Metronome

by Oliver Langmead

  ‘Slint,’ says June, turning her attentions to the nightmare diver. ‘I spared you because I really don’t like having to banish nightmares. I still don’t. Which is why, even in the light of the fact that you being here means you’ve done something terrible to my crew, I’m going to give you one last chance. So listen carefully. I want you to wake William. I’m done with him.’ She gestures at me with the object in her hand. ‘Then, once I’m done here, I’ll take you back to Babel as well.’

  I take a step back from Slint.

  His helm swivels around so that he faces me. The rest of him follows. At once, I manoeuvre the case of my violin over my shoulder and place my hand on the hilt of the sword at my hip. ‘Please don’t,’ I tell him. ‘Please.’ And yet he advances, slowly lumbering across the cracked ground.

  Slint reaches up and frees the chains from his shoulders, letting my coat drift free and flutter away. He grips hold of the Metronome’s half-moon wheel and brings it before him, bearing it like a makeshift club.

  I reach out with my free hand, taking another step back. ‘Slint!’

  He raises his weapon. At the last moment, he turns and throws it with all of his might at June. The wheel hurtles through the air towards her.

  Crying out in surprise, she snaps her idle hand around to bear on the spinning projectile. The wheel bursts, devoured in an instant by what looks like fungus. A shower of mushrooms patter across her yellow dress.

  Still, the Sleepwalker is startled. Even as Slint sprints towards her, thundering with his heavy boots, it takes her a moment longer to recover.

  Her face changes, curling into anger.

  June throws the object she was holding. I catch a glimpse of it as it rolls towards Slint. It is not a pebble, or a marble, after all. It is an acorn. The instant it touches the ground beneath his feet, it erupts.

  The tree grows in fast-forward, exploding from its acorn in an instant. Branches as sharp as knives puncture the suit of the nightmare diver, one in each arm, one in each leg, and another through the stomach. The new tree winds around until he is brought to face the sun. Slint is crucified.

  ‘No!’ I cry, and rush towards him. Too late, I realise that it is foolish for me to try and help. Too late, I see the Sleepwalker’s attentions turn on me instead, and her hands raise towards me. There is no need for her to throw another acorn. I am already carrying a length of wood that she can use to hurt me.

  I feel the pressure against my back, and the force of the conjuring as it sends me flying through the air, landing hard on the black road. The air is knocked from my lungs as I impact, but it is nowhere near as bad as the sudden pain of loss. The realisation of what she has done to me.

  My violin. She has used my violin.

  I roll over to see the tree as it blooms from the case. I watch the strings as they snap, clinging on to the new bark. I watch the bow as it is warped in twain before becoming its own small sapling.

  Feeling the thudding of my heart in my head, still gasping for breath, my distress turns to anger. It turns to a white-hot rage that burns through me, burns through my veins. And it is with no thoughts, only anger, that I draw Thyme’s sword.

  The searing white flames that gush from the red-hot blade blind me, but still I stand. I turn about, until I can see the shape of the Sleepwalker as she reaches into her satchel, drawing out more acorns. There is a look across her face now that might be uncertainty, but still she stands her ground. And with a flick of her wrist, she sends acorns flying towards me.

  I begin to run towards her. To close the gap.

  I am no swordsman; I have nothing but rage for what she has done to my instrument. But as the first tree erupts from the ground at my feet, I slash wildly with the burning blade, and see blackened branches as they fall away.

  It is the second tree that catches me. I am quick to slash it out of the way, but not quite quick enough. Though I am not impaled, the sudden trunk of the tree slams into me and sends me sprawling. The sword is loosed from my grip as I hit the ground harder than before, my senses jarred by the sudden impact. The heat in my veins remains, but I have no breath left to breathe. I am a fish floundering for air.

  The sword spins, a burning arc, and hisses into the cracked earth blade-first nearby, scorching it instantly. Still its bright flames crackle. I try to crawl across, to reach for it, but my chest feels like it might burst. I am struggling to stay asleep.

  A different hand clutches at the hilt of the blade.

  ‘For many an age,’ says the Captain, ‘I have not allowed arms aboard my ship. Night after night my crew and I have slept long and deep, kept dreaming by my words alone.’ She throws her crutch away, and I watch it clatter down the slope. Then, Captain Reid pulls the burning blade from the ground. She tests its weight in her hand, and arcs it around with the skill of an experienced fencer. And with her bad foot behind her, she lowers herself into a stance, the blade pointed towards June.

  ‘For you,’ she says, flames reflecting in her eyes, ‘I make an exception.’

  The Sleepwalker throws another acorn, wildly. Reid turns the burning blade in a close arc, and where a tree erupts from its acorn, she cuts it cleanly. The edges of the cut catch fire, and the tree falls away. With her leg bound, the Captain advances slowly but inevitably towards June.

  June still stands her ground, but she looks frightened now, fumbling around for more acorns. ‘You have no idea!’ she cries. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing!’

  The expression across the Captain’s face is fierce, mirroring the burning blade in her hand. The next two acorns clatter to the ground at the Captain’s feet.

  ‘You wrecked my ship!’ snarls Reid, and cuts the first tree in two.

  ‘You woke my crew!’ she snarls again, and slices the second tree away.

  The Captain lunges, a brilliant leap, delivering a bright arc all the way across from her shoulder, until it clatters against the stone of the slanted arch.

  June stares wordlessly down at the cut through her torso, burned black from the bright blade, then back up at Captain Reid, a moment of absolute terror crossing through her, just like the sword did. Then, she wakes.

  The Sleepwalker bursts into dust, and the trees she conjured do the same, leaving only the splintered remains of my violin and the shapeless suit of Slint as it hits the ground, pierced rubber wobbling.

  I finally catch a gasp of breath as the Captain falls to her knees, the bright blade of the sword planted into the hard ground beside her. She holds on to the hilt so that it can take her weight. And there, kneeling as if she is praying, she clenches her free fist.

  Standing unsteadily and clutching hold of my chest, I limp across.

  ‘Captain?’

  ‘My crew,’ she says, between gritted teeth. ‘Now, we must find my crew.’

  Murdock

  I repair Slint.

  Tugging at my shoelaces, I use them to tie up two of the tears running through his suit. Otherwise, the only materials I can find are the scattered pieces of my violin. Using lengths of horsehair from my bow to puncture the rubber and pull it together, I then use the four strings that once stretched the length of my instrument as well. The tear through the suit’s chest, right above where Slint’s heart should be, glints gold instead of steel.

  With the last few rips sewn up, my fingers bleeding from handling thin wires, Slint fills out the rest of his suit again, that flabby, flopping rubber expanding out from his helmet as if there is a liquid pouring down. Slint rises as if from the dead.

  Reid is watching the distant waves that coil around the island. She is frowning.

  ‘They must be here, somewhere,’ she says, but she no longer sounds certain.

  Thyme’s sword is sheathed at my side, and with the loss of its bright hot fire, so too my rage has dissipated. I am now a musician without an instrument, but I do not mind. I am still asleep, and June is awake.

  Slint limps up to join us. One of his legs is now slightly shorter than the other – the rubber ha
ving to be rolled up to fill in the gaps – and the entirety of his left arm is gone, gauntlet tied to a knot at his shoulder.

  I am beginning to feel weary. There is a tiredness in my legs, in the soles of my feet, and my chest still hurts with every breath I make. Yet, it is not a wholly unpleasant weariness. I feel as if I have earned my bruises, every one.

  We watch the island below us for a while.

  ‘Maybe,’ I say, eventually, ‘we should go and see what all the fuss was about.’

  Limping and dragging our feet, we venture up to the slanted arch – that broken compass needle pointing at the sky – and cross into the dormant volcano’s basin, where the black road eels into the dark earth beyond. The temperature drops immediately.

  The silver prison looms ahead of us, casting a mighty shadow.

  It is a huge and bizarre crystalline structure, so faceted with walls and peculiar angles of architecture that it shines diamond-like. Cyclopean in its height and proportions, it dwarfs us – reflecting us a thousand distorted times. It even dwarfs the sun, which seems small and distant behind its tallest twisted towers. Dust cakes the lower walls, and while there are glimpses of the intricate carvings once etched into it, most have been worn away by time.

  In all regards, the prison looks like it might just be one enormous chunk of ice. It has no windows, and from its highest edges it looks lumpy and melted; there is no telling if it was ever built out of silver bricks, or if it was simply carved out of one gargantuan nugget of silver. Every surface glitters with condensation and the hard earth at its base crackles with frost. A little condensation rises from its jagged heights, wisping against the blue sky.

  The black road curls away around it to some hidden entrance, no doubt.

  ‘It must be ice-silver…’ I say, remembering what November said: the metal that nightmares loathe even to touch.

  It takes me a small while to realise that there is movement below, on the grounds between the black road and the prison. It looks like there is an entire graveyard filling the base of the volcano. I can see rows of earthen mounds, coated in the same frost as the rest of the crater, and above each one a small wooden cross.

  Among the rudimentary graves is a small dark figure, stumbling as if its legs are too stiff. It moves among the graves as if it has risen from one of them. Quickly, I fumble around for March’s compass, but there is no needle pointing below. There are only three needles here: one for me, one for Slint, and one for Reid. That corpse-like creature must be a figment.

  ‘Murdock?’ says Captain Reid beside me, almost too softly to hear. Then, she is stumbling down the slope towards him. I glance up at Slint, who remains his usual impassive self, and then the two of us follow after her, navigating the scarred and icy slope towards the graveyard.

  Up close, the shambling figure looks almost dead. It is ghostly pale, and little more than skin and bones beyond the black greatcoat draped across its wiry shoulders. Its cheeks are sunken and its white hair is thin where it clings to its skull. In one hand it drags a shovel, and when it catches sight of the Captain with its hollow eyes, it stops in its tracks. Its gormless mouth remains open, as if it is struggling to breathe.

  ‘Isabelle?’ it wheezes.

  The Captain stops before him. ‘Murdock…’ she says. ‘I came back. My captain – I came all the way back for you and the crew.’ I can hear the wavering emotion in her voice, like nothing I have heard from her before. She sounds… childish. Keening. ‘All the way from Babel,’ she says, ‘we crossed the seas. I gathered my own crew, Murdock. I had my own ship built. All for you. And I’m sorry it took so long, but I’m here. I’m here now.’

  The corpse man’s shoulders drop, as does his head.

  ‘Isabelle…’ he moans, a graveyard groan. ‘Let me die. Please, let me die.’

  Reid glances around, at the prison and all the graves, her brows knotted. ‘Where are the crew?’ she asks. ‘Where is everyone, Murdock?’

  With more strength than I could imagine in the shambling figure, he raises his shovel in both hands, and plants it firmly in the nearest grave. 'Nought but dust, but I marked them still. We waited, Isabelle.' The icy ground cracks around the blade. 'We all waited for you,' he wheezes. Then, he lurches forward, reaching out with one of his skeletal hands. He places his skull-like head against her shoulder and holds her in an embrace.

  ‘Let me die,’ he whispers with his parched voice. ‘Please. It has been so long.’

  There is a long quiet in the graveyard before Reid responds.

  ‘I am… too late?’

  The shambling man crumbles to dust. The grey stuff pours down Reid’s arm, and I am sure that I hear a hiss of relief as it goes. The corpse-like creature called Murdock turns to nothing at all.

  Only his coat is left behind: a great black coat with tarnished silver buttons. I watch as Reid kneels and picks it up from the ground, shaking it free of grey dust before pulling it over her shoulders. By some miracle it fits. She turns back to us, and there is that same familiar stern expression across her features. The only remnant left of her encounter with Murdock is a single tear, still trailing down her leathery face, all the way to the edge of her chin.

  ‘I have found my crew,’ she says, and she grips hold of the shovel’s hilt where it stands, still buried in the ground. There are maybe a hundred graves here. I wonder what I should say, but I have no words.

  ‘Time to find our way home,’ says Reid, quieter, and she releases the shovel.

  *

  We follow the black road back up to the slanted arch.

  Where it meets the lip of the volcano, something catches my eye. There is a crimson glistening across the dusty black surface of the road that I must have missed before. I crouch down to see. The substance is oily – still wet – and spattered in a trail that leads back down and into the volcano, following the road.

  ‘Blood?’ says Reid.

  I follow the road with my eyes, watching it curl around to a hidden corner of the prison. ‘It can’t be June,’ I say. We all saw her wake, chopped in two. I draw March’s compass, but its face is empty except for the needles pointing to us three, and this blood certainly does not belong to any of us. It is a mysterious trail, freshly laid. I am hesitant to follow it.

  ‘Come now,’ says the Captain. ‘Someone may be in need of aid.’

  Warily, I tow behind Reid, who stands taller within her new black coat. Behind us, Slint shuffles to keep up. If Reid is the Dorothy of the black road, and Slint is the tin man, then what does that make me? The brainless scarecrow or the cowardly lion? Worse, does that make me Toto? Perhaps it is my weariness, but I find myself chuckling at the absurdity of it.

  At last we reach the end of the black road.

  It comes to a halt before an almighty set of double doors. They are huge, maybe three times my height, and set deep into the icy silver prison. The divide between them – a line through the silver – is only ornamental: they are well and truly sealed, and all around their edges, a frosting of deep ice keeps them airtight. Whatever hinges they may have are inside, and whatever carvings and inscriptions once covered them have been worn to a mirror flatness.

  Sat with his back against them is Thyme.

  It takes me a moment to realise that he is not dead. The old knight is so bloodied and torn that he is almost a parody of life; it is bizarre that his chest should still rise and fall. What little there is left of his white tabard is torn to bloody shreds, and there are great splintered chunks of wood sticking out of him everywhere.

  ‘Thyme?’ I rush across.

  The last liar opens his blood-encrusted eyelids to reveal reddened eyes. This close to the ice-silver prison, I can feel the terrible chill of it. Where Thyme has his back against the metal a seal of frost coats him. It is no wonder that he shivers and shudders.

  ‘Ah,’ he says, throatily. ‘Manderlay the Bard.’

  ‘Do you know this man?’ asks Reid. She stands behind me.

  I do not think that this is the
right time to reveal that Thyme was stowing away aboard the Metronome. The countless pieces of wood splintered into him must be bits of her broken hull. He must have dragged himself all the way up here after she fell from the sky.

  ‘This is Thyme,’ I tell the Captain, hoping that she will not enquire. ‘He’s a friend of mine.’

  I lean forward, attempting to free Thyme from the icy surface of the prison, but he shakes his head. ‘Nay,’ he protests. ‘I am done. Leave me, my friend. I only wished to behold this – the edge of the road that leads all the way from Babel to here. I only wished to sate my curiosity, and so I have. Leave me here, and return hence to thy tower and doors. I am done.’ He coughs weakly.

  Glancing back at Reid, I see that she is no longer concerned by Thyme. She is preoccupied with her own ailment. Sat upon a chunk of stone, she is unwinding the bindings from her splinted leg, and where flesh is revealed, it looks clean. ‘Come then,’ she says. ‘I should like to reach the Golden Gate before I wake, and we have much work to do building ourselves a new ship.’ She tests her leg, and it seems strong again.

  I turn back to Thyme. ‘Are you sure?’ I ask him, but I remember what March said of injured people in dreaming. That it is better just to let them wake than keep them asleep and in agony.

  ‘I am certain,’ he says. ‘Only…’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘My sword. I see ye have my sword. Leave it here, I beg thee. Thou canst not leave a knight without his weapon, surely!’ He coughs again, spraying blood with his spittle. ‘Repay thy debt to me,’ he says.

  I unbuckle the leather-bound sword from my side, and hand it over. In truth, I am glad that I am able to leave it behind. Then I stand. I am not sure what else there is for us to do here. Reid is ready and waiting, freed of her bindings, and she looks impatient to be gone. And Slint is nearby, with his helm swivelling back and forth, looking uncomfortable beside the ice-silver prison. I am not sure what else I can say to Thyme before we leave, so I settle for, ‘Goodbye, then.’