by Sean Wallace
Italian spilled from Trinchero and I shook my head, not understanding until he said “pterodactyl”. That was a word I knew, a word he seemed hard-pressed to speak. I nodded and repeated it back to him. He gestured excitedly at the creatures within his aviary.
I watched the pterodactyls circle as Trinchero fed them, wanting to ask him where he had found them, where they had come from, how it was possible, but mostly I could not speak, so enthralled with the scene before me.
The trio of pterodactyls had to come to perch in one of the tallest trees. Occasionally, they leaned in to one another, snapping their beaks or chirruping, but mostly they sat still, watching Trinchero and me. The smallest of the trio often rubbed its beak on a bare protrusion of tree trunk. While I could certainly attempt to ascribe devious intentions within their violet-shaded eyes, I did not, for these creatures were unknown to me.
On this side of the balcony, there was a workstation that supported tables, shelves and a deep sink. Here, Trinchero cleaned his hands, then gently patted me down, and while I remained a collection of aches and bruises, the sleep had done me a world of good. So too the coffee. I thanked him for both things, and he waved his hands, gesturing again to the aviary.
I looked back to the structure, if only to try to calm my heart. I rested my hands on the rail, watching the pterodactyls as they interacted. They were at ease, accustomed to the presence of one another, whereas I was highly aware that I found myself alone with a man whose acquaintance I had only made upon boarding the Rocha a week prior. Alone, in what appeared to be his home. This was an entirely new circumstance for me.
“Signora.”
“Muriel,” I said again, and touched a hand to my chest.
He bowed his head to me, and said “Vittorio,” and it seemed settled, this small bit of understanding between us.
Trinchero gestured for me to follow him inside. Here, there was a sitting room, in the center of which sat that gilded and glass coffin. My steps stuttered at the sight of it, but I came to a dead stop when I realized the coffin was empty. It no longer held its beeswax lady and I could not imagine where she might have gone, where she might have been placed. Surely she had not crawled from the coffin on her own?
My host vanished up a long and winding staircase and I followed after. Some part of me said to be cautious, but the larger part, the part that wanted to see the world long before J. J. encouraged such reckless behavior, said that one could be cautious and curious both. Had Trinchero meant me harm, I felt certain he would have already caused it.
He led me to the uppermost floor of the house, which seemed to be its own room; there were no doors, only a large attic-like space, more panels of glass set into the ceiling at random intervals. Machinery occupied tables and benches alike, some of which I knew, but most of which I didn’t. Mostly, my gaze was drawn to the sheet-draped body on a far table; the sheet was tucked up to the beeswax lady’s chin, as though she were in bed.
Before I could ask about her – questions drawing answers that wouldn’t be readily understood – Trinchero motioned for me to come to the cages that lined one wall. There were dozens of compartments, but only four of them were filled. They held animals that I first thought were more pterodactyls, but proved to be smaller, with longer legs for running. Each cage had a number, each animal inside slightly different from the one that preceded it; the first animal was wholly flesh and bone, while the second was augmented, metal gleaming at its vicious claws. The third bore mechanical joints, and the fourth was fully armored, eyes shining in jewel tones much like those raptors on the coffin.
The fourth animal leaned on the cage door and snuffled as if trying to smell us. I couldn’t help but step closer, to get a better look at the metal which enclosed him. Encompassed him? I couldn’t tell if it was a metal shell that might be opened, or if he was only metal, all the way down. The metal was beautiful, etched with scales and feathers and my finger was upon its nose before I realized what I had done. Trinchero grabbed my hand and drew me back just as the creature snapped its sharp teeth at me.
“Raptor,” Trinchero said, and I understood that word, too. Another kind of dinosaur. Was he making them? Or had he found them?
Perhaps it was both. I wandered the workshop, finding legs and tails and skulls fashioned from metal; these had not been assembled, and maybe they were not intended to be. I looked back at the first raptor, the one of flesh and bone, and wondered how Trinchero had gotten from one form to the last. Had he copied nature’s own design?
I wandered from the mechanical body parts, toward the lady where she lay draped upon the table. I was of a mind to touch her nose too, half wondering if she would also snap at me, when throughout the house there tolled a deep and resounding bell. Trinchero clicked his tongue and vanished down the stairs without a word to me. I looked back to the dead lady.
She was strangely beautiful and I wondered at Trinchero’s ties to her. Sister? Wife? Or something I could not so easily label? I crept closer to her and was bending to take a closer look at the darkening of her skin near her lace collar when an explosion of angry conversation erupted from the lower floor of the house. I jumped back from the lady and went to the top of the stairs, listening. There were but two voices, Trinchero’s and another man. This second man fell to English insults occasionally and it was this that drew me to the stairs.
It was impolite to eavesdrop of course, so I took the stairs down until the men were well within my view, and sat down. Watching in plain sight. If anyone cared to look. Surely that wasn’t eavesdropping. Least not in its traditional form.
I could not understand most of what was said, but the tone carried beyond the language spoken. The gentleman, if he could be called such, stood nearly nose to nose with Trinchero, hands balled into fists, his face colored with rage. He grabbed Trinchero by his jacket lapels and pressed him into the nearest wall. In his hand was a crumpled handkerchief.
“Gentlemen.”
I was on my feet and moving toward them before I could reconsider. It was foolish, as I was easily half the height of each man, but I would not let Trinchero be bullied.
“You have come into his home – show some respect.”
The men looked at me and stepped apart. Trinchero smoothed his jacket flat and the other man stared at me with what I could only call astonishment. He did not expect me.
“Madame, forgive me,” he said in English and made a quick bow to me. He took the time to fold the handkerchief before stuffing it into his jacket pocket.
He looked askance at Trinchero, but then that gaze came back to me. Warm and blue, like the hottest part of a flame; his own mustachio was less well kept than Trinchero’s. Something about his face was familiar to me, but I could not say what or why. I had never seen him in my life. He was dressed well, almost too well to be out in the woods where only the monkeys and Trinchero lived, and this told me we were probably closer to a town that I had believed; his shoes were clean, and so too his trouser legs. He had not tromped through the trees to reach us.
“I was unaware Senhor Trinchero had company. Senhor Alves at your disposal.”
I stood a little straighter. “Mister Alves, I have the impression you would have made the same amount of fuss had you known.”
The displeasure that crossed his face confirmed my suspicion of him. This man was on a mission and he did not care who might know. He was a man who cared about his appearance, but did not care about this appearance, making a fuss in Trinchero’s own house. He turned to Trinchero now and bit out a few words of Italian before taking his leave. He bowed to me once more and was then gone. Through the front door that he did not latch, I could see a long bricked drive and a quartet of horses lashed to a beautiful green carriage. Into this, Alves vanished and was carted away, down a road that twisted through the trees. I looked back at Trinchero.
“Signora,” he said, and before I could protest, quickly added, “Mu-ree-el.”
We stood in silence a long while; I nodded, wishing to tell h
im I understood. He had a life here, into which I had unexpectedly fallen. I gestured to the open doors, breathing in the wind as it poured into the house.
“Buenos Aires?” I wanted to ask more, but did not know the words. My language guide was in my case. Which was now goodness knew where. I possessed nothing.
Trinchero nodded, but did not look entirely pleased. I wondered if it was the idea of seeing me to the city, or what had transpired with Alves, but I could not ask. Trinchero readied his own carriage – also drawn by horses and nothing so curious as larger-sized raptors – and saw me to my hotel, where I had been expected the day before. I made my apologies to the staff and my goodbyes to Trinchero, and went to my room, which looked west, west toward Trinchero’s house in the trees. I could not see it and though I longed to see an upward flood of gem-colored lights from that strange coffin, a familiar beacon, looking did not make it so.
The gracious hotel staff assisted me in the acquisition of new clothing and toiletries, and I was able to access my accounts for that all important greaser of wheels, money. While this work momentarily took my mind off the terror of the airship’s explosion and my subsequent fall from the sky, that feeling was still there; I would wake and think myself falling. Traveling to an island that floated above the city was surely inviting another such fall, but I went anyhow. To show myself that I could, no matter how my legs shook.
Buenos Aires was beautiful, but the island city that hung above it was more so in my eyes. It was borne aloft by colossal balloons filled with gasses I could not name. Naming them and picking the structure apart might have diluted the wonder of the place; yes it was science and technology, but from where I looked, it was magic. The island streamed vapor into the sky, which wreathed it in a constant cloud deck. From these clouds, the spectacular theaters and concert halls rose. They glittered in the daylight, colored glasses and polished metals, and some of the tallest roofs had become home to bird nests. Many people came to watch the birds of Valle del Cielo, to check them from a list or paint their images, but these colorful and talkative birds were often hard to separate from the performers of the island city.
The airship that ferried us toward the floating island was peppered with some of these performers, a cluster of women dressed in feathers and silks. Their headdresses shimmered in greens and pinks, the red of a robin’s breast, the blue of an upturned wing. I tried not to stare, knowing this was only the tip of the iceberg, but couldn’t stop looking. Had I stopped, I might have seen Trinchero on the airship.
As it was I did not see him until I was deep within the city of theaters, well entrenched in the banner- and balloon-strewn cobblestone streets. I found him standing outside the theater I had seen sketched within his journal on the Rocha. I stopped well before he might notice me and scowled. The day had been trying, for no matter how I tried to forget him and his dead lady, it seemed I could not. In the curl of a theater’s awning, I saw the curl of his mustachio. Amid the birds that soared above the city, I remembered his own pterodactyls.
Trinchero’s theater, Teatro Milagro, was both tall and wide, fashioned of a stone that seemed to catch and hold the sunlight, condensing it to something that looked like honey. The theater doors were polished ebony, and its high glass windows shone with a strange rose-colored light. It felt as if the building were filled with this rose color, that if those windows could be opened, it would flow into the streets. The theater roof was made of metal, free of any nests, but the highest peak was much like the aviary metal and mesh in Trinchero’s own home.
Trinchero had moved on by the time I reached the steps leading to the theater’s doors. I stood there, eyeing the banner that had been strung across the street between his theater and the one just opposite. The banner was spotted with paint and pitch that served to obscure most of the writing, but I picked out enough lettering to read what remained of the English: Bear Witness to the Dueling Desdemonas – The Falcon and the Bee.
She was Serafina Falco and she was Beatrice Mosconi, and each was slated to star in her theater’s production of Otello. The Falcon hailed from Teatro de la Luz, while the Bee called Teatro Milagro home. Trinchero’s own theater!
I looked back at the structure and strode to the box office, where I acquired a ticket for that evening’s performance. I was told the Teatro de la Luz’s performance of Otello was for the following evening, and did I wish a ticket for it as well? I did not, but I couldn’t help but feel curious over the entire thing. Even as I settled into my seat that next evening, I wondered. Was it intentional? Was it—
A hand upon my shoulder caused me to look from the stage with its curtain – that same curtain I recalled from Trinchero’s journal, the one he had drawn with such care and detail. Trinchero smiled down at me then nodded to the young boy at his side. This boy wore a tidy suit, with a green silk tie wrapped at his neck. He grinned at me, round spectacles brightening his hazel eyes.
“Senhor Trinchero would like for you to join him backstage,” he explained in English. “If you have an interest.”
I had an interest and slipped from my seat to follow them where they led. Trinchero was dressed impeccably in a black tuxedo, and while I wore my best dress, I still felt I was a curiosity as we moved through the crowds. Were people whispering about me? Surely not, but I could not mistake hearing “Brennan” as I passed one couple. I glanced at them, but did not know who they were.
The boy nodded at me when we stepped into the wings. “Mister Brennan had a hand here,” he explained, and gestured to the gears and cogs and other technology that made up the theater’s innermost workings.
I didn’t need to see the stylized “B” stamped on each to know they were J. J.’s design. They had been made to move things larger than backdrops and curtains, and Trinchero used them masterfully, having rigged castle walls and ships to no doubt slide perfectly into position as his opera called for it. It made my heart soar, if I can use such a phrase, to see J. J.’s inventions used to such an extent. Trinchero had no need for small paper props when he could move heavier and more realistic likenesses.
I watched from the wings with the boy – Trinchero fluttered about like one of his pterodactyls as the production required. The boy was Nestor, who had worked in the island city his entire life. Being that he was but ten, I asked if he had been born there, to which he nodded. His mother was one of the city’s contraltos and while he appreciated that theater and its shows, he wanted more. A chance encounter with Trinchereo and his diva, his milagro bee as they called her, in the streets had convinced Nestor that this was the place to work, to be seen, to excel.
“Who is the milagro bee, then?” I asked.
Nestor gestured to the stage as Desdemona made her entry. “See there.”
This lady should not have been known to me, but she was. I was so alarmed at the sight of her that I took a step back. Nestor grasped my hand before I could stumble over the coiled ropes and leads upon the floor, but I was only vaguely aware of his clammy hand upon my arm. The lady upon the stage took all my attention.
She looked to have been carved from beeswax, exactly the way she had appeared within her glass and gold coffin. But here, she moved as any woman would, talking and singing – and singing with a voice that was so heavenly, I wondered that the sky did not open and rain angels upon the stage. Her hair was as ebon and gleaming as the theater doors, coiled at the nape of her neck. And there, where once her lace collar had hidden it, churned a series of mechanics within the darkening umber of her skin. These gears and cogs allowed her movement, fluid and precise. She stepped across the stage and sang as if she had lungs that filled with air, and not bellows that were operated by the motion of her legs.
Make-up colored her face and I had trouble telling if she were flesh at all. Was she animated like some golem, a spell writ across her skin? Was there a key that would notch into her back so one could wind her up? It was no wonder Trinchero could not leave her in the forest after the Rocha’s crash. I stared at her, captivated and curio
us both, and saw Trinchero had paused to do the same. His hand rested over his mouth, as if he were holding his breath.
It was possible she had been damaged in the crash, after all, but her voice was flawless and the audience seemed to hold its breath alongside Trinchero as she sang. It was only perfection and my legs trembled. Nestor squeezed my hand.
“I am all right,” I whispered. “She is quite the miracle, though.”
“Beatrice Mosconi,” Nestor whispered in return.
I had never seen the opera before, but J. J. and I had read Othello at one point or another, and its story remained familiar. I did not, however, remember there being an attack by wild birds. It was the moment Otello was to strike Desdemona – he was to call her a demon, and she would fall to the ground, but before he could, there arose such a sound that everyone on stage was struck silent. We all looked upward, and perhaps some feared that the stage was to collapse, for it sounded like failing metal, but no – no.
Pterodactyls streamed from the ceiling. Their leathery wings beat furiously in the air; the theater’s lights flickered under the ceaseless fury of those wings. Claws snatched at the actors, ripping hats and wigs free, and sharp beaked mouths lunged for throats. It was a deadly whirlwind and for a long moment, I think the audience believed it to be fiction – they saw these creatures as constructs, not the living, breathing animals I saw them to be. They were much like the trio Trinchero kept at his home, though these were mottled blue, with furious orange eyes.
At my side, Nestor cried out and fled, and those on stage followed his lead; they abandoned their marks, to seek shelter in the theater’s wings. It was then the audience erupted in panic and fear, giving up their seats to flood out of the theater.
The stream of pterodactyls seemed endless. It was as though a door in the ceiling had been opened, and a bottomless bowl of the creatures tipped into the theater as one might spill snow in a winter’s production. I stumbled backward and wrapped myself in the edge of the curtain, unable to look away. Two of the creatures had settled upon the scaffolding and I thought at first they only rested, but no – no, they were waiting. They were looking.