Swan shivers as she moves away from the vaulted tunnels of her childhood, takes her first steps above ground. She and the rest of Thevessels, with their faux-freckled complexions and fairy-floss waists, are laced into white corsets, robed in sheer fabric and begartered with lingerie ribbons. Soft veils fall before their kohl-rimmed eyes, which are kept modestly lowered, as Themothers lead them up into an unfamiliar shade of evening.
The sky seems limitless despite its bracketing clouds. Leafless bushes click-clack in the wind, their branches twitching like mandibles as the women brush past. This year’s Ladyday girls swarm out and around the downworld’s largest trapdoor, a din of nervous giggles and snippets of well-rehearsed tunes. They won’t venture any further without Themothers’ permission. Staccato echoes of artillery in the distance ricochet around the group, bouncing along the pockmarked asphalt that had, until that moment, been the only sky Swan had ever known.
“Will you pass through the gate?” Hermother asks, offering Swan the first of two tickets. It is small and faded, paper worn thin from generations of use. Working her tongue around her mouth, Swan tries to dredge up the moisture speech requires. It is useless. Swallowing hard, she quietly takes the lucky scrap from Hermother’s outstretched hand. Her stomach roils; her throat convulses and throbs. The taste of pent-up worry is thick on her tongue.
“Will you lay yourself bare, fresh skin to fresh earth? Will you dig for your unborn soul?” Nod, Swan mutely replies, heart palpitating. Nod, nod.
Themothers tut-tut her lack of response. Swan had hoped they’d mistake silence for excitement, for speechless anticipation, for awe at finally being chosen. Instead, Hermother’s tone is clipped, irritated. You know what’s at stake, her expression screams. Of course Swan
knows. Of course.
“Will you pay the toll and absorb new life?”
Nod, nod.
With well-practiced movements, Themothers circle around the duo to conclude the ritual. All the women take it in turns to add ochre dots to the girl’s fair cheeks, to share choruses of birthing songs, to infuse her skin with the expectation of pregnancy. Their gestures and incantations temporarily transform her: no longer Swan, today she has become Avessel.
Hermother presents the second ticket. Smiling, the matriarchs turn, and wait to hear Swan sing the accepted refrain.
They give her more than enough time, but their patience is rewarded with silence. Swan’s lips quiver while she tries to convey, with devout gaze and solemnly clasped hands, that she won’t disappoint them. That she will contribute, just as they have, just as all the downworlders have. That she will transcend her skills as a painter and today praise Themarys by becoming Amother. She wants to say she will.
She can’t.
Thevessels, ushered away from the trapdoor, look eagerly ahead. But Swan lingers at Hermother’s side, hoping to catch a glimpse of encouragement, a sign that she’ll be welcomed home soon. Any sign. Hermother’s features, once so nurturing, might be made of stone for all the hope they impart. The girl watches, unblinking, until the door clangs shuts behind Hermother’s perfectly straight back.
A sulphurous breeze lifts Swan’s skin into goose bumps; unbidden tears well in her eyes. May it be to me as you have said, she thinks. Still unable to give her answer voice.
Hints of sunset are too bright. Whoever is responsible for painting this sky should’ve invested in a stick of amber Conté. Swan shields her eyes. This palette is too gold, the application too heavy. Its weight presses on her like a stranger’s unwanted embrace. She looks at her hands, inspects the rims of her nails that still bear the stains of her trade. Patches of brown, deep green, and burgundy: far more fitting colours with which to honour Themarys. She has used them all, mixed their tints out of mushroom ridges, kaolin, mould, and iron oxide; sanguine dyes for the septet of Marys adorning her chamber walls, drawn on old sheets of newspaper.
Swan yearns to imitate the illustrations she creates. To be like Themarys, plump and freckled, blue-robed on red cushions, with saturnine faces surrounded by bees, caterpillars, peonies, strawberries—evidence of fruitfulness she has only seen in two dimensions. All her knowledge of fecundity has come from Themothers’ books: from abstract words, wan photographs, bleached memories. Freckled babies have been born and raised in the downworld—this all girls have seen. But how they get there remains a secret until Themothers bestow the rights of Avessel. Until then, the girls wait, and prepare.
For sixteen years Swan has pored over pages graced with Themarys’ likenesses: at first admiring without understanding; then appreciating the gift of creation; then inventing artworks of her own. At night these images fill her dreams; three times a day she sings them into being while rehearsing her summoning-song. Dreams echo through her vocal chords, promising to quicken life within her.
Now she hunches, watches Elizabet’s approach through the sheen of her veil. Swan hasn’t slept for days—she practised so hard, sang so true, and for what? Today her voice is thinner than paper, breathier than a puff of steam on the upworld’s horizon. She scowls and digs her fingernails into the soft flesh at the base of her thumbs.
Her cousin has never looked more joyful. “Don’t be afraid, dear Swannie.” Elizabet air-kisses each of Swan’s cheeks to avoid smudging makeup, squeezes her hand, and softly chirps out a blessing: “Themarys favour you.” The title breezes through her cousin’s lips in a rush, too sacred to linger in profane mouths. Swan averts her gaze, unconvinced.
“Your song is amazing,” Elizabet continues. “Relax, you’ll be fine. Soon those freckles will be real.” Then, sotto voce, “There’s no way you won’t have a girl.”
Shhhhhhhhhh! Themothers’ hiss shreds the still air; brows furrow, eyes blaze. The procession falters at Elizabet’s jinx. Her face turns lucent with shame; her betraying mouth is pressed shut by Swan’s trembling fingers.
Take it back, Swan silently implores, searching her cousin’s face for hints of malice, finding none. Hurriedly, Thevessels make the sign of Themarys. Swan closes her eyes, imagines all the colours she’d use to paint over Elizabet’s mistake. A prayer of hues: indigo, cerise, even brash gold. But not beige, no. And white is out of the question.
The procession passes quiet steel shells on the way to the cemetery, structures that go up instead of down.
It’s all so ancient, Thevessels whisper. So impractical.
“Why build with such fragile material?” In her work as a scribe, Agnes makes exceptional connections, joining thin stroke to fine curves as easily as breathing. In the upworld, it seems, her mind isn’t as dexterous as her hands. “Such crumbly rock,” she continues, gesturing at the decrepit buildings. “Look—it’s too heavy for its ribs and has fallen all to the ground!”
Concrete, Swan thinks, looking at row upon row of rectangular hulks lining the boulevard’s left bank. Not rock. It must have been sturdier once.
Thevessels titter and shake their heads at Agnes. Such stupidity is bound to turn her skin tan, to see her burdened with a Lacuna child. Wouldn’t that teach her? Give her a boy and confine her up here forever; then she’ll learn how the upworld works.
“How many upbuildings have been felled by men’s battles?” Thevessels demand. Humiliated, the scribe remains silent. “Hazarding a guess would be futile,” they agree on her behalf. “Like trying to pinpoint the end of infinity.”
A flash of green arcs high above their heads. In its unholy light all footsteps slow; some splash to a stop in late-spring puddles.
“A falling star!”
The child can’t be blamed for her ignorance. Pearl is only twelve—too young to be here in Swan’s opinion—and though she still has a hard time differentiating between psalms and hymns, the girl’s descant won’t be denied. Summoning-songs don’t discriminate by age; they ring true but once, when Avessel’s time is nigh. No matter if she is young or youngest.
Not a star, Swan thinks, as two sparks break away from the blaze overhead. It’s a—
“Boomer!” Ag
nes cries, trying to redeem herself in her sisters’ eyes by stating the obvious. Upbuildings loose showers of stones; Pearl squeals and breaks into a run. Themothers herd their charges: arms outstretched, they shoo the girls quickly toward the cemetery gates, casting worried glances skyward. They’ve travelled far from the downworld door; even if they could safely return before true-dark, none of them would. Ladyday magics are most potent at dusk and Thevessels can’t afford to let the opportunity pass.
They press on.
Swan trails behind, but not far enough to go astray. Elizabet drops back to join her. Their pace is brisk and ungainly.
“I heard Lacunae hang their enemies from the street signs up here,” she whispers. “You know, as a sign of conquest.” Strobing boomer flares illuminate the sharp planes of Elizabet’s face. For a moment she is plunged in a wash of emerald, as though submerged in Swan’s paintbrush waters. A blink later, the glare dies, and the upworld is once more burnished orange with the glow of spot-fires.
Acrid smoke billows across the broad street and breaks against the buildings’ vertical husks. Swan turns away from her cousin and tries to find a pocket of fresh air. She takes shallow, wheezing breaths that taste like ash and lung. Lifting a hand to her mouth, she stifles the hacking cough that claws at the base of her throat.
Where do Lacunae find shelter in this forsaken country? Nothing is whole for miles, apart from the statues flanking the cemetery’s entrance; dozens of tall men, all bronzed sternness and corroded gestures. She knows they’re men, or meant to be, even though they remain utterly still, not fighting. Perhaps that’s how Lacunae sleep? Standing, dressed in foreign garb? Surely they must sleep between sieges. Even tanned ones must crave respite sometimes.
Even those whose songs have failed need rest.
Thinking of the Lacunae seems to conjure them into being. As Thevessels and their entourage file past the avenue of statues, they grow wary of men skulking in the shadows. Swan is the first to glimpse one, cowering in the lee of a dumpster. His uniform is unusual; dirty and inside-out, worn through at the knees, partly hidden by baggage. Hair clings to his face, bushes down to his chest. Lacunae are supposed to be shaven, Swan thinks. Aren’t they? They are supposed to be fierce, not frightened. Not sad.
Stone scrapes across stone, a stream of khaki forms emerges—but from where? Swan can’t tell. These are Lacunae, she thinks, turning to compare their garb with the other man’s. Nothing but trash huddles by the dumpster. Increasingly, she can smell sour Lacunae breath, the sweat seeping through their dappled shirts, the scent of scalp and decay. They appear in broken troops, uniformed in tan and grey splotches; like magic, the fabric makes them disappear when not directly in Swan’s line of sight. Looking away is a relief.
The men prowl the cemetery’s perimeter, emboldened by their proximity to Thevessels. By the chance some of that fair skin will be filled with murky children, growing tan before dark falls. They scratch their brown faces, clutch dangles of metal tags, and wait for their numbers to increase. Boy children are theirs by treaty, as are their mothers. Though their contempt for the downworlders is plain, these men willingly exchange protection for the promise of replenished legions—and for spare women to raise them.
Holymarys, Swan prays. Save me from that.
Unwilling to process the desperation, the hunger, she sees in the Lacunae’s appraising glances, she focuses instead on the statues’ scarred faces above. The head and shoulders of the tallest are coated with splotches of—what? Paint? Fallout? Trickles and splatters of white that coat heroic features to the point of erasure.
She tries not to interpret this as an ill omen.
The cemetery’s gate is always open. Its hinges support nothing but air—there’s no need for a door. Lacunae enter these grounds but once in their lives and none, to Swan’s knowledge, have ever returned from that journey.
Several girls run through their scales as Thevessels pass under the gate’s rusted archway, so-la-ti-dos keeping vocal chords warm for the ceremony. Elizabet wraps her arm around Swan’s waist, squeezes tightly, smiles a rainbow of happiness. Swan trembles with fever, her skin sweaty despite the afternoon chill. Red jealousy gnaws at her innards as she listens to notes projected with perfect pitch, from voices that aren’t her own.
It isn’t supposed to be like this.
Each time Themothers heard her summoning-song they’d exchanged significant glances. They’d asked her to demonstrate it again and again until everything in the women’s bearing—from their sinfully tapping feet keeping time with her rhythm to their poorly suppressed grins, hovering between pride and relief—everything told Swan she would be chosen first. That she would sing to bear them a girl, and earn a promotion to prime illustrator. For that, more than anything, she promised to be a most devout Mother.
But as she steps through the gate and is confronted by its keeper, fear leaches her envy and leaves her shaken, hollow. Her throat too dry for singing.
“Absterget marianae omnen lacriman,” Themother says as Swan exchanges her first ticket for entrance to the inner sanctum. Themarys shall wipe away every tear from their eyes. Swan doesn’t want to cry, but can’t seem to stop. Her tongue edges out of her mouth, catches a few moistening drops on its tip. The gatekeeper reaches beneath Swan’s veil and dabs her cheeks with a woollen sleeve, then hands her a faceted lachrymal vase.
“Drink from this,” the woman says, the timbre of her voice lower than Swan’s spirits. “If it hurts. You know, when the time comes.”
Gum trees, naked as ghosts, criss-cross the cemetery’s lawns. Their slender trunks guide Thevessels through the labyrinth of plots, but otherwise there seems no method to their planting. Saplings spring up of their own volition, heedless of barrier or design. Roots infiltrate decorative plinths and hasten their decomposition; garlands of ivy choke marble cherubs; branches reach skyward from mausoleum roofs like grizzled undead hands. A symphony of crickets greets the girls as they creep through graveyard districts. Swan listens for nightingales or owls or bats, but hears nothing but the pattering of bare feet and wind sighing at their passing.
Ants crawl across paths in orderly lines, tiny foot soldiers more disciplined than the ragtag procession of girls. Swan avoids stepping on them though walking is treacherous; in places the gravel is fused together in solid, uneven slabs. There is much hobbling from stubbed toes.
Long shadows intersect with walkways, directing Thevessels to their graves, which need to be fresh to serve their purpose. A week or two old, three at most. No sign of fair young angels bidding the fallen goodnight. Unbleached titanium, a colour paler than oatmeal though not yet ivory, stripes the soft grass at the path’s edge. Swan inhales sharply as she scrapes the ball of her foot on a ribcage, scatters the exposed skeleton.
With a tail of that length, the bones must be animal. The thought gives her pause. What do Lacunae carcasses look like? Surely they’re bigger than this one. And dug deeper. But for all Swan knows they could very well have tails.
Themothers draw to a halt. With low voices they sing a few notes, the tune an aural blueprint of the cemetery. Taking well-rehearsed cues, Thevessels join the motet until its polyphony reveals to whom each allotment belongs. Swan’s temperature rises, sweat beads her forehead. When her turn comes, she mimes a verse (a mezzosoprano’s G, below middle C), and prays for her song to return. She nearly chokes on its lack.
Grave after grave is assigned to full-throated girls. But not yet for Swan. A horrifying thought nearly brings her to her knees.
What if there aren’t enough?
One row over, a marble headstone, carved with bas-relief crosses. Two plots beyond that one, a limestone pillar, broken in half. A few granite tombs guard an equal number of newly-dead. Three sandstone markers, etched with intersecting swords, retreat over a low hill—none of the girls will approach those tanned monuments. Beneath the western wall, a copse of naked trees shelter seven or eight wrought-iron urns, which are perched atop decorative steles, nestled in the
dank scent of turned soil.
Will there be enough?
Swan spins around. Thevessels’ voices slide up a key change her ravaged larynx can’t negotiate.
Will there be a grave for her?
She turns again, her breath coming hard and fast in the upworld’s asthmatic air. One, two … five, eight… . Summoning-songs take flight all around her; Swan raises a hand to her parched mouth. She feels disoriented.
How many are there?
And Elizabet? Where’s Elizabet?
Will there be a grave for her?
A figure clad in hoarfrost and winding sheets peels away from a nearby mausoleum. Swan stumbles to the ground; her lachrymal vase skitters out of reach. The figure’s strong hand, pale as Swan’s own, scoops up the small vial and holds it out. Swan takes it, and the extended hand. Standing, she nods her thanks and checks that the vial remains securely stoppered.
“Have you got your ticket?” the figure asks. Her voice is soft but strong, its cadences familiar. Swan bends to retrieve the crumpled slip, taking the opportunity to peer up into Theexhumer’s shady cowl.
“This way,” the woman says, lowering her hood to afford Swan a better view of her face. Swan’s mouth opens in a silent gasp. Theexhumer strides toward a marble plinth that beckons from the cemetery’s north-east corner. She doesn’t turn back to see if Swan follows.
Ohmarys.
Under the dirt, under the winding sheets, under the layers of unkempt hair, she looks exactly as she had two years ago. Her name had been Judith before her mark was erased from the hymnal. Elizabet had partnered her in more duets than Swan can count—until Ladyday broke their harmony, leaving Elizabet to sing solo.
Swan hurries to catch up. Her guide’s skin shines like white silk, utterly clear. Never Amother then, but Anexhumer.
A lost one.
Holymarys, Swan prays. Looking around, she sees Thevessels being similarly led by unhooded figures shrouded in smoky garments. Is Patrizia there too? Is Esme? Is Amelia? All Ladyday girls once, all lost. It’s a jinx, thinking of them, but Swan remembers painting Amelia’s shining orange hair and cannot, cannot forget.
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