No Present Like Time

by Steph Swainston

  Evening was now invisible through storm clouds clustered over the Castle. The rally starts in three hours; at full speed I might be able to make it in time. Torrential rain had seeped in through a broken shutter and my satchel was lying in a shallow pool. I couldn’t stand the thought of putting my hand in cold water, so I kicked it to a less saturated part of the floor.

  I looked for any sign of Tern, but she had spent the day away. Catching myself shaking, I suddenly flooded with anger. Nothing rules me; what the fuck have I become? My syringe lay on the floor under the bed and just the sight of it overwhelmed me with lust and despair. I picked it up and, holding it like a dagger, I smashed it down onto the slate top of our dressing table until fury deserted me in a wave and I was left looking rather cynically at the bent object. You are really going to regret doing that in a few days, Shira.

  Can’t waste the rest, anyhow, I vindicated. I stalked down to the lower room, where I diluted my last vial of cat and decanted the preparation into a little hip flask so I could take sips while traveling. A drift of letters had piled up against my door and when I opened it they fell into the room. I ignored them and pinned up a withered note that read, “I’m not in but you needed the exercise.” I spread my wings, wriggled through a slit window and jumped off bound for Eske.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  My wings skirred in the wet air. I flew fast, but the faint trace of Tern’s perfume on my clothes kept distracting me. I pulled the neck of my T-shirt over my nose and sniffed her rich and peppery scent. She smelled the same as she did the first time I saw her. I met Tern when, on a Messenger’s errand, Lightning gave me a missive to deliver to his neighbor, the Governor of Wrought. The letter was a blank piece of paper and Lightning is an accomplished matchmaker, but I didn’t discover that till decades later. I think that Lightning, being a connoisseur of exquisite things, appreciated Tern’s beauty and hoped that I would preserve it forever in the Circle. I sought an audience with Tern in her stateroom. She was untouchable, as self-contained as a cushion cat, small and dark-haired, infinitely more refined than a Rhydanne. Her white dress clung to her body all the way down to the floor. I adored her voice the instant she spoke; it was like being dipped in warm caramel. I wanted to offer her books to read aloud.

  In the following year, 1892, Tern decided to marry. She put out word that she would welcome challengers for her hand and organized a series of formal balls and dinners for her suitors, who arrived in droves and began to decant gold into the vaults of Wrought. The competition was much tougher than I had imagined; they all had titles and most of them had manors. I had nothing to offer her except my kiss, which bestowed immortality, but I thought she could not possibly want someone like me.

  I had lost my virginity with three girls together in Wellbelove’s petite maison-a whorehouse in Hacilith that I had rented one night for my own use, and I was a drug dealer so I could afford it. I knew never to pick a skinny whore: Rosie Brosia, Titmouse Slow and a girl called Anything Once threw themselves on me and taught me well and good.

  When I first visited Awia I was just as wild; I swept through the country like a swarm. In Peregrine and Tambrine I partied till four of the morning. I frequented the theater each night in Micawater and strayed from pavement cafés to bars, meeting artists and dollymops in the narrow streets of that pristine town. In Rachiswater I took advantage of the local girls and long walks by the lakeside. In Sheldrake I stayed, finding the sea air analeptic, and at Sarcelle’s palace they set fifteen tables of feast for us each night.

  From there I rode the Black Coach to Tanager, and dropped meringue and absinthe on the patched bedspreads of the Corogon School Whorehouse. Enclosed by bowers and founded by schoolgirls, its roof garden was rampant if the weather was fine. It slouched across the adjoining roofs of a whole street, warmed by the hot, stale shops below. I fucked the girls and drank their homebrew while cries drifted out from the inmates in the lunatic asylum; the girls knew them all by name.

  I never believed that love existed. I wanted to smash it all up into shards and cut myself with the sharpest. But Shira Dellin changed me. Then came Tern, who transformed me a little more. I loved her, the color of her skin, shapely legs and plumage; I wanted to fill my senses with her.

  Tern’s unattainable demeanor was an aphrodisiac and a barrier. I didn’t want to join her noble class but I dreaded that her chocolate voice would laugh and reject me. Her suitors sensed my insecurity and uttered barbed comments to convince me; she wouldn’t want to marry a freak. When I met Shira Dellin I had been surprised to discover that I found Rhydanne girls captivating, but she had turned me down spectacularly. I flew to see Lightning, who instantly understood the cause of my haggard, insomniac appearance. I desperately begged him for advice. After all, he was the expert and I was so bewildered I was prepared to follow any instruction. He suggested, “Lady Wrought would love to receive gifts.”

  I gave her a live kestrel that I caught in the air, its wings bound to its body with embroidery thread. “Comet,” she said, “what am I going to do with this?”

  Next day I stole in, offering her edelweiss from a mountain that no one can climb. “Get out!” she said. “I’ll only see you at dinner with the rest of the suitors!” I backed off, stepped up to the velvet window seat and, horrendously, found that my boots were still filthy from the stables. She pointed sternly at the casement through which she had released the kestrel. “Your turn to fly away!”

  In despair and fatigue, I started to use scolopendium. One night, because I was unaccustomed to it, I overdosed and discovered the Shift. I slowly had a palace built there, Sliverkey, in order to give me confidence to court Tern, but in my homeland I owned nothing, no lineage, barely a pot to piss in.

  “No, no!” Lightning admonished, amused. “She’s not a hungry Rhydanne. It’s important to give her beautiful presents, ones that will last, to remind her of you when you’re absent. You must make her feel wanted and special-I suppose you could always offer her stories. Ladies love tales and you seem to have an inexhaustible supply.”

  I flew from the Castle to see Tern when my duties were done. I perched by the bedroom window and told her stories. She was very eager to know about the Castle; she urged me to tell the things I took for granted-what’s behind the Throne Room screen? What does the Emperor look like? How does one talk with him? Few of my exploits genuinely held Tern’s wandering attention, but she liked me to describe a ruined ancient Awian citadel far north in the Paperlands.

  The unreachable château had interested me since the first time I saw it, from the sickle summit of Bhachnadich. The Paperlands surrounded northern Darkling like an ocean, an unbroken surface of gray Insect constructions that lapped into points and fell away into shallow valleys. In perfect conditions, a ruin was seen on the horizon, rising through the paper crust. It appeared to be a massive square edifice topped by a stone dome. Sunlight flickered on its peeling leaves of gilt as they fluttered in the wind.

  Tern’s interest spurred me to the idea that if I dared travel to the ruins I might touch down on the dome and return alive. I trialed a distance flight without landing once, I then climbed Bhachnadich and launched myself from its thousand-meter rock face. I picked up the katabatic Ressond gale and sped over the Insects’ territory.

  A long lion-gold winter light lay across the Paperlands. Far below among the rigid cells I saw Insects scurrying, going about their instinctive lives. If I crashed, thousands would dart out of their tunnels and tear me apart. If I don’t crash, Tern will love this story.

  I glided to rest and then flew on. After hours of alternately gliding and flapping I became exhausted. Burning and stiffening in my wings and back distracted me from Tern and punished me for being so stupid as to fall in love. When it became too much to bear I took tiny sips of the wonderful panacea painkiller I had bought; the agony melted away.

  As evening advanced the Ressond wind declined in strength. I shed all unnecessary weight in midair; unlaced and dropped my boots and bits of
clothing until I was just wearing a shirt and shorts. After sunset I flew by a hunter’s moon and as I drew closer to the derelict building I realized how truly gigantic it was. The Paperlands broke around it. Ridges of paper adhered to it like buttresses and thinner web-strands reached up and anchored to the base of the dome.

  The tops of adjoining walls were still visible, kept upright by Insect cells, but the roofs had fallen away. Insects had eaten the timber rafters and the entire structure was unstable.

  The broken dome loomed beneath me, rounded and silvered with moonlight. I landed on its cold stone apex and looked back toward the jagged Darkling peaks, while I ate some honey sandwiches and glugged the last drop of water, then threw my pack away. I was utterly exhausted and my wings ached so much I couldn’t close them. The landscape was dead; no birdsong, the silence pressed me like deep water. For hundreds of kilometers, nothing was alive but Insects. I was the alien here.

  I dozed until I felt some energy returning, but all the time I listened for Insects. I lay on the dome and looked through the lightless hole. I couldn’t hear any beneath me so I dropped through, landing awkwardly on a slope of rubble and roof blocks that had collapsed onto a travertine-tiled floor. I only had seconds before the Insects smelled me-some new food in the Paperlands they had chewed bare-and they would amass around the building, race up the echoing steps.

  Moonlight lit the angular corners of fallen masonry blue-gray. I could see just a small part of the circular room but it was empty. Insect mandibles had scoured the fabric off the walls leaving grooves like chisel marks.

  Perhaps it was a municipal building rather than a royal residence after all. I curled my toes around a carved cornice block. I dared not leave the circle of moonlight directly under the hole; the room was in shadow. As my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I saw a dull shine among the farthest blocks. I picked my way over them and reached down. It was a bronze castor from a table leg, and three more were scattered nearby. Presumably they were left by the Insects when they ate a wooden table. Anything inorganic left on the table would still be buried. I hefted a couple of the smaller bricks aside-and uncovered the lair of a spider as big as my hand.

  I fled to the top of the cone of debris, glanced back. The spider did not move. Its ovoid abdomen glittered darkly. I approached with great caution and prodded it; it skidded over the stone dust with a tinkling sound. I lifted it carefully. It was a brooch made from two flawless emeralds fixed in peculiar curlicues of silver wire, a reticulate casing ingeniously twisted into eight jointed legs. I pinned the spider to my shirt and was about to dig around between the blocks in the hope of uncovering more jewels when there was a clattering noise outside.

  My pulse soared so fast blood rushed in my ears. Feelers waved in the doorway and an Insect charged into the room. I scrabbled up the rubble. I jumped, grabbed the edge of the roof and pulled myself onto the dome. Claws thrust out of the hole and snatched at the air. The open ground around the building bristled and seethed with Insects. I watched them erupt from the tunnels, like red-brown droplets racing toward a simmering sea.

  The ache of the return flight and the anxiety of proposing to Tern are all too easy to remember now I am speeding toward Gio’s meeting in Eske. I recall that it took me a fortnight to recover my strength, muster my courage and present myself decorously at Wrought manor. I dropped the filigree spider, the priceless gem of old Awia, into Tern’s comely hand and her sloe eyes lit with admiration.

  I said softly, “A talented jeweler must have crafted it before the Insects invaded. It held some wonderful meaning for a lady in antiquity, maybe one of your ancestors.” I looked down. “I want you to wear the spider when you kiss the Emperor’s hand.”

  “You mad bastard,” Tern pronounced. “You could have got killed.”

  “The aim is to give you eternal life.”

  She examined the emerald spider that sparkled in the light from twenty candelabra. “You mad, crafty bastard.”

  I had turned away, wondering if this was a compliment or slight. She poked a finger under my chin and lifted it. She kissed me; we kissed for hours.

  Tern dismissed her suitors from the mezzanine where they queued with their plumed hats in their hands. A gust of wind through the tall sash windows swirled out white gossamer curtains and the dust covers on the furniture in her nearly empty bedroom. Outside, snow clouds passed over a crescent moon. Wrought’s twisted river roared in spate through sparse black woodland. Beyond the doorway three cats postured in the long hall where the shadows of spindly trees moved on the polished floorboards.

  She undressed me and dropped my clothes to the floor one by one. Her small hands fumbled the front of my trousers, pushed them down and unhooked my pants from my hard cock. Her fingers traced the grooves on my hips that led down to it; she took a good look. She touched the tip; it swelled under her fingers. I moaned and she said, “Hush. You chanced your life to impress me, Eszai. Don’t you want me?”

  She walked to the four-poster bed and sat on the counterpane. The spider brooch squatted on the pillow. I approached her slowly; she was five years older than my physical age and confident in her extreme beauty. I did not know how to have loving sex; I had only ever fucked whores and the ambitious. I had a horrible feeling that I was being tested but all I could do was surrender and follow Tern’s lead. She stroked my wing and encouraged me to slip under the covers.

  She undressed elegantly, leaving her stiffened silk bodice, with white suspender straps to her stocking tops. The bodice covered her breasts to her belly; her panties had somehow gone with the dress. She lay on her side as Awian ladies do, but unlike the others I’d slept with, she did not avert her gaze. She was uninhibited, too proud to follow fashionable repression. I lay behind her on my left, my body fitted close to her. The smooth hollow between her shoulder blades was snug against my chest, my scarred shoulder high above her. Her warm wings were tight between us, tucked up in the small of her back. Her satin feathers rustled and rubbed, driving me mad with lust. She trapped my hard cock between her thighs. I moved my hips, pulling it over her silk stockings. I was not sure what to do. She made no move to help me so I pressed and only felt soft flesh. She leaned her whole body backward and opened her legs slightly. I pushed upward carefully and felt flesh part. She enveloped the tip of my cock.

  She opened her eyes and looked back over her shoulder. “Oh, please…”

  “My lady.” I propped myself on my left elbow and made quick flicks but not very deep. I couldn’t penetrate far, the angle was wrong. Just the head of my cock rubbed slickly in and out of her. I felt her cunt yield and stretch, hot and wet.

  “Keep going,” she ordered quietly. “Harder. Fuck me harder.” She began to whisper filth. I was shocked to hear her murmur, calling up wisps and bodies in twos and threesomes that populated the dark room with ethereal fucking. She was not delicate; she kept straining to see my chest. She raised a knee, backed into me trying to impale herself deeper. Her thighs were becoming very wet. I wiped a hand over her outline, pausing in the softer reprieve between ribs and hips. I wriggled my left arm under her waist to angle her higher, all the while hoping that my best performance was good enough.

  “You’ll do,” she said with wonder. “You’ll do…you’ll do, you’ll do, you’ll do. Don’t scratch.”

  She firmly pushed my hand between her bodice lacings and flattened it against a small breast, encouraging me to rub it in circles. No other girl I’ve slept with has ever done that. Her brown nipple was hard against my palm. Her locks coiled on the pillow. A braid hung down from my hair and brushed her neck.

  I pumped and struggled. I changed my stroke, long and slow. I could see my cock going in and out of her. Amazed, I thought: It’s actually happening. This is really happening to me. Her small rounded buttocks pushed me back every time she rolled against me. I bent my arm that was underneath her and easily lifted her body up. I rubbed my stomach on her black glossy wings and felt the tips of her flight feathers bristle into my
crotch.

  I brushed my hand down to her front and wiry pubic hairs. I found her left hand already working away there; her fingertips traced wet circles. She took shallow breaths through parted lips. She pushed my hand away. Low, under the skin of her back, her wing joints moved as if she wanted to flex them.

  “Open them around me.”

  She spread, either side of my waist. Her black wings shuddered with every thrust I gave her, and brushed my skin. I almost came helplessly into her. I paused, held myself still.

  “Look at me,” she said.

  I was right on the edge. Another thrust and I’d come. I paused to gain control; Tern moaned her displeasure. She shook her body on my cock.

  “I can’t,” I gasped. “I have to wait.”

  She looked into my eyes and came. Her body thrashed and whiplashed. Her uppermost wing fluttered. She breathed deeply and cried out, “Now harder!” She almost slid off me but I gripped her hips and laid into her, thrusting as hard as I could. I leaned over, twisting her top half down, breasts to the sheet, my chest pushing above her back. My hips slapped against her bottom. I forgot her status. I pumped as hard and selfishly as with a whore. I felt the flutter in my groin. Her cunt pulsed, squeezed like a fist and drew my come out of me in quick hot spurts. I thrust slower and stopped, panting.

  I couldn’t tell if she was giggling or crying. She pulled my arms around to hug her. Relief filled me; I had done well. “Stay here tonight, Jant ‘long-nails,’” she said warmly. “My legs are tingling.”

  We cuddled close and listened to the river. I wondered how many other men she had slept with before me and I hated them. The stiff sheets crackled under the white brocade coverlet; a draft stirred lace hangings on the heavy four-poster bed. After a while Tern murmured, “Mmm…I want chocolate…” Then she fell asleep.