Beneath Ceaseless Skies #53

by Parks, Richard

  Laure Harbin appeared in the next scene, in the role of the youngest Valkyrie. Though I was struck by how well colour brought out her true beauty, now that I knew about her and Aucoin it was difficult to watch them interact on screen.

  Katarin made her cameo as another Valkyrie after the final battle. In a touching scene where she collected the soul of the Goat’s faithful companion, she convinced me she belonged in front of the camera. But I could not oust from my mind the fact that a Valkyrie was the spirit of a slain warrior, and that Katarin played on-screen one of the dead.

  I called Katarin and Carmouche back to hear my analysis. “No ghosts in the film that I could see, but I’d like to examine any props with runes on them.”

  Katarin nodded. “Everything’s kept in Warehouse Three. Would you like to rest before we continue, Tremaine?”

  “No. I won’t let this curse get the best of me.”

  “I’ll stay for this film and keep you company,” Carmouche said. “Two sets of eyes are better than one.”

  Katarin left the room while Carmouche and I prepared the next reel: Serpent of the Nile.

  “Just between you and me, Professor, do you think Madame Bertho resents Laure Harbin for taking her place in the limelight?” Carmouche asked quietly.

  “Carmouche! She wouldn’t.”

  “I have to consider every possibility. Maybe she doesn’t consciously wish Miss Harbin harm, but her repressed envy might be fuel for the curse.”

  “Let’s eliminate all other possibilities first,” I said.

  The chimera mascot sequence again began the film, and it was Carmouche’s turn to be amazed by the brilliant colours. “Astounding!”

  Laure Harbin played the lead in Serpent of the Nile, and her performance as the vengeful daughter of a murdered Aigyptian pharaoh captivated me from the start. Aucoin played a minor role as a jolly slave, providing comic relief in this otherwise sombre tragedy. Unlike the previous film, they never appeared in the same scene.

  As the film played, my slight discomfort welled into a nameless dread; my body ached as though a year of my life had been ripped through my skin. I gasped for air, fearful that I had condemned myself to an early death.

  Halfway through, when Harbin danced for the usurper’s son in a most revealing costume, my cheeks flushed. I tried to focus on the hieroglyphs and sphinx statues in the background instead. During the bathing scene, Katarin appeared briefly as one of the handmaidens. But tantalizing glimpses aside, I was still on the hunt for the source of the curse, as was Carmouche. I didn’t expect to find Hyperborean runes in a flicker set in Aigypt, but films were rarely perfect recreations of a specific time period.

  Even though the film ended on a powerful note, I was relieved it was over. Carmouche weathered the film better than I did, though he kept rubbing his left shoulder as though it was sore.

  Katarin returned. “Anything?”

  “A few anachronisms here and there, and two hieroglyphs I’d like to revisit, but none of the same runes from the first film,” I said. “Though I must say, Katarin, there were gross historical inaccuracies with Miss Harbin’s costume.”

  “Ah, but no one will forget how well she wore it,” Katarin said, a tinge of envy in her voice. Was Carmouche right? “It’ll immortalize her...if anyone ever sees the film again.”

  “Only The Lioness in Summer left.” Carmouche stroked his moustache. “Whatever it is, it should be in the first half-hour, to trigger the panic.”

  I nodded. “It certainly narrows down where we look next.”

  Then, the answer hit me like a one-tonne golem. One thing did appear in all three films...or more precisely, before them. I’d grown so used to it at the ciné that I forgot all about it.

  “The studio mascot!” I struggled to my feet. “You filmed a new opening with a new chimera, didn’t you, Katarin?”

  “We had to...the old sequence was in black-and-white, and the animated clay model simply couldn’t convey realistic colours.” Her eyes widened. “Goddesses, Bernard Marec was responsible for it!”

  “How did he do it?” I asked.

  “Taxidermy, with hidden gears inside, I think.”

  Marec had built the studio mascot using animals that were once alive. The thought sent shivers through my body.

  “Necromancy. It’s three animal corpses stitched together to mimic a beast of magic. There’s power in that.” I took a deep breath. “The chimera cursed the opening sequence, which is why it took effect so early in the third movie.”

  Katarin understood. “That’s why the pre-screened scenes weren’t dangerous—the mascot clip was spliced in later! And Philippe would’ve seen that chimera more than anyone else. Framing, focusing, threading the film—”

  “Maybe the chimera’s bleeding us.” I thought about the victims’ bloody eyes. “Ever hear of shadow-plays? Silk screen, puppets and their shadows? They’re a form of entertainment as popular in the Orient as films, but older and more ritualistic, involving prayers and offerings of food to the spirit. The first shadow cast in a shadow-play was always that of the World Tree, blessing the performance to come, and the same image closed the show.”

  “But instead of a World Tree blessing, the chimera cursed the films?” Carmouche asked.

  “Exactly. The longer you watch a cursed film, the more lifeforce you lose. Philippe would have taken many wounds after seeing the chimera many times but not ‘bled’ to death until the third film was well underway.”

  “Then we must destroy that chimera to break the curse,” Carmouche concluded.

  I grabbed my walking stick. “Take us to it, Katarin.”

  * * *

  I’d been to the studios on numerous occasions but had never seen inside Warehouse Three, a hulking gray building at the far end of the lot. It took longer than usual to walk there, with Katarin and I still suffering from a twice-viewed curse. Strangely, my lethargy was slowly fading while Katarin remained weak.

  As Katarin unlocked the door, I took my foxfire-in-amber out of its cherrywood box and mentioned my returning strength.

  “Same for me. What do you think it means?” Carmouche asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “We may have overlooked something.”

  The warehouse was dark but for a glimmer of light near the other end. I held my foxfire-amber high, illuminating the rows of movie props. I recognised a few iconic set pieces in the shadows: a two-storey Tarot card depicting Ankou, the personification of Death in Graalon myth; the massive Bronze Gong of Shangdu; and the colossal clockwork griffin, star of a series where it terrorised the Great Undrowned Cities of the World.

  “The light’s from Marec’s workshop,” Katarin whispered. “That’s where he keeps the chimera.”

  Carmouche drew his palmcannon. “Go back to your office and lock the door, Madame.”

  “No.” Katarin was adamant. “My company, my responsibility.”

  “Then stay well behind us,” Carmouche said. He and I led the way deeper into the warehouse, with Katarin a distance behind us. The row we walked down held props from Lioness in Summer: a rack of spears and mirrors from the Hall of Mirrors scene, arrayed facing each other. The mirrors magnified the light from the amber, creating the illusion of infinite corridors as we passed.

  At the four-way juncture, we turned right and then left onto the adjacent row. An open work area, illuminated by a gem-dish of foxfire-ambers on a cluttered table, lay at the end of the row of obelisks and sarcophagi. Bernard Marec stood behind the table clutching a glassy object in his left hand. When he saw us, he raised his free hand and flicked his wrist.

  The shelves to our left came crashing down on us. Carmouche pushed me forward in the nick of time, but I hit the ground hard, and the foxfire-in-amber skittered out of my hand. I glanced back: Carmouche was half-buried under the avalanche of boxes. Luckily, Katarin had been far enough behind us that the shelf missed her.

  Then I saw the chimera.

  The beast stood in the adjacent row, its lowered
goat’s horns undoubtedly what toppled the shelves. The lion’s head clicked its jaws open in an odd staccato motion while the serpent’s tail stayed motionless.

  “Katarin, run!” I shouted.

  She turned to flee, but the chimera darted behind her with the speed of a live lion, barring her way. When it stopped moving, it remained as still as taxidermic art.

  Without turning, I called to Marec. “Are you going to kill us?”

  “No one was supposed to die!” The chimera trembled in time with his shaking voice. “I only meant to steal enough life to give me back my strength. My body’s breaking down, Voss. This arthritis, these failing eyes—I won’t become a prisoner of my own body.”

  So that was it: he stole strength from others to stave off his illnesses! That explained his speed at Le Pégase.

  I turned towards him. “But you took too much. People are hurt, and a young man’s dead.”

  Would he kill us now to keep his stolen life energy? Yes, if he were desperate enough. But if the same power animated the chimera like a puppet, then the puppeteer might need to see us to attack with it.

  “What of you, Tremaine?” Marec said. “Wouldn’t you want to feel young again, and walk as though you’d never injured that leg? I can teach you how.”

  Oh, to be able to run again! How the thought tempted me. But the cost to my humanity would be too great.

  “How’d you do it?” I asked. “A spell from a book in my museum?”

  “Exactly. I needed a way of drawing enough lifeforce all at once from the audience, so I made a taxidermic chimera and used stop-motion photography to simulate its life and motion. The viewer’s eye interprets the fast-moving frames and thinks the dead model’s alive, their energy in fact willing it to life.”

  “Clever, making the audience unwitting participants in their own doom.”

  I finally recognized the crystalline object in his hand: a polished lens. But if it wasn’t the projector’s lens...it must belong to the camera that had filmed the chimera.

  “That’s why you were at the theatre, wasn’t it? The chimera’s physically too far from Le Pégase, but you could capture the audience’s life energy if you were there with that lens.”

  “You have it,” Marec admitted. “I etched the spell on the lens I used to shoot the stop-motion.”

  The chimera model owed the illusion of motion to the ensorcelled lens, so any lifeforce torn from the audience would flood into the crystal. That explained why Carmouche and I had regained our strength soon after the screening room viewing; the crystal lens wasn’t physically close enough to trap our life energy.

  “You had to come back for the chimera, didn’t you? It’s a linked set, the lens and the model. Brilliant.”

  “They say that photography’s the art of stealing souls, but my art has stolen years of—”

  As he was gloating, I reached out with my walking stick, hooked back my foxfire-in-amber with the lion’s head and scooped it up, hiding its light. The area around me turned pitch black. I could still see Marec but hoped he had lost sight of Katarin and me.

  “—Vooosssssss!”

  Under cover of darkness, I moved and crouched, trying to ignore the pain that flared in my leg. I managed just in time: the chimera crashed into the spot that I had vacated.

  Marec beckoned the chimera back towards him with a gesture, and as it padded past me, its fur brushed against my hand.

  Marec grabbed a glowing amber from the gem-dish and made its viper’s mouth bite it. He sent the puppet back towards me, now bearing its own light source.

  Time to run. Marec would have to move to keep both the chimera and I in line of sight. I uncovered the amber to light my escape and hobbled at top speed into the next aisle, fighting the ache in my leg—

  —and came to a dead stop when I entered the corridor of mirrors.

  Photography was the art of stealing souls, Marec had said. But I knew my anthropology well enough to know the superstition came from a similar taboo against mirrors. A mirror was said to trap a creature’s soul as reflection within itself.

  I turned and saw Marec coming down the shadowed aisle, sending the puppet chimera after me. The reflection of the great beast filled the expanse of the mirror next to me.

  With as much strength as I could muster, I smashed the mirror with the pommel of my walking stick moments before the beast reached me. As the mirror shards fell, the force animating the chimera peeled from its frame like a glove. The lifeless puppet skid to a halt at my feet.

  “How...?” Marec rushed towards the fallen chimera but didn’t see a rune-carved spear extending at ankle height from under a shelf. He tripped, and the crystal lens flew from his hand, smashing to pieces against the floor. “No!”

  I stepped over the inert chimera, drew the blade from its cane sheath, and put Marec at the point of my sword. He grew wizened before my eyes.

  “Mirrors steal souls as well, Marec. It’s said that if a mirror breaks while you’re reflected in it, it damages your soul. You imbued your chimera with stolen lifeforce, a pale imitation of a soul at best.” I ground fragments of the life-stealing lens under the heel of my shoe.

  Katarin and a bruised Inspector Carmouche emerged from the adjacent aisle.

  “Well done, Professor,” Carmouche said. “Bernard Marec, you’re under arrest for murder and several counts of attempted murder.” He grabbed a length of rope from a prop shelf and tied Marec’s hands.

  I once thought Marec had a decent man. It might have been a façade, I supposed, but I sincerely believed he had not strayed until the spectre of death changed him. For the sake of his soul, I hoped he remembered who he was, and who he could still be.

  Katarin touched my face with a hand, her touch warming my cheek. “My strength seems already to be returning. Will the others recover as well?”

  “In time, Katarin.” I turned my head, my lips grazing her fingers. It was all I dared. “In time.”

  Copyright © 2010 Tony Pi

  Comment on this Story in the BCS Forums

  Dr. Tony Pi was a Finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2009. He works at the Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto, where he’s surrounded by the cinematic at all times. His story "Silk and Shadow" appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #11 and the BCS anthology The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Year One. "The Curse of Chimère" is the third stand-alone tale in the Leolithic Age setting (following “Sphinx!” in Ages of Wonder and “Night of the Manticore” in Abyss & Apex). His stories can also be found in such diverse venues as Writers of the Future, Clarkesworld Magazine, and Intergalactic Medicine Show.

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  THE GIRL WHO TASTED THE SEA

  by Sarah L. Edwards

  Pigeons and sea swallows nested at the top of the house, under its eaves and sloping gables. Below, at the meeting of masonry and cliff, lived the gulls and the salt shrifts. Sometimes Abby would climb down to the cypress trees sprung from stone and watch the shrifts as they wheeled and dove into the surf. Then up they soared again to the green-eyed, stump-winged babies bawling from stone nests, with never a glance for the green-eyed daughter of the house, perched above.

  Down below even the clumps of cypress, Abby guessed there were limpets and hanging clams like in the ricepaper paintings, though of course she could not climb down so far even if she were allowed. And below that there were two massive trunks of stone on which stood the whole house, gables and cypress and Abby and all.

  And below that was the sea.

  The sea, Abby thought, must be like if she could strain all the air smelling of salt and seaweed through a cheesecloth and then squeeze the drippings into a bucket with a brim wide as the horizon. Yes, that was the sea. It was only natural that a girl born squalling into the world just a few hundreds of feet above its surface and living her entire brief life in its breezes would want to kiss it, taste it, wash her hair in it until her pinewood-blonde curls were brown as the floating kelp. Only na
tural.

  And so, when the stryke flew wheeling in from the north coast to deliver abstract news of battles and bandits and the sale of thirty-seven bolts of hand-spun Mowerian silk, it was only natural that Abby would sneak from her nursery-turned-playroom-turned-solarium down into the eyrie where the stryke was bedded. She brought crumbles of cheese and three black sardines folded in a napkin. The stryke’s eyes flashed even wider and yellower when it saw her, but it didn’t screech, and when she opened the napkin and held out the first sardine it took it with one hook-nailed hand, tossed it, and snapped it from the air with its hooked beak.

  “Will you take me down to the water?” Abby said.

  The hand, reaching toward the napkin, pulled back.

  “No, it’s all right. You can have the fish anyway.” She held out a second sardine, waiting, until the stryke took it.

  “Please, will you take me down the water? I’ve never been there before.”

  The stryke cocked its head, no different than a gull when she tempted it with a bread crumb. It gave a questioning squawk.

  “Not far, you know. Just down to where the pillars stand in the water. I’ve never seen them, but the painting in the dining hall shows. They’re like legs that could walk away and take us anywhere—though they never do. They can’t, I suppose. Have you seen them?” She reached suddenly and caught the stryke’s hand.

  The stryke considered, nodded.

  “Please, won’t you take me? You can have the cheese and the fish for your journey and I’ve the key to loose your cuffs”—she pointed to the single, clanking chain that stretched from the wall to the stryke’s wrist. “And you can fly out tonight if you like, instead of tomorrow.” She hadn’t meant to promise this; doubtless there were messages to be returned in the stryke’s carrying sack to those mysterious names and places up the coast. But— “Please. Let me touch the water.”

  The stryke paused longer this time. It raised its beak and shook it side to side, and Abby caught the odor of the oilfish three days past that the sailor boy had fed it for its troubles.