Illusionarium

by Heather Dixon Wallwork

  He tore his eyes from my father and fixed them, one yellow, one red, on me. My same eyes.

  “Yes,” I said, dying inside. “I will. For five minutes, I will.”

  Queen Honoria regarded me, her eyes glittering. Then, without lowering her pistol from my father’s head, took a pocket watch out from a pocket in her layers of dress and clicked it open.

  “Five minutes,” she said.

  The masked guard released me.

  Shakily, I found my feet and a pot of tea by a bedside, poured a cup, and mixed it with a dose of the antitoxin. Everyone’s eyes were fixed upon me.

  I administered the cure to my mother first; she lay breathing in quick, shallow gasps. Even her eyelids and lips had turned black.

  “Hello, Mum,” I whispered, touching the cup to her lips. She drank it in little sips, then with a trembling hand reached up and brushed my cheek.

  “My Johnny,” she whispered.

  I kissed her fingers.

  I poured another for Hannah and pressed it to her black lips. She gagged and tried to push it away.

  “Stop being stubborn, for once,” I said.

  She cringed but allowed me to help her drink, then curled up into her pillow when she’d finished, shivering. I pulled the blanket up to her neck with a shaking hand.

  The bottle had one last dosage of antitoxin within. I walked to my father, still frozen with the pistol at his head, and pressed the antitoxin into his hand.

  He blinked at the bottle, then at me. A mixture of expressions crossed his face: surprise, confusion, then hope and a glimmer of pride as his fingers closed tightly over the bottle.

  “Jonathan.”

  The five minutes had flown. Constantine wore a fantillium mask over his face. Queen Honoria pulled the pistol away from my father’s head and fitted her own mask on, illusioning with broad gestures something I could not see. The masked guardsmen all around us produced fantillium masks, strapping them over the mouths and noses of their crimson faces. They handed a mask to me. I buckled it around my head. It pumped and hissed; I closed my eyes, inhaling. And the fantillium filled me once again, fizzing my blood and brightening the lights.

  The door Queen Honoria had illusioned stood at the end of the infirmary wing, the same old Tower of London door with rusted hinges.

  I faced it, resolved. And that very moment, the invisible compass inside my chest went click, an audible noise to soul. I felt Anna’s touch on my chest, stronger than the numbing fantillium, and knew exactly what I must do.

  I stepped in line next to Constantine. He ignored me. The masked guard streamed around us and through the door, which opened into the overgrown courtyard. Queen Honoria, Constantine, and I passed through the arched doorway at the same time. The moment we crossed over the threshold, the moment when our veins and cells and organs went blip, I closed my eyes.

  And illusioned.

  It wasn’t like any illusion I’d created before. It flowed from me like a song, an orchestra of interweaving threads and melodies, painting themselves into a picture around us. The infirmary disappeared, the Tower of London before us disappeared, the masked guard disappeared, and only Constantine, Queen Honoria, and I stood in the Nothing between two worlds.

  Walls faded in around us, and we stood in the center round tower. It was a mix of the Tower of London, Nod’ol, Fata Morgana, the observatory, the infirmary wing. The ceiling was made of glass, and weak winter light shone down over us. The floor was tile, the walls stone.

  A lone door stood in front of us. It was the same Tower of London door we’d just walked through, moments before.

  “What—” Constantine began.

  The quickening formula grew in my mind and evaporated from me. The sun above us began to whip around, brightening, darkening, brightening, darkening, faster and faster until it became a flicker and our shadows danced around us. The tile molded and cracked. Weeds blossomed and died at our feet. Trees grew up along the sides of the strange room, filling with leaves in a blur and then dying, falling to seed, seeds growing into trees, dying again. The glass above blackened with grime.

  The Tower of London door in front of us blurred out of focus like a bad microscope, until it split into two identical doors, side-by-side. As time flickered over us, the identical doors began to change. One started rotting, hinges rusting even further, wood blackening. The door at the right grew polished, carved, with steel hinges and latch.

  “What is going on?” said Queen Honoria severely, her voice muffled underneath her fantillium mask. “Are you illusioning this, Jonathan?”

  “Madam,” I said calmly. The room had a Quiet that I’d only experienced once before. “You are witnessing . . . a schism.”

  The glass ceiling cracked and shattered. Shards rained over us and disappeared into dust. The trees grew over our heads and broke the tile with their roots.

  I halted the formula. The sun jarred to a stop. We stood knee-high in weeds, the room almost a forest, crumbling stone ruins shadowing us. Moss and vines covered everything. I walked to the doors and yanked the vines aside, exposing their frames. The door on the left had almost completely rotted away, hanging from one hinge. The door on the right stood, polished, solid wood.

  “Your Highness,” I said, startling the three of us. “Queen Honoria. Do you recognize these doors? They lead to Nod’ol—one thousand years from today.”

  Queen Honoria’s dilated eyes flashed at me, then at the doors. She took a wary step back.

  “You,” I said, “are the schism between them. This door”—I nodded to the polished door on the right—“is the result of allowing Lady Florel to take leadership of Nod’ol.”

  I strode forward, grasped the steel latch, and pushed it open.

  Such a world I couldn’t even dream.

  Constantine, Queen Honoria, and I drew back. The Tower of London stood over us, preserved to a shine, the grass clipped as smooth as velvet, and words appeared in the air of the courtyard, dissolving, pulling together new words in some magical trick of light, or a new form of energy. “Tours from 10 to 6,” they formed. History, images of London maps. We stared.

  Beyond the Tower of London, golden buildings peaked to the sky. Over each spire, gold pennants rippled. There was no Archglass. Airships flew through the air without balloons, somehow held aloft without wings or sails, mechanical bullets of steam sweeping through the cityscape. And something more—I inhaled sharply. Giant creatures soared between the towers, flapping leathery wings, bridled by people mounted on their backs. Creatures, perhaps, that had once roamed the earth and had somehow been revived.

  “Dragons?” Constantine rasped.

  Queen Honoria snapped forward, grasped the latch, and shoved the door closed. Darkness fell.

  “This is madness, Jonathan,” she snarled, hands shaking. “Turn time back! This instant!”

  I did not move.

  Queen Honoria whipped an illusion—a bolt of fire. Before she could lash it at me, I had dissolved it from her hands. She tried again to attack with fire; and again it disappeared with my anti-illusion.

  “Constantine!” Queen Honoria screeched. “Help me!”

  Constantine remained still as a statue.

  “No,” he whispered.

  “Queen Honoria,” I said, nullifying her illusion again. “I’m giving you one last chance! You can make Nod’ol the city you just saw! Go back with Constantine and turn yourself in. Give the monarchy to Lady Florel. Earn absolution for the crimes you’ve committed. It’s not too late!”

  “I will not,” she growled, feral. She thrashed as her illusions wisped away.

  “Do you want to see what happens to Nod’ol if you don’t?” I said. “If you go back and still are queen?”

  I threw open the door on the left. The wood crashed from its hinges to the floor, revealing a vast expanse of Nothing. Not even weeds grew. The old stone walls had been reduced to rubble. No city tower stood beyond; there wasn’t even a river among the ruins. A far distant post jutted up from t
he ground, marking an Archglass that had once been. A smoke hazed over the entire landscape.

  Queen Honoria stared at it, frozen.

  “You recognize this place,” I said. “Don’t you.”

  Queen Honoria went mad.

  She screeched and threw herself at me, gray hair flying wildly. I fell back, hitting the wall, and immediately she was clawing at me, slashing at my face and neck, catching me unaware with bolts of illusions that seared my skin. I cried aloud, more from fear than from pain, as her clothes tore at the seams and I saw what she had been hiding, perhaps for years: Eyes.

  They were everywhere—on her shoulders, wrists, dropping down her arms, melting down her neck. In that horrifying moment, she grasped the pistol at her waist and pressed it to my head.

  A new force took over, grasping Queen Honoria and tearing her away from my side. The pistol clattered. With newfound courage, Constantine dragged Queen Honoria to the doorway of the abandoned city.

  “You utter coward!” he said, tearing off her masks. I scrambled about in time to see a third eye between her eyes, her dress soaked with tears and gray hair tangling to her elbows as Constantine forced her into the abandoned city, throwing her to her knees.

  “Illusion time back, Jonathan!” he screamed, leaping back through the doorway. “Now!”

  Numbers took over before I could even think of them, searing my vision and coming alive in the illusion. The Quickening Formula:

  And x = –6.3114 x 1010, turning the years backward into seconds. Time whirred retrograde. I gasped as the illusion left hollows in my mind. Queen Honoria disappeared as the sun jolted into a strobe and the wood replaced itself. Plants grew backward in the flickering light. The ceiling re-pieced together, shards rising up like billowing steam. The tile mended. The doors unfocused and melded back together, forming once again the unkempt door of the Nod’olian Tower of London. And behind me stood the door that led to the Fata Morgana infirmary.

  Time slowed to a stop. The room had returned to its original form. I remained on the tile, heaving, broken and sore all over. Constantine hulked by the door. He ran a hand through his matted hair as I forced my crying muscles to pull me to my feet.

  We stared at each other for a moment.

  “You’re me,” he said without a trace of emotion. His eyes looked me up and down. “What I could have been, anyway.”

  “What you can be still,” I said.

  “Ha!” Constantine laughed, then broke into a cough. “Look at me, Jonathan. Look at me. I’m not you anymore. I’m a monster.”

  I looked at him. He hulked underneath a thick orange coat, almost disappearing inside it. Every inch of skin was covered, his misshapen form hiding whatever he was splitting into underneath.

  And yet, I caught glimpses of myself. The brown at the roots of his hair. The shape of his eyes and the way he rubbed his clawed hands together, over and over, not unlike how I kneaded my cap when I was nervous.

  “When I died,” I said thoughtfully. “Did I tell you? I saw Anna.”

  Constantine froze, still crouched. His eyes widened under his mask, hanging on to my every word.

  “She said that there still was a Jonathan in you. She said she knew there was.”

  Constantine was sweating down his neck and collar. No—not sweat. Sweat didn’t stream like that.

  “She really believed that?” he said. “Underneath all my . . . noses and eyes and dye? She still did? Well—ha! That would make one of us, then.”

  “Two,” I said. “And since I’m you, that would make three.”

  Constantine rasped. I realized it was a laugh.

  “It’s not too late, Constantine,” I said. “I know it’s not. Go back to Nod’ol and turn yourself in. Lady Florel is going to need your help. Divinity, you know.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Constantine, rasping. It might have even been a laugh.

  On impulse, I embraced Constantine—beast mask and all. I wanted to fix everything—take him back to Fata with me, to stay with my—our—family. He filled my arms in a misshapen hulk of a figure.

  “I’ll go,” he said, breaking away abruptly. And then, with more firmness: “I have to go back.”

  “Wait,” I said, and feverishly searched for something to write on and write with. I settled on a torn piece of my coat, scratching in numbers with one of the numerous cuts on my numerous fingers:

  x = – 6.3114 x 1010

  “That’s the key,” I explained, handing him the scrap of cloth. “The key to Queen Honoria’s prison. A thousand years in a few seconds. Lady Florel can decide what to do with it.”

  Constantine’s eyes furrowed underneath his mask, but he pocketed the cloth and nodded. He thumped me on the back, nearly throwing off my glasses. My Nod’olian self had considerably more muscle than I did.

  “Thank you, Jonathan Gouden,” he said, grasping the rusting latch of the Nod’olian White Tower. When his voice was quiet like that, he almost sounded like my father.

  “Thank you, Jonathan Goodwin,” I said, and took my own door’s latch.

  We pushed the doors and crossed over the thresholds at the same time. Every inch of me rearranged itself as I stepped into the clean white of the infirmary and shut the door behind me. Many of the blue uniformed men had revived and stared at me in utter horror. I yanked off my mask, breathing clean air again.

  The hallucinations came. Demons crawled on hundreds of legs inside my lungs and stomach and head, mechanical centipedes, schisming into hundreds more, filling my body . . . I fell to my knees, thrashing, clawing at my head.

  Jonathan.

  Fantillium would feed them. My hands tore and grasped at nothing.

  Jonathan.

  Arms grabbed me instead, keeping me from writhing on the floor, and pulled me into a tight embrace. The creatures inside me hissed and punctured my veins. I fought, but the hands remained holding me tightly.

  And slowly, the demons waned.

  Sweating and exhausted, I found myself in the arms of my father.

  “My boy,” he said, and he was laughing and crying at once.

  CHAPTER 23

  Dock 3, Fata Morgana (Class. A Aerial City)

  January 1, 1883

  The sun was a washed coin. It swung above the horizon for an hour a day now—a solar feast!—before plunging below again and sweeping the sky in purples and blues.

  Much had happened since I’d stumbled back through the illusioned doorway nearly a week ago. The empire had slowly begun to limp back to life. The Venen had taken its toll. According to the light sigs, Arthurise was clothed in black. There wasn’t a person who hadn’t lost a mother or a sister, and everyone mourned the queen. But still, many had been saved. Within a few hours in his laboratory, my father had reconstructed the cure and immediately signaled the antitoxin’s formula to Arthurise, halting its spread.

  The king, who had revived after the attack of the masked guard, listened in my father’s laboratory as I told the entire story—from Queen Honoria illusioning the door on the Chivalry and the way to falling back through the infirmary doors. I didn’t leave anything out—not even Edward the Pathetic Miner.

  I couldn’t tell if the king believed me or not. He only remained slumped in one of my father’s chairs, looking too heartbroken to even breathe. He’d nodded when I’d finished, taken the transcripts from the airguardsman who had been recording my words, and left for his ship. He’d be returning to Arthurise. I suspected this wouldn’t be the end of my explanation; but for now, it would do. My father believed me, and that was enough.

  In the meantime, Mum and Hannah, like Lady Florel, healed miraculously well. They remained in the infirmary for three more days, getting their strength back, and I took care to visit them at night, talking quietly and helping Hannah with her academy homework. At night, everyone in the infirmary was asleep. And Alice, who was healing without a freckle amiss, gratefully didn’t see my splitting face.

  The last illusion had hastened me into something like Constantine.
My second face looked like it was sliding down my throat, my split nose askew and the eye at my temple splitting open. Another eye had begun to indent on my neck. I had extra fingers splayed from the others, completely movable. Hannah teased that I ought to learn to play the piano, but at the look on my face, clamped her mouth shut. My extra toes made it hurt to walk, and I limped. I made certain to wear a large scarf at all hours of the day.

  I’d been having hallucinations, too. They fevered and haunted me ceaselessly, twitching and crawling over me whenever I closed my eyes. I could only drive them from my soul like sweat—pounding them from my mind by running through Fata, over the pathways and by canal fronts, letting the cold sting my face and convincing myself that I didn’t need fantillium to make the creatures go away.

  But I was healing. Anna had been right about that. After the first three days, the hallucinations weren’t as vivid; their pricks not as sharp. The Rivening was beginning to heal, too. The eye at my temple had closed and scabbed over, the bridge of my second nose had gone soft, like cartilage, and my extra nostrils had begun to close up. My fingers were taking their jolly time. Dr. Palmer, my father, and I examined the extra pieces of me with great interest, sorting out how the bone and muscle had split.

  We decided I ought to accompany my father to Arthurise, and as we helped quell the Venen there, we could consult the top surgeons of the empire. My father had promised, in fact, that I could have a hand at the scalpel and make some incisions!29

  And so it was, just nine days after returning from Nod’ol, my father and I packed our things and prepared for a season-long stay in Arthurise. Longer for me, because after I’d recovered, I’d be remaining in Arthurise to attend the university and become a surgeon myself.

  Mum and Hannah, well enough now to brave the cold air, gave us a send-off on dock three, surrounded by benches and jaunty-tune telescopes. Leaving my family in this familiar setting reminded me of Anna, and I couldn’t say much. At the top of the vertical dock, the Chivalry loomed, engines fired up and ready to brave the polar storms to transport the empire’s head medical scientist—and his apprentice—to Arthurise. Northern airguardsmen walked to and fro, up and down the lift, loading the hull. We stood as a family, still among the harried last-minute work. A cold wind caught our backs, flapping our coats.