Ashtown Burials

by N. D. Wilson

  A butter-smooth lawn stretched away from the doorway. Dangling Horace between them, gripping his arms tight around their shoulders, Cyrus and Antigone staggered into the light and looked around.

  They had emerged from a small building on one side of the lawn. In front of them, an enormous obelisk rose from a circular fountain. Well beyond that, the lawn ended in an iron fence. Beyond the fence, narrow roads were lined with gray stone buildings and townhouses.

  Cyrus and Antigone were standing on a fine gravel path, separated from the grass with a clean, sharp cut in the turf. The path curved through the lawn until it met a much larger path and became stairs. The stairs grew into a looming forest of grooved columns guarding lean towers and railed balconies, porticoes and paned windows the size of the Archer’s swimming pool, glistening in the sun. The place was a fluid behemoth of stone crowned with blue sky and a towering choir of statues. It was a museum, a palace—a hulking glory large enough to hold several of both. Two long mezzanined wings bent forward off the central structure, embracing the lawn on opposite sides.

  Cyrus pulled his eyes away from the building. On one end of the lawn, a group of lean people were running in tight, synchronized formation, dressed in matching white shirts and very short shorts, changing stride and direction, accelerating and slowing as a man yelped orders from the front. But the real shouting was coming from the other end of the lawn.

  Between the fountain and the stairs to the main building, a small group of adults stood with clipboards watching five sweating teenagers pedal furiously on a bizarre contraption of bicycles attached to five oversize spinning, umbrellalike propellers.

  “It’s like …,” Antigone began. “I don’t know.”

  Cyrus didn’t know, either. While he watched, the contraption inched off the ground and thumped back down. The adults made notes.

  “Dig!” a pedaler shouted. “Dig, dig, dig!”

  The five pedalers hunched over their handlebars, yelling, groaning, and whooping as they pumped frantically. The contraption shook. The big-bladed, wobbling propellers beat at the air, working to tear themselves free. And then, while Cyrus watched, the whole thing eased up off the ground. One foot at first, and then three. Yelling became laughter, and the elevation increased while adults ducked and the flying bicycle team slid sideways above the lawn. Ten feet. Twelve. Twenty.

  “Cyrus!” Antigone said, tugging Horace. “Come on!”

  Cyrus gaped. The design wasn’t that complicated. It was just bikes and … He needed to learn how to weld.

  “Cy!” Antigone pulled on her side of Horace, dragging Cyrus toward the grass.

  “Tigs, aren’t you watching this?”

  Twenty feet up, one of the bikes snapped and dangled. A boy dropped, flapping and screaming, and then bounced in the grass and went limp. They were all screaming now. They were falling. The pedalers pedaled but only four propellers spun. The contraption slid down through the air, faster and faster, toward the fountain.

  When the first propeller hit the obelisk, it tore free, whirring off in the direction of the synchronized runners. Another flipped through the grass, stopping at Cyrus’s feet. Bikes and riders tumbled down the statues and into the water. The adults made notes on their clipboards.

  “Cyrus, come on,” said Antigone. “We have to find someone.”

  The two of them, with Horace’s arms over their shoulders, stepped forward off the path and onto the grass.

  A sharp whistle rolled down the steps from somewhere in the columns.

  “Grass!” someone shouted, and a shape materialized, double-timing down the distant stairs, running with his toes pointed out. He was short, wearing a bowler hat and a suit, and he was blowing a whistle with each breath. At the bottom of the stairs, he broke into a rigid run, but he didn’t come straight toward them across the lawn. He stayed on the footpaths.

  “Hey,” said Antigone as he finally approached. She shrugged Horace’s arm farther up around her shoulders. “Where’s the hospital? We have to get this guy a doctor right away.”

  The bowler hat staggered to a stop in front of them, straightened, tugged his coat, and blew his whistle one last time.

  “You,” he said, panting, “are on the grass.”

  Cyrus looked down at his feet. They were about eighteen inches from the edge of the path. He looked at the propeller, dug into the turf beside him, at the wreckage around the fountain and the distant team of runners. He looked back up at the man’s face. But he wasn’t a man. Too young and pimply.

  “They’re all on the grass, too, and you’re just a kid,” said Cyrus. “Now tell us where the hospital is or I’ll stomp on the grass.”

  “I’m seventeen,” the kid said. “And all contact with the grass is strictly prohibited without a usage permit, excluding sheep and gardeners.”

  Cyrus laughed, shifting his shoulder under Horace’s arm. “You’re not seventeen. You look ten.”

  “Sixteen,” the boy said. “And I can write you up.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Cyrus. “I’m taller than you.”

  “Excuse me!” Antigone gritted her teeth, flashing irritation at her brother. She was sweating. “This guy has been shot, and we need to get him to the hospital or a doctor or whatever you have here.”

  “Please, step off of the grass.”

  “No.” Cyrus shook his head.

  Antigone stepped back onto the gravel path, tugging Horace and Cyrus behind her.

  For the first time, the boy examined the limp body’s face. Even his pimples went pale. “That’s Mr. Lawney. You shot Mr. Lawney?”

  Antigone sputtered in frustration. “No, we didn’t shoot him. He was bringing us here and got shot on the way.” Struggling to hold up her side of the lawyer, she heaved Horace, adjusted her grip, and began to yell. “Tell us where the hospital is, you ten-year-old tick!”

  “I’m fifteen,” the boy said. “And don’t yell. The hospitalers are gone right now anyway. Everyone not testing is in the Galleria.” He pursed his lips, lofty and disdainful. “Even the other porters left their posts. The outlaw, William Skelton, named two Acolytes, and people said they were actually coming. I don’t believe it. They’d have to be crazy. But they’re too late anyway.”

  Antigone looked at her brother, and then back at Pimples. “How late?”

  The boy turned and squinted at a clock tower on the building behind them. “Well, late enough, anyhow. They’d have to reach one of the gates and be granted clearance. That could take five minutes by itself—the guards won’t exactly be helpful—and they have to present themselves at the Galleria in three.” He looked back at Cyrus and Antigone. “At least if the other porters were telling the truth. They don’t always. At least not to me.”

  “Grab his feet!” Cyrus said. “Quick!”

  The kid blinked beneath his bowler hat.

  Antigone nodded. “Please? Hurry! We can’t be late.”

  Cyrus and Antigone turned, swiveling Horace’s toes through the gravel toward the porter. The boy bent tentatively and gripped Horace by the ankles.

  “Okay?” Cyrus glanced back over his shoulder. “Great. Is the Gallery in the big building?”

  “The Galleria,” the boy said. “And yes. Up the main stairs.”

  With Horace bouncing between them, Cyrus and Antigone steered straight across the grass, beelining for the stairs.

  “Hey! Whoa! Stop!” the boy yelled. “I can’t reach my whistle. My hat! My hat has fallen! In the grass! My hat is in the grass!”

  Cyrus grinned at his sister. Breathing hard, Antigone managed to roll her eyes. Behind them, the boy jogged on tiptoe.

  When they reached gravel and began climbing the stairs, the boy stopped yelping. Puffing, keeping his breath even, Cyrus concentrated on the steps. The treads were deep, but each step was short. He would have been able to skip a stair if he’d been running alone. He probably would have skipped two. But not now, trying to keep time with his sister and dragging a body.

  “Come on,” A
ntigone gasped. “We can do this, Cy. We’re doing it. We’ll make it.”

  They reached the top and rushed forward between two grooved columns. Huge wooden doors, taller than the Archer, were closed in front of them.

  “Are you …,” the kid began, gasping. “Did you come … through the waterway? It’s prohibited. Waterway’s closed. Hazardous.” He began coughing. “Use the wicket.”

  “What?” Balancing his part of Horace, Cyrus reached out with one hand and tugged on a dangling iron ring.

  Horace’s feet dropped, and the kid porter scrambled forward, pushing Cyrus aside. He grabbed a knob, and a small door swung open inside the large one.

  “The wicket gate,” the kid said, stepping out of the way.

  A bell pealed loud and long, the sound ricocheting around the stone.

  “Go. You have five rings. Follow the people. I have to stay here.”

  Antigone ducked through the door with Horace’s arm and shoulder. Cyrus and the other shoulder followed. Inside, both of them froze. The huge corridor was crowded, and every face had turned toward them. High above the mob, the ceiling was vaulted, and each vault was frescoed with maps. An enormous reptilian skin was mounted on one wall, running around a corner and out of sight. In the center of the hallway, a large leather boat perched high on a stone pedestal.

  The bell rang again.

  “Um, hi,” Antigone said. “Is there a doctor here?”

  The crowd parted.

  “Go!” someone yelled. “Hurry!”

  Cyrus and Antigone Smith, caked with blood and soot, dragged their lawyer through the path in the crowd, his toes squealing on the marble floor. Whispers and murmuring swirled as the crowd closed behind them.

  The bell rang again.

  “This way!” A man’s voice echoed through the hall. “Over here!”

  “He lies!” a woman shouted. “Over here!”

  Cyrus and Antigone stopped. The crowd pressed in, grabbing, pulling, pushing.

  “Is that Horace?”

  “Is he dead?”

  The bell rang again.

  Cyrus looked into the faces around him. Some were angry. Some were laughing. Some were worried.

  “Cy! This way!” Antigone lowered her head and plowed into the crowd. A woman was leading her toward a tall open door. They were through, but still surrounded by the mob. “Don’t ring it!” Antigone shouted. Her voice bounced through the vaults, and silence fell on the crowd. “We’re here! We present ourselves! Or declare ourselves! Whatever! We’re here! And we need a doctor!”

  The bell rang again, and the echoes died slowly.

  “Hello?” Antigone said, her head on a swivel. “A doctor, please? Our lawyer’s been shot.”

  “Initiates, step forth!” The voice was deep—rumbling irritation.

  The crowd pressed back to the sides of the enormous room, and Cyrus, regripping Horace, began to move toward the front.

  “No!” Antigone pulled back. “Not until we have a doctor.” She looked around the room. “He bled a lot!”

  Two middle-aged, pale-faced women in white skirts edged nervously out of the crowd and then hurried forward. They took Horace and laid him gently on his back. One finger-checked his pulse.

  Massaging her shoulder, Antigone nodded at her brother, and the two of them walked slowly toward the front of the huge room. Cyrus’s eyes skidded through the crowd. White-haired men in safari jackets stared at him. A group of older girls in tall riding boots sneered. Behind them, deeper in the crowd, Cyrus spotted a small flock of starched nuns’ hats. He moved on, past a cluster of fit, sweating boys in tall socks and the same short white shorts and shirts as the runners outside. They all stood with their arms crossed, each with a simple black medieval ship printed high on his cotton chest. Farther on, a young group of flushed, ponytailed girls in similar uniform whispered and giggled. Instead of a ship, each girl’s shirt had a small snake curled in a ring, swallowing its own tail. Cyrus’s hand went to his neck as women and men in pocketed shorts and trousers and jodhpurs scowled and stepped aside. A group of monks in brown robes with rope belts and sandals stepped backward, crossing themselves as Cyrus and his sister passed. Cyrus tore his eyes from theirs, from the crowd, and focused on the room.

  Columns of different colors, scaled like fish, held crowded mezzanines on both sides, and light streamed down through large windows. In the front, a forest of enormous portraits collaged the wall with color. Men and women stood on ships, beside strange creatures, on mountains and beaches and walls. The paintings at the top, arranged beneath the high, black-beamed ceiling, were crude and simple. Below them, the canvases became more ornate, crowded and medieval, cluttered with red robes and dragons and sea creatures. Even farther down, the styles changed again and again, until, at the very bottom, a single abstract portrait hung—a boy’s face, intense in its wide strokes, colored only with red and black. In front of the portrait, the same boy sat behind an ebony table. His face was freckled and sharp. His hair was brown and strawberry, and his loose linen shirt was open at the neck, revealing a heavy silver chain. A red cloth dangled over his shoulders, and a book the size of a small hay bale was open beside him.

  At one end of the table, a tall black man stood behind a paper-covered lectern with his arms behind his back. His head was shaved almost to the skin, his strong jaw ended in a tight, pointed beard, and his eyes were as sharp as they were dark. At the other end of the table, sitting open on a low pedestal, there was a long wooden box. Inside, with tattooed hands crossed and eyes closed, lay the pale and charred corpse of William Skelton.

  “Cyrus,” Antigone whispered. “Cyrus …”

  “Shhh,” Cyrus whispered back. “I see it.”

  “Name yourselves,” the bearded man commanded. His voice was accented, British.

  Antigone coughed and cleared her throat. “I’m Antigone Elizabeth Smith, and this is my brother, Cyrus Lawrence Smith.”

  “Hi,” said Cyrus.

  “Do you present yourselves as the heirs of William Cyrus Skelton?

  Cyrus blinked. William Cyrus? “What?” he asked.

  Antigone hit him with an elbow. “Yes, we do,” she said. “And we’re his apprentices or acolytes or whatever.”

  A thin man with a pencil mustache, wearing a cream suit and a skinny blue tie, stepped out of the crowd. He smiled at Cyrus and Antigone and then turned to the bearded man. “The Order challenges. With my colleague John Horace Lawney unfortunately injured, there is no longer a Keeper to confirm the children’s identities. Without confirmation of identity, their presentation as Acolytes and claims to inheritance cannot be acknowledged.”

  The bearded man turned to the boy behind the table. The boy’s eyes were down, but he nodded slightly.

  “Will any Keeper stand up as witness?” The bearded man scanned the crowd.

  The thin man winked at Cyrus.

  “Hold on,” Cyrus said. “Can’t we wait till our lawyer wakes up?”

  “You could have requested an emergency deferral.” The thin man smiled. “But you didn’t. You presented and declared yourselves.”

  “Seeing no witness …,” the bearded man yelled.

  “Wait a bit there, Rupert Greeves!” An old woman in a belted safari jacket forced herself forward. “Eleanor Elizabeth Eldridge will stand up. I watched them born, and I watched them grow.”

  Cyrus gaped.

  “Mrs. Eldridge?” Antigone asked. “What are you doing here?”

  “Identity has been confirmed,” said the man called Rupert Greeves. Mrs. Eldridge nodded, and retreated to the rim of the crowd.

  Stunned and confused, Cyrus watched her go. Then an old and very bald monk hustled forward, bowing to the boy as he came. “Perhaps,” he said, bobbing, “I could remind the dais that William Skelton was duly excommunicated from the Order of Brendan on charges of theft, murder, and other gross misconducts. He was an outlaw with no standing to bring Acolytes into our Order.”

  The boy ignored him. Rupert Greeves clear
ed his throat. “Perhaps I could remind you, Gregory, that Brown Robes and Brendanites do not have the authority to expel anyone from this Order with your own declarations. Your charges were thrown out without a hearing.”

  “But our evidence,” the monk said. “So much evidence.”

  “Visions, spectral testimony, and dreams are inadmissible,” Rupert said. “You know this. Now step back.”

  Sniffing, the monk spun and retreated, glaring at Cyrus as he did.

  The thin, cream-suited man jumped even farther forward. He was almost to the table. “The Order wishes to establish Passage.”

  The big, bearded man grimaced. “On what grounds, Cecil?”

  The lawyer turned, smiling to the crowd. “These children stand before you, hoping to be established as Acolytes and heirs to one of the most notorious outlaws this community has ever seen. No, he was never successfully expelled, but his misdeeds have become a matter of record. If the community were to reclaim the entirety of the Skelton estate, it would be no injustice, and only the slightest step toward righting a lifetime of wrongs.”

  The crowd murmured its support, and the thin man turned, locking eyes with Cyrus. “In addition,” he said, “twenty-one years ago, their father, Lawrence Smith, was himself expelled from this Order. Children to an outlaw, Acolytes to an outlaw? I have to wonder how committed these two would be to our ways and to the rule of our law. I have to wonder why we would want them at all.” Again, he winked at Cyrus, and then turned to face the bearded man. “Their Acolyteship was filed literally minutes before the death of Mr. William Skelton—suspect already, to say the least—and their family has a questionable history with our Order. In fact, these two would become the only living members of the Order to have a known ancestor contained in the Burials. At a minimum, Passage as established in the case of Earhart, 1932, would seem an extremely reasonable request for the community to make before acknowledging such a substantial inheritance.”

  Rupert Greeves scratched his pointed beard and turned his dark eyes to Cyrus and Antigone. “Any response?” he asked.

  Cyrus looked at his sister. Her brows were down over eyes that looked as confused as he felt. Turning back to the big man, he shrugged. His shoulders ached, and his head was spinning. “Honestly, I don’t have a clue what’s going on. But that guy is snaky.”