foreign wife and his foreign son, he’d taken her on the carnival circuit instead, and made her ride her own horse and carry her own gear, and if the circuit was too arduous or cold or dangerous and she died … well, at least he’d gotten what he wanted, which was to have his way in all things, even when his way made no sense. She hated him, hated him. But when he opened his mouth and moaned, she understood that her hate had not kept her from loving him. Argento had been made cruel by the conditions of his existence. Just a string in a harp, plucked alongside the others. She was not too young to see that.
They had already broken his arms, and he was in pain. An odor filled the tent. Mr. Capulatio kicked him effortlessly. “Name?”
Argento did not reply. But nothing he did in that moment could be right, and for that she felt sorry.
Mr. Capulatio snatched him by the hair and hauled him upward a foot. “All right, then. Your name? We’ll do you.”
“Argento,” he gasped.
Mr. Capulatio dropped him and shrugged. Argento couldn’t catch himself on his arms and he fell facedown with a thud, and looked up with sick blood dripping from his nostrils. “O, a liar, beautiful,” Mr. Capulatio said. “Argento, my good man, you are delightful. Since you’re so shockingly delightful, I’ll let you in on a secret. I don’t want to kill her. Why would anyone kill her? So lovely. And do I want her for my bed?” He laughed; it reminded her of a dragonfly, something about that sound like hovering. “Well, maybe. But no, not really. Maybe a little. O, all right. You see, at this particular point in my life, I need something…” his voice wandered off—he wasn’t talking to anyone. He gazed at her long and without any happiness. “Something to keep my mind off things. I am an ambitious man, you see, some might even say a regal one. I deeply hate the northcountry. It’s unwholesome cold, terrible for my health. What a stupid Law it is that we should let the land rest for the winter. The stupid Law of a false king.”
Argento coughed.
“O yes,” said Mr. Capulatio. “A false king is King Michael! He is even now living in splendor meant for someone else. We have proof of this, in our texts. Exegesis, it’s called. You’re too stupid to know what I mean, of course.” He gestured around him. “I have people trained to study the texts. They have worked years upon years and this is at last what they have concluded. So this year I proposed to these people, my distinguished consortium of magicians and merchants, that we simply not go. North, I mean.” He blinked at Argento. “I know! An insane idea. What in the world are we thinking? That, my good man, is what you must be thinking, am I correct?” He waved a hand. “But I don’t care what you think because you are about to die. You can clearly see, I do what I like. Your darling sister—if she is indeed your sister, which I doubt—is necessary for my comfort but more importantly, she figures into my destiny. Do you understand that?” He peered at Argento seriously. “She will be my queen. A miniature queen. The gemrock in my crown. A lucky sigil in the form of a beautiful girl.”
Argento tried to snort, but he choked on blood. “You’re not a king.”
“Aren’t I?” He grinned. “Well, who can say? Who’s really anything?” He bent forward and brushed a smudge of blood from Argento’s nose, rubbed it between his fingers. “It’s not like it matters.” He stopped smiling. “You’re so charming. You charm me. You are the most charming man I’ve met in a long time. Charming enough to make into a Head, for certain.” He straightened and cracked his neck. Boredom like a lightning bolt. “Is the stage up yet?” he demanded of the servant, who nodded. She noticed the servant had drawn back just a step, afraid maybe, of what might happen. Mr. Capulatio said, “Excellent. Tomorrow, dawn, you’ll die, Argento or whatever your name is. It doesn’t matter anyway, because we won’t make you a Head, I changed my mind. But we will give your heart to little Aurora here—that’s what I’m calling her, since no one has been kind enough to divulge her name. I’ll cut your heart out myself and give it to her, an engagement present, and we’ll keep you in a box and you’ll be near us as we ascend the throne in Cape Canaveral! Yes? Beautiful. We are romantics, are we not?” He stepped over Argento and stood above the girl and her stomach heaved like when she fell from her horse, and she was floating, airborne, for the shortest moment as he pulled her to her feet and into his chest. He motioned to the book, her brooch, and the sack containing the Head of Cosmas. “Now show me these things that are dear to you. I want to know everything.”
To the servant he said, “Escort this gentleman to the cages.”
* * *
Mr. Capulatio talked to her all night but never once touched her. She did not sleep, but stared up at the striped fabric ceiling as he made outlandish claims she was sure did not make any sense, but in the night and in her fear they seemed true. He said that after the summer execution season, his carnival would head for Cape Canaveral, the holy city, the seat of government, and there they would unite with the other factions that supported his claim. They would mount an attack and take the throne. He knew he would succeed because he was divinely blessed, he said. Had been since the day he was born. Certain magical knowledge (like the exact date of the return of the five space shuttles) had been revealed to him secretly—the rockets would return, he assured her, even the incinerated ones. All five shuttles would be healed of their age and wounds, no longer patched trash cans, but miraculous elevators that would convey mankind beyond the sickened earth, the ionosphere, and into cosmic radiance. The names of the five rockets, he whispered, when said together, comprised the most magical word in existence. Columbiachallengerdiscoveryatlantisendeavour. It was what he said when he cut off heads. It was what he said in the ears of women to whom he made love. It was what he’d murmured when he’d first seen her, a young girl on the carnival circuit—bizarre, surprising, and most of all magical. Magical? she whispered, almost too afraid to speak. Mr. Capulatio shook his head with a peculiar defiance. O yes, you are mostly definitely magical. I found you, my Queen, the last augur of my destiny, exactly where I thought I would find you, he said. A battlefield. From pain an
d blood is born a new world order. Glorify. Columbiachallengerdiscoveryatlantisendeavour!
Later that night, she imagined her brother dying to the sound of that strange word and in spite of everything, she couldn’t batten down her eagerness to believe—what if even the smallest part of Mr. Capulatio’s stories were true? What if he did take her to Cape Canaveral? What if the shuttles did come back, once the world had been washed in blood for one Eon? Maybe the Eon of Pain was ending? Maybe her mother was wrong and Wonderblood meant all the pain and horror in her life and all lives had been worth something, after all. She tried to make herself care about the magic—she pinched her eyes closed and tried to whisper Mr. Capulatio’s word in thanks for her good fortune; she tried to believe it meant something. But really she only wanted to go home. With her eyes shut, she remembered the way the air and water fused on a warm day, exactly the same temperature, how she couldn’t tell where one stopped and the other started and how much a part of the universe this made her feel. More than any word. If only he took her back to Florida, she would escape, vanish, go home. She knew the saferoads there, some of them. She’d walked them so many times as a girl, behind her mother, watching her dress sway as they went from settlement to settlement, healing when they could. She’d live in her own small house, she’d have a dog, she’d eat seagulls, grow her vegetables. She thought of Cosmas in his sack and wished he weren’t a Head, so she could tell him about her plan. She’d ask him what it would feel like when her heart uncrushed. Like crying, he’d say, only the good kind of crying. She didn’t know the word for that feeling.
* * *
Just before dawn, she’d pinned the black brooch to her shirt. Mr. Capulatio was already dressed. He’d fixed his hat upon his head at an angle and was flicking through the book Argento had given her. He glanced at her and nodded to the brooch. “O, perfect, I was just about to suggest that.” He shrugged. “Can you read, darling?” he asked, his voice inflectionless.
She hesitated, shook her head.
“Why do you have this, then?”
“It’s not mine.”
“You surely don’t expect me to believe it’s his,” he said. She said nothing. He smiled again, bent until he was level with her, and batted at a piece of her hair. “All right. Impressive.” She didn’t know if he meant the book or her silence. His face close up was lineless, younger maybe than she’d first guessed and also cleaner than any face should be. “This,” he began, handing her the book, “is powerful magic. Dates and names and history, on and on. Why do you have it? I must ask, you know I have to ask. You are my almost-wife.”
“It’s not mine.”
“Not yours. I see. Well, that makes sense. Shall we go cut off some heads?” He shrugged again, and she sensed this gesture—this casual decisiveness—contained him more than any other.
“Please—”
“No please. Please is for later. Now is for thank you.”
She stared. He stared back. Then he rose and said over his shoulder, “If you could read—and I’m not saying you can—you would know that the subject of this book is me. How felicitous, how scenic! That I would find you exactly where I expected to find you at the moment I knew you would be there, and you would have in your possession a book about me! How is that for harmony! Glorify, the universe is truly great. Now, darling.” He looked deeply into her eyes and took his knife from where it lay on his bed. “Don’t make me tell you again. Say thank you.”
* * *
Colored streamers everywhere, ten thousand more than she’d ever seen, flapping as she walked with Mr. Capulatio across his carnival, which was huge, which had risen in two days like an enchanted crop. Crawling with people who moved, built, sliced, hammered. A clockwork masterpiece, this camp, with massive tents and a stage flanked by booths where the customers would buy their Heads come summer. And a metal cage, encircled by lanterns still glowing in the bottle-blue dawn, and people inside with faces tightened by fear. People she knew. When they saw her with Mr. Capulatio, when they looked at her like that, their hands on the bars, she tried to hide behind him, she thought: Don’t look, I can’t help you, but he was walking ahead, wearing red pants and a tan shirt and carrying that knife. His hair was long and flashing black like a seabird, topped by a felt hat with an aigrette thrust through the hatband. He did not hold her hand. She followed him anyway.
The birds were singing as Mr. Capulatio mounted the stage. Loud as tin cans tied to a spit in a storm. The people gathering about the stage were louder still, and she felt so alone, ringed on all sides by this oceanic land—she wondered wildly if this place was the root of her nostalgia, this country of surging grasses and wind that looked somehow like tides and waves. Then the first ray of true light split the horizon. All she could see was the block at the center of the stage, hideous-smooth and black. A servant directed her into a booth where three crones in face paint offered to hold her, in case she fainted when the time came. They draped a shawl over her shoulders and one whispered, “Cover your eyes if you need to,” while the other said, “I don’t see why she’d need to,” and the last marveled at Mr. Capulatio’s new costume. At the first execution of the summer—which this was, had she known, wasn’t she honored?—Mr. Capulatio was always resplendent, the old women said, with his unchopped hair and his knife made of pearlescent metal from the shuttle launch site.
She stared up at him. He was leaning on a podium and waiting.
Mr. Capulatio would execute six or seven, the women said, but Argento first, and this was an act of kindness. Mr. Capulatio must love her so, they chirped, and stroked her back. His new little queenlet, blessed with a grand destiny. Suddenly she saw Argento; he was bound, and two men conducted him to the stage, where he stepped up like a drunk. Silence swept the crowd. She heard her brother’s footsteps, the whistle of breath through his broken nose, as he trudged over the boards and stiffly knelt before the polished block. He stared ahead with all the foreknowledge of a sheep, blue-blank membranous eyes, but then she saw his hands behind his back, shaking just a little, and a minute cry escaped her lips. She had seen executions before, knew to brace herself against those rolling waves of pity she couldn’t enter, otherwise, that feeling she could not feel until a man began screaming and she imagined his family, watching him die like that, to be made into a lucky charm. She thought maybe Argento deserved his fate, but pity kept her from wishing it upon him. Mr. Capulatio certainly had no pity—he was half-smiling. And Argento had none, not even now. But they were men, and she was different. She hoped he couldn’t see her. Better for him to die alone. But Mr. Capulatio straightened, pointed his knife, and announced, “She’s right there.” Argento wouldn’t look. Mr. Capulatio took a powerful step forward and raised the knife and said, “Last chance.”
He was not joking. Argento wouldn’t look, and without ceremony, Mr. Capulatio brought the blade down, his face contorted by effort but not emotion. And in the end she couldn’t look either, but hid her eyes in the shawl and wished she had never met Argento so she wouldn’t have to remember him. The wet sawing lasted much longer than he’d earned. The crowd cheered. The birds.
* * *
Summer came and went, and though Mr. Capulatio tried to keep her from the unpleasantness of the executions, she always heard the beheadings and that gasping mob, their breath released together as laughter because laughter was all they could muster. He left her alone in the afternoons, when he left with bags of magic paraphernalia, and returned bloody in the evenings.
She walked around this new camp with an audacity she’d never had at her brother’s carnival. She belonged to Mr. Capulatio and so everyone treated her well, and this knowledge shamed her because she felt so safe, and sometimes also it caused a twinge of excitement deep in her belly. There was a tent full of dancing girls, not much older than herself, and they caused fights between the men and even some of the crones, who considered them like daughters and fought over which one was prettiest or the best dancer. The girl liked to spy on them. She watched th
em draw on each other’s faces before they performed, butterflies and stars, and once she heard them singing together in such a crystalline collective voice that it was like a knife in her chest. She imagined herself with them, laughing and shimmying onstage for the men, but stopped her spying when she realized she was jealous.
And sometimes, because she missed Argento, she went to watch the Head Makers at their task. Chanting and chalk and brands and blood. Heads were bought and sold at the booths, spines removed, ground, burned, eaten, sigils etched into dead flesh and live flesh. These Head Makers didn’t venerate the Astronauts or the hexagram that symbolized the six towers at the Cape; their brand was a rocketship and there were booths devoted to each of the space rockets. The man in charge of the largest booth had a red beard and black hair and he was a ratty skinny thing but the way he said, O, Queenie, you tell Mr. King I took extra special care with those Heads he brought in the other day was genuine and kind, and his smile had a black front tooth but the way he smiled made her want to smile back. She was not afraid, even when he held a freshly beheaded body over a basin to collect its blood, he said. Collecting blood had been illegal in Argento’s carnival, because according to Wonderblood the blood from the dead was supposed to saturate the earth. She had thought it was illegal everywhere because of the Primary Law, and wondered if the people in this carnival were happier because Mr. Capulatio was a blessed redeemer, or because he let them break the law.
Mr. Capulatio himself, though, confused her more day by day. He often took her outside to present the sky to her like a gift, something made special by his attention, and he bore it upward on his palms so familiarly, like it was his. Like a deep dark sapphire, he’d say, is the sky. Like the sea. They stood on a butte under the stars, at the center of five pikes and Heads, on these breezy summer nights. He could talk in such a beautiful way, it was hard not to listen. He kept his fingers clasped around her shoulders, so tight it hurt, and he said hypnotizing things like, This field used to be underwater. Extraordinary, how the world reinvents itself. Inspiring. Promising. Once, during a moment of mad terrible loneliness, she’d asked, Do you believe that magic is real? My mother told me it’s all just lunatic-ravings. They were staring at the stars, like always. His mood darkened almost imperceptibly but then he laughed, rattled her hard. My queenlet, are we not born in blood and pain? Is this not how we are squeezed grossly into the world? So then how should we atone for the sins of our past if what we desire is a new world order? Magic is about balance, sugarplum. If we once leeched, now we must gush. He shrugged. Your mother must have been a fool’s bitch to believe otherwise, is all I’ll say about her.