The Choir Boats

by Rabuzzi, Daniel

  “Reglum,” Sally said, moving closer. She could see each one of his eyelashes and the small hairs at his temples.

  “I speak now as Reglum, not as a lieutenant in the Marines,” he said. “Almost all of what we see, and everything we are trained to observe and depict, are monsters by any definition. They have no power of reason that we can discern, no conscience. They devour any flesh they can find. The brood of Phorcys, one and all.”

  He watched an osprey fly off its pole in the harbour, then continued, “Yet are these beasts doing anything worse than following the instincts they were born with, like a fish-hawk? Are they not part of the natural world too? Who made them, if not the Mother? God the Father as you style him in Karket-soom? Wurm? Some other angel or demon?”

  Sally thought about the deep green voice in her head at the Sign of the Ear, and remembered the silence of Oos. She recalled the booming of the Wurm-Owl.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It seems God takes many forms: here, in Karket-soom, in the Interrugal Lands. But if God is everywhere, so too is the Wurm. Even if we free Yount, true escape may never be possible.”

  “Now you take us far beyond the simple truths of teratology,” said Reglum. “As I have told you before, I don’t pretend to understand a being such as the Wurm, though I admit to you alone that I have pondered his nature. At Oxford, I read Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis and the fragments of the Pnakotica and the Liber Ivonis kept in the Bodleian, but to little avail. Is it not enough to know that he is our foe?”

  “In his beginning, the Wurm was not as he is today,” said Sally. “I see that in his deepest eye, the lens that goes back to his birth. He and his fellows chose their path, Reglum, unlike the monsters in your catalogue. Which means they can choose again, if only their pride will let them. Which means we can choose again too.”

  “Oh Sally, you veer into what the Sacerdotes call unorthodox philosophy when you make such claims. They will tell you to stay with description and classification, and to leave thoughts about first causes with the Learned Doctors.”

  “As they tell us also in Karket-soom,” said Sally. “But I think they cannot hear the Mother — or are wilfully blocking their ears.”

  “Ah, now we come to it,” said Reglum, grazing Sally’s arm as he spread his hands. “Here at the Abbey we have been thinking for over a century about what the Learned Doctors say. The ichthyologist Flureous Mur’a Hunce was most penetrating — you must read his work sometime — and Vallussea Dwendify, who studied beetles, she was also trenchant. We disagree with the Doctors on some matters that they insist are objective truths. We learn from Karket-soom in ways they do not. We read your Hunter and Blumenbach, Erasmus Darwin . . .”

  Hearing those names, Sally’s heart skipped. Instead of Reglum’s voice, she heard James Kidlington’s. She saw James on the deck of the Essex, and on the swing at the Gezelligheid. She fought not to, but she saw James sitting at a table in prison on Robbens Island, holding her locket. With a small gasp, Sally backed away from Reglum, who looked up in alarm.

  “Sally, what is it?” he said, “I am sorry. First monsters and then, worse, a lecture about them. Here, sit down.”

  Sally shook her head. She willed James Kidlington out of her mind for now and looked anew at Reglum. Reglum gazed at her, while rubbing his shoulder. Sally walked over to the window and pretended to watch the ospreys for a while. She was very conscious of Reglum standing right behind her, was certain she felt his breath on her neck.

  “Tell me more, Reglum. If the monsters are no worse than lions or tigers, then what about their normal prey? They must eat something when they cannot attack tough ships or invade Yount itself. Do you catalogue their prey?”

  Reglum sighed, “Yes, but only as an afterthought. Once a new species is determined to be non-threatening, we lose almost all interest in it. We’re poor Linneans, I am afraid, in that regard. We record such species in a supplementary catalogue, the Auctary of Innocuous Beings. To be the sub-editor for the Auctary, that is a position with no future, let me tell you.”

  An osprey lumbered back to its pole with a fish. Sally and Reglum watched the osprey rip into the belly of the fish.

  Reglum said, “Some of the Innocuous Beings are strikingly beautiful. In one place are little flying rodents that we call druddi, which is maybe ‘applequits’ in English. Their wings are blue, their bodies banded in black and white. In another place is a sort of antelope we would call in English something like ‘Chiming Sebastians.’ As they skip along they utter ringing notes that sound like they are chiming out, ‘pass the mustard, pass the mustard.’ Imagine herds of them loping over the savannah, how the air shimmers with their music!”

  Reglum raced ahead like the antelopes he described, saying, “Natural phenomena too are not always hideous in the Interrugal Lands. Once, while serving on the Curlew, I saw a rainbow created by starlight only, the oddest colours refracted over the sea. We do not yet fully understand the optics but no Marine who saw that sight shall ever forget its beauty. We have built a device to measure the starlight rainbow. We can differentiate its colours, even capture them on recording paper using silver nitrates and cyanotypic glues.”

  Reglum no longer raced but soared, and Sally soared with him.

  “Rainbows, Sally,” he exclaimed. “Like the one in Akenside, do you know it, in the ‘Pleasures of Imagination’? Here, here, I have it . . .”

  Reglum strode to a bookshelf and pulled out a well-thumbed volume. “By my bedside at Brasenose College, and always close to hand here. Ah, listen: ‘The melting rainbow’s vernal-tinctur’d hues . . .’ Yes, yes, farther down . . . ah: ‘through the brede of colours changing from the splendid rose to the pale violet’s dejected hue.’ Marvellous.”

  Seeing Reglum’s face glow and listening to him recite English poetry outside the world in which England was, Sally thought, Herds of ringing antelopes and starlight rainbows, I want to see these things. With Reglum, I would brave goblin butchers and carkodrillos and all other goettical creatures.

  Later, back in her own room, holding Isaak in her lap, Sally had another man’s voice in her head again, and the memory of him holding her locket. Not for the last time, she wished the cook were here, and Mrs. Sedgewick.

  I can sing a ship out of an ocean, and force an owl back into his cage, she thought. But I cannot see my way clear on this other matter. And I do not have a Saint Morgaine for this affliction.

  Interlude: Regina Coeli

  Maggie sat cross-legged in the alley, with a treatise of calculus in her lap. The Sunday sounds of a London late afternoon faded in her mind. The Irish children had watched her for a while but then drifted away. Maggie solved equations, placed the solutions in her mind, scratched arcs and tangents on the wall. Sitting cross-legged on the alley floor, she raised up her mind and put herself along the path of a tangent and walked, slowly at first but with increasing confidence. London faded away behind her.

  Maggie walked a long time alone in darkness. Stars emerged overhead, one by one. When the moon rose, a lark landed on her shoulder, and sang softly in her ear. The lark guided her feet, while pouring forth polynomials, diophantine equations, notes on the topology of curves, proofs relating to the existence of monodromic groups. Maggie found the solutions to the lark’s equations, posed problems of her own, which the lark solved and to which it then responded with another series of equations. Maggie solved and sang in turn, and so they went, intertwining their music. Maggie walked through a landscape of rolling hills, long sweeping grasslands without a single tree. At the top of one incline, she saw on all horizons the first hint of dawn and dusk simultaneously. The lark soared trilling from her shoulder, higher, higher, higher until it was lost to sight. Spilling a torrent of song, the lark tumbled back to Maggie. On she walked, with the lark periodically leaping into the ever-dawning, ever-gloaming sky, singing.

  She came to a wall at the top of a slope. Maggie heard the distant crash of waves on a shore and tasted salt on the breeze. The wall was
made of red brick in one light, and grey brick seen in another, and all colours in all lights, but never white or black alone. The wall curved around into the rising and setting sun. Bell towers stood at regular intervals along the wall. The path ended at a gate in the wall, flanked by two griffins. Eyes rimmed the gate, fierce eyes, kind eyes, stern eyes, eyes lined with tears. Atop the gate was a mouth that spoke as Maggie approached. “Who/what/why do you seek?” it said in every language at the same time, a perfect harmony coalescing into the language that precedes all others. Maggie did not remember answering but she must have because the griffins bowed to her and the gate opened.

  Inside was a garden, suffused in the never-ending dawn and endless dusk commingled. The sea-tang merged with a thousand fragrances, the bass of the surf supported the tenor of fountains. Espaliered roses climbed the walls, fruit trees stood in rows, flowering vines hung from arched trellises. Cats roamed terraces, chasing after butterflies as big as hats, and dogs frolicked on geometrical lawns. A bell tolled and then another and another. As they did, Maggie entered a plaza flanked by columned walkways, with an enormous fountain in the middle. At the top of the fountain was a statue of a pelican piercing its breast: water gushed from the wound, flowing down over rows of marble water-horses and sea-turtles. Dolphins swam in the fountain. Everything was tinged pink and grey, peach, purple, and nutmeg from the perpetually rising and setting sun. The lark left Maggie’s shoulder, alighted in a plum tree, and joined its voice to the dawn/dusk chorus — the Mantiq al-Tayr, the language of the birds.

  Six African women and a woman from Asia Minor sat at tables in front of the fountain. They looked up and smiled as Maggie approached. One of them stood up and, bowing, said:

  “Known now as Maggie Collins, be welcome.”

  Maggie bowed and looked at the woman. She gasped: “The Baby Macaroni!”

  All seven women chuckled. The standing woman laughed most of all.

  “Well, yes,” she said. “If you will. But I suppose Macrina the Younger has a slightly more dignified ring, don’t you think? Of course, I forgive you (how could I not?), if you will forgive me.”

  Bewildered, Maggie nodded.

  “My love,” said St. Macrina the Younger. “Meet your sisters/ daughters/mothers.”

  Maggie looked at each of the others. Suddenly she knew them: Saint Crispina of Numidia with the shaved head of her martyrdom, tall and unyielding to her male interrogators; St. Monica of Hippo Regius near Carthage; the Saints Perpetua and Felicitas, also of Carthage; Ijeoma Chidera, weaving intricate geometrical designs for the honour of Aha Njoku, the Lady of the Yams; and Nne Adaobi, holding a spear inscribed to Oya, the goddess of wind, fire and lightning from across the river. Maggie knew them and they knew her in that instant, just as they had known each other forever. Maggie beheld her ndichie, and they embraced her.

  “But why?” asked Maggie.

  “Come,” said St. Macrina the Younger. She took Maggie by the hand. They walked in the sunrise/sunset to the nearest bell tower, ascended the winding staircase, and emerged in the carillon. They looked out and Maggie gasped, partly in surprise, partly in recognition.

  “Behold the Garden,” said the saint. The wall was an enormous circle that was also a dozen other shapes, all perfect. Inside the wall was much larger than outside, an infinite regression, fractals of lawns and arbours and fountains. The air was so transparent Maggie discerned the follicles on the feathers of birds perched in trees across hundred-mile greenways. The air was so quick Maggie smelled the aroma of flowers a day’s walk away.

  “The Garden?” she asked, knowing the answer now but wanting confirmation.

  “No,” said the saint. “Not that one, but not so far away either.”

  Maggie considered the flowers, which named themselves to her as she gazed. She had seen very few flowers since coming to New York City and then London. The last time she had seen and smelled such a profusion of flowers, she had been a very small girl, barely able to speak, in the place called Maryland. Her memories of that place were not good.

  “Maryland,” she said.

  The saint looked at her sadly, and said, “A different place but not so far away either. The mockery of its intended. Maryland is not Mary’s Land. And here we are, at the Garden of Patience, the Inns of Learning, where we sing the Quadrivium and the Trivium throughout the constant dawn and dusk, the forever-becoming, as we plan for some other end.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Maggie, who was beginning to understand but only as a frog begins to appreciate far above it the rim of the well into which it has fallen.

  “Look,” said the saint.

  Maggie saw now thousands of others in the garden. A few she recognized: Saints Paula and Eustochium with their books and brooms, steely-eyed Saint Radegunde with her mason’s trowel, Saint Teresa writing and writing, Hypatia surrounded by a dozen pupils. The names of others formed in her mind as she beheld them: Rabia al Basri, with her broken jug, Meerabai singing bhajan prayers, Guan Yin holding a willow branch, Dhashi Zhi at her feet, both listening to the music of the world, Machig Labdron, the Queen of Bliss, playing her drum and bell, Tse Che Nako the Thought Women, the Spider Woman, Estsanatlehi the Self-Renewing One, clan-mothers of the Haudenosee, women from every people, every country, every continent, from Africa, Europe, Persia, India, Siam, China, from Australia and Peru, from California and the polar North, from everywhere on Earth. Women sat in libraries, vast libraries opening onto the garden. Women sat at drafting tables, wove patterns into cloth, mixed chemicals in retorts, manipulated large engines of calculation and analyzed the results.

  From the assembled minds arose a humming, a music that probed and retreated, advanced and circled back, concentric and tangential, always emerging and always receding at the same time. Like the perception of a lost time on the tip of one’s tongue, thought Maggie, or the memory of an event that has not yet happened but certainly will. Maggie saw that men were also present, fewer of them, but working alongside the women, and likewise of every possible race and type. And then — Maggie had to rub her eyes to be sure — she perceived other beings, also working with the men and the women. Some were all covered in fur, some had feathers instead of hair, some were as tall and thin as storks with superbly long noses to match. Maggie saw across the pellucid air that their beak-noses had three nostrils.

  “What am I to do?” said Maggie.

  “This you know though you have forgotten,” said Saint Macrina the Younger.

  Maggie considered this as sunrise and sunset coddled the air, lacing the sky with shades of tin, cream, and coral.

  “I fear the Owl,” she said at last.

  The saint said nothing while the world turned around and onto itself.

  “Fear him but not forever,” she said at last. “And not into despair, not into inaction. He and his kind are not the highest powers.”

  The saint pointed down at the great fountain with the statue of the self-mutilating pelican, a thousand fountains replicated across the gardens below. The water gushing from the pelican’s wound turned to blood, a splashing river of blood out of which the dolphins leaped with cries of alarm. Rivers and rivers of blood, thousands and thousands of dolphins. As quickly as it began, the blood ended, replaced by water that turned mirror-silver. At first the thousand mirrors reflected up to Maggie and the saint the turquoise and lilac of the sunrise and sunset. Then the mirrored garden revealed a vision of ingenious power to Maggie, the creation of a key to open the mightiest gate ever made. All the music, all the equations, all the geometry of the universe would have to go into the engine depicted. And all the love, all the mercy, or else the device would fail.

  “We need seven for this song of building,” whispered Maggie. Saint Macrina the Younger nodded, and all the saints did the same down below, every man and woman of every species in the garden nodded.

  In the mirror were the images of six individuals. Maggie knew them. Most of all Maggie looked at the image of the young white woman, the one with
the small-chinned, anxious face. The white woman was sailing beyond the edge of the world, desiring herself to go to a place where sad dreams come true. The young white woman looked out at Maggie and, for one instant, Maggie and the white woman hummed to one another, “I know you!”

  The mirrors clouded over, the waters of the fountains swirled again. A long sigh broke from the massed scholars.

  “The other six seek you, though they do not realize that yet, not fully,” said Saint Macrina the Younger. “They must find you and together you seven must sing the Song Eternal to awaken the Mother.”

  Maggie said, “I know. But still I fear the Owl.”

  “Look,” said the saint, pointing to a dark grey shape that soared out of the thousand bell towers at the instant, a shape that swooped low over the fountains and gardens before flying over the heathlands and downs beyond the wall.

  “The owl of wisdom flies at dusk,” said the saint. The owls hovered and then circled towards the line of shore, hunting by the sea. “The Wurm-Owl is not this owl. The Wurm-Owl is a usurper, a bloated, leucristic mockery. Fear the Wurm-Owl but not unto death.”

  From the far side of the sea, something stirred on its pillar of bone. Maggie shuddered and, despite herself, so did Saint Macrina the Younger.

  “Come down now,” said the saint. “You must go.”

  Maggie descended the staircase, and re-entered the garden. Larks, thrushes, and wrens greeted the dawn. She heard the bees flying from flower to flower, could see the hairs on their legs, full of pollen as they worked at a million pistils and stamens. She smelled sandalwood and acanthus, galbanum and sarara, the spices of every archipelago. The lawns were strewn with small blue flowers.

  “Go forth now, find your six sisters and brothers,” said the saint, and all the saints of every nation.