Wonderblood

by Julia Whicker

  Alyson was correct, however; she was very good. None of Tygo’s taunts, no matter when during the course of her stroke they were uttered, seemed able to upset her. Her concentration for this game flabbergasted John, but he reminded himself that people’s talents could lend themselves to unexpected pursuits; one could never quite be sure who would be good at what.

  At last Alyson, perhaps bored of showing off, placed herself directly in front of John, her square elegant head coming to his chin, and locking her eyes on his, said, “Well? When is the bleeding going to stop? I asked you once already.”

  “Ah. Well. We did an experiment last night that involved Tygo Brachio entering the trance state, but the information we received was hardly clear, and it shall need extensive study before we could possibly begin to—”

  She pouted. “Then why did you even come here? If you don’t know any more than yesterday?”

  “Because you asked us to.” Tygo said.

  She smiled at him slowly. “So I’m just going to keep bleeding forever? How will I ever have Michael’s child then?”

  Tygo’s eyes went up and down her body and John forced himself to look away, back toward the gate, where he noticed, to his surprise, Michael and Marvel Parsons standing together, deep in conversation. Michael, despite being an exceptionally tall man, the very physical ideal of a king, was dressed in unremarkable clothing: a plain white shirt with an open collar. He tended to wear his shirts until he’d sufficiently yellowed the armpits and neckband. He preferred the launderers to remove the stains with lemon juice rather than order a new shirt. The Hierophant wore his plain monk’s cassock. Beside him stood the young pale-haired guard who had come for Tygo the day before.

  Of course Marvel was already at Michael’s ear. But saying what? What had he so needed Tygo for, when surely his time was better spent planning a defense against the outlaw carnival? Should that be needed. His presence annoyed John. Exhausted him.

  He heard Tygo remark to Alyson, “Like I told you, pay no mind to the bleeding. It’s bound to happen when something large upsets the gravity of earth. Trust me,” he said, snickering. “I’m a doctor.”

  “But the shuttles can’t be that big.” Alyson said, doubtful. “Big enough to upset gravity? In ancient times did all the women bleed whenever the shuttles came around?”

  “Who said it was the shuttles?” Tygo asked.

  “You did! I remember it.”

  “I said it may be the shuttles.”

  King Michael was pointing to the stella novae, and gesticulating. The Hierophant, nearly as tall as the king, waited patiently until Michael was finished, then shook his head at the three golfers as though they were intruding on some previously arranged event.

  Tygo was saying, “The shuttles may not be like they were when they were first on earth. We don’t know what they’d be like, actually. They could be anything.” He sounded so confident that even John found himself believing. Tygo tapped his ball lightly and it fell into the cup with a pleasant clacking noise. “O good,” he murmured. “I’m getting better.”

  John still couldn’t bring himself to look at them head on, but he sensed the queen had inched her body somehow closer to Tygo, who acted like he didn’t notice. “What did you see in your trance?” she asked.

  “A trance is like … it’s like seeing different things out each eye at once.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Say you’re sleeping. You’re also dreaming. Inside the dream, you know you’re dreaming. You wake up and you remember you’ve had a dream, but you also know you were asleep in bed the whole time. You can’t remember the details, but you know you had a dream. You also know you stayed in bed for the duration of the dream. A trance is like that.”

  She hit her own ball. “So it’s like having two present moments. One physical and one mental.”

  “Exactly.”

  Alyson giggled. “You’re good at this. Can I hire you instead of John Sousa to be our Astronomer?”

  John swung at his ball with a manic, too-hard swing, hitting it into a pit of sand lounging smugly in a far corner. It would be hopeless to get it out without several more swings. They were on the eleventh hole. There were fifteen. He could leave soon.

  He ran sweaty hands through his hair, stared somewhat cruelly at Tygo. “Your Majesty, it might behoove you to note that this man was a prisoner for treason against your own husband but a few days ago, and just yesterday he did confess to me that he was a con-man in a previous existence. Just last night he was unsure if he could even enter a trance, and now he’s speaking as though he’s some expert. I would say that the evidence I have suggests that he’s faking his visionary talent to save his own head.”

  Tygo smiled again.

  “You aren’t a man of religion, are you?” John sneered. “You’ve often reminded me that you abhor magic. Now you have the ability to enter trances? I think the evidence points squarely to these stella novae being ordinary comets whose paths have brought them nearer than usual to the earth.” He shrugged angrily. “Perhaps they will veer away and we’ll see them no more. Perhaps they will hit us.”

  Tygo’s ball waited in the cup. He gestured for Alyson to go again before they moved to the next hole. “Well,” he said. “There’s an outlaw carnival camped at our gates. Maybe they know something. Has anyone asked them?”

  John inhaled. “‘Our’? So you are one of us now?”

  Tygo smiled thinly. He pointed to John’s ball in the sand pit. “Don’t you need to get that in before we move on?”

  John stamped over to it. “I say they’re comets. Plain and simple. That’s what these things usually are, and we have no evidence as yet to the contrary. I say Tygo is an opportunist and that it was a grave mistake for us to have been taken in by his foolishness.” He hit the ball. It did not come out of the sand. He hit it again. Alyson watched, her eyes folding upward like a dancer’s arm. He hit the ball hard one last time. At last it flew out of the sand and back into the enclosure, where it nearly connected with Tygo’s head. Tygo ducked so quickly that he lost his balance and fell onto the ground. Alyson dropped her club and rushed to him, kneeling by him and taking his shoulders in her arms. Incredibly, he was laughing.

  He seemed electrified by her closeness, but pulled back as her hands came to rest on his face, near his ear-holes. Tygo dusted himself off.

  “Are you all right?” she whispered, touching his hair.

  John turned away just in time to see the Hierophant and the king making strides toward them. Michael, jolly and tranquil as ever, took large steps upon the springy grass, but the Hierophant scowled at them all, his daughter included. His frown visible even from across the golf course. “John Sousa!” Michael was calling him now, waving. “John Sousa, we have a most urgent need of you.”

  Michael arrived with muddied boots and a pinkish glow to his already pinkish face. He nodded affably at his wife, who had stepped away from Tygo. But Alyson’s eyes were locked on her father’s, whose frown had transmuted into a grimace of distaste at the sight of her hands upon Tygo. “Daughter,” he said through a nearly closed mouth.

  She threw her hair behind her shoulders and then gathered it into a bunch, which she fastened with a ribbon she’d withdrawn from her pocket. John watched with fascination. She was in her own way the most beautiful woman he had ever seen—this was a truth that now struck him with a wallop. Had it been Tygo’s appreciation of her that had made him aware of his own? His cheeks, now burning, embarrassed him; surely they were red. Michael noticed them too, and clapped him on the back and said, “Yes, it is an oddly nice day, all things considered, warm too! We won’t have many more of these before the rains come, and winter. You should be out and about more, Astronomer—you wouldn’t get such a shock from warm weather if you took more time outside. I’ll never understand how an Astronomer cannot like the outdoors.”

  “I take my outdoor time at night when the stars are visible,” John sighed. “We are a fair race of people, the Sousas. And
the data does take much sifting through, and that usually does entail … indoor time.”

  Michael laughed. “Yes, yes! Of course so. Speaking of the stars. Astronomer, I have quite the task for you today. We are greatly in need of a very accurate horoscope about these outlaws. Marvel here is telling me we haven’t got time, but I say we can’t even consider things properly without one. How quickly could you make one? Would an hour suffice? We’ll go to my office to do it.” He began to steer John in the direction of his residence, which abutted the course.

  Marvel Parsons regarded John narrowly, his arms limp at his side. His eyes were concentrated green gushes of level-headedness, his only visible resemblance to his daughter, although on her they were as unrevealing as if they’d been drawn there in chalk. John did not bow to him. Tygo had sense enough to. The Hierophant spoke in a clipped voice. “I received a letter late last night from their leader, a young executioner named Capulatio. He wishes to meet with the king, inside the gates. Without weapons, as an act of good faith. He claims an undeniable proposition concerning the…” He waved his hand toward the sky. “Stella novae?”

  “We should meet with him,” broke in Michael. “Why not? He may know more than we do and they haven’t threatened us in any way.”

  “There are many reasons not to,” replied Marvel. “You’re not swayed by his obvious breaking of the Law? By bringing several carnivals here at the wrong time of year? I’m very displeased by any act of open rebellion.”

  Michael glanced at John encouragingly, indicating he should join the debate, then said, “I’ve prayed over it. I feel no conflict, personally. Things do happen to change the Law. Miracles. If we don’t pay attention at the right time we may miss them. What sign do you need beyond these two new lights in the sky? If a third appears we must have no doubt, I think. Something wondrous is happening, I feel it in every bone of my body. I’ve decided to be excited.”

  Alyson twisted her mouth to the side. “Lord Astronomer was just telling us the lights were only comets.”

  Michael peered at him, dismayed, youthful freckles standing out on his ruddy skin. “Really? How did you arrive at this very intriguing opinion?” he demanded.

  Marvel smirked and John, pained, began, “Well, sire, I … you see I was merely attempting to make a point about basing conclusions on poor data. Which was only that we certainly haven’t yet given the lights the study they deserve, so any conclusion we draw now would not be even remotely sound—”

  “But when there’s no time for study, what then? This could be the Return, whether you’ve studied it or not.”

  Tygo bowed deeply, inserting himself between John and Michael. “Your Majesty, I am Lord Astronomer’s assistant, if I may explain? We have begun to study the lights in earnest, but the magic we’re using is complicated and difficult to interpret, so we haven’t drawn any conclusions—nor would we until we were completely sure that our observations are correct. This must take time. Until then I think a horoscope is a wonderful idea, if the Astronomer agrees?”

  The king gripped the Hierophant’s shoulder and erupted in a merry laugh, which sounded like air blown over the neck of a bottle. “John, I think you cannot refuse. What a catastrophe if we went in blind and it ended horribly?” He eyed Tygo’s shackles. “Servant, have you done something wrong, to be chained up? Where are your ears?”

  John watched as Marvel sank deeper into disapproval. The corners of his mouth formed a straight line—his face was a remarkable mask of restraint. “Excuse me,” Marvel coughed in a brittle voice. “But this is the man I told you about. The convict. Sousa believes he is a visionary.”

  “Now see here. I don’t know what he is. I just don’t know.”

  Marvel nodded. “One minute he’s a visionary and the next he’s a con-man. Or a Surgeon. Maybe he’s none of those things. Or maybe he is a spy as well. He comes from Kansas. That’s all we really know,” he said. He appeared on the verge of speaking again when Michael thrust his hand out and greeted Tygo as though he were a courtier—John knew this was Michael’s way; he would have done it for Alyson’s hairdresser or the court clown. “A visionary!”

  “I would have him come with me to the Pardoness now,” Marvel snapped. “I’ve waited long enough. She’s waited long enough. The time has come for him to prove something to one of us. I’ll wait no longer.”

  Tygo turned to John. Was it desperation in his eyes? John couldn’t tell. But as quickly as John had seen it, Tygo nodded and bowed. “I’m at your service.” What could it mean, Marvel’s interest in Tygo? John had no time to wonder, however, before Alyson took her father’s arm.

  “Do you think the outlaw carnival means us harm?” she asked him quietly. “This meeting, will it be dangerous?”

  He seemed to recoil slightly at her touch and acted as though she hadn’t spoken. She said, “Father?”

  “Alyson. I have no idea what they want.”

  She stepped back. If she was stung by his tone, she did not show it. She took up her club again and walked alone to another hole. Did she often feel alone, John thought, perplexed.

  Then Michael rushed John into his office, and they had spread out their charts and water bowls. John was seated at the rough wooden table and locked for an hour within the heavenly math of so many overlapping orbits, and he drew triangles upon triangles upon semicircles, and for the hundred-thousandth time he wondered if these shapes meant everything or nothing at all, and if people all did indeed live their lives as prescribed inside of them, or if the shapes were merely patterns thrust upon them arbitrarily. The king smoked as he waited, exhaling blue lungfuls of air that choked John until silently he opened a window.

  Outside on the green lawn Alyson had begun her golf course over again, this time with another maiden for a partner, and they shrieked with laughter as a warm, gentle rain began, and John felt something inside him tighten and release, tighten and release, until he realized it was only his breath, entirely mundane and predictable. But suddenly he understood it had been the opposite all along: each breath he took meant something, in spite of his every effort to render it meaningless.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE THUNDER, PERFECT MIND

  Mr. Capulatio came back to the tent. It was nearly afternoon, and the girl could hear sparse droplets beginning to strike the tent. He took the box of her belongings down again, and handed her her own brooch, the one Argento had given her that had come from their mother, and pressed it into her hand.

  She said, “What is this for?” The brooch in her hand like a black spider.

  “Black amber, sugarplum,” he said, and picked up his hat from one of the sofas. “You wear it when somebody dies. Come on.” He dusted off the hat and popped it back into a more perfect shape, then went into the damp light of the day, holding his arm above his head as though this could shield him from the droplets. She heard him laughing with another man just outside the tent. “Come on, I said,” he called.

  She put on the only clothes she could find, the white tunic she had been wearing before the wedding. She pinned the brooch to her chest and went outside. Whoever Mr. Capulatio had been speaking to had gone. Her new husband took her hand and opened a parasol above both their heads. For the first time since they’d camped, there was almost no one around. She was not cold. Her soft leather shoes wet through as they walked.

  The black amber rock hung too heavily to the thin fabric of the dress-front; she feared it might rip. Her thigh hurt where she’d burned it. They walked out past the boundaries of the carnival. Past the sentinel fires and a field where some draft animals were pastured, then through a hedge of pricking bushes.

  They saw a group of men when they mounted a tufted hill and came plodding around a thicket of low wet cactuses. The men stood in a slight natural basin. She’d never seen any of them before. They were huddled together around something she couldn’t see. All of them were damp from the sprinkling rain. Mr. Capulatio led her closer.

  The tallest was old, a dark-skinned barrel;
he wore a brilliant yellow tunic and seemed like the sort of man she might have trusted if she hadn’t met him here, now. So she did not trust him, but he smiled sympathetically at her anyway, as though he knew her from somewhere, and she had the same thought, but then she wondered if it just happened that way sometimes—if there are people in the world who are instantly familiar to you.

  The other men parted to reveal what they had been crowded around. The girl froze. It was Mr. Capulatio’s executioner’s block, that black shining death-creation, and standing there beside it with her hair chopped to her chin and very dirty but calm as a lakeshore was Orchid. Her heavy blond brows smudged all out of order. She still wore the dress from the wedding, which had been a brilliant deep blue, though now it was dingy and stained all down the front with what the girl could only assume was blood. The girl felt hypnotized, rooted in place. It was a feeling similar to when she’d first seen Mr. Capulatio on the battlefield—a knowledge that she should run compounded by her absolute lack of ability to do it.

  No one had held a parasol for Orchid; the rain had cut a rivulet down her face.

  “Are you going to kill her?” she whispered.

  “I don’t like to talk about ‘killing’ or ‘dying’ in this special place,” Mr. Capulatio said. He handed her the parasol, then swept his hand out over the whole of the landscape, which in this spot was ringed on all sides by scrub and palm-bushes. To the left she could hear the endless murmur of the sea. “My star,” he said to her. “My sapphire. This place is the most holy in the world. This is where we left the earth, where we cut the binds of this sphere and blazed upward. Centuries ago. This, my wife, is where we first went to Heaven. It happened. It is here that you will ascend your queenship. It’s only right. This is the spot that I first took on the mantel of king. Where I dispatched our Prophetess Lois, from the line of Huldah, using her own ritual, to set in motion all that has happened thus far.” He pointed to the sky, although the lights were invisible through the rain.