Unquenchable Fire
Page 13
Sometimes she walked down to the ferry dock and watched the new arrivals as they stumbled off the boats. The assistants would let them look around for a moment, then they would shout in their faces. Meekly the dead would allow the assistants to lead them to the walls. Once frozen, they never saw or heard anything again. A couple of times the third sister thought of taking a consignment to herself, before the workers could fix them in their places. She didn’t dare.
Finally Our Blessed Mother of Night (as another assistant called her) decided that only her beloved sister Asti could blot away her loneliness. By this time she had convinced herself that Asti had loved her and not Lily. She convinced herself that Asti missed her, that Asti longed for her and would rush to give up the noisy Earth for the cool beauties of the Underworld. If only she could go herself, the lady thought. But she was always the responsible one. She didn’t want Asti to think she’d become flighty.
She sent two assistants, a male and a female, in a Silver Phantom Rolls Royce. The lady stood on the shore of her land and watched them drive across the grey river. She watched them wave and shout at the bent humans, the silent mice, the still mosquitoes coming across in the latest shipment. When the messengers were gone the third sister walked back to her magnificent bedroom, where she sat on the corner of her white sheets.
The assistants found Asti at her desk, mapping out new routes for the high winds that sealed off the planet. They smiled at the smell of blood in the air; someone must have run a sacrifice to get the Mother Of Earth’s attention. Asti jumped as a hand curled round her shoulder. ‘Blessed One,’ said a sarcastic voice, ‘we would very much like it if you would take a ride with us.’
‘This is my territory,’ Asti said. ‘Get out.’
One of them fingered a necklace. Asti saw, among the teeth and snapped bones, nine copper coins. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ the messenger said. ‘If you can prove your…dominance, we’ll get in our car and go tell our lady you were busy.’
Asti’s heart jumped. She’d always hated Death’s ultimate claim on all her children. She asked, ‘What do you mean by proof?’
The two of them smiled. ‘We’ll choose a group of targets. Nothing very difficult. A child, a beetle, an orchid, that sort of thing. If you can save one of them, just one, we’ll go home.’
Asti stared at them. The tips of their teeth showed over their white painted lips. ‘Make your list,’ Asti said.
The contest lasted ninety-nine days. At first Asti tried to counter their every move. She would protect her creatures with her body, or snatch them in her arms and leap from one wind to another. She would hide them in caves, in crowded subways, in the centre of blizzards. When she saw the enemy penetrate to every one of her children she knew she must change her tactics. Only one, they’d said. She just had to win one time, and they would leave her alone.
She chose one of the last targets on the list, a young girl who worked in a sweatshop in Taipei. Asti met the child one morning on the way to work. A touch on the eyes caused the girl to forget her job, her family, her name. First, her Mother armoured the child’s body. She bathed the girl in a river that flowed from Asti’s own mouth, she rubbed her in the leaves of a tree that grew behind her office. Then she began the disguises. She wiped away the girl’s personality, then substituted layer upon layer of fake identities: an actress in Italy, a shoemaker in Beirut, a striped cat living in the back of a grocery in Utrecht. For the final layer, the outer coat, Asti dressed the girl in her own face and dress and set her down at the great desk. With absolute conviction in her personal history as Asti, Mother of Life, the child set about ordering the latest growth rates for orange trees in Portugal, for rainstorms in Ohio.
Asti herself returned to that morning in Taipei. In the shape of a young girl she sewed ‘made in Taiwan’ labels on the insides of black and yellow jeans.
Days went by, weeks, months. One afternoon she was returning from her work when a Rolls Royce pulled up alongside her. She kept walking. Two figures stepped in front of her. They took her hands and a shock of cold went through her. In the car she sat without a word. She didn’t look at them or speak until they came to the riverside, where the ferryman stood looking at his watch. Only when the two waved her onto the ramp did she fold her arms and quietly shake her head.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I’m not the one you think I am. I am her Mother, and I’ve beaten you.’
‘Which one do you mean?’ the female asked.
‘You know which one. The one who looks like this.’ She pointed to herself. ‘If you want her you can go to my office. You’ll find her sitting at my desk. She thinks she’s me. You can have her now because the contest is over. I’ve beaten you.’
‘Oh, that one,’ the male said. ‘We took her long ago. And the others. You, Blessed Mother—you’re the one we want.’
Asti stared at the boat. There, among the passengers, stood a tall woman in a silver dress. When Asti stepped onto the ramp she herself was dressed in moonlight, and the tall woman became a ragged girl with filthy hair.
Even as the boat pulled away Asti saw the blight float down like smog over all her lands and people.
Lily did not hear of the kidnapping for some time. She was on a run, trying to outdistance the gigantic gas creatures who kept rolling back the end of the universe. Bored with her vast playground she wanted purity, escape. She wanted to get out beyond even the incessant gossip of the quasars. She was almost at the edge, almost in sight of the border when the message came. Lily, I need you. The Lady of Heaven hesitated, then picked up speed again. The hell with Asti. All the times Lily had begged her to go into the dark, just for a holiday, and now she just summons me? Lily, help me. Help yourself, Lily thought. She could feel the universe slide away from her like drops of water off a racer’s back. A great field of white opened in front of her. One step and she would break apart into the splendour of endless nothing. One step.
She turned and headed for Earth.
It was in fact only desperation that made Asti pray to her reckless sister. From the moment the Queen of the Underworld had installed her in a room in the centre of the Great House In The Valley Asti had thought obsessively about their mother. It’s my fault, she berated herself. I should have kept up the search. I didn’t love her enough. And yet, whenever she tried to make herself pray to her mother nothing came. She told herself it was because their mother couldn’t help, or because she, Asti, resented all the times she’d called and had never got an answer. The real stop to her prayers was something else entirely. She had become the Mother now. All the festering children of the world prayed to her. Why should she give that up, even imprisoned in hell?
Her sister had placed her in a long narrow room with a large bed against the far wall. The posts of that bed were black diamond, the walls a constant waterfall of colours. Asti only sat on a thin-legged ivory chair beside the stone door that held her prisoner. Naked, with her shoulders curved forward, she pressed her fists against her cheeks, and when her sister came to talk to her, to stroke her, or threaten her, Asti only stared ahead as she willed her tears into ice. She looked at her sister only once, when the Lady of Night tried to remind Asti of the supposed love they had once shared in that spectacular time before they took up their duties. For a moment Asti turned to stare at her sister with a look half horror, half pity. She looked away again almost immediately, but the third sister got up and left the room. The next day two of the Lady’s assistants came to take Asti to a crowded room where the corpses of women who had died in war hung on hooks along the wall. They jammed Asti onto the same hook as a young priestess who had prayed, thousands of years before, to Asti to save her from her murderers. When the assistants left, laughing at some whispered joke, Asti at last sent out a call to her sister Lily.
By the time Lily arrived on Earth that call had dissipated. Fragments of it hung in the air, soaked the ground. Wherever Lily walked she felt like she’d stepped on a wet sponge. The rocks, the grass, they all oozed A
sti’s voice, but no words, only pieces of syllables.
In one step Lily stood on the hilltop that held Asti’s office. Insects crawled over the huge desk. For a while Lily stood there and listened to them weep for their vanished mistress, ‘she who loves the beetle with the elephant, the cockroach with the eagle.’ Honey and other offerings drifted down the table legs.
Lily stepped outside and cast her eyes across Asti’s world. All the things that had worked so neatly under Asti’s tight schedule now had flown to pieces. In one place no woman or animal could conceive despite constant intercourse, in another, streams of babies fought each other to get out of their mothers’ wombs. In yet another, Lily saw a woman in labour for twenty-three days bring out a miniature doll, a wind-up toy with a metal face painted in a huge grin.
In one city ice formed on people’s hands as they tried to eat, while in a certain village in France the sun set the people’s blood bubbling in their ears so that they had to shout to hear their own prayers.
Great waves of prayer washed over Lily. Everywhere people beat the Earth and themselves, they sacrificed animals and each other until in some towns Lily had to wade through blood and bits of meat. Others burned whole forests in their hope to catch the mother’s attention.
Lily was standing in a town hall somewhere in Belgium watching one man cut out another’s tongue for some blasphemy or other, when a tall woman stepped up to her. The woman wore a red velour suit, red high-heeled pumps, a white ruffled blouse—and around her waist a belt strung with human eyes. Lily said to her, ‘Tell my sister she’s got some real class working for her.’
‘You can tell both your sisters,’ the woman said. ‘Though I don’t think the little one will have much to say about it.’
A great fear shook Lily, but she forced it back down her spine. With her mouth open wide she called down a storm on the messenger. The wind blew down skyscrapers to reveal the temples and pyramids underneath their basements, it blew the skin off stockbrokers and their secretaries, it ripped open all the books so that they dumped their black ink into the rivers and lakes. But when it ended, the woman in the velour suit and the vulgar belt still stood, her back against the remnant of a wall. She smiled. ‘This isn’t your territory, Sky Woman. It’s too hot here. You get confused. Would you like to come with me now? We can go in my private plane.’
Lily smiled back. ‘Tell your lady I will visit her after I have properly cleaned myself. I’ve just come off the road.’
‘But how will you find the door? You’re not used to these small worlds.’
‘I grew up here.’
‘Of course, but even then you never did go down to the ferries, did you?’
Lily didn’t answer, but instead stepped out upon the sea, heading for the island where she and her sisters had grown up together. When she reached it she found all the trees gone, the rock hot under her feet and the sand beach fused into glass. A sniff of the irradiated air told her that some government or other had used the place as a test site. As she climbed the hill to the house she passed a delegation of army officers under a red and white flag with a Lunar crescent, supposed symbol of the vanished Asti. In a show of ostentatious humility the generals were crawling on their bellies; Lily had to step over them to get to the door.
Inside, everything was the same, the chairs by the windows, the skylight, Asti’s paints and dreadful portraits, the third sister’s pebble collection perfectly arranged on a square of volcanic glass. Without any conscious plan Lily began to smash it all. Her legs kicked out, her hands slashed the walls. When she stopped, everything lay in dusty heaps. Beyond the mess the generals continued their oblivious crawl.
Now Lily dressed herself for battle. She reached into the sun for a long tunic of white light. Her hand swiped at the moon and came away with a mask of silver to cover her face, all but the teeth, which she cased in steel. She gloved her hands in mountains and shod her feet with the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.
One step took her to the ferry docks, another carried her across the river. For a moment she stood there and stared at the huge house, with its thousand cold chimneys, its ten thousand corridors, its hundred thousand blacked out windows. Softly she said, ‘Lady of Death, this is Lily of the Stars. I want my sister back.’
Room after room she marched through Death’s house, until she came to a black door twice as tall as herself. Over and over she tugged at it or kicked it, but it wouldn’t budge. A stoop-shouldered man in overalls came up behind her. ‘That door is the Night,’ he said. ‘You cannot break it. But I have a fancy for your shoes. If you give them to me I will open the lock.’ Lily kicked her salt ice slippers at his face. He caught them in his teeth, and then with a small key opened the door.
Through a thousand more rooms Lily ran, finding nothing but the frozen faces of the dead, until she came to a pale door half as tall as herself. ‘That door is Sorrow,’ said a woman when Lily couldn’t break it. ‘Give me your gloves and I will open it for you.’
Again she marched through the house, until she came to a wide gate, thick spokes of glass with empty air between them. Lily tried to break the lock or crash the glass. She tried to squeeze between the bars. Nothing worked. A woman in a glittery G-string appeared on the other side. ‘You won’t open this,’ she said. ‘It’s made of fear. Pass me your dress and I’ll unlock it for you.’ Lily took off her dress of light and threw it through the bars. Instantly the door swung open. Lily ran along the swampy corridor.
She came to a door of yellow mud. Three women and a man appeared behind her. The man wore her shoes, one of the women wore her dress, another her gloves. The third woman said, ‘That door is Anger. Give me your silver face and I will open it for you.’ Lily stripped off the moon mask and threw it as hard as she could. It struck the woman’s face and clung to the skin.
The moment Lily squeezed through the door her third sister loomed over her like a mountain. Lily tried to shout but nothing came out of her mouth except the steel plating that had coated her teeth. She tried to kick but could no longer feel her feet. At a gesture from Our Lady of Pity the four messengers lifted Lily and jabbed her body onto a huge rusty hook. Across from Lily Asti groaned. The Lady stood over them. ‘Now we are all together,’ she said, and walked out of the room.
Asti moaned. Her tongue stuck out like a stick held between her teeth. Looking at her, and the arms and legs of the dead priestess behind her, Lily thought to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ but the words stuck in a mire of anger. It was all Asti’s fault, all her stupidity, her selfishness. How could Lily ever have loved her?
‘You’ve got to get me out of here,’ Asti managed to whisper. ‘My children need me.’
Lily was about to say that Asti’s children could join her on her hook when a thought came to her. ‘Asti,’ she said, ‘call your children. Tell them to worship their mother.’
Asti slurred, ‘They already worship—’
‘Here.’
‘Here?’
‘Call them here.’ But it was no use. Asti had slipped off again. Lily pitched her voice high like her sister’s and sent out a call. All over Asti’s world her children began to kill themselves. The simple ones smashed themselves against stone or drowned in poison, or cell-divided so rapidly their nuclei shattered. Others set up competitions or gave exhibitions of their suicides. Newspapers reviewed the latest trends, neighbourhoods became fashionable for avant-garde deaths.
When the first crowds began to arrive, when the first extra boats were laid on at the ferry stations the assistants held a party to celebrate. The Lady attended but left quickly. The toasts had seemed like jeers. She went instead to her sisters. The dark room soothed her eyes after the garish decorations of the party room. She went to Asti and touched her shoulders. They felt like mould, like dead leaves. At that moment the Blessed Lady of Deliverance understood, before any of her workers, what was happening.
The workers soon began to see the signs. The boats began to arrive faster than the assistants could find their prop
er places. Soon, they paid no attention, just gathered in the halls or down by the docks. Worst of all, the dead were laughing. They arrived like car loads at a political convention, they came in bright clothes, with banners, they sang songs as they marched off the boats. The assistants tried to order them to the walls. They paid no attention. The assistants tried to outshout them or command their silence. The dead only sang louder. And more came, animals leading litters of young, human children with their arms filled with pets, whole parades of painted faces and banners and megaphones.
The Lady walked downstairs, stepping over the corpses of cats. The mix of colours made her wince. When she marched through her once silent halls, mobs cheered and the dead threw flowers at her. She realised she had become so used to loneliness she could not tolerate the touch of fingers or eyes. At last she reached the room where her sisters hung on hooks.
‘Go,’ she told Asti as she lifted her off the walls. ‘Get out. Get back to your job.’
Asti looked from her to Lily. In this one room no sound had come of the invasion. Lily laughed, a raw gurgly noise because of the hook in her throat. The third sister cocked her head at Lily. ‘You did this, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘Asti’s not smart enough.’ Lily smiled at her. ‘She can go, but you’re staying. When they’re all gone, when there’s nothing left, you and I will still be here.’
‘Still hating each other,’ Lily said.
‘Exactly.’
Asti said, ‘Let her go. Please. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s not like you and me. She doesn’t understand.’
The third sister searched Asti’s face. There was no trickery there, no calculations. Only love. ‘If I let her go,’ she told Asti, ‘will you stay in place of her? Will you stop your children and stay here alone, with me?’