The Orphan's Tales

by Catherynne M. Valente

“If you are finished, we must go, Arioso,” the violinist insisted.

  “Yes, yes, to the roost and the river with you—you are taking her by the river way, aren’t you? It is the best and loveliest route. But promise you’ll come back and play for the Duchesses this year. Swear it! No one can play the Basilisk’s Dirge like you! And bring your audience with you—she is a pearl among empty seats!”

  Arioso kissed both of us noisily on our cheeks, though his kiss went straight through my smoke, and returned to the stage, where the beautiful sea set was being struck, and a forest raised in its place, with leaves all of ladies’ cast-off spring veils.

  Agrafena did indeed take me by the riverside, the Vareni, which flowed through the corners of the city, cutting deep into the layered streets, as though Ajanabh had always been there, and the river, a latecomer, had had to make do with grinding down avenues and boulevards instead of hills and mountains. The thoroughfares arched out over the water like battered cliffs, their undersides curving sharply away from the current. Leering lanes had long ago crumbled into little red deltas, where ramshackle fishing huts and lock-houses had been built onto the ruins of what might have once been a grocer’s alley.

  The water of the Vareni, which rushed and burbled, was of every conceivable color. In Kash, everything is more or less fire-colored: red and golden and black and white and the occasional blue. But here was crashing, waving water in rose and emerald and cobalt, stark yellow and depthless black, white and scarlet and orange, indigo and silver, gold, and flashing, peaking turquoise. Even in the inky, starless night, the colors gleamed. The whole thing whirled by, eddying and swirling, sending up a rainbow of spray against the docks and finger piers which jutted out into the water, for the Vareni was a warm, swift-flowing river, treacherous and deep.

  Agrafena watched it go by for a moment, and chuckled at my astonished stare.

  “Up northside”—she pointed—“is the Dressmaker’s Parish. For centuries upon centuries, they ran their cloth through the headwaters of the Vareni, the final wash of the dye. All those colors leeched into the water, and even though there is but one lonely spider there now, weaving her ball gowns still, the colors are fast, and the Vareni is bright.”

  She led me down to the waterside, to a tall and spindly bell tower which had no bell, though several suspect shards of bronze lay shattered around its base. A warm light seemed to flicker inside, but I could not be sure. Water like blood licked the stairs.

  “This is where I leave you,” Agrafena said, drawing out one side of her long hair and playing a few slow, jagged notes. “When you will, find me in my courtyard again, and I will take you back to Simeon’s hands.”

  She walked away, her red dress swaying, and her feet kicked a few swift, dancing steps as she disappeared behind a thin little chapel with a kicked-in door. I turned to the bell tower, the roost, I supposed, and sucked in my breath. The Vareni smelled like fish and linen. The door was no more than a gaping arch, and I ducked inside, drifting up the long, curving stairs, my smoke behind me like a shadow.

  In the upper rooms, by the light of my own flames, I could see a great ivory cage, burned black by the blazing tail of a Firebird, who lay sleeping within, his wings folded gently over the dozing form of a young girl, whose toes stretched and curled lazily as she dreamed. The ceiling spun away overhead, into the broken bell hook and beyond, and the night poured in.

  THE TALE OF

  THE WASTE,

  CONTINUED

  THE VEILED WOMAN PUT HER HAND ON THE leopard’s head, and the great cat arched her neck to meet the peeling palm, purring as her ears were thoroughly scratched.

  “She does not sicken you?” the Djinn asked.

  “She does not repulse me, no. She is mine. The leash goes both ways. And her hand can do little to me by now that is not already done.”

  Surprisingly dexterous, Rend pulled a little pack with her soft, spotted mouth from her mistress’s voluminous black robes and opened the flap, gently drawing a water flask from its depths and a few strips of dried meat and crusted bread. Curling her lips away from the food so as not to moisten it, she pushed it into the cage, where Scald chewed it gratefully. She refused the water, however.

  “That I do not need. They mean for me to starve here, not die of thirst. We do not thirst. What fire longs to be quenched? Either way, it will not be long.”

  The leopard shrugged her spotted shoulders. The evening was deeper now, and the scent of weeds and mouse bones was thick on the wind.

  “We find it interesting that you speak of Ajanabh, for that was the home of my lady, before she was stricken. She knows little of what has passed there since she left the red towers for the black spires of Urim. Did you betray your people? Did you do something to keep them from the carnelian box?” Rend asked, her whiskers twitching.

  The Djinn-Queen frowned, her orange-lined eyes narrow and angry. Then she laughed, harsh and hoarse, golden tears showing at the corners of her eyes, where the fire made filigree patterns, as she shook her head. “That silly box. If only they had told me what was in it. But then, I suppose generals are always foolish, no matter how dazzling the host they command. But I would not call anything I did betrayal, no more than it was betrayal to tell no Djinn but the highest about Kashkash’s true nature, or to keep a Queen ignorant of her own war.”

  “I meant no offense,” the cat said, and the Djinn glared, not at her, but at the woman with black veils, whose cool, sad eyes returned the gaze. She did not move, and after a long while, the Djinn sighed.

  “I think you and your mistress are both impatient. I will come to the box and the cage in time, if you will give me leave to meander in the Ajan alleys of my tale…”

  THE TALE OF THE

  CAGE OF IVORY

  AND THE

  CAGE OF IRON,

  CONTINUED

  THE FLOOR OF THE CAGE WAS PILED WITH cushions trimmed in fused tassels and rich gold thread. The child was resting on a lovely blue brocade, and she turned in her sleep, pulling up the Firebird’s wing over her shoulder like a blanket. His neck was curled protectively around her, banked and glowing, his beak polished brass, sticking out between the blackened bars of the cage. The door swung open and free, and with the breathing of the pair, the whole thing swayed back and forth on the frame that held it up a ways above the dusty floor.

  “Hello?” I said softly, but my voice echoed like a scream against the red walls. The bird stirred and his eyes slid open lazily, shimmering eyelids drooping. The child moaned softly and her aviary caretaker hushed her.

  “Go back to sleep, dovelet, it’s only a Djinn come to see Papa.” I saw her head fall back to its pillow, and soon enough the contented sounds of a child sleeping drifted out of the cage.

  The Firebird gently extricated himself from the child and hopped out of the cage. He was huge, the size of a young elephant, his plumage all the familiar hearth colors: deep red and orange forefeathers down to creamy sear-white underfeathers. And his tail was aflame—unlike the Djinn, the tail of a Firebird is the only thing which is truly afire—long tailfeathers like those of a peacock, tipped in curls of fire and marked in intricate, blistering designs. As he woke the flame wound up from sweet ember to soft roar, and I thought him beautiful in that moment, for fire, as ever and always, speaks to fire.

  “You must hush,” he said, his voice like a green branch falling into ash. “My daughter needs her sleep.”

  “Your daughter? But she’s human!”

  “The ways of the world are strange and dear, my little flint-strike. My daughter she is, doubt it not.”

  “Simeon sent me to you. I understand now what he meant: a flame like my own.”

  “Now why in the world would he do a thing like that?” The great bird put his head to one side, as if considering a pile of seed.

  “I am looking for a box of carnelian—”

  “I’m sure I haven’t anything like that, but if you care to look, just keep soft on your feet.”

  “No, no
, I’m sure it would be hidden. But Simeon seemed to think I should see you.” I looked down, already a little ashamed of what trespassed outside Simeon’s embrace. “Did you know there is an army outside? They will attack tomorrow, or the day after.”

  The bird fluffed his wings. “The whole city stinks of them. Even Kings and Queens sweat, and their swords weep, and I can smell the cannon even now. And you have their mire all over you, so I am reasonably certain I know you, too. I am sure Simeon means for me to tell you a great many things, in hopes that you will think well enough of us not to smoke us out like rats. But I am not sure at all that I care to speak to you, and I certainly know nothing about your ridiculous little box.”

  “Please,” I whispered, “I only have until dawn. I have been Queen for no more than a day. It is not my fault. Tell me why you are in a cage with a little girl, and perhaps in your tale I can find their box.”

  The Firebird glowered, and finally settled down onto the floor, his flaming face very close to mine.

  “Are you lost?” he whispered.

  “Yes,” I said fervently.

  “Poor lost things are a specialty of mine…”

  THE TALE

  OF THE

  CLOAK OF FEATHERS

  CALL ME LANTERN—AND DON’T LAUGH. I WAS always gentle, always. I was a sweet little flame in a glass. I was never a devouring blaze. That is for you, and your kind, and your army, and your cursed box.

  That was for him.

  The Wizard was holding my feather when I flew into the turret room—I knew he would be. I had felt his hands on my fringe for years, waiting for a need. The moon was a slash on his collar when I alighted on the sill, pale and sharp. Need stood in the corner, with a great, round belly swathed in an elaborate yellow coat, the color of daffodils with the first sunlight of all sunlights on their petals. It was epauletted in gold, and spangled in gold, and buttoned in gold, and belted in gold. The lapels were fringed in a green so bright it wearied the eye, and his stockings and high-heeled boots matched to the toe. He had a thin, long sword with a graceful basket looped into his belt, festooned with ribbons, the expensive, poised kind of sword that lets one know immediately that the bearer doesn’t mean anything by it. He had a black wig that glossed and curled opulently to his waist, and over his face he wore an angular dancing-mask, painted with gold leaf like a manuscript, with extraordinary peacock feathers fanning out from the hollow eye sockets, their dazzling fronds bedecked with violet eyes. The mouth was a hard little slit.

  In his green-gloved hand was a sack of spices, so rich and fragrant they had wet the bag through and filled the room with heady scents.

  “Listen well, my young partridge. This is Kostya of Vareni-side, and he will shortly be the possessor of your feather, and you must be a good little parakeet and obey him as well as you have obeyed me by flying all the way here in the dark and cold, and leaving such a lovely, lithe goose crying in your wake.”

  “There is no need to gloat, Omir,” said Kostya, his voice hollowed by the slit in his mask, but still eel-soft and insinuating. “It is poor form. I’m sure he is quite wretched enough without your help. I shall take him, and keep him dry, and feed him so many charming things to eat. All the mice he could hope to gobble up, served on platters of glass and gold. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Lantern?”

  The man in the yellow coat put his hand on my wing, and it seemed to writhe beneath the glove. I shuddered, and my colors flared worry and warning, blue on white. I said nothing.

  But the deal had been struck, and the Wizard took his bag of spices, inhaling with delight. Kostya of Vareni-side stroked the edge of my feather with an intimate little sigh, his breath ragged and rattled as he fingered the fringes—and then opened the door of a tall ivory cage, and gestured inside.

  What could I have done?

  The journey to Ajanabh was a long one, and to the rim of the desert, the best route is by river. Being a river man of long acquaintance, Kostya chartered a lavish barge the colors of pumpkins and blood, and I was set in my cage at the prow, to watch the foaming green rivers of the mountain country gurgle by. The barge teetered under my weight, but held without too much complaint.

  The river was wide, wider than I had expected. I could see the far green shores, lit up with fireflies and spackled with mosquitoes, but they were not very near at all, and the water foamed brown and weedy around the barge. Beside me on the deck sat a large glass goblet set into a firm wooden hold, and in the goblet was a fat goldfish, snapping her veil-thin tail around her. Her scales caught the river light and her black eyes blinked slowly, one after the other. The cut crystal turned her skin into prisms.

  “Are you enjoying the river?” she said, her voice bubbling in the water. “I could speak to the pole men, if the flow is not smooth enough.”

  “I barely feel the motion of the river,” I said gloomily. “It is as smooth as I could ask for, but I did not ask, and I do not wish to go where the river wends.”

  “I am sorry. It is the nature of animals to be caged and cupped whenever a curious man happens by. This is tragic, but one must take a philosophical outlook. The river is long; the glass is fragile.”

  I ground my beak. “Ajanabh is wide, and the cage is strong.”

  The fish brightened; her scales shimmered with pleasure. “Are you going to Ajanabh? I am only taking you so far as the river wanders. How lovely! I have relatives in Ajanabh, you know.”

  “How wonderful for you. I am not looking forward to it. The peacock-man in the yellow coat says he will feed me mice there, but I think a man with a longing to feed mice to birds may pursue that interest anywhere. If he wants to take me by river to a city I have hardly heard of, there will be more than mice when we arrive.”

  “But the river there tastes like palm sugar! I do love these cold mountain routes, but when the night is very blue, I think of the Vareni, and how it would have felt in my mouth.” She turned lazily in her water, brushing the glass with her fins. “Every morning, they pour me out into this river, and I taste the water—it is like frozen moss this far up in the heights—I taste its current and its depth, the direction of its flow, I find the safe channel, I discover whether or not the trout are spawning this month. And they scoop me back up into my glass, and I chart their course through the flavors of the river.”

  “They might have given you a bigger glass.”

  “Men are inconsiderate. I am sure they believe my wine goblet to be an ocean bounded in glass. But I am the pilot of this barge, and they can do nothing without me.” Her face, such as a fish’s face may be, turned mischievous and sly. “But once, you know, I was a dragon.”

  I laughed. The sound rang out over the quick water. “You must have been the smallest dragon ever to pick a maiden’s apron from your claws.”

  She colored angrily. “Don’t laugh! I was a dragon! And bigger than you are, by far…”

  THE RIVER

  PILOT’S TALE

  I WAS SPAWNED IN A GROANING LOCK ON THIS very river. It was an accident—the water swirls up, the water swirls down, and every so often a handful of gold specks are caught in the sucking whirlpools, and make do in the pockets and eddies beneath the algae-slick walls. We are the lock-children: I and all of my brothers and sisters are called Lock, and it is only confusing in mating season.

  The mountains here hunch and bow like old men’s shoulders, and everywhere there are clouds and mists and trees bent low to the water, so low that they grow and grow beneath the tiny waves until the river floor is nothing but trees from either bank tangled up in each other, threshing the mud between their leaves. The water is cold and fast, and in the crags where ice creeps in along the sand, seizing the bowing trees, leaving only the middle of the river to run and chase as it is accustomed to do, there is a waterfall.

  I do not rightly know where the first goldfish heard that this waterfall was anything but an unfortunate drop in the river table. But gossip travels among us quickly; this is the nature of fish. And some red-finn
ed fellow had heard it whispered by the trout, who had it from the pike, who had been assured by the thorny-boned catfish, who had listened rapt to the drumfish’s clacking tongue, who knew the eel would never lie, who was in awe of the adventures of the bass. And all of these agreed, that if a goldfish could but leap over this waterfall, she would become a dragon.

  Many of the Locks disbelieved this: what a preposterous idea. Dragons are made from eggs and fire and in far-off countries which no polite fish has ever heard of, and besides, who has even seen a dragon in these days, let alone heard rumor of smoke or scorched maidens dipping their blackened hair in the river to cool it? But then, we Locks were born separate from the other goldfish, and are a recalcitrant and ornery breed. I alone went with the goldfish who were born in the open water to the foot of the fall, to stare into the mist and the pounding, thumping water, to wonder how a goldfish could ever manage to leap so far, if anyone had done it, what it would feel like to have hard green scales instead of soft gold ones, what it would feel like to breathe fire—would you choke on your own smoke? Would it burn your tongue? What does fire taste like? Most important, we gathered in orange and white and red clusters and wondered what it would be like to fly.

  We had heard that dragons had wings. The sunfish and the walleye had assured us that they had seen hundreds of dragons in their time, and each of them had lovely leathery wings, sometimes brown, but more often outlandish colors, like our own skin. They were graceful, they looped and corkscrewed in the air, they tasted the wind like we tasted water and everyone, just everyone knew how beautiful a dragon was. Flying was like a long leap, the sunfish explained. So if you could leap over the waterfall, you would just keep soaring and rising, and bony wings would unfold from your back like fishing poles.

  This sounded far better to us than to be small and unremarked fish, known only for a color we could not help. We wanted to fly, and scorch things with our breath! What would the fishermen say when we were dragons, and could roast them mightily? If we could put their little ones into glass bowls and feed them whenever we pleased—or not at all, if that amused us!—and laugh at how small a grown man will be if you raise him in a bowl and never let him out, not even on holidays. They would not say very much, we all agreed. And we wouldn’t listen to them if they did.