Beneath Ceaseless Skies #161

by Margaret Ronald

  Copyright © 2014 Margaret Ronald

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  Margaret Ronald’s short fiction has appeared in such venues as Fantasy Magazine, Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, and ten times in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, including a series of stand-alone stories set in the same steampunk world that began with “A Serpent in the Gears” in BCS #34 and includes “Salvage” (BCS #77) and “The Governess and the Lobster” (BCS #95) along with four others, as well as a ongoing series of fantasy mysteries beginning with “A Death for the Ageless” in BCS #134 and continuing in “Sweet Death“ in BCS #161 and “Murder Goes Hungry” forthcoming in 2015. Soul Hunt, the third novel in her urban fantasy series and the sequel to Spiral Hunt and Wild Hunt, was released by Eos Books in 2011. Originally from rural Indiana, she now lives outside Boston. Visit her website at mronald.wordpress.com.

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  WE WERE ONCE OF THE SKY

  by Yosef Lindell

  The plague is coming. It spreads on the whispering tongues of the tavern-folk and on a breath of dry wind over dead grass.

  I sit at my table in the Bureau. Sunlight pierces the narrow windows on either side, illuminating the books in front of me. Euclid’s Elements and Ptolemy’s Almagest—the building blocks of an ordered but sterile world. Shelves full of leather-bound volumes surround me like a scaffold, smothering me in their eternal solitude.

  I grab the desk with spindly birdlike fingers and push myself up on squat legs. From the window to my right, I can see smoke rising from the chimneys of Frampton-on-Severn. That is the human village, where Beta like myself are not welcome. The humans don’t trust our long tongues, our mottled papery skin, and the round holes just above our foreheads. But the plague kills us just the same. Out the window on my left, the Beta colony sits beyond the river Severn and the rolling hills. That is where I grew up, but I will never be at home there. It has been a long time since I could believe my people’s myths.

  Instead, I am caught in between the village and the colony. So I stay at the Bureau, collecting books and waiting for the plague.

  * * *

  My earliest memory is of my third birthday. Father put me on his shoulders like he had seen the human fathers do, and took me outside. He pointed to a star, and touched his long tongue to mine. I heard his voice in my mind, which is what happens when we Beta touch tongues. I shivered, even though the night was warm. Kev, he was saying, do you see that star, just to the left of the crescent moon? See how it shines brighter than the rest? Well, that is where we came from. Someday, to there we will return.

  Oh, to have come from a distant star! At nights I would lie awake, dreaming of the sky and its limitless possibilities. But every year, when Father took me outside, he pointed to a different star. So Father doesn’t really know what star we came from, I thought. Maybe we didn’t come from the stars at all.

  Eventually, I stopped believing him. So I didn’t complain when I got too big to ride on his shoulders and we didn’t go out anymore on my birthday.

  * * *

  Thrita shows me maps. “Wotton-under-Edge,” he says in his sonorous voice. He points at the map with a long, oily tongue. “That’s where it was first reported. I reckon it’s coming due north. Dursley is next in its path. Then it will reach Frampton-on-Severn, then perhaps the colony.”

  I nod numbly, pretending not to care. From reading Galen I learned that disease spreads because of bad air, or miasma. That’s why it tends to fester in the cramped quarters of cities and towns. We are out in the country. Perhaps we are safe. I tell that to Thrita.

  He stares at me with those pale lamp-like Beta eyes. Thrita has unusually oily hair which grows only in sparse patches and tufts. “The Beta are never safe,” he says.

  Thrita knows that better than anyone. As an orphaned child, he often went hungry. One night, a human patrol found him outside the colony after curfew, foraging for food. The Baron’s men ordered him put in the stocks for two days. They warned him that if he broke the curfew again, they would have him hanged as an example. Zelhorn found Thrita while he was still in the stocks, dying of thirst. Thrita had one very important skill most Beta didn’t have—someone, somehow, had taught him to read. So Zelhorn convinced the Baron’s men to free Thrita on the condition that he work for the Bureau. The humans like Zelhorn’s Bureau for the Societal and Literary Advancement of the Beta. They allow us to collect taxes and to help enforce the King’s Law. Perhaps they think we keep the Beta out of trouble. Also, the humans like Zelhorn because he worships the Christian god.

  “We always die,” Thrita was saying, in that slow, mellow voice of his. “Either the plague takes us, or the humans think we were spared because of some witchcraft. Then they kill us anyway.”

  I don’t say anything, because I know Thrita is right.

  * * *

  Once a month, my family went to see the relics. They were housed in the tallest building in the colony, a gaunt structure capped by a solitary spire twisted like the horn of a unicorn. The relics, sixteen metal pieces arranged on both sides of an aisle, were viewed silently and in single file. Father went first, then Mother, then me.

  The unmarked metal coiled in strange, skeletal shapes. Some relics were dark as obsidian; others shone like pale steel. Mother instructed me not to touch them. She told me that old Bilus had touched a relic, gone mad, and died within three weeks. I wasn’t sure I had ever needed any convincing on the matter, and I certainly didn’t after her story. Still, Mother held her arm out behind her and squeezed my hand when we passed between the relics. Her hand trembled, and I wondered who was really holding who. Sometimes she cried when we got home.

  Father told me that the humans once tried to destroy the relics. Although they ruined the building, they couldn’t even dent the metal.

  “Why did they want to destroy the relics?” I asked.

  “They called them heathen idolatry.”

  I didn’t understand what that meant, but there was little about the humans that I understood. “What are the relics anyway?” I asked.

  “I’ve told you before.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “They are fragments of a great vessel that sailed the stars. They are pieces of the ship that brought us here.”

  “Why do we have to look at them? The ship is broken. It can’t sail anymore.”

  “The past is important.”

  “Then why does Mother cry?”

  Father looked troubled for a moment. I think he wasn’t quite sure of the answer. “Do you know those woodcuts of Mother’s parents that I made for her?”

  “Yes.” Mother often gazed at them in the flickering light of the fire after she put me to bed. I never fell asleep that quickly.

  “Their pictures are only carved in wood, but the likeness reminds her of what she’s lost. I figure the relics are much the same.”

  I thought back to the stars. “Sometimes,” I said, “I think we pretend to remember things that we are not sure we ever had. And that’s why Mother cries—because she doesn’t know if there ever was a ship, or if we came from the stars.”

  Father looked at me sadly and said nothing.

  * * *

  Zelhorn approaches. I am still in my library, cataloguing books, inscribing them, constructing a meaningless shrine to eternity. I know it is Zelhorn without turning around. The stench of rosewater and charcoal follows him everywhere.

  “Kev,” he says, “I need a favor.”

  I face him. He is wizened and old; his braided white beard hangs in strands knotted with jade beads. He wears a cross, and he taps incessantly with a stick. Today, he bears strange parcels: tan masks with dull glass eyepieces and tapered conical fronts that look like beaks of implausible birds. I worry that he has devised yet another experiment.

  Zelhorn continues: “I need some things from Frampton-on-Severn. Lavender, camphor, mint, maybe a touch of cloves. No rose petals—I have too many here already. But do make sure we have
a good deal of straw.”

  Now I’m certain this experiment concerns alchemy. No matter, Thrita and I do all of Zelhorn’s real work for him anyway. Still, I eye him suspiciously. “What for?”

  “For the doctors of course! Bubonic plague spreads by miasma. To prevent the doctors from contracting plague, the incense goes in the front of the beak and the straw serves as a filter.”

  “Doctors?”

  “For Wotton-under-Edge. The town needs doctors, but its own are either stricken or fled. I think some of the Beta might be interested.”

  “The Beta are not doctors.” They can’t even read.

  Zelhorn waves his tongue dismissively. “It matters little. We can teach them the procedure. Make a poultice. Lance the buboes. Avoid breathing the foul air.”

  “Avoid breathing the air—how?”

  Zelhorn comes so close that the stench of rosewater is overpowering. His beads and cross jangle in my face. “The costumes will mitigate the miasma, of course. And behind these masks, humans and Beta look the same. So Beta can be doctors without the humans knowing. Humans will let Beta doctors treat them. The plague will be contained, and the Beta doctors will be paid. Change, not plague, will soon be in the air. This is, after all, the Bureau for the Societal and Literary Advancement of the Beta!”

  I draw back. It is just like Zelhorn to try to find some silver lining in the plague. To use it to our supposed advantage. “I suppose the Beta will die quicker this way,” I say. “But perhaps it is for the best. There won’t be any witch trials afterwards.”

  Zelhorn’s eyes are like smoky lamps. “In all your time here, what have you actually done to help our people?”

  “You are not helping them either. These doctors will die.”

  “Only without the proper precautions. That is why I need the herbs. The sweet smell in the nose—” he taps the bird mask— “dispels the miasma.”

  I make no acknowledgment.

  “Do what you wish,” he says eventually. He hangs the bird masks on my shelves. “I will send Thrita instead.”

  I think back to a time when I trusted Zelhorn. When it seemed that he alone taught a truth of which others were afraid to speak. Perhaps he is right. I have done nothing at the Bureau. My literacy project is a failure. The Beta have no interest in learning to read. Going to Frampton-on-Severn couldn’t be any worse than remaining here. “No, I will go,” I say.

  Zelhorn looks at me approvingly. “Good.”

  I will go, I tell myself. But this will not stop the plague.

  * * *

  It was night. I awoke to the familiar sound of distant tapping. I crept silently from my bed and lay at the foot of the crafting table, watching wax drip between its slats and wood shavings flutter down to meet the sticky mass forming underneath.

  When I raised my head, there was Father, a candle clenched tightly in the hole above his forehead. His tongue was taut as a bowstring and glistened silver in the half-light. An iron nib quivered on its edge. Tap. Tap. Ta-Tap. Father chipped away at the wooden block on the table, creating delicate patterns with the nib attached to his tongue.

  Father was a block cutter. He said that each block of wood was full of stories waiting to be discovered. Sometimes, the wood yielded valleys and the rivers that ran through them; other times, I saw great mountain ranges with waterfalls tumbling into canyon-beds far below. Often I imagined dragons wheeling upon the peaks, scorching the mighty mountainside with flame. Yet this time, there were no dragons or mountains. Instead, all I saw were scratches, marks that curved and curled in an unknown dance.

  “What are they?” I asked.

  “Words,” he replied.

  “I like dragons better.”

  “Words can become whatever you want them to be, even dragons.” Father offered me his hand. “Come, let me take you back to bed,” he said.

  Later, Father explained to me that these woodcuts were templates that could be smeared with ink and pressed onto parchment. This was how books were made.

  I became fascinated by books of all kinds. Words were an intricate wonder, but since I couldn’t read, I could only pretend their meaning. Father must be a master of words, I thought. So I begged Father to teach me.

  It was quite a shock when I learned that Father couldn’t read either.

  “He has a strong tongue,” said Mother, “and an eye for copying the strokes. But he doesn’t understand what he copies.”

  “The Beta don’t need books,” Father said, “when we have our stories.”

  I was crestfallen. Unlike my parents, I knew the world was changing, and that books would be more important than old stories. And if I could read, maybe I could find the truth about the Beta and where we came from.

  So I insisted on learning to read. Father made me what he called an alphabet primer. Each letter of the alphabet was carved in a flowery script and inlaid with what looked like silver. The whole alphabet was encircled by reliefs of dragons and unicorns painted scarlet and amber. It was beautiful.

  But who could teach me?

  * * *

  It is a long time since I have been to Frampton-on-Severn. The marketplace is awash in smells of manure, salted fish, and a peppery stew. It is still better than the hushed and stale air in the Bureau. I see a human with a shrill voice; his wooden leg drags across the pavement. He yells “caps for sale!” and waves the caps in the air. Other humans mill around near shabby stalls. After all these years, I am still fascinated by the way they drink. They tilt back clay bottles or cups held directly to their lips. It seems so much easier just to use my tongue.

  But then again, I am Beta.

  I once accompanied Father to this market in a horse-drawn cart, surrounded by his woodcuts and crates of pears and apples that smelled sickly sweet. As we reached the square, he placed a hand on my shoulder, gently but with a determination that made me wonder if I should be afraid, and told me to stay close, for we were among humans.

  I ought to heed his advice still.

  I seek out Zelhorn’s supplies. I find camphor in little glass bottles. Near the stall selling dried lavender, two men whisper urgently. Apparently, the plague is still spreading north. It has reached Dursley. It comes closer.

  When I have bought most of what I need, two rough-looking men approach. They leer at me with unshaven faces. “A Beta,” they say.

  I wonder if I should answer them. I back away. “My name is Kev.”

  They come close. I can feel their hot breath. “You don’t belong here.”

  They are right. I don’t belong anywhere. “My pardon. I am running an errand for the Bureau—” I don’t want to mention anything about the plague. What if Thrita is right? What if they think we are witches?

  I don’t think these men have heard of the Bureau.

  One of them grabs my neck and tightens his fingers.

  My throat constricts. I cannot breathe. “Medicine!” I squeak. That’s what I was getting.

  I flail about, waving my birdlike arms helplessly. With my fading sight, I see muscles rippling in the human’s arm.

  I see a flash of metal. Please, not a sword, I whisper wordlessly.

  Not a sword. A blunt metal pipe. In the haze, it could have been a relic.

  I am on my knees. My head is throbbing. Dark blood runs down my face.

  The metal pipe rattles like old bones.

  Then I black out.

  * * *

  A traveling alchemist came to our colony twice a year and put on a show for the children. We sat cross-legged on the grass as he waved his arms and his twirling and shifting fountains of colored smoke enveloped the sky. The scent of sulfur hung heavy in the air.

  The alchemist always asked us what we wanted to see. I wanted him to conjure a golden dragon spouting crimson fire and with a tail like a thunderbolt. But someone else had already asked him for a dragon that night. So instead I asked for a great ship.

  “To sail the seas?” the alchemist asked.

  “No,” I said. “To go to the sta
rs. A ship large enough to take all the Beta home.”

  He leaned closer to me, and I caught a whiff of rosewater and charcoal. The strands of his white beard were braided with jade-green beads. “No one can sail the stars,” he said. So instead he made a sailing ship, its prow dipping and rising on a glassy blue sea.

  But I knew the ship was only an illusion. I thought: if this alchemist, with all his magic, can’t take us to the stars, then no one can. We never came from the stars, and we will never return there.

  When the show ended, I asked the alchemist if he would teach me how to read. His name was Zelhorn, and he agreed.

  * * *

  Zelhorn and Thrita tend to my injuries.

  “It could have been much worse,” Zelhorn says gently. “Two broken ribs. You lost a lot of blood. Your nose was smashed. It will never look quite the same. But you will live.”

  Until the plague takes us all, I think.

  That night, I take a candle and creep down the winding stair to the library. I put on a bird mask and its matching dark cloak; then I quietly descend the stair again. The disguise covers my disfigured face. I will wear it, but I will not be a doctor. Instead, I will run far from the humans and from the plague.

  At the bottom of the stair, I see Zelhorn sitting in the dark by glass bottles of medicine under a torn canvas. His eyes are closed. He is rocking back and forth slowly; perhaps he is praying. He does not appear to notice me.

  What does Zelhorn pray for anyway? I wonder. What good could it do? No god will save me. I must save myself. That’s why I must run away.

  I reach the threshold. I touch the door.

  “Where are you going Kev?” Zelhorn asks.

  My hand jumps in surprise. I do not answer him.

  He eyes my cloak and mask. “While I admire your desire to treat the stricken, you are still too weak. I must insist you return to bed.”