by IGMS
She shivered and I took her inside, into the light-filled studio. I made her tea myself, though all I had was a dark oolong from the coast. Lise said oolong was not the kind of tea a woman needs after a long cry, but she made do.
"There is a simple explanation," I said while my mind scrambled for words to calm her. "Your father can no longer walk. You are afraid for him. You tied this fear to the gems we have on hand in the workshop, nothing more. See?" I held out the amethyst.
She nodded, but would not touch the stone. After a moment, she added, "I am fine now, sir. I see there is nothing to fear."
Before she could calm herself fully and get to work, Chambers knocked on the door. Lise spilled her tea. I reached for a rag to wipe it up and found myself using the linen wrapping that had cradled the topaz. The gem was no longer in my pocket. Where could I have dropped it? I checked the stove, the sink, even the kettle. All the while, I knew Chambers was waiting beyond the door
"Whatever is the matter?" he blustered when I finally let him in.
When I explained, he pointed at my workbench, where the topaz sat. "It is a lovely stone. How much are you asking for it?"
"I had thought to cut it into three. I will do that today and price it."
"Please let me know when you have done so. Stones of that color are so rare, and it matches my lady's hair."
I rather thought Chambers's lady's hair was more the color of dishwater, but I didn't say so. Lise hiccupped at the table and buried her face in her teacup.
When I showed Chambers the wax model, the light struck the fine lines I'd carved in the figure's hair and the soft curves of her breasts and belly. "Imagine this in gold," I said, tracing a line with my finger.
"Move those tresses, the more the better," Chambers said, waving his hand lower. "I don't need to approve that last bit. When will it be ready?"
"I can carve again today and cast the bracelet tomorrow." Then I would cut the topaz. "We'll have it polished by evening." I had three other baubles to finish besides. I'd lost too much time to the topaz. The new year was a popular time for the exchanging of fine gifts.
"Very good. I'll see myself out," Chambers said. "Though you may want to look to your locks. A man's been lingering outside your shop of late." He gestured with his chin towards the window, then strode through the door, snapping a pair of leather riding gloves against his hands.
I leaned out the studio window to see if I could discern what Chambers meant. Even from a floor up, the smell that greeted me was unpleasant: unwashed hair, perhaps rotting leather. The man leaning against the wall below was the same who sold me the topaz the morning before. I ducked my head back inside and turned to Lise.
"I don't want you going out of doors alone, not with that fellow lurking."
She went to the window. "I see no one."
When I joined her, I saw she was right. The man was gone and the street below the shop was empty. Perhaps Chambers was playing a prank on me. The ruse felt too obvious for anyone else. Nonetheless, I put my arm around Lise. She shivered. "Your dream is not real. No one will carry you away."
She smiled and leaned against me for a moment, warm like the sunlight. "Thank you. Now let me open the shop."
"And I will cut this stone."
Lise's smile was gorgeous in the light. I had noticed before, but now her eyes captivated me. They were brown, speckled with gold flecks much the same color as the gem on my workbench. Her eyelids were swollen and red from all the worry about her dream and, more than likely, about her father's declining health.
She blinked once and shook herself, as if from a spell, and turned from me, before looking back over her shoulder. "You won't fall asleep again?"
I shook my head. Not to worry.
As she left, I went to the topaz and again prepared my diamond saw. The cutting marks I'd drawn with the grease pencil the day before were gone. I grumbled, suspecting they'd been wiped off when I lost the stone from its wrapping, and bent once more to my work.
Lise found me in the same position, hours later. Her concern weighted her voice. "I couldn't tear you from it," she said. "And, sir. Your arms."
From fingers to elbow, each arm was covered in grease pencil markings; some clumsy, some elaborate geometries. I quickly wiped them clean.
"You said it sang to you of strands of gold; of the perfect setting," Lise said.
Her words made no sense, but neither did the lost hours. I shivered in the warmth of the day. Beyond the window, in the square, I saw a familiar figure in a tattered cloak. Suddenly, I wanted to escape from my studio and the chill that hung over it. "Let us get lunch by the river," I said. "We will make a special day of it."
Lise's mood changed at the mention of an adventure. She clapped her hands and went to get her cloak. I gathered some things as well. We locked up studio and shop and passed a wonderful hour by the river. When we finished our meal, I took her hand and kissed it. Her cheeks colored pink. "Sir," she said.
"Call me Marcus, as I call you Lise."
At these words, she paled. "You said that in the dream!" She started to rise from the riverbank. I caught her arm and held her tight.
"It was a dream, and you are young enough to let them shape you still," I said. "Do not fear." But her shoulders shook and I held her tighter. We walked back to the studio like that, for all the city to see.
My heart skipped when Lise reached up to brush her smooth fingers across my scarred and calloused fingertips.
When we reached the studio, the ragged man was nowhere in attendance, but the studio door was swung wide and my worktable had been turned upside down. Drawers were pulled askew; soft solder wire and old lost-wax molds lay scattered on the floor. The wax model lay undamaged beside the workbench.
The rough amethyst, a bag of gold casting beads, and much more were gone. I reached into my pocket and touched the topaz. I was glad I'd taken it with me.
"I will have to get more gold to finish Chambers's bracelet," I said, trying to remain calm for Lise's sake.
"I can go," she said. We had a standing arrangement with the local pawnshop and they kept a bit of casting gold on hand to sell us. "But we have nothing to pay them with."
"Let me cut the topaz now. I'll send one of the trillions with you to the pawnshop. That will cover costs until Chambers pays for the bracelet."
In the wreckage of the studio, I found my diamond saw and prepared once more to cut into the marquise, near the crown of the thick yellow gem.
When I came to on the floor, Lise was shaking me and crying. "Marcus, please!" She saw my eyes open and sobbed. "You were cold! I heard a noise like the diamond saw's hum, or a song, and then everything went sideways and when I came to, you were cold." She pointed at the topaz, still in my hand. "That gem does not want to be cut!"
"No," said a voice from the door, thick with a sick man's phlegm. "It is a stone of the Jeweled Valley, and an old one. I parted with it cheaply when I was starving and I will have it back. The gem is unsafe with you." The cloaked man advanced, dark in the evening shadow. "It must be placed in a proper setting, or it will ruin all who touch it."
I had enough strength left to grab my torch from my worktable and fire it, holding it before me, Lise, and the topaz. "You are lying. Part of Chambers's prank."
The man eyed the torch. "I thought you a proper jeweler, but you have no skill with Valley jewels. You must return it, or set it in my presence." He held out an old book, wrapped in fouled leather. Gold wire crisscrossed the cover, terminating in six clawed bezels that grasped at air and two more that still held glittering gems. The book had been gloriously jeweled once, until someone pried each stone loose for barter or sale. Or so Chambers would have liked me to believe.
"Tell Chambers to leave off these games. And go away. I own this topaz, and will use it as I like."
"I know no Chambers," the man said. He tucked the book away in his cloak, and reached for me. For the topaz.
The torch was of the new kind, a gas mix in a canister. It ha
d a hand crank that let me adjust the fuel, which I now threw hard forward. A blue flame burst forth and the man leapt back, but not in time. His cloak caught, and the grease within the cloak as well. He ran shrieking down the stairs and into the evening gloom.
I comforted Lise as best I could, and we shared a drink from a bottle of good red wine that I'd put up for emergencies. She was too shaken for me to leave her, and I worried the sheriff would take the topaz from me. Instead, we bolted the door.
Lise began to whisper, her eyes locked on the topaz. "You do not think we should get rid of it?"
Her concern touched me. But as I thought of the topaz, as I felt again its smooth facets against my fingertips. I saw once more what the gem could become. "Why give Chambers the satisfaction?"
"You still think this is one of Chambers's jokes?" Lise turned to me.
"How could it be otherwise?"
"Why would he risk slowing your progress on the bracelet for a prank?"
Indeed, why would he? I hadn't thought of that. What a smart girl. About the bracelet too. I needed to finish that. "Let us see what I can make of it. Chambers will pay handsomely for pretty gems." I poured her more wine.
"Chambers would pay even more for a cursed gem. It would be popular with his guests."
Lise had a better head for business than I'd realized.
My client's cabinet of curiosities was renowned and reviled within the city. I nodded. "The topazes I cut and set will be more startling than any misshapen bones in a glass case, more beautiful than Chambers's nightshade butterflies. And three 'cursed' stones are better than one." I envisioned the gold Chambers would pay for the earrings, for the pendant. I stroked Lise's hair and sipped my wine. "We could make our fortune on this gem."
Comforted, she leaned on my shoulder and I kissed her hair, then her cheek. She put her arms around my neck and hung there. I picked her up and carried her to a cot at the back of my studio that I used when I worked late.
I had apprenticed hard for many years to learn my trade and still more building my reputation. I'd never had much money to spare on women. Lise knew as much as I did when it came to what happened that night. But we were well pleased with ourselves. The moonlight shone yellow on our bare skin, tumbled in the sheets of the cot.
I thought I heard singing. Lise swore it was my voice. For the moment, I was too happy to care. The outside world was outside, and we were one within.
Thus restored, I woke to moonlight, with new ideas for the topaz, and new ways to cut it. A way to set it that made my heart pound.
I laid out my files and my gold bezels, preparing. Sharpened my diamond saw once more.
I could swear on the russet hair of my dearest love that the gem sang to me that night as I lowered the saw to its facets.
It was Chambers who pounded the door down the next afternoon. My eyes opened to a ragged man bent over me, his hands clutching at my chest. At Chambers's roar, the man dove through the window, his hands empty. I heard a crash far below, then the baker's shout and the sheriff's whistle.
And so it was Chambers who discovered me naked in my own studio. I lay dazed below my workbench, in a congealing pool of blood.
Lise, my darling Lise, lay curled in a ball on the cot's sun-yellow sheets, her eyes frozen a pale amber. She breathed, but it was a raspy sound. I could see no mark on her. I followed her gaze back to my own body. She stared at my chest, at the gem set there, deep into my flesh, beating like a heart.
"Marcus," she whispered. "The topaz."
And I felt it, in me, singing. My veins pulsed with its rhythm. I knew I could never cut it away.
Chambers has found a buyer for the shop and the studio, for I will never make trinkets again. Lise tends me when Chambers doesn't have an audience arranged. There are many who wish to see the jeweled man.
As for me, I am happy with my saws and pliers, with my gold wire. I have inlaid gems across my arms and torso, using any local jewels that Chambers can find. I favor yellow stones like chrysoberyl, spinel, and tourmaline, though these do not sing to me.
On days when my skin scars and hardens around the newest bezel, Lise brings gauze and salves from town.
"Is it not beautiful?" I ask her. I watch my body sparkle in the sunlight of our room.
"It is beautiful," she answers. Her fingers trace the gems. Her eyes meet mine, filled with tears that do not spill. While she can no longer hear the topaz, she can see its measured pulse.
Below, the hall of Chambers's home echoes with the beat of metal doorknocker against wood. I shiver. On days like this, I am not fit to entertain an audience. Chambers has so far said it amuses him and his lady to have me as a guest, even when he must turn the curious away. They are kind hosts.
But this day, a man has come to their door to sell, not to see. My room faces east for the best morning light and overlooks the front steps. I hear the conversation. I see the gleam of facets nestled in linen.
"It sings," the man says.
Chambers often buys me gemstones, but he turns this man away. "We want nothing more of you."
I lean against the glass, my skin crisscrossed with gold in the light. I trace the barest hint of a song in the air and remember the last gems on a leather-bound book.
As the ragged man leaves, heels dragging loud in the gravel, I mark which way he goes.
InterGalactic Interview With Fran Wilde
by Lawrence M. Schoen
* * *
Fran Wilde's first novel, Updraft, was launched by Tor Books earlier this month, the first book in a promised series from her Bone Universe that already includes short stories "A Moment of Gravity, Circumbscribed" and "Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud." The second book, Cloudbound, is slated for a 2016 release, and she's working on a third volume, presently untitled, for 2017. Fran's other fiction includes stories set in her Moon Universe and Gem Universe (including "The Topaz Marquise," reprinted elsewhere in this issue), as well as a world she's created for the Storium interactive game/storytelling system. She's honed her craft at workshops such as Viable Paradise and the Taos Toolbox, and then there's the small matter of her MFA in poetry. Her skill sets extend into other domains as well. She's a generous programmer and technologist, a talented artist, and an unrepentant foodie.
SCHOEN: When I read your work, I'm often taken by the precision and weight of your words, ironically so in Updraft. Where does this come from? Is it fair to assume it's something you acquired in your study of poetry, or does it reflect an innate talent that you refined in graduate school, or something else entirely?
WILDE: Concision is probably related to poetry for me. And it's also important during the editing process -- using one word instead of three, finding the exact word for the situation, rather than an okay word. I love the way language works like locks and keys, each word acting on its neighbors until the final word of the sentence and paragraph, and eventually the final word at the end of the story, carries the full weight of that story. That's part of what makes a good narrative stick at the end -- all that came before.
SCHOEN: Following up on that, there's a huge visual metaphor in your novel. If I may be so bold, it's like you're painting vast skyscapes, panoramas of open space punctuated by towers of living bone with tiny winged figures flitting between them. Some of the most powerful and dangerous elements in the story -- whether the winds themselves, the constant threat of falling into the clouds below, or the maws of the invisible skymouths -- are unseen, giving much more weight to the things that are visible and knowable. Did you have this in mind all along, did it spring to life in the writing process, or are you learning about it for the first time in this question?
WILDE: I think it's a good visual! The vastness of the landscape -- never-ending sky -- and the comparable scale of enormous towers versus tiny people . . . that's the kind of thing that sets up visual tension from the start, isn't it?
The unseen versus the knowable. That's another kind of tension. When you render an item in a story so visible that the invisib
le aspects of another object appear in negative space -- that happens in art too.
Flying versus falling is related to all of these tensions -- the interaction of characters with landscape. I did have that in mind, and it was a theme I wanted to work, but it also emerged organically as I wrote and revised the novel, did more research, and revised again.
SCHOEN: Last question on your novel: there's a cautionary vibe to portions of the story -- obey your elders, follow the rules or bad things happen, fly where you're supposed to or get eaten, and so on. Do these exist as subtext, or purely as elements to provide conflict and drive your plot forward?
WILDE: I don't put anything in my stories purely to drive plot or stoke conflict.
Those on the edge of any culture -- or in risky situations -- often develop fairly extensive layers of superstitions. Superstition is one way to feel like you're exerting control over an environment you cannot control. The focus on rules, the superstitions about what to do when someone fails or falls, some rituals, like, for instance, what you do when you spill salt -- all of these combine to help build a world and enmesh characters within the actualities that world requires.
So, too, with Updraft.
SCHOEN: Let's shift gears a bit. I'm always fascinated by what starts an author on this path. Was there some specific book or event that inspired you and made you realize this was what you wanted to do?
WILDE: I've always written. What I've not always done, especially with regards to fiction, is to finish stories. For a while there, I had lots of starts, few endings. I finally pushed myself to finish a short story before starting another one in 2010-11, when I decided to make time for writing, before almost anything else. Finishing stories instead of giving up on them or getting distracted by a shinier one, something I hoped would be "stronger" than what I was already working on, was what it took, actually. With a first draft what "strong" actually means is somewhat "Your Mileage May Vary" -- we all want stories to be amazing right out of the gate, and they're often just starting points. For me I realized I was dedicated to writing when I enthusiastically engaged a revision on a finished first draft and completely reworked the story into something that was actually stronger. That felt amazing.