The round of polite applause gave way to a low murmur of confusion. A well-liquored voice cut through the crowd, asking why the birds weren’t to be kept live.
Her father started to explain why it wasn’t prudent to keep live birds inside, and that they must be drained of their blood to preserve them. A great many noses turned up at this fact. A fluttering of fans was followed by a chorus of similarly impolite voices calling for something with live animals, like a zoological enclosure or even a circus fair.
Mrs. Peabody, one of the most influential guests, with strong family ties to the east and all manner of wealth and prestige, joined in by demanding that the museum produce the kind of entertainments she was used to. She wanted stories of naturalists and explorers going away to far-off lands and coming back with a wealth of new discoveries and tales to tell. In her unconscionably loud voice she said that all the birds in the museum were of the same boring sort that might be seen by anyone.
The murmur of agreement was cut by a yelped insult, from the far back: ‘And you live with a witch.’ This set off a rumpus. Men cried ‘blood-drinker’ and ladies shrieked or feigned to faint. Birds on sticks started dropping, as though shot down mid-flight.
Mr. Gray could not manage to quiet the uproar with his mild protestations. Mr. Buell wore an intolerably smug smile in the back row. Elswyth watched her father wave his arms in a weak farewell, as though his speech had gone well and the night was concluded. Her stomach sank. She felt rather like drinking the phial herself. Her father wandered off into the crowd.
She finally found him recumbent on the leather sofa in the taxidermy room. When she first entered, she thought he was asleep. He lay as motionless as the great bison frozen in glass behind him. Approaching, she saw that his eyes were open, and he was staring at the ceiling. He looked distraught.
She sat on the floor next to the sofa and arranged her skirt about her. She waved off the small cloud of dust that rose from the unclean floor. Her father did not move.
Presently, she spoke. ‘I am sorry about the speech.’
He lifted his head. ‘I am not at my best either, my dear.’
‘Louisa wants to marry Mr. Buell.’
‘She is but a girl. She does not know what it is she wants. Everything has gone wrong. I’ve failed you both terribly.’
‘Father…’
‘I’ve failed my museum as well. There won’t be donors enough now. And what visitors will come? Chicago was supposed to be a boomtown. Even if I manage to open it, there will be no one to come. We might’ve stayed back east. You girls might’ve been introduced properly. To real society, not this mob.’
‘I’m now promised to Mr. Buell or the Auspices. I don’t know which. I miss Mr. Thomas.’
‘On the other hand, I never could have found my way there. In the east if you don’t have a family name or the money already, it is impossible to get anywhere. I’m sorry you girls have Gray blood. It has given you every disadvantage. Chicago was the only place for us, and now it seems it hasn’t been enough.’
‘I know he has written me letters, though they have been kept from me. He was not handsome or dashing, but he was kind and doted on me.’ Elswyth stood and walked over to the worktable, where her father had begun to reassemble the broken moth tray. She pulled a sorrowful specimen up by its pin and held its white gauzy wings to the light.
‘This is what I mean about Chicago. There is no one worthy of marriage to you girls.’ Mr. Gray sighed. ‘Had I known Mr. Buell was a snake waiting in the mud…’
‘I needed something to hope for. I’ve sent a telegram to Mr. Thomas in Santa Fe. He should be there now. I told him to return as quickly as all haste would allow. Before the twenty-fourth, so that I may marry him instead of Mr. Buell.’
‘Oh Elswyth.’ Her father sat up. ‘What have you done?’
‘It’s a shot in the dark. When Mr. Thomas comes back, I could marry him instead, and we shall raise Louisa’s child as our own. If we are hidden away, as planned, it could be that Mr. Thomas gave me the child before he departed on his journey. Though there is some shame in this, our marriage upon his return would rectify it. And Louisa should not be made so upset. Her condition is…’
‘Did you implore Mr. Thomas to abandon his errand?’
‘Was it not just an excuse to be rid of him?’
‘Has your aunt interfered?’ Her father was suddenly furious. ‘It was all arranged, you and the baby and Buell. Anne should be well satisfied if they are cousins, as Louisa said.’
‘This still leaves Louisa her chance at marriage.’
‘Elswyth, you don’t understand what you have asked. Mr. Thomas is your pet. He will do whatever you say, and if you…’
‘Father, I didn’t tell him to abandon any errand. I simply gave him a date by which he might return. If I must take a husband, let it be anyone but Mr. Buell. There is a child to be fathered. Think of your progeny. I know I asked for his proposal, but…’
‘We must send Mr. Thomas another telegram immediately. We must get word to McMarrow to keep him on course. It is vital that he complete the errand.’
‘If he is my pet, as you say, then he has already departed from Santa Fe in haste. There are no telegraph stations west or south of that place—I asked at the telegraph office yesterday. What vital thing does this letter contain, that he can’t come home now?’
‘The letter isn’t all there is to it. He himself simply must reach Irion. Mr. Thomas’s life depends on it. As does Irion’s. All our lives depend on it.’
‘Whatever can you mean, Father? Who is Irion?’
‘There’s a war. Elswyth…I can’t…I can’t speak of it. I fear Mr. Thomas will not return. Your mother’s Sisters have doomed everything,’ Mr. Gray rose from the sofa and clasped his hands together, his brow furrowed. ‘Fate is now in General Irion’s hands. Mr. Thomas must make it to Texas.’
‘Maybe he has already accomplished that. You chose him for the task with the confidence that he could complete it, I might assume?’ Her father remained quiet. He wore a hopeless look, his eyes glazed over again, lost in some distant world.
Elswyth could no longer stand it. She grabbed her father’s hand and fell to her knees. ‘Please, Father, please. If you love me, don’t let this happen. You must restore Mr. Thomas. Please let him return.’ She implored him, choking back sobs. He lifted her up and embraced her, smoothing back her hair in a way he had not done since she was a child.
‘There, there, my dear. Don’t fret. This is not your fault.’ He grasped her shoulders firmly and bent to catch her downturned eyes. His face was lined with sympathy. ‘It was beyond my control, sending him away. I trusted McMarrow to give him the best chance.’
Elswyth stood.
‘Even if he makes it to Texas, there is no guarantee the plan will work.’ Her father’s tone turned despairing. ‘Maybe men, your plan should. Whether he turns back or not, I fear the worst. I love you girls above all else. I would do anything required of me, but I no longer know what to hope for. If your lost suitor can travel with the greatest haste, perhaps he can make this wish of yours come true. May the fates save us all.’
Elswyth then embraced him tightly for a long while, squeezing her eyes shut. The room had all but gone dark, and her father watched the last fading light of the Chicago sky disappear from the reflection in the great buffalo’s glass eyes.
Eliza, I am increasingly desperate in my search for Zeke’s letter. I keep coming back to one record. The return of the letter is simply noted and stamped: an uncarbon’d letter, belonging to Z. Thomas, submitted. Maybe it refers to a carbon of the letter after all? Maybe someone opened the envelope?
The rabbit hole that single piece of paper has led me down is incredible. With increasing complexity and skill, someone has covered up any trace of the letter, using labyrinthine references, cross-notes, and misfilings. My desk is a pile of records and files, which just keep multiplying, cyclically, without ever adding up to anything at all.
It
is as if someone devised this paper puzzle with the express purpose of showing me, in the most tedious way possible, why my system of knowledge classification and record-keeping is weak and anathema to those who try to find simple facts. The threading system, the carbon repeaters, the cross-files have all failed me in my hour of need.
If I embrace that paranoia, it is clear where this thread is leading. My hand is being held as I am paraded past more records of the Auspices and their strange doings. It seems they don’t just recruit but provide shelter for Gray girls and pregnant girls in trouble. They offer an option outside of the lifephase system. They must have solicited you. But I urge you not to follow them. At least until we know what they’re after.
I was also surprised to learn that there is an Auspicium located in Texas. Apparently the fount-water requires close monitoring and constant vigilance. The Auspices must be nearby, but I have no idea where in the city-state they live.
If I could sort it out, I could turn this bundle of letters over to you, and perhaps see you just one time, the Law be damned. It is my final wish that we speak, before I am gone forever.
Zadock Thomas also seems on the verge of disappearing. It appears that wandering in the desert made him delirious, and he tried to write in that state. One phrase that’s easy enough to pick out is “salt sea” and it didn’t take many drawer pulls to find him. He can only be at White Sands, a large gypsum deposit devoid of plant and animal life in southern New Mexico, if this letter can be trusted. White Sands is 240 square miles of sparkling colorless dunes, the remains of a great salt lake and, from the old descriptions, an amazing sight to behold. If he is near there, he’s close to El Paso, which means he wandered south from Rodriguez’s home, not back north. He is completely turned around.
He also could be hallucinating. Hallucination is caused by exhaustion, psychotropic substances, or a proper psychotic break. Whatever the cause, hallucinations are most common in the evening hours, when the light is low and can play tricks. A desert mirage.
Or it’s dehydration. Water was in very short supply, and Zadock may not have been skilled at discovering appropriate sources of clean drinking water. This isn’t the only letter where Zadock’s mental state must be called seriously into question. It is a distinct possibility that this episode caused permanent psychological damage, if it weren’t already present.
Speaking of madness, I asked a Queer friend in Chicago-Land about this Spree character, supposedly outside in the rot. They support him, and he was there at Atlantas. The Queers also warn me he has gone a little mad, living in the rot too long.
Maybe Zadock had a similar condition. Even though his handwriting shows his distress, I’m still inclined to comment on its beauty. This typowriter seems clunky and foreign when compared to the smooth undulating flow of ink on paper.
It seemed no one had been in her rooms. Elswyth raced back down the stairs. Louisa had been confined to her bedroom, and now she was missing. She thought of the scolding she would give her sister.
She had just read to the end of The City-State, save for the last four pages. With the conclusion, she could see a way through. She was desperate to tell Louisa what she had read. There might be an alternative to all the lies about bloodlines and a life in the Auspicium. Elswyth worried that place would transform the spirit of a girl beyond all recognition.
She looked in Aunt Anne’s cottage. It was empty save for the putrid smell of rotting herbs. She searched through alt the rooms of the house, one by one, and found them all empty. She climbed the long stairs to the ballroom–turned–fencing salle. Mr. Buell, who could reliably be found in some dark corner of the estate, was eerily absent. She lifted her skirts and ventured into the half-constructed rooms, an addition to the house long forestalled, the French roof being the only part near completion.
It wasn’t until she stepped out into the front garden that panic overtook her. Aunt Anne’s absence could be reasoned out. Mr. Buell and Louisa missing in the same stroke was alarming news.
Why hadn’t she used the poison? She ran out into the streets, looking for any sign of Louisa. Had she lost her sister, and the baby, in an afternoon? She patted her pockets for the phial and found it gone. Everything suddenly seemed lost.
The streets bustled about her, filled with workers out for the midday meal. Many were milling about in the park across the boulevard. There was shouting and the ring of hammers on nails. The streets were flooded with vendors and ladies with tiny tip-tilted parasols riding in open barouches, and Elswyth felt it all start to spin about wildly. She darted across the plank street like a spooked antelope. She couldn’t catch her bearings or her balance…
Eliza, it seems all my investigations are disintegrating. The account contained in The Sisters Gray ends abruptly here. The last two sets of printed pages are missing from the book, yet the records indicate that it entered the Vault in perfect condition. The damage is surprising because the book is held together with a strong morocco binding. The missing pages bear the signs of having been forcibly removed.
This is disheartening. It means the question of the Thomas lineage will go unanswered by this book. If Elswyth indeed raised Louisa’s child, and never had one of her own with Zadock Thomas, the bloodline is broken. If Zeke is not truly the Khrysalis, then what fate awaits you both?
There is only one place left to look. The letter.
I’m tearing through carbons now, looking for it. The letter could be nothing, of course, just a normal correspondence from Joseph Gray. A solicitation for funds or request for specimens. Perhaps even an overblown opinion about the war for Texas. But my instincts tell me otherwise. If the novel is built on some small foundation of truth, then Gray considered this single letter very important. It must have been more than just a convenient way to dispose of Zadock’s interest in his daughter.
Gray died from typhoid fever years later, in 1860, when the country was on the brink of civil war. His wife’s six sisters buried him in Chicago, in the graveyard of their family order. The Gray name lived on. A street was named after him, as well as the city’s butterfly sanctuary: an impressive greenhouse, and the last remaining vestige of the Museum of Flying.
Zadock left no will, but almost every one of his ancestors did, right through to Senator Zacharyh Thomas. All these wills mention a bundle of letters passed to the next generation. A Khrysalis tradition. That a letter could have survived this long would be a small miracle. Especially since the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 stood in its way. Some thirty-eight years after the city’s incorporation, nearly everything in it was destroyed. Journals, letters, and personal documents were all incinerated. Many records that would be useful are lost to time. The fear of this very thing led to the fire ban in our modern city-states.
Zeke’s letter, however, must have survived. The loop of paperwork has perhaps pointed to it after all. There are records on Daxon, buried deep in the Vault. Many have been corrected, blacked out, but I can see the fingerprints now. I can find no evidence that the cannon was stolen. The funding records for it have been destroyed. Its existence portends danger to me. I can’t help but to think of those Queers who died in Atlantas. Perhaps the Deserters have the right idea.
The thread I am following also connects Daxon to the Auspices. Murder is a convenient way to cast blame on the Auspices, who are trying to recruit troubled girls.
The altered records point to something insidious. Daxon resents the Auspices for taking girls out of the lifephase system. He would prefer to punish them. He dislikes the Auspices’ control over the ways and lifeblood of the city-state, and seeks to destroy the Auspicium. But to get rid of them, he’d have to dismantle the Senate as well. Or weaken it enough to bend it to his will. The cannon is his strong right hand.
His interest in Zeke makes much more sense now. To destroy him is to weaken the Senate. You both must steer clear of Daxon at any cost. He wants the letter to delegitimize Zeke. Or frame him as a murderer.
I’ve scoured the entire Vault on this wild-
goose chase. The letter can only be in one place: Daxon’s office. The door is locked with his blood ID. I must get inside.
∧∧ Zeke found himself waiting once again. He was anxious about Bartle and his mission to find the letter. He was worried about Eliza and the fact that she couldn’t see her father. She had gone to find Leeya, to help her. He was supposed to help Raisin and figure out what they both might do. Instead, they found distraction in the company of laudanum. ∧∧ ∧∧ ∧∧ ∧∧ It was heartening to be with his friend, even if all Raisin could talk about was government conspiracy. ∧∧ ∧∧ He ranted for hours about life outside the walls. He said that because the Collapse ruined the earth for living things, the clock had to be turned back. Hunting and gathering had to be rediscovered. Cities had to be rebuilt in harmony with the natural world. Raisin believed that folks in the rot were doing this now, and that the city-state’s rare fruit came from their orchards. If only the barriers didn’t exist, the folks outside would be ready to merge societies. ∧∧ He spoke in reverential terms about “Spree,” a leader of Deserters, who had formed the largest safe camp in the rot. The Queers from Atlantas had joined him, and they were arming themselves. Zeke would get heavily invested in Raisin’s stories, and start to worry about events outside the walls, until Raisin would continue with some ridiculous detail about time travel or giant animals and Zeke would remember that it was all a fantasy. ∧∧ ∧∧ Though it was cracked, Zeke enjoined listening. Some moments reminded him of Port-Land, when it seemed to take forever to make it to the next lifephase, and all they did was daydream. It gave him hope. Raisin had a good energy. Until he saw Leeya. ∧∧ ∧∧ ∧∧ She finally invited Raisin over. Apparently, he told her there was life outside the barrier, that they could flee the city-state. Leeya didn’t believe the Deserter propaganda. And she certainly didn’t think fleeing was a good plan for Raising a child. She threw him out. ∧∧ ∧∧ ∧∧ ∧∧ Raisin took it hard. Then the despair came on them both. They finished many drams of laudanum. They talked about how they would end up alone or in jail. Zeke was waiting to hear from Bartle. His few sober moments were filled with dread about the impending deadline. ∧∧ ∧∧ ∧∧ ∧∧ ∧∧ ∧∧ ∧∧ At night they went to the square. Raisin looked at pretty girls but only talked about Leeya. When ladies waved their fans in his direction, he mocked them. Zeke laughed at his rude hand signals. The letter and the deadline retreated from his thoughts. ∧∧ ∧∧ ∧∧ On the way home they laughed even more, stumbling through the freshly washed streets. Raisin told Zeke his theory about how bad Lawmen are stationed out in the rot, part of some army as the first line of defense for the city-states. He said they were harassed and taunted by the Queers who had escaped and wore little more than feathers. The Lawmen were made to wrestle and ride around on dogs in old-timey uniforms. ∧∧ ∧∧ ∧∧ Zeke could hardly catch his breath, he was laughing so hard. He was stopped short by someone else standing on the wooden plankways. Zeke squinted into the dark.
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