The Universe of Things

by Gwyneth Jones

  “I’ve made up my mind.”

  “Yes dear?” they quavered in unison.

  “Don’t be stupid. I’m not your ‘dear.’ Listen, I’ve decided. I want to get married. But I can make conditions, can’t I? I want to marry the richest man in the world. I don’t like changes. I don’t want anything to happen to me, ever. I want money. I don’t care if he acquired it by selling pork pies made of babies’ brains. I don’t care if he’s ugly as sin or has filthy personal habits. I’ll marry him, I’ll have the children. Any reasonable number, so long as I don’t have to see them afterwards. Or screw the bloke more often than is strictly necessary for royal reproduction. Those are my terms. Are you satisfied?”

  Now in this same country, and at this same time, there lived a famous magician. He was semi-retired on a comfortable pension, but he had started a small school of magic, just for amusement and to keep himself up to date with the latest developments. He lived on a cloud, which he had fitted up by magic with mystic gardens and thaumaturgical laboratories. It also happened that one of this magician’s valued protégés was an inveterate thief and liar. Even his name, which was Rayfe, was stolen. He had “borrowed” it from his brother when he first set out to become the sorcerer’s apprentice.

  The mage had known at once that he had the wrong brother. But there are no mistakes in magic, so Rayfe stayed, and the brother had to be content with a polite letter. Rayfe was a dangerous investment, but the boy had talent. The elder magician had decided to take the risk. Rayfe made good progress. When he had been in the school two years he could command the four winds at his whistle and conjure mountains of gold out of the air. But he still couldn’t eat his dinner with enjoyment unless it was someone else’s. If he told you of any marvelous trick he had performed, you could be sure that, of all the tricks in the book, that was the one he hadn’t mastered. He had to steal even praise. When he couldn’t satisfy his need any other way, he would even steal blame and own up humbly to crimes and stupidities that he had never committed.

  One fine morning — inevitably — the mage woke up with a crick in his neck and a stone in his back, in the middle of a field. The thief had stolen his master’s magic — every last spell of it.

  Meanwhile, back at the palace, the princess’s search for a bridegroom was well on the way. Up to the palace doors came a stream of adventurers, charlatans, conmen, fantasists, fools, all of them claiming to be the richest man in the world. (Needless to say, the real rich and eligible suitors stayed well away.) Princess Jennifer found none of them was quite what she wanted. She retired to the bedroom, where the real gold swans watched over her, and sliced open the half-healed places that she’d cut last week. The bloodletting helped. It drained off some of the pressure. Something inside her was trying to get out. This way it escaped only in small installments, under control. Pain and blood.

  “Is it my fault?” she asked her distracted parents, “if the world is so full of liars and fools?”

  Then they brought in Rayfe.

  The thief saw a thin girl with over-bright grey eyes, very unattractively dressed. He thought she looked even less appealing than in the unflattering royal photographs. He was not disappointed, for the girl scarcely featured in his plans. He was after her money. The princess whose parents were looking for the richest bridegroom in the world must be worth a pretty penny.

  The princess didn’t see Rayfe at all. She didn’t often look at people. She didn’t like the eyes.

  The first stage of the inquisition began. Three months later, Rayfe and the princess were married. It was all orange blossoms and archbishops, and the king could hardly believe his luck.

  The bridal limousine bowled along through a wide sunny meadow. The bride was still in her wedding dress. It was a present from the groom, and he had asked for this romantic touch to the start of their honeymoon. “Stop the car,” said the newly made Archduke Rayfe, suddenly. “It’s so lovely here, we’d like to take a little stroll.”

  So they both got out, and strolled. Behind them there came an odd little sound, like a twig snapping. When they looked back the car, the driver, and the motorcycle escort had all disappeared. Rayfe was astonished. He had intended, on this little stroll, to vanish the ugly princess’s dress, just to tease her: instead he’d lost the whole motorcade. His concentration must have slipped.

  The princess was staring coldly.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Rayfe.

  The princess picked up a fold of her white lace gown and studied it closely. The inspection revealed nothing, but it gave her something to do.

  “It was all magic, wasn’t it,” she stated flatly. “The background the court detectives checked out, the financial records?”

  Rayfe grinned uncertainly. “What’s going on, Jennifer?”

  The meadow turned into a hotel room. Jennifer fingered her satin and lace nightgown. “You tricked me.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on, Jennifer,” said the thief. “I thought you liked me. We were seeing each other, you took me home to your parents, you have this game about being a princess. Your parents seemed to like me. Everything moved very fast, but I wasn’t complaining. I’m in love with you!”

  Jennifer looked at him with contempt. “I made you up,” she said. It was the first time she had ever risked telling any of her puppets that: she was exhilarated and frightened. “I make up everything. And you’re not in love. My father paid you to take me away.”

  Ralph was beginning to find that small cold voice scary. He had never been much of a success as a cheat and a liar. He freely admitted (to himself) that he was one of the hopeless. Incapable of holding down a job, too scared of going to jail to succeed in a life of crime. Answering the princess’s ad had been a risk. Marrying her had been an act of desperation. Guilty Daddy and Mummy make over income for life, to their crazy daughter’s keeper… Suddenly he knew what his life would be like, and his blood ran cold. He affected a light laugh. “Oh, come now princess. Can’t you take a joke? You wanted wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. Nothing is beyond the dreams of avarice, and nothing is what you’ve got —”

  She stared in a way that made him feel sick.

  “Now, now, princess, don’t be a sore loser. Besides, there’s nothing to complain about. Magic’s as good as any other currency.”

  He made a few passes in the air and spread out his hands. Paper flowers showered onto the carpet. The princess stooped and picked up a jagged rock from the meadow grass. She flew at him. Rayfe yelled in panic. Pain and blood.

  The meadow turned upside down and vanished.

  The princess and the thief were hanging face to face in nothingness. It was very cold. “What’s happening!” screamed Rayfe. The princess felt herself in the grip of magic that was not of her own making, for the first time in her life. “I knew you must have stolen your power from somebody,” she snapped, improvising quickly. “Your master has caught us.”

  The nothingness became the garden belonging to the magician who had trained the thief who gained the hand of a princess by trickery. The magician, who knew everything, was there with them. Jennifer saw a stern, bearded male face, looking out of a cheval glass that had appeared standing on the lawn. The garden was not reflected in the glass.

  “He’s going to kill us,” she said. “Or worse.”

  “Oh God.” Rayfe’s voice was real, but his body didn’t seem to be all there. It looked like a cardboard cut-out. “Get me out of this, somebody. I’d rather die than live out my life tied to the heels of a monster.”

  The magician ignored Rayfe. “So,” he said to Jennifer. “You expect me to kill you. You are an optimist, after all.”

  Jennifer looked into the eyes in the mirror and wouldn’t show that she was afraid. “You can do what you like, I suppose. You’re in charge. But I’d like to know what my crime was.”

  “Your crime? Your perpetual crime is that you do not feel at home in your skin. Your latest crime is that you tricked this young man into destroying him
self.”

  “He tricked himself.”

  “That’s no excuse. You set a trap, using the king your father’s money, designed to catch someone as worthless as yourself. I am aware that by doing so you saved your royal parents from an unpleasant fate. I will take that into account. Let me see. Your crime, Ralph, was the more cold-blooded. You have never tried to save anyone from anything. I will award the choice of weapons to the princess. Jennifer, whom do you hate most?”

  Before her wedding the princess would have said: “I don’t hate anyone,” and meant it. She didn’t even hate her parents. But she had changed, even in this short time. Her lip curled, in passionate disgust.

  “Him!”

  “That’s unfortunate. He’s your husband, and you two are very close.”

  As the magician spoke, Rayfe felt dizzy. There was a buzzing in his ears; he thought he was fainting… His vision cleared. He looked around and with a heart-wrenching shock saw himself — standing, stiff as a board, a few paces away. He looked down at what felt like his own body.

  The princess began to scream. She screamed and screamed, and clutched her head and ran. Things grabbed her. The garden was full of grappling hooks, there were walls that she banged into. She couldn’t see the grass or the trees. She was wet and cold, and her head was full of something thick and cloying. She fought against the nightmare with all her iron will. She saw the edge of the cloud, looming up. She screamed in defiance. “No one can make me suffer!” And she flung herself into space.

  She fell and fell. She lost everything: the swan-necked bed, her monogrammed silks, her blind, but royal parents. She lost her knife and the neatly laid out dressings, the ritual that kept her safe. She lost the privacy of her own mind. The elder magician’s voice came to her, calm and affable. “If the pair of you ever learn to like the arrangement, come back and see me.” She fell screaming, knowing there were worse horrors to come.

  The princess’s wedding dress grew drab and shabby. She lived like an animal in the wild wood. She who had taken her only pleasure in life from the softness of her bed and the delicacy of her food, scrabbled for left-over roots in a turnip field and slept in ditches. Her hair hung in rattails, her pale skin had turned the color of earth from dirt and weathering. She stank. She never gave a thought to the way she lived, never a shudder. She couldn’t, the pain wouldn’t let her. It wasn’t her pain. It belonged to the shadow that followed everywhere at her heels: night and day, sun and shade.

  She made arrangements with the woodland animals, who lent her their claws and cigarettes. She hid herself away (there was a hollow tree stump that was her favorite spot) and cut her arms, her thighs, her sides. She bled. At times, the shadow lifted itself from her feet. It sat opposite her and screamed without a sound. She had a feeling that she was feeding it on blood. Her blood kept it alive, kept it screaming. Her shadow was a drug addict; she was the drug that destroyed. She no longer remembered that she had ever been alone in her head, so it was the shadow who really suffered more. She would have liked to put it out of its misery. Sometimes she tried to jump on it and found herself scratching and tearing the woodland earth, or the animals. The shadow always escaped her, and so she could not escape from it. In the end the fact that she was conscious of that presence was the only light left in her mind.

  She lived from night to night, stealing the pig’s porridge and the dog’s crusts. She survived well enough; but then the real winter came. The villagers who lived in a huddle of small grey houses on the edge of the wood became harsh and bold. She was driven from her hollow tree with sticks and stones. At night the dogs chased her. She couldn’t find anywhere to hide. The blood, not fed to the shadow, began to build up inside. The pain, which wasn’t her own, couldn’t serve the same purpose as the old kind. She ran like a beast through the wood, a beast with sharp teeth and claws that crept up on smaller beasts and pounced.

  The princess had blood and flesh in her mouth, warm torn filaments coating her tongue. The rabbit screamed, and she let it go. The princess retched, vomited bile. She knelt there and she thought: What am I to do? She had to find some way to get rid of the shadow at her heels. Hate of the shadow kept bleeding through, making her conscious again. Being conscious made her violent. Being violent made the villagers torment her. There had to be a way out.

  On the edge of the village, Ham the woodcutter lived all alone. He was a big, quiet man who had little to do with the other village folk or the dumb animals who did deals with the princess. Princess Jennifer had often seen him as he went about his work. She had watched him and judged him. She knew that he would help her. Resolutely, she took the path that led to his cottage.

  “I have been lost in the wood,” she said, shivering, when Ham Cottar stood in the doorway. “Can you give me shelter?”

  “I should hope so, at this season.”

  He took her in and sat her by the fire. The winter passed; the spring came. The woodcutter told princess Jennifer that she had attacked her husband with a hotel ashtray, and basically that was why she had been living in this wild place. He was glad that she had decided to come in from the cold, but as long as she continued to harm herself, he couldn’t hold out much hope for her escape from the magic wood.

  “I don’t harm myself,” said Jennifer scornfully. “I don’t live in my arm.”

  “Where do you live, Jennifer?”

  The princess looked on the woodcutter with pity. “The place where I live doesn’t have a name. No name, no time, no space. I make up all of those things. There’s only me, the thinking thing.”

  The woodcutter smiled slyly. “So that’s what you’ve been doing all this time,” he remarked. “The mind locked up inside that raving animal has been re-inventing Descartes?”

  Her shadow lay between them. It had no right to be there, a steady black manikin in the flickering firelight. But the shadow always came back. It was the same stuff as herself, dirty and dangerous. It came and stared at her with helpless eyes. It had nowhere else to go.

  “I want to get rid of my shadow,” she whispered. “It feeds on blood.”

  “Jennifer,” said the woodcutter, “I want to help. But you won’t change anything by talking about a bloodsucking shadow. If you want to be separated from the person you call that, come further in, out of the wild. I know you can. Trust me.”

  He touched her. He didn’t take the danger seriously. He was only a peasant; his simple life had never touched the realms of great enchantment.

  The princess thought she could settle down by the woodcutter’s fire. She would let him do what he liked, and be warm and comfortable again.

  The shadow came, and she told him she’d found someone else to destroy, she wouldn’t be requiring his appetite any longer. The cut-out of starless void was less sharp-edged than it had been; Jennifer noticed this with a stirring of inexplicable unease.

  “We’ve got to get me out of here,” she said, suddenly. “This place isn’t safe anymore. You understand? Not safe.”

  Ralph the thief was used to the conversational style of his wife-in-name-only. He suspected that one of the doctors was fucking her. The man’s life was probably in real danger and Ralph ought to tell someone. But he wouldn’t. The way this place worked, Jennifer was the one who’d end up getting punished, though they wouldn’t call it that. And for God’s sake, she wasn’t responsible.

  “I don’t want to help you,” he whined. “I don’t know why I keep hanging around. It isn’t the money.”

  “I know it isn’t,” said Jennifer. “You stay because you’re worthless, just like me. I’m crazy and I stink, but I’m still the nearest you’ve ever had to a steady girlfriend.”

  “You don’t need me to get you out,” said the blurred shadow, reluctantly. “You’re not sectioned. That means they can’t keep you against your will. You can walk.”

  The princess remembered that Ham the woodcutter had told her the same. Because she was not cut into pieces she could leave the wood. But her magic had been too strong for
Ham. Fearing for him, she decided to leave anyway. She left the wood, in peasant clothes and shoes that the woodcutter had given her. A marketing farmer took her into town, and there she found work.

  She had no money. The thief who had become the shadow had stolen it all. She had no interest in finding her way back to the kingdom of her birth. Her royal parents must have given her up for dead long ago; they wouldn’t thank her for reappearing. She decided to leave them like that: happy enough in an abandoned story. She found a bed in a hostel, became a cleaner, and then a shop girl. She was neat, quiet, and hard working. But her shadow was a nuisance. In the town people weren’t used to seeing even their own shadows. There wasn’t much space for them on the crowded streets. Sooner or later she would notice someone staring at it. She would notice people whispering; she would have to leave her job. There was always some excuse. She was given a good reference, and the shadow was never mentioned, but she had to go.

  Her life came back to her piece by piece. She knew that the wood had not been real. She knew that the woodcutter had been in danger before she arrived and that he was beyond her saving. She understood that the elder magician had arranged it all. He had stolen her safety, thrown her into the wild wood, and given her a foul shadow, for reasons of his own, which he would explain in time.

  She possessed her thinking self, and a shadow. The true horror of that companion was not that it was worthless and evil — like herself; but that it was the same stuff as herself. This is what happens to common people, and it can happen to a princess. She looks out of her tower and sees another thinking thing, a being she hasn’t invented. The citadel is broken, the world outside exists, nothing will ever be the same.

  When the princess had worked this out she acquired a vegetable knife, lint dressings, antiseptic spray. Since she didn’t have to think of her parents, she purchased a kidney shaped metal dish from a medical supply shop. She’d always wanted one.