by Adam McOmber
“Pascal, I’m only beginning to understand what I am. ‘Goddess’ isn’t quite the word. It’s possible there is no word. But believe me, Ariston Day doesn’t have a clue as to what I truly am.”
“We must be wary of him,” Pascal said. “We don’t know what he intends.”
“I’m through with being wary,” I said. “Day has gone too far. Every half-witted mystic and self-proclaimed man of science will soon be knocking at the door of Stoke Morrow. We can no longer hide. It’s time for us to move ahead with this, I think. But first we must find Maddy at the Crystal Palace and get her away from him.”
“How are we to do that?” Pascal said. “Day has his army.”
“Trust me when I say I’m stronger than he is, Pascal. I believe I always have been. I’ve just been afraid to show it—even to myself.”
• • •
When the street became congested near Grosvenor Square, Pascal and I disembarked from the carriage and made our way through the city’s passages that Nathan had once shown me. These makeshift habitats for the poor were filled with tokens of daily life: bits of altar cloth and damask decorating broken tables, birdcages with no birds to inhabit them, and blackened iron heating stoves. From the outdoor sitting parlors, we moved into darker alcoves, places mad with stolen tea trays, tiny tables, and the like. At times these passages were the width of a traditional alley, yet at other times the walls grew terribly close, no more than two feet apart. Too narrow to bring a coffin through, Nathan used to say, though it was customary to hold open-air funerals in the passages. He once told me there were even areas designated as holy places where the passage dwellers made worship.
I stopped dead in one such chapel when I saw a shrine to what had once been the Virgin but was now transformed into something quite new. Mary’s face was painted white, making a mask of her features. She was draped in a mantle of red and lauded with wildflowers. Someone had used baling wire to attach a stalk of wilted lilies to her hand, as with the statue in the Spitalfields church.
“The same desecration we saw at the Hall of the Red Star,” Pascal said.
“It isn’t a desecration,” I said. “It’s the transformation of myth.”
“But who would make such a thing?”
“Word is spreading,” I said, almost to myself.
Pascal stepped forward, took a daisy from the altar, and presented it to me. “For your continued benevolence,” he said.
His humor made me nervous; still, I accepted the flower.
• • •
The Crystal Palace floated over the lush grasslands of Hyde Park, and Pascal and I hurried through groups of wealthy picnickers who lounged on the great lawn. Reflected sunlight blazed in the thousand glass panels that made up the surface of the palace, making the building difficult to look at directly. Red and gold flags fluttered from the glass parapets, and the transept was inhabited by a full-grown oak tree, enclosed in glass.
Pascal paid our entrance fee, and I followed him into the transept, where the great oak stood in its prison. Men and women moved around the towering tree, marveling at it. I gazed beyond the transept toward the wide pavilion that opened onto the various halls of history and science. “We must be careful to avoid the new inventions,” I said. “I don’t know how my body will react to them.”
Pascal, ever the kind boy, took my arm and led me on.
We passed through chambers, various and extravagant, looking for some sign of Madeline, Ariston Day, or the Great Illumination, which was to be our meeting place. We found ourselves in a room that housed scenes from the New World. Large taxidermic cats and serpents lurked in a silken jungle. In one scene, a puma was about to spring upon a brocket deer, and we were told by the small placard nearby that the cat intended to pull the deer’s neck back until it snapped.
“So that’s what it’s like to be in America,” Pascal said. “No wonder Alexander can be such a bastard.”
“We have to keep moving, Pascal,” I said, glancing at a tower clock mounted near the glass ceiling. “It’s almost three.”
We followed the hall through the volcanic ruins of Pompeii, where a sign warned us to BEWARE OF THE DOG, which we later found petrified in ash—a poor little terrier curled into a fetal stone ball. From Pompeii, we passed through the courts of Byzantium, then a Greek palace and a room that was entirely devoted to a collection of various artifacts of Araby. A golden monkey leered down at us from its pedestal.
All the objects were singing quite loudly in what nearly sounded like a chorus. It worried me that perhaps these objects understood I had arrived, and they were, in some sense, rejoicing. The ages of man were glad that I had come.
We continued on through the musical court where the head of Apollo rested on a central pillar and around him danced an array of fauns, playing instruments. Nowhere did we find any announcement regarding the Great Illumination. The palace was so vast that finally I resorted to asking a tour guide—a stodgy man in a shabby brown suit. “You’ll find it beyond the Egyptian Gallery, mum, and there’ll be no greater marvel in all of London this year. You’d better hurry. The show’s about to begin.”
Pascal and I raced through the Egyptian Gallery, where the animal-headed gods watched silently and waited. I thought of the white ape Nathan had met on Malta and wondered again what the creature had done to him. My head was filled with visions of that primitive monster, and I wondered if Ariston Day was correct that I could be something equally primitive and terrible. I’d brought harm to Nathan, brought harm to Maddy. I forced myself to brush these thoughts away.
Beyond the Egyptian Gallery, we found neither Maddy nor Ariston Day, only a hall with hundreds of glass bulbs dangling from wires, crisscrossing the high arched ceiling. A crowd of some two hundred people had amassed, men and women dressed in their finest, all staring up at the little glass balls on black wires, waiting.
“What is the Great Illumination meant to be?” I asked.
“They intend to show everyone electric light,” Pascal said. “I read about it in the Times. Electricity is conducted along those wires and brings fire to the filaments inside the glass bulbs. It’s man’s newest invention.”
“Harnessed fire,” I said softly, fearful of what such an invention would do to my senses. Despite my growing sense of strength, I knew I must not underestimate Day. Each of the bulbs was already ringing, making a shrill, otherworldly noise, and just as I was about to tell Pascal we should leave, two things occurred simultaneously.
A mustachioed barker mounted the stage and began announcing to the onlookers that they should prepare themselves, as the Great Illumination was about to begin. “The god Prometheus will descend upon London-town to give us fire,” he said, “and none of you will ever be able to look away.” Then directly, I saw a flash of red uniform in the crowd—the queen’s own red, streaked with grime and soot. It was, most certainly, a Fetch.
“They’re here,” I said.
“Where?” Pascal asked, craning.
“Keep an eye out for Maddy,” I replied. “She’s confused. I think it would be better if we all got out of here and met Ariston Day on some other terms.”
“But, Jane—” I didn’t let him finish. I made my way through the crowd toward the red curtain where the barker stood. It was behind the red curtain that Maddy said I should meet her. In the darkness there, I found neither Ariston Day nor any Fetches nor Madeline Lee. There was only a large glass box, standing on end, nearly six feet in height. It reminded me of an Egyptian sarcophagus and had a brass perimeter decorated with various animals of England—a pheasant and a fox, a grouse and a stag. Wires from the Great Illumination ran along either side of the box, and glass bulbs had been screwed into the box itself. I was wondering at the purpose of the box when I heard the scuff of a boot behind me and turned to see Maddy—looking worn down in her violet dress, as if she hadn’t even thought of sleeping.
“Here you are, finally,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d come, Jane.”
�
�You asked me to. Of course I’ve come. But Maddy, we must leave. The electric lights—I don’t know what they’ll do to me.”
“Ariston Day knows what they’ll do,” she said. “Step inside the box now.”
“Maddy, I—”
“None of your arguments. I won’t hear them.”
I looked again at the gleaming coffin. “What purpose does it serve?” I asked, feeling strangely frightened by the box.
Maddy took Nathan’s pistol from the pocket of her skirt. The gun made a blunt statement in her hand, a kind of ending, and I wondered if one of the Fetches had shown her how to use it. I wished that I’d taken the pistol from her when she offered it at the Temple of the Lamb. I should have known it would be safer under my command.
She trained the pistol on me. “You’ve left me no choice, Jane. I know what you did. He told me what you did. You have to get into the box so we can help Nathan. There isn’t much time.”
“Day told you?”
“That’s right.” She put her thumb on the hammer and cocked the pistol.
“Maddy, please don’t do this. Ariston Day isn’t even his name. The man is nothing but a fabric of lies. I should have explained before. I read the entire report written by Vidocq. If I did something to Nathan, I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Yet there are other ways to bring him back, there must be.”
Without warning, Maddy fired the pistol. The sound of it rang out so loudly I could hear nothing for a moment. I waited to feel pain, but there was none. Looking to my left, I saw a hole in the red curtain. A woman on the other side was screaming, and I could hear shouts from the crowd as people scrambled to escape the hall.
“You would shoot me?” I asked. “Have you lost your mind entirely?”
“I wasn’t aiming at you,” Maddy replied, and her eyes betrayed her utter desperation. “It was a warning.” She cocked the pistol again. “You took Nathan away because of your jealousy, Jane, because you couldn’t stand the idea of him choosing me. But I’ll have him back. You’ll show me where he is. Now do as I say, and get in the box.”
My hand was shaking as I found the box’s latch among the brass animals carved on its side. I feared that Maddy was wild enough to actually shoot me, and I knew I had to play her game long enough so I could figure out what to do—how to stop her without harming her. When the door swung open, stale air wafted out, and I wondered if there was any ventilation in the crystal coffin. I had no time to consider this further, as Maddy had pressed the pistol into my back. It sang to me softly, a kind of lullaby.
“How could you?” I said, my voice nearly breaking.
“You’ll see, Jane,” she replied grimly. “This is necessary.”
“Maddy, you’re my closest friend. We’ve nearly shared the same heart for—”
“No more poetry, Jane,” she said, gesturing toward the box once more.
I stepped inside the glass coffin, and Maddy closed the door, locking it from the outside. I turned to look at her. Her dark doll’s eyes, the delicacy of her nose and cheeks, all of it was the same, yet this must have been some other Madeline Lee, one who could be this terrible.
The sounds of glass and metal roared around me as soon as I was inside the box. It was a violent noise, as if a dark storm was building. I began calling to Maddy, asking why she would do this. Why didn’t she trust me?
“Trust you?” she said, eyes hard and face chalky. “I saw it even before Ariston Day explained. You poisoned Nathan and then put him in that awful place.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“The only possible way to get Nathan back is to open the Empyrean, Jane,” she said, “and the only way to open the Empyrean is to force you to do so. You haven’t cooperated with any of this. You’ve been hiding your deeds all along.”
“Day doesn’t care for Nathan,” I said. “He wants the Empyrean open for his own purposes—and those purposes are darker than you imagine.”
She did not soften.
“Open the door,” I begged, putting my hand on the glass, an action that made the screaming grow louder in my head. The sound tore through my skull as if it could split me in two. “But please don’t put yourself and Pascal in danger. We can leave if we all go now. We’ll find another way to get Nathan back, I promise.”
But as she backed away, I suddenly understood Ariston Day’s plot—his provocation. He hadn’t actually needed to talk to me in Southwark at all. He’d summoned me there, knowing I would bring Maddy, and it was she he wanted to talk to. Only she could complete the provocation. I was helpless against her because I wanted so badly to protect her.
The roar was still building at the back of my head. I could feel the blue of the sky beyond the palace walls, and I longed for the green silence of the parkland. The glass of the coffin wanted dissolution. All of the objects in the palace wanted their release. And I would be the one to give it to them.
I pressed against the barrier that separated me from my friend. “Maddy, whatever Ariston Day has planned, I swear to you, it’s not going to bring back Nathan. It’s only going to draw us deeper into—” But my own voice was drowned out by the sound in my head, and my thoughts fell to pieces under the strain of it.
As I was trying to gather myself, to control the environment around me in some way, the curtain had fallen and I saw the great crowd had departed from the hall, frightened off by the gunshot. They had fled, and only some twenty Fetches remained. The white slice of Ariston Day’s face appeared among the sea of their red coats, his black featherish hair, his salmon-colored tie and the glint of silver tie pin upon it like a captured star. He was smiling up at me, adoring.
I turned to look for Maddy, but she was gone. I was alone on the stage, caged like an animal for everyone to see. And I watched helplessly as the Fetch with the ugly grin who’d brought Day’s initial message to Stoke Morrow pulled the black switch at the side of the stage attached to an electrical box.
Suddenly the bulbs ignited, each filled with electric light, and it was as if the tip of a drill had been applied to my skull. The ringing was no longer ringing; it was the sound of a great brass church bell in a tower. I fell to my knees. Too late, I understood why Day had brought me here. These lights—this focusing of electricity—was not an invention of man, it was the invention of man. And when I looked up, I saw that each individual bulb was surrounded by a halo. It seemed to me that bright flowers were strung across the glass ceiling of the Crystal Palace, creating an ethereal domain. I could feel the palace slipping away. The field of bright, screaming flowers was drawing me toward it. Somewhere in the distance, a pane of glass shattered and then more glass was breaking. The entire structure of the Palace was shaking, and I felt I might bring it down at any moment.
Pascal was suddenly outside the box, calling to me and fumbling for the latch. A vortex of energy churned about the hall. And I soon was not in the vortex—I was the vortex. I could feel it pushing its way out of my chest. I could not respond to Pascal or even look at him any longer because I was wholly other than him. We were not the same kind of creature. I was blooming in the darkness. Maddy had long ago put a surface on me, a facade of normality. And now she’d helped to tear it away. I could feel that surface sloughing off into the aether, and I tried my best to hold the doorway closed. I didn’t know what would happen if it opened. Who would I hurt? The buzzing electric lights were too much. I felt the fullness of my power burst forth from my chest. The box exploded around me, and I was falling up toward the ceiling and the field of glass flowers.
The sky became the ground. I was going to strike it. No time to brace my body. I was going to hit.
CHAPTER 31
I felt that I was everywhere at once; my essence had moved beyond the boundaries of my own flesh into stillness and silence. Without opening my eyes, I listened for the murmur of objects, and impossibly, I heard nothing. I extended tendrils of myself into the far distance, attempting to experience even the presence of one soul. But there was nothing. In the ope
n air of Hampstead Heath, I could at least hear my own clothing or the dull hum of faraway London bricks. But it was as if every object in the world, every clamoring soul that I’d perceived since the death of my mother, had simply ceased to exist.
I opened my eyes and was greeted by stark white light. The Crystal Palace was gone, and it appeared I was floating in some eternally bright and empty space, a world washed clean. Then slowly, trees materialized—sturdy oaks with white bark and pale toothy leaves. Flowers appeared soon after, burning like lanterns in the underbrush. I lay on a bed of white grass, mere inches from one of the oversize blossoms, and it seemed as though the light inside the petals fluctuated, growing brighter and then dimmer. There were fine veins in the petals too, like those that can be seen beneath the surface of a fair woman’s skin. I felt the glow of light in my own body, growing brighter and dimmer, responding to the light of the alien flowers. I was part of them, and they were part of me.
Finally, I was here in the forest of my dreams—Nathan’s Empyrean and Ariston Day’s Paradise. Being swallowed wasn’t the end. This was a beautiful new beginning in a place with no sorrow or pain. I lay on my back and ran my fingers through the white grass, finding it cool. There was no breeze or movement in the forest, and stranger still, no smell. It was as if nothing here had ever lived. This was the aether. Such lack of life made the forest magnificent, just as the gods themselves who’d never lived were magnificent.
I heard a woman moaning some distance away. The moan was confusing—a dark stain upon this place. And then I remembered Maddy firing Nathan’s pistol and forcing me into the glass sarcophagus surrounded by electric light. I remembered feeling agony when she betrayed me. Such emotion should not have tainted the Empyrean, and yet it was here.
The woman was still moaning, and I recognized her voice. Maddy, who’d put everyone in danger, was close at hand.
I rose from my place in the white grass, checking myself for injury. My dress was torn around the neck and shoulders and I’d suffered cuts from broken glass. Blood leaked onto the fabric of my dress, making red flowers on the silk. I caught a glimpse of a purple gown beyond a patch of bright flowers. It was Maddy, trying to stand, and looking at her, I felt a rage rise up in me unlike any I’d ever know.