Wonderblood

by Julia Whicker

  He had killed Lois, Orchid’s mother? Or had Lois allowed herself to become a sacrifice? The idea of Mr. Capulatio executing his own wife’s mother was horrid to the girl, no matter his justification. She took a step away from him.

  The four other men walked to four points surrounding the black block. Surrounding her. Mr. Capulatio went to the center, where there was also a shallow stone basin, presumably to collect blood.

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

  His face was a wash of pacific resolve. At his feet, in the wet grass, his own blade, the pearlescent curved edge that he had used to behead her brother. She saw it now. His voice contained no doubt and no fear. “There is no death, Aurora. There is only Wonderblood.”

  The four men who stood with Mr. Capulatio all held their own swords like ceremonial staves in front of them. The rain had gathered and was now a cool mist, collecting as droplets of water on blades and clothing alike. She began to shiver. Two of the men were in middle age, and one was older and one was younger. The younger man was shorter and stouter than the rest and wore an otter-skin over his cloak. He had a close-trimmed yellow beard.

  “But who are these men?” She tried to meet eyes with Orchid, who would not look at her.

  “These are my Orbiters, the leaders of our four other carnivals. The same four carnivals which you’ve seen gathered here at the Cape in anticipation of my coronation as king. Five is the holiest number. As a group of five acting as one we cannot be vanquished. Each of these men has been convinced of the righteousness of our cause for many and many a year, and each has sworn an oath to die for me. They will be my cabinet when I ascend my kingship inside the palace compound. They have each forsworn their birth-names and taken up nom de guerres in honor of the shuttles. Columbia, Challenger, Endeavour, Discovery. And I am Atlantis.”

  “We have waited a long time for you, Sigil. You are the beacon that will bring forth the Age of Times. Glorify,” one of them said.

  Orchid was staring intently at Mr. Capulatio. Her arms were bound. The blond man held her by the elbow. Now Mr. Capulatio came to the girl and took the parasol from her and tried to push his sword into her hands. She kept her fists balled up.

  He had executed her brother on this block. He must carry it around with him wherever he went. She looked at the stone as though she could burn it to death with her eyes. Did some small amount of Argento’s blood remain in the rock? The day he died, she had been afraid. She hadn’t watched; the guilt had closed her eyes. Now she was different. It seemed every hardship of her life had carried her here as if by design—her abandonment by her mother, her abuse in Argento’s carnival, her kidnapping and enthronement, her marriage. All these past moments aligned perfectly, one atop the next, and she saw through them like a telescope: the thing she saw at the other end was her power. The girl had survived each and every trial and they had led her here.

  The blond man brought Orchid forward. He pushed her to the block, where he bent her neck down and to the side.

  The girl did not know if her mother was right and all magic was lunacy, or if magic was surely everywhere, waiting to be known at the precise moment one was able to know it and never an instant before. But she knew she felt power coursing through her and it made her brave. She had power to do this, or refuse. She thought maybe she was magical.

  Mr. Capulatio said, “I’ll hold your arm. It takes more force that you’d expect.” He raised his eyebrows to the other men, who all chuckled darkly.

  The girl pulled at her white dress, which was sticking to her body in the light rain, and gathered herself to her full height. “I don’t need any help.”

  He peered at her closely and spoke after a long moment. “Do you know what we’re asking you to do?”

  “Yes.”

  The girl could not stop looking at Orchid, the bloody dress, the eyelashes wet from the drizzle. Now that she stood so close to her, Orchid seemed very pale, and smaller than the girl had imagined. Her body rigid and defiant still. The muscles in Orchid’s arms flexed with tension. What would it take, she thought, for them to live together in harmony?

  She took the sword from Mr. Capulatio. Orchid’s face remained still. The girl spoke to them all, meeting in turn the eyes of the four Orbiters and trying very hard not to sound afraid. She was not. It was as though she had never been afraid in her life. “I am the sigil. You were waiting for me. I’m here now. The Great Work is finished and the world is different now,” she began slowly. “I’ll show you.”

  She raised the sword. But it was not Orchid’s head she cut off. Instead she pushed Orchid back to her knees, grabbed her bound hands and cut the rope with a fluid swish. For a moment, Orchid’s face went entirely blank; she could not have imagined this. But as soon as the girl had cut the rope, she brought the sword back down, the force of the metal driving through the bone grotesque and crunching. She did not pull back when the blade connected, even as Orchid let out a scream of fear, pain, confusion. Like any ordinary woman who was afraid.

  The girl had severed one of her hands.

  All the men yelled together in a panic. Orchid continued screaming, blood pouring forth into the basin, and she flopped to the ground where more blood soaked the earth as she rolled around clutching the stump. Her hand lay dead on the block.

  Mr. Capulatio was by Orchid’s side at once. He picked her up, pulling half her body from the wet earth and roared at the girl, “My god, what have you done? You’ve ruined the spell! Everything we’ve worked for!”

  She spoke coldly. “I’ve given you a new spell.”

  “What?” he yelled. Orchid’s blood soaked the front of his clothes. She still wailed. He looked as though he wanted to throw Orchid down and strangle the girl, and also like he wished he could pull his first wife to his chest to stop her pain.

  “I told you last night,” the girl said. “But you didn’t listen. The Eon of Pain has ended. The shuttles are back. Hers is the last blood to be spilled, but not for magic’s sake. This a punishment. She tried to kill me.”

  They fell silent. Orchid opened her eyes. A weak laugh came from her. “A Law of Mercy,” she gasped.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “She gives you a new Law of Mercy.”

  Mr. Capulatio stroked Orchid’s face. He pulled off his cloak and wrapped it tightly around her bleeding arm. “What are you talking about, my Radiance?”

  “The texts say new Ages shall be rung in like thunder, by a perfect mind. Remember? Here is your Thunder, your Perfect Mind. Listen as she gives you a new Law, David.”

  He paled. “What creature better than a woman to stay our hands at the executioner’s block?” he whispered. “To stop our swords at the very moment when bloodshed becomes a sin again?”

  But Orchid had stopped listening. She was gazing out over the soggy field in the direction of the compound. Then she fainted. Mr. Capulatio gathered her into his arms and held her body to his with such familiarity that all at once the girl felt like a stranger watching them make love. She stepped back, her heart thudding.

  Just then he looked up at her with blazing eyes. “It is always a woman whom the heavens come to. It was a woman who gave us the doctrine of Wonderblood.”

  “Killing is wrong,” the girl said.

  He stared at her from the ground, then stood up, holding Orchid as though she weighed nothing. “Let me tell you, there is no right or wrong in magic. Magic is. Magic exists apart from your belief.”

  “I believe in magic,” she said coldly. “But killing is still wrong.”

  Mr. Capulatio conferred with his Orbiters. The seconds stretched on, and the girl felt them draw out like the long blade of his knife. Might Orchid die from her wound? She was strong, the girl doubted she would die. With their backs to her, the girl could see only the chin-length jagged remains of Orchid’s light hair. One of her arms—the one with a hand—hung slack along Mr. Capulatio’s leg. After a time the Orbiters were nodding together, agreeing with each other. They had acc
epted her Law of Mercy: Mr. Capulatio had saved face and won them back.

  They all returned to the carnival then. The men went away—where, she had no idea. Mr. Capulatio carried Orchid. He gave the girl the severed hand to carry. A pale heavy lump. It was like a living being still, she could almost feel Orchid’s fingers moving among her own. In the tent he took it away from her and placed it in a canvas sack. He summoned the crones to care for Orchid. He bent to his first wife’s face, smoothed her mussed eyebrows, and kissed her as deeply as if she were awake.

  Then he strode past the girl without looking at her. She had the feeling that by doing what she had known to be right, she had done her husband a gruesome wrong. The subjectivity of truth, for the first time, kindling within her a confusion she could not ignore. O, lucidity, she thought. Leave me.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE WATCHTOWER OF THE UNIVERSE

  Marvel Parsons watched the king and John Sousa leave the golf course to make their silly horoscope. He stood there a long moment beside Tygo, watching his daughter begin another round with one of her handmaids. She looked happy, but he could tell she wasn’t. He hadn’t missed her flirtatiously gazing at the earless convict—how baffling, women’s hearts. Who would want such a man?

  A woman who had everything, he supposed. Who was very bored.

  His mood blackened as he considered his failings as a father. He had not raised Alyson—he’d left that to nurses and servants. Her mother, a courtesan, had died a few days after Alyson’s birth. Marvel had not cared for the woman, really, beyond her pedigree as a daughter of a fine family of the Cape. A few pangs of guilt when she died. He’d prayed over it. Women died in childbirth. It was sad. He had needed a child. He had gotten a child. Glorify.

  At times, Marvel felt as though he didn’t care what happened to anyone. And just as often, he felt the weight of his guilt like armor, impeding his every attempt to free himself. Why had he not left last night, after speaking with Michael?

  Alyson looked at him from across the golf course. A few drops of rain fell from the bright gray sky. The sunlight had been swallowed by the clouds and now the comets, the stella novae, whatever they were, were hidden. Alyson’s round face broke into a tentative smile as she motioned for them to join them again, waving her club in the air. Marvel shook his head darkly. He sighed. This was what he truly needed a pardon for.

  Abandoning his daughter.

  Tygo coughed at his side. “Are we … going somewhere? Or should we begin another game with them?”

  Marvel chuckled. “I’m sure you’d like that.”

  “She is a beautiful woman.”

  “Lonely,” said Marvel suddenly.

  “Aren’t we all?”

  He glanced down at Tygo. This close, he could see the ear-holes, the scarring around them like puckered, waterlogged skin. “Very profound. In Kansas you were a priest, I take it?”

  “Who said anything about Kansas?”

  “Do you know who I am?” Marvel asked suddenly.

  “Marvel Parsons.”

  Was Tygo sent to bring word to the Mystagogue that Marvel was High Priest of the opposing sect? To learn whatever secrets the Cape knew of the cosmos that Kansas did not? Was this why he’d ingratiated himself to John Sousa? Or had he come simply to kill Marvel and be done with it? “No. Do you know who I am, really?” Born to be the True King. A failure.

  Tygo’s hands, still shackled, did not shake. He took a long breath. As though he were tired of talking about it. “That’s not why I’m here.”

  “Ah,” Marvel leaned back. So he did know. Or was pretending to, for some reason. “Tell me, then. You know I can have you tortured. Why are you here?” He paused. “Why are you here?”

  Tygo tugged his hair down over his ear-holes. When at last he spoke, his voice was soft, almost helpless. A droplet of rain landed on his eyebrows and he brushed it away. “Because I’m a visionary.”

  “What did you see?”

  “The truth,” Tygo said.

  “We all receive portions of truth, I think.”

  He faced Marvel head on and said, “I saw the end of this world.”

  Marvel began to laugh. “O. Only that?”

  They went to Canaveral Tower, where Juniper was waiting for them. He had run ahead to warn the Pardoness of their arrival. He was a good servant, Marvel decided, after all. He would like to keep him.

  * * *

  The pardon was all he needed. Or rather, wanted. Then he would leave.

  The Pardoness received Marvel this time in a loose golden robe. She sat in her bed again, her gigantic legs lost somewhere in the folds of blankets. Her hair and face were uncovered now. Her cheekbones pressed against her skin. All that she consumed feeding those enormous legs and nothing else. The ledges of her clavicles made Marvel want to touch his own to make sure they had not broken through his skin.

  There were no servants attending her at this hour. To her right was a very tall bookshelf containing old books, so many that some were stuck into the shelves two or three layers deep, overflowing even to her bedside, where there was yet another stack. A small collapsible wooden table sat at her elbow. She was bent over it, writing. She glanced up as Marvel entered, placing the pen in its inkpot. She said, “Puzzles. There is a man in the palace who makes them for me. That is his entire purpose.” She pointed to Tygo and Juniper, who had been waiting by the doorway. “Well, here we all are. At last.” She nodded skeptically at Tygo. “He is quite small, now that I see him. How will he manage to remove my legs?”

  “What?” Tygo paled.

  “My legs. How will you remove them?”

  His mouth seemed to have gone dry. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

  Marvel took Tygo by his chained arms and dragged him into the center of the chamber. “Surgeon. Whose patients live, almost always. Take off her diseased legs.”

  Tygo cursed under his breath. He swept back his black hair and it stayed just where he left it, in a swirl above his right ear-hole.

  “You can do it, can’t you?” asked the Pardoness. “I can see by your face that you think you can’t.”

  Tygo flushed. There was none of the medicinal smoke filling the chamber this time, but the smell was still peculiar, like no one had aired out the room in the longest time. Marvel noticed there was only one large airway, a closed door that led to the balcony. “What’s wrong with your legs?” Tygo croaked at last. She pushed the folds of fabric away and heaved the appendages toward the front of the bed, each leg a hundred pounds—more. When Tygo saw them he gave no reaction. Juniper crept forward to get a better view. Marvel yanked him back again.

  “My name is Green Butterfly,” she said to Tygo. “If you did not know already.” Marvel took pleasure in her voice, which was unusual and beautiful, even though he realized now that she had some speech impediment, or had never learnt to speak correctly in the first place. The thought made him sad. “I wish to be like my namesake and fly away. Please remove my legs if you can, so I can leave this place.”

  “I—” Tygo began to shake his head. “No. These are … what disease is this?”

  “You’re the Doctor, you tell us,” Marvel barked. But darkness had begun forming again inside him at Tygo’s obvious confusion. Of course he was no Surgeon. What a fool Marvel had been to even think it. That a Walking Doctor had come from Kansas to the Cape? Who had even ever heard of such a thing?

  “Walking Doctors take an oath to do no harm,” Tygo muttered. “Primum non nocere. If I took it upon myself to operate, I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t die—”

  “Escape is my aim,” she said, leaning forward and meeting his eyes. Her own were dark brown, almost black. “Whatever the means, at this point.”

  Marvel rested his eyes on Tygo. “If you are not a Surgeon, what are you?”

  The Pardoness joined him in staring at Tygo, her eyes disappearing into her face, dark circles acute with comprehension. “Then have you come to confess? If you are not a Doctor?”

 
; “I did some healing in Kansas, some simple things I learned from my mother, and the rest I…” He seemed to slump. “I was just getting by. I never thought I’d get picked up for it. Much less asked to use it on someone so”—he swallowed—“important.”

  In a flash of impotent rage, Marvel shoved Tygo to the ground. He spilled onto the floor and slid for a few feet, unable to stop himself with his chained arms. “Who took your ears? Was it the Mystagogue?” Marvel shouted. “How did you get here from Kansas? Why did you come? Who sent you?”

  Juniper instantly was at Tygo’s side, pulling him to his feet. Marvel turned on him as well, his suspicions erupting from him. Suddenly awestruck by his own complacency. “And you!” he yelled to the guard. “You are a spy, I’ve known it since the beginning. You’re not from a carnival, you’re from Kansas, too! You were sent to flatter and trick me.” He shoved Juniper away. Marvel wished he carried a dagger instead of poison. “I’ll have you thrown in the jail if you don’t confess.”

  Juniper stumbled backward, the small sack on his belt containing his Head bouncing against his thigh.

  The Pardoness only sat in her nest of golden silk, unsmiling, unruffled. “Yes. Confess. Perhaps everyone should confess.”

  Marvel whirled toward her, about to scream at her, too, until he felt the Pardoness’s eyes. Gentle. Calm. In the round stuffy room he became at once aware of his own petulance, his own pointless personal agony. Green Butterfly watched them all. Then, at last, she smiled.

  She cleared her throat. “My, my. What excitement.” She kneaded her knobby fingers together like she was knitting a garment in her lap. “All because of my poor legs.”

  “Pardoness—forgive me,” Marvel said, smoothing his graying hair and arranging his cassock’s belt. He bowed shallowly. “I lost my head.”

  “You are forgiven.” She pointed at Tygo and Juniper and spoke in a quiet voice. “I see I am not to be freed by anyone here. But perhaps you men might be. Shall you two receive pardons as well?”