Wonderblood

by Julia Whicker

  Just as they began their walk down the aisle of Heads and streamers, a great globe of green light sprang up at the shore below, as though a lamplighter had been watching for a signal, as she and Mr. Capulatio passed some invisible marker. The path before them ran directly into the sea, and there at the seam where the ocean met the sand was a large raft, suddenly lit up brilliantly. A driftwood barge big enough to hold three people at least, and on the barge stood Orchid in her own fine dress, holding a burning torch in her hand that sent spirals of emerald light and shadow down her forearm, with her hair bound up on one of those stiff forms that the crones wore. She wore face paint like a crone. Her smile when she saw them was dreadful. The torch had been treated with some chemical that made it burn green.

  At the water, the girl hesitated, but Mr. Capulatio tugged her into the sea, which swirled around her ankles and billowed her dress between them, and when they were knee deep he boosted her up onto the raft, which must have been anchored because it remained in place despite the jostling. The girl stood for a moment alone with Orchid, who glared without a shred of sympathy. She offered no encouraging word, not even a nod of acknowledgment. The girl looked at her, and Orchid, hard-eyed, looked back over the umber stripes on her cheekbones. Once Mr. Capulatio ascended the raft and they’d all regained their balance, he laughed and exclaimed, “My wives. My hearts.” It was such a jubilant laugh. The torch in Orchid’s hand winked in the breeze and she set it in a brace bolted to the back of the raft.

  The crowd massed at the waterline. They stood shoulder to shoulder, and the low pitches of their voices were no longer audible. She felt the raft straining against its hidden tethers with the tide. Orchid moved closer to Mr. Capulatio. “Are we really going to do this, David? You can still stop this hideousness. I’ll say anything you want me to say to them. But stop it.” She paused. Though she was begging, she did not sound like it. Her voice, the girl noticed, was quite high. “I need time to read the texts again. There is a mistake in my interpretation.”

  “Read your lines,” he replied, forcing her slightly away from him with his thigh.

  “I will not,” she hissed. “I cannot, this is too awful.”

  It seemed to the girl that Mr. Capulatio might strike Orchid. But the scowl passed nearly instantly and he grasped the girl by her hand again and stroked the inside of her wrist. “My Radiance,” he said to Orchid. “Wife of my first heart—”

  “Quiet with that!” she whispered. “I will not do this, David. Tell them that she is a sacrifice to the Great Work. Say that you will marry her here and now, and then we will make her a Head, together; she is our great sacrifice. Look, I’ve brought my knife.” She lifted her dress and exposed her tall leather boots, the ones she had been wearing earlier. Poking from the left one, just visible up against her pale thigh, was a knife handle. “I’ve read the scriptures over and over today and I cannot agree with you. You are not supposed to take another queen. You are making an erroneous interpretation. Please forgive me for saying this, but perhaps it’s brought on by your fear of what is to come. David, my dear husband, my spiritual master whom I have loved with all my heart since I was a girl. That was not so long ago, I am not that old! Please listen to me. We both know how afraid you have been of these days, of our Work coming to its apex. Let us at least admit that? Can you admit it?” She stared at him imploringly.

  He said nothing.

  “Fear has clouded your vision,” she raised her voice. The folds of the silk around Orchid’s thigh, the handle of the knife catching the light as she bent forward ever so slightly—the girl saw it. Mr. Capulatio was watching her leg too. He was barefoot, as was the girl. Orchid swayed as she spoke, then spun her hands in an odd circular motion; the girl wondered if she was trying to conjure something. “Husband, I cannot see as I once could. I grant you that. But my intellect hasn’t changed, my talent hasn’t lessened. I am still your Glassine Prism, refracting your dreams into words for the world.”

  He nodded. “Yes. You are. And this girl is my gemrock, my possession of highest worth. We are all the things we are. I am the king. She is the living sigil who ushers in our success, who appears at the perfect time, and whose appearance heralded the Return. Glorify.” He spoke coldly.

  Orchid turned to the sky with restless anguish. “There are two, now?”

  “Yes,” he said, going nearer to her. He pointed at the second star. “Yes. It appeared late in the afternoon. It’s faint, but it will get brighter. You must know I consult minds other than yours. These wise minds tell me another and another and another rocket will come, until they are all here. Watch. Look.” He held his hand before her eyes, extending each finger rigidly in sequence. “Five, all together.”

  “But—” she began.

  “You are a translator,” he said. “A scribe. Before your accident, when your visions were accurate, you’d earned your place with me. I trusted you, when we used to look at auguries of the future to discover how I died. If I would die. Do you remember? This girl is no visionary. I’ve asked her to predict my death many times. She makes up answers. They are wrong, only fantasies, but they charm me. She’s charming. But you, wife, what do you do for me now? Find fault with what we’ve written? Tell me that I am not the best person to interpret my own visions? You hear how stupid you sound, don’t you?” His eyes, flickering in the green torch, were blank. “We will perform the Star Sapphire ritual with Aurora, just as I’ve planned. First thing tomorrow. You will attend. Happily.”

  “No,” Orchid clenched her jaw. “Never.”

  “Put down your dress. You are indecent.”

  Though they spoke almost inaudibly, the girl wondered if anyone on the shore could hear their argument. Orchid’s hand hadn’t moved, her fist a tight rose against her thigh, with fabric bulging from the crevasses between her fingers. The girl noticed with alarm that hand was creeping slowly toward the grip of the knife. Orchid’s voice was throttled with jealousy. “David! My love. Say she is your wife if you have to, but say we will sacrifice her to the Great Work. Let me sacrifice her. I know what to do. I always know what to do!”

  In Orchid’s eyes an inchoate rage began to boil, and the girl sensed she would strike out with the knife at any moment. The girl began to creep toward the side of the barge. She would jump into the black water if Orchid reached for the blade. Mr. Capulatio, an executioner after all, must have felt the swelling tension, or else he knew his wife’s nature well enough to predict what she would do.

  In a single moment that passed almost too quickly to see, Mr. Capulatio darted at Orchid and pulled the knife straight out of her boot. He sliced her skin in the process. She howled a high and vivid scream but still managed to lunge after the knife with her fingertips. It slipped past. Mr. Capulatio had already swung it behind her, and in the same motion he grabbed her by the hair and turned her almost entirely around, until she was bent backward over his knee, where he held her, where at any moment he could break her back or slit her throat or stab her in the heart. Then, slowly, he pulled her long pale hair off of the hair-form and around his arm, and she was staring up at him with wide hate-filled eyes.

  The three of them on the raft were at once alone in a world of their own making, roiling and rolling together like bubbles in a fountain. Mr. Capulatio raised the knife to Orchid’s neck. The girl watched, her breath trapped. Orchid closed her eyes. A look of hunger on her face. And strange courage.

  Hovering motionless on the edge of the raft, the girl became aware of a new emotion roaring in her heart like a beast: she wanted to protect her husband. She thought of him that way now. Her body tensed like a single muscle. Orchid’s eyes remained closed in anticipation.

  But when the blow came it was not to her neck, but to her hair. Mr. Capulatio sliced her hair off in four sawing thrusts, tossed it by handfuls over the side of barge. He was smiling now, a genuine smile, his head-cutting smile. But he was angry, too, she could see it. He pushed Orchid upright, steadied her, and then threw her knife into the sea as
well with an angry grunt. It disappeared beneath the inky water.

  “How is that for a sacrifice?” His voice frightened the girl.

  A smear of blood stained the lower half of Orchid’s dress. Her hair now floated in a jagged cloud about her ears, released of its former weight. Calm closed in on them like a cotton veil; some spell he had done in the cutting must have momentarily subdued her—the girl wondered, was it really magic?

  “That knife was from the launchsites,” Orchid whispered. “Where will I get another one?” It sounded as if she were trying to make a joke. Because of course she cared nothing for the knife, nothing for anything else she’d lost except her power.

  Mr. Capulatio pulled the girl back into the center of the raft and wrapped his arms around her, tucking her in close. He laughed angrily. “O, but you won’t need a knife in the cages, woman. Which is where you’re going right after this.”

  She made no expression. “Who will do the Star Sapphire ritual with you if I’m in the cages? I had assumed such an honor would be my fate.” Her words were bitter.

  “You will do what I tell you to do. I think that’s what annoys me so much about you these days.” He wiped his bloody hand on the sleeve of the girl’s dress.

  Orchid closed and opened her eyes the way a person does when they are trying to wake up. The crowd had turned silent.

  He pushed on her shoulder now, almost playfully. The girl could tell he was enraged, his chest was hot through his clothes. “Say your lines.” He paused. “Loudly, please.”

  From some pocket in her dress she produced a folded square of paper and after the girl and Mr. Capulatio had taken their positions facing each other, and after the crowd had clapped for what felt like an age, Orchid began to read the words, haltingly at first and then with less apprehension, until she sounded not just normal but entirely convicted, and the magical words moved between the girl and Mr. Capulatio and snaked past them, out into the waiting host of people, each one of them a believer, each one filled with the wonder of ritual.

  After a moment Orchid took from between her small breasts a vial of blood and continued. “This is the daughter of Fortitude, the fawn of the Battlefield,” she called. “Behold, she is Understanding, and science dwells within her and the heavens covet her. She is ringed by the Circle of Stars and covered with the morning clouds. She is ravished every hour by Glory. She is deflowered, yet a virgin; she sanctifies but has yet to be sanctified herself. Happy is he who embraces her, for in the days she is sweet and in the nights full of pleasure. Her company forms a harmony of many symbols. So purge your streets, sons of men, and wash your lands clean with blood for this Eon. Make yourselves Holy and put on righteousness. She will in time bring forth children and these will be the Sons of Comfort in the coming age, the age of the True King, the Age of Times. Glorify.”

  And it went on this way, a chant, for many minutes until at last Orchid opened the vial of blood and poured it over their joined hands and kissed them both on the cheek, her mouth drawn closed over her teeth, and the girl felt the cool blood go over their skin. Whose blood was it? But it was Orchid’s, of course, she knew without asking. Then Mr. Capulatio kissed her for a very long time and pressed his body against her. Startled, she felt his hardness and was confused. She had thought he was angry.

  She let herself be led wordlessly onto the sand again. In the flickering light, her hand looked black with drying blood.

  Orchid marched ahead of them on the beach and stood in front of everyone for a moment, appearing dizzy, like she had just awoken from a nap. Then she whirled around and knelt in the sand before Mr. Capulatio.

  He looked at her, unmoved. Her body in her blue dress as she spread out on the ground was beautiful even to the girl. She chastised herself for her own jealousy.

  Orchid thrust her face up. “I have misread the scriptures in relation to this wedding! When he returned with the lucky sigil, I admit my heart complained. I could not see his larger plan for our Great Work. I did not interpret the scriptures correctly. Our master has reprimanded me. We made our peace at once. He shows us daily what perfect love is. And witness: I am still his wife. Wife of his first heart. I am his first wife. He has not cast me out!”

  But this was no apology: even the girl recognized Orchid was trying to force his hand. Mr. Capulatio watched with a placid expression. He bent next to Orchid and spoke a few words in her ear. Then he straightened and smiled brilliantly at his people. They stood all around, stunned. There would be no undoing this fiasco. Faces pressing inward upon them. He brushed sand from his knees. He offered a hand to Orchid, who did not take it. “Someone escort my Radiance to the cages—not my tent. This is my wedding night.” He was still smiling. “And she has nearly ruined it. Do it now,” he repeated, as two men picked up Orchid and pulled her bodily to her feet.

  Though she rose calmly, there was something wracked and demeaned about the way she tensed her shoulders, with multiplicities of anger squeezing her like a vice, making her smaller and harder yet, her solid small arms and their muscles clenching and unclenching like breaths.

  Mr. Capulatio turned his back on her. He called out for everyone to hear. “Now, we’ll dance! And drink. And prepare. Come and greet your queen, the Third Queen of Cape Canaveral. She is the true queen for the Age of Times. Look to the sky, at the returning shuttles, and rejoice! From this day we enter a new Age!”

  Everyone gazed at the shooting stars in the sky, now numbering two. There were definitely two, even if the second was faint. But the girl watched the two men pull Orchid away through the crowd. She watched the way the crowd closed up behind her like soft tissue after a puncture wound. The crowd swelled into the processional aisle and there was suddenly music again, and someone knocked over a torch and a man caught his cloak on fire and ran laughing and screaming into the sea.

  CHAPTER 13

  TELLOCHVOVIN

  After his humiliating audience with Alyson, John Sousa, Chief Orbital Doctor, took Tygo back to Urania at a gallop, so Marvel Parsons would not have time to intervene. John had a set of gigantic stone spheres among his predictive devices that could be moments away from achieving their purpose, and he wished to see them with new eyes. The spheres were made of limestone rich in fossilized shells, and were numbered five, just like the shuttles. They’d been constructed for him over the course of twenty years, and they were, as far as he could measure, perfectly round. The magicians who made them claimed to have employed a potion that softened stone until it was workable as clay. John didn’t doubt this, but he had never seen it. The spheres, when they were finally finished, were immensely heavy and had been moved out to Urania one by one by a team of seventeen horses, and each sphere was placed exactly on an astronomical alignment that should, according to every calculation John had ever made during the twenty years it took the magicians to prepare the stones, match perfectly with the position of the shuttles upon their Return.

  He ran like an excited child into his observation yard, his circumferentor in hand and lifted high so he might begin to measure the horizontal angles before he even came to a complete stop. The two comets blazed now, one brighter than the other, in the night sky. In the distance he could see the outlaw carnival’s bright green glow. He had never known a carnival to use green torches—what could it mean?

  But after a few moments, he’d dropped his arms: he did not even need to use the circumferentor. His angles were plainly off. There was no alignment whatsoever between his spheres and these new objects, whatever they were. There was surely the chance that John’s calculations were merely wrong—that he’d been wrong enough in his life, and it was his own vanity that clung to these erroneous positions.

  But no. In the end the spheres seemed to signify nothing. He stood there, bereft of all direction, with Tygo at his side. Tygo, who knew nothing of the spheres or any of the other perfectly aligned water tables and dials and disks that John had used so inertly throughout his tenure as Chief Astronomer. Then, without knowing exactly why, a
terrible anger overtook him—not at Tygo but at the idea of Tygo. At his luck. His faith in himself? The entire situation was preposterous. By no means could it be true that the “angels” had told Tygo about the Return.

  There were no angels. There could not be. He would not believe it. And yet what could this be other than the Return?

  John felt black with fury as Tygo was strolling around the courtyard with his hands still shackled, looking with passive interest at the circular metal domes hiding what was not in use. The torches along the front wall of the house had been lit, and in the shadows Tygo’s ear-holes looked like pits. Here and there he touched the domes with his shackled hands, which sent John into a private agony until he felt like tossing up his hands in defeat. At last Tygo turned his eyes to John. He waved across the courtyard. John waved back.

  He gloomily called out, “Why don’t you call down your ‘angels’ now, since my own attempts have always come to nothing. I’d like to see you try, actually.”

  Light from one of the torches bounced off Tygo’s manacles. “That would be a very good idea. Clarification. Assurance. But—” He shook the shackles and smiled hopefully.

  “I’m sure you’ll manage,” replied John.

  “You do know I’ve only ever spoken with the angels that one single time, using my own personal shaving mirror.”

  “Surely the angels wouldn’t mind you using a less humble mirror,” John replied acidly. “They are angels, after all. But I have many such mirrors. In fact I posses a beautiful mirror, a black granite chip of the Sky Mirror itself.”

  “Sky Mirror?”

  “The monument here at the Cape? Built by the ancients for all the known martyrs who gave their lives in spaceflight? That also lists the names of the noble families for posterity?”

  Tygo’s expression didn’t change.

  “Surely the angels would prefer that mirror to a shaving mirror?” John pressed.