by Charlie Nash
He has to watch for the whole afternoon, and the evening, and into the long blue hours of the night. Her color returns, but she does not stir until the witching hour, when he is wretched with inevitable grief. So when her hand drifts up to touch her face, the relief knocks him sideways. He grasps the hand.
“Thank God,” he says, without thinking, and gathers her against him, fragrant again and whole. But worry has made up his mind. He looks into her half-open eyes. “You must tell me why this is happening. You must.”
There is a long moment, where he feels the weight of all she is, all the time she has lived. Then she sighs. “The Age is ending, Physician.”
“I don’t understand.”
She pushes herself up. “The world has Ages that renew after many, many years. The Olympians fear it.”
“What will happen?” he whispers.
“The Titans will come. Everything changes.”
“How do—”
“Because I saw it. Once. Long ago.” Her eyes flicker over him, then soften. “My talent was not beauty, Physician. It was sight. What I allowed Hephaestus to do disguised me. I knew when the Age changed, I would die. A god always dies.”
John hears her past words come back to him. “But Hephaestus died.”
“Yes.” The sound is like a door closing. “And when he died, his work began fading. So, the body he made is failing…” Her eyes fix on him, those lovely eyes that are still flesh. “Physician, please, you must keep me in repair. Stall the Age.”
The chilly hand within John has a name now: helplessness. He shakes his head, slowly. He can hear how her breath catches. How she is steadily eroding within. Is it even right he should do what she asks? If he wasn’t in love with her, if he wasn’t in awe of what she was, would he want to?
“I don’t know if I can,” he says truthfully.
Her gaze widens. “You have never seen a Titan, Physician. You don’t know what they will do to the world.” Her voice softens, like the spent embers from a once-hot fire. “War and suffering … and I do not want to die.”
His head is in his hands, now, his thoughts a tumble. “A few weeks ago, all this was fantasy,” he says. “I did not believe in gods or Ages. I imagined men as machines … but not such as you are.”
When he looks up again, her face has composed, and he senses the ether coursing through her skin. Where her hands rest on him, he feels its tug. “You do not believe it,” she says. “Then I will show you.”
She drags him from the shop, barely able to collect his coat against the heavy chill which stalks the city like a beast waiting to swallow the sunrise. And suddenly, he knows she is taking him towards Terrance’s churchyard. They stop atop a broken cobble in a gas lamp’s shroud.
“There,” she says.
He looks and sees nothing different. The church, sleeping, its shingled roof and thrusting spire. The seminary slumped alongside. Somewhere in there dwells Terrance, but he knows not what she means. “I see nothing.”
“There.” She grips his hand and his gaze drags upwards.
“I still—” But he does. In the ether’s lens, he sees it. A tangle ringing the steeple top, coils and twists of thick sticks … no, not sticks. Wires. Metal shards. Coach suspension straps. And amongst it, he spies a beaked head, weaving. As they watch, the bird perches on the side of its savage nest, a tumbling vision of shimmering feathers, catching the first rays of dawn.
“Firebird,” hissed Aglaea. “When the Age ends, she will burn to ashes and rise again.”
He stares in wonder, the threads of these fantasies twisting into a knot he cannot unpick, not with his helpless hands. “Then what can you do?” he asks.
She glances around, and he has the sense he has felt many times before on his walks, of women in robes in the edges of shadows. Her face hardens, and in the hiss of her breath he hears Aphrodite, and from the beat of the ether in his skin, he knows she is speaking to someone else in ways he cannot hear.
The sunrise is complete before she answers his question. She does it with her hands on the sides of his face, her gaze imploring, pulling every string of his marionette heart. “You must repair me, Physician. And keep me hidden. The firebird has only a day to wait for the fire after it finishes its nest, or it will die and not rise again. Keep me safe until then.”
But an unease has planted itself in his senses, and nothing will shift it. His walks take him back to the church, not to Terrance, now, but to see the growing bower of the firebird, near complete. The robed figures are in his dreams now. They circle the store at night, and hot breath blows on the window panes. And the unrest seems to extend to everything else. Clouds rush across the sky, and the weather turns warm. People visiting his shop creep in, their voices soft. Word comes of fights in the streets, not just at the docks, but in Mayfair. For the first time, he takes down his hunting rifle and leans it by the door. And when a knock comes one evening, when Aglaea is in the grip of slumber after another repair, his eyes stroke that long, greased barrel and he wonders if a man with a bowler hat is on his step … or a beast with steaming breath.
It is neither.
A woman blocks the fading light, her coat golden, its hood drawn about her face. She is taller than he is, commanding. He feels a shudder, made of robed phantoms that stalk his moves.
“Who are you?” he demands, his eyes raking the dark for glowing eyes or bared teeth. The ether whispers a name to him, but he does not catch it.
“Admit me, Physician. I am not here to harm you. Or the Grace.”
His eyes settle on the golden snake circling her throat, and his limbs move against his will. He holds the door for her, then closes out the night. He follows her as she moves to the center of his floor, ringed with shelves and jars and powders. He feels her gaze as a measuring weight, assessing what he is worth.
“Why are you here?” he croaks.
“You must not protect her,” says the figure.
Rage sparkles within him, fanned by the helpless hand. “Do not tell me what to do.”
She sighs. “Your heart has been touched. It will not be easy. But you must let her go.”
“What do you know of it?” he demands.
She raises her hands, as if she is a merchant’s scale. “Only certainty. The Age will change, but not without the firebird. She must have the courage to face her fate.”
“Why does she have to die?”
The figure shakes her head. “Only she knows that, if she has looked. She should never have submitted to Hephaestus. He was nothing compared to her. Even the Olympians cannot see the future. It is a gift she has run from too long. And if I knew, I could not speak of it. Such is forbidden, for it changes the path.”
“Let them come for her, then,” he says, the bravado of his firearm infecting his words.
“She knows how to disguise herself, Physician. We can do nothing to intervene, and you should not either. Let this take its course.”
These words are like darts, with the same sharp tips Terrance’s arguments used to dig in his breast. His tongue moves to ask her again who she is, how she dares to come here, and how does she know this at all? But the ether whispers her name again, and this time he hears it. Athena. Justice. No doubt can be a cloak enough for her.
Athena nods, sadly. “Civilization is teetering, Physician. No one sees it coming. The firebird has nearly finished. If it dies without the fire, the world cannot be reborn and the Titans will crack it open.” She looks him up and down, and he feels as transparent as his powder jars. “You are not a man of faith, Physician, but you do not have to be. You have seen for yourself. Think on it, and swiftly.”
When she is gone, he climbs the stair to look on Aglaea. Whether the world is ending or not, his life will end when hers does. He rakes over these feelings like coals, again and again, feeling the bright hurts of possibilities lost.
He needs time to cure himself, before he can decide what to do.
Perhaps, in a day, he can do it.
He stalls
through the next turn of the sun, planning to lay this all before Aglaea when he closes. They will make a plan.
It all falls when the bowler-hat men break down his door. He has an instant to curse himself, for he has forgotten Kelvin amongst everything else.
“John Hector Battersby,” says one thug, with an even grin. “Lord Kelvin wants to speak with you. And your lady friend.”
John is too far from the rifle. “You have no authority,” he says, his knuckles white on his mortar’s edges.
“We don’t need any.”
Then John sees the figure trailing the men on the street. Terrance. His cowl pulled up, his countenance serene. And he sees how all this has played out. The things he has told Terrance, about Aglaea, about his own disgrace with Kelvin and the Society.
As they drag him outside, he hears their footsteps on his stairs, knows they will soon have Aglaea, too. He clutches at Terrance’s robes. “Why?” he hisses.
Terrance shakes him off, looks down his long nose with eyes of the wounded that say, Never ask a man to choose between another man and his God.
They take them to the Society, to a long thin room with a single window and a heavy door. Through the pane, he can see the church spire and the firebird, its work now complete under a slate-gray sky. A drum of thunder plays out across the heavens. He has the sense of events unraveling, now, and distant shouts of unsettled crowds. The room’s sputtering candle reveals Aglaea slumped beside him, both of them tied in their chairs.
For several hours, they are abandoned. He works fruitlessly at the knots as night descends, as Aglaea sinks towards mechanical death. She mutters about forges, about sleeping and waking transformed, of Aphrodite and of Artemis’s dogs. His senses scream to touch her, to find the fault that is turning her skin pale and blue. The ether brushes over him, turning his existence into a focused spot within a foggy dream. He realizes she isn’t speaking out loud. He can hear her in his head.
Lord Kelvin comes to inspect them, cheerful in his great coat, and opens Aglaea’s panels in a manner that drives John to dreams of his own, where he tears the man’s eyes out with his fingernails. And then worse. Kelvin notices her poor condition, and he brings two men in overalls, who haul her away.
He screams himself voiceless, but Kelvin, unmoved, takes the vacated chair and sits opposite, his steely eyes and commanding mouth both working. “Battersby,” he begins. “How did you do it?”
He refuses to answer.
Kelvin dabs his brow. “No matter. We will discover the secrets in time. You, on the other hand … the church will take care of you.”
The storm’s thunder rolls over them again. John tips his head to see the firebird outlined on the steeple. Ether crackles inside his skull. He can sense Aglaea, nearby. And others. The candle flickers and for a brief second, its flame splits in two.
“I care not for the church,” he says.
Kelvin snorts. “But many do. And they will see your name smeared in improperness. Your shop will be cast down. Unless …” He raises a gray brow.
Unless you give me your secrets. John hears the unspoken question in ether-speak. He knows he has none to give. He has been nothing in these events but a leaf caught in Aglaea’s eddy. A sadness settles inside him. No one will know what he has felt. Is it still noble? Does it still matter, even so?
But Kelvin doesn’t know this. With his last discipline, John affects a ponderous face. “Perhaps I can show you. Take me to her.”
They have her on a long surgeon’s table, machinists prodding about in her insides. This room’s windows are larger, and open onto the church. The storm grumbles. John’s feet seem slow to him, each step a minute’s passing. Ether sneaks about him, and his corner vision fills. They are all here, now. Robed figures, waiting for the end of the Age. He hears Kelvin’s boots behind him, but all he sees is Aglaea.
The machinists have run tubes, turning hand pumps to prolong her life. Her eyes are closed, her head tipped, but he feels her pain in the tug of her mouth, in the twist of his own heart.
This is not a way to live.
Kelvin is asking him questions, and he sees his chance. He steps close. His mouth is working, spilling lies about metalworking techniques, about things he saw in Hephaestus’s forge. But all he needs is to reach …
He gestures towards her pump, her silver ribcage, his heart breaking across the scale of rust and decay. His gaze fixes on the small tap below the blue-fire boiler. A collective breath draws, the ether pulls taut, the stormy sky roils. Forgive me, he thinks.
His fingers slip, then turn, and her blue-fire fuel slicks away. The boiler shudders, the wick blows out.
It seems to take forever as she holds on, but then the pump slows and ceases. Yelling. Kelvin’s men realize the demise. He feels a fist connect his jaw, driving his consciousness into momentary retreat. The floor is rushing up to meet him, but he never feels the impact.
Instead, he feels the pull. It’s the sensation of a rope within his hands, dragging him into the sea. Let it go. He hears Aglaea’s words again, but in Athena’s voice. And then he knows: it’s Aglaea who is streaming away, part of the ether herself. He feels himself rising, then looks down on his own body far below. Kelvin and the men are working, but Aglaea is gone; what remains only a machine.
And through the window, the sky looses a bolt, shattering the church spire. The lightning sets the firebird’s nest aflame.
Pandemonium.
He hears the monks erupt from their worship, the shouts from Kelvin and his men. And his own grip on the skyward pull slowly slips. Panicked, he feels Aglaea’s gentle touch on his shoulders, as it was in Hephaestus’s forge.
I am not dying, Physician.
But I am, he thinks. He can feel the tie to his body stretching tight, soon to fray and snap.
The Age is turning, she says. War is coming. And a time when the ether will drive the world. Let go, Physician. Live to see it.
He grasps for her hand. Feels the last touch of her skin, the last scent of the delicate oil. Then his mind loses grip.
When he comes to, he is in the churchyard, the spire ablaze on the last of twilight. Someone thrusts a pail into his fist and he ferries water like a machine himself. But the blaze is ferocious, and all through the night it consumes the church, pushing back any who come near. He watches, stunned, from the gas lamp post, the fire pushing away the cold blanket night. Until dawn when all that remains is lingering coals, and ash paler than snow.
He slumps before it in a daze, a thick tear unshed in his eye. A shadow falls, and he stares up at a tall, hooded woman, the snake necklace glowing in the pale light.
Physician.
He cannot assemble his thoughts. His voice is a croak, battered with night and loss. “She is gone.”
Not gone. Transformed. As she should have been.
He wipes his nose on his sleeve like a child. Transformed or lost, both the same and neither a comfort. Athena serves him the neutral smile, of justice, of things made right.
Remember you have touched the ether, Physician. You will see her again.
The air shifts, and he knows the goddess is gone. He hauls himself up on the lamp post. The sun is sneaking above the buildings, now. And against its bloom is a bird, rising, its feathers streaming fire.
Jack
West End, London, 1924
James Kelly’s boots had scarce touched English soil again before he found himself drenched in the gorrawful wailing Jazz that had so infected New York. The West End rain was doing its fair best to compete; yet the Jazz was winning, and spawning all manner of vain, painted, sleeveless forms dribbling about the pavement.
“Well, hey cutie, don’t you look the big cheese?”
James started with the horror of being snuck upon, and by one of the dribbles, a blue-eye painted harlot dripping pearls onto a filmy shift barely passing for an undergarment. Her scarlet red mouth gave him a sassy, tight-slipped smile. James shrugged his shoulders inside his suit-jacket, shifted his necktie a
s if he might just be taking directions. But he put his hand in his pocket, covering his valuables lest this whore try to lift them. He was a man given to judgments, which his own mother had not enjoyed and his late wife even less, but he remained self-assured in his disposition despite the places it had led. A man of sixty-four was quite entitled to whatever vice he wanted.
“I’m fine, thank you,” he said brusquely, and almost moved away but for the fact he had presently nowhere fixed to go. The harlot lifted her chin to the Jazz-infested club growing up from the foundations behind her. James supposed she was an employee, walking the curb to bring in the business.
“You in for some hooch, baby? Play a little snuggle pot?” she suggested, winking, and undeterred. She had an American accent. She lit a cigarette, and had eyes like a cat in the match-strike.
James certainly could use a drink, the chief reason for his return from the States where prohibition was tiresome for a man partial to both scotch and High Morals. He’d avoided the East End, because he’d known and hated it before going across the Atlantic. He was not policeman or priest, but his mind walked a narrow road. He did not frequent the houses of whores, he made his opinion known on the subject. But he was somehow drawn to moral corruption, as if to see how close he could dance to the fire before it caught him alight. He was a man with a powder keg core, but his fuse length was different every time. And that was part of the allure.
He wavered, and looked towards the club, at the slip-clad bodies hanging out of windows and dancing masses in splattered half-light. The place was cast in the New York speakeasy mold, but legal in prohibition-spared London. Again, he scrutinized the harlot from her dark bob and no-teeth smile, all the way down her slender bangle-ringed arms that finished in deep red nails.
“Hooch?” she whispered coyly, knowing him more plainly than he would admit. That got his fuse started.
“Alright,” he said stiffly.
“Follow me,” she said, leading him into the fray.