by Ken Altabef
She wanted to die.
She lay face-down on the ground for a long time, sobbing into the grass.
And then, after a while, she wanted to live.
She couldn’t think any more. She didn’t want to. Dresdemona stood up and wiped the tears from her eyes. Then she walked along the grassy sward, following a gentle decline toward a wide copse of tall trees. Beyond the tree line she could see nothing. The trees were dark and foreboding with dried, brown leaves. She’d never seen anything like them before. They seemed half dead. She felt a chill, dressed only in her short gossamer gown, and the flimsy soles of her dancing shoes did little to protect against the rocky landscape. She stopped to pick some wild berries and mushrooms but wondered how she would survive, alone and unprepared, in this new environment.
Toward dusk she came upon a group of men huddled at a makeshift campsite in a small clearing. A trio of horses were tethered nearby. She crept closer. The smell of roasting rabbit made her stomach growl. If there were some way to steal a little of the food…
A snapped twig gave her away.
“Who’s there?” barked one of the men. The others scrambled for their rifles. The men looked grim and determined. Their gaze scoured the trees. Dresdemona did not think she’d have much success in trying to flee. There were too many dried leaves cluttering the ground to give her footfalls away. And the allure of the roasting rabbit was too great. Thinking quickly, she put on a glamour to resemble their clothing—a long red coat with a gold sash, white leggings and a tall black hat—and took the appearance of a serious young man.
“Come out! Come out here now!”
She stepped confidently from the brush. She did not feel confident.
“Who are you?”
“Just a traveler.” Dresdemona spoke English as well as any of the denizens of fabled Avalon, but she still came off with a foreign accent that must have sounded strange to the men.
“A spy, more like!” roared the officer.
“Look at ‘is uniform, Lieutenant,” said another. “Blue cuffs an’ collars. He’s from the 8th Regiment of Foot. That’s our patrol.”
“I don’t recognize him,” said the lieutenant. “Here. Now. Let’s see your papers.”
Dresdemona could produce the image of papers but had no idea what they should look like or what they must say. She gave the illusion of digging a small folded linen sheet from her coat pocket.
The officer grabbed her wrist and gave it a cruel twist. He took a glance at the blank linen sheet and concluded, “Fakes! He’s one of King Louis’ scuzzbags no doubt.”
“Grab him!”
The redcoat swung for Dresdemona’s jaw but, as she had made herself appear a grown man over six feet tall and was really only a slight girl of fourteen, his fist whizzed through empty air. The heft of the misplaced swing threw the man completely off balance and he toppled on top of her. The sudden thump spoiled Dresdemona’s glamour and the soldier cried out, “A blight!” He grabbed for her throat.
Dresdemona twisted out of his grasp, ran a few steps and then leapt across the campfire. She did a cartwheel and vaulted atop one of the horses. She flogged its flank but the beast only snorted and refused to abandon its rightful master. As the men struggled to catch up, she rolled off the reverse side and hid down in the grass. She used a green glamour to disguise herself. The men cursed and complained, tromping about the place as Dresdemona held her breath, and then settled again around the fire. Dresdemona waited until well after nightfall to make good her escape.
Over the next few months she wandered up and down the English coast. She posed as a child but encountered men who wanted to do her harm; she posed as a grown woman but still encountered men that wanted to do her harm. Her attempts to control people with the gladdrun mostly fell short. She needed more practice. She posed as a farm hand for a time but the work was too hard and the beatings too severe. Hoping for better luck in the city, she made her way toward Cornwall, living on the streets, a shadowy thief in the night. If she could work her magic on men of substance…
But she never got the chance. The closer she got to the cities the more she encountered the cruel evidence of the Purge. Faeries hung in gibbets by the roadside, dead and rotting in their cruel iron cages.
For a time she posed as a young orphan girl and travelled with a wrinkled old woman on a rickety cart going from market to market selling colored yarn and other scraps of fabric. Dresdemona put on the glamour of an ugly girl and affected one withered useless arm. She’d found this disguise afforded her the proper balance of pity while also keeping men’s unwanted advances away. The old woman’s teenaged grandson still made amorous advances toward her, though Dresdemona doubted their sincerity. She dampened the youth’s impulses by way of the gladdrun, using the scent Oggdon had taught her to make herself irresistible but in the reverse. She still hadn’t mastered the technique but found it was much easier to cause repulsion than desire.
As their cart pulled into a farmer’s market in Chowdrey one day they were stopped by a squadron of the local constabulary. The officers thrust a sprig of St. John’s wort under the old woman’s nose. She waved them away. “Aah, go-wan!” she spat. “Get away with yeselves.”
But when the odious root approached Dresdemona she suddenly began to feel weak and dizzy.
“Eh! There’s one turned to the green!”
Her glamour had slipped.
“She’s green all right!”
Before she knew anything more they’d grabbed her and yanked her out of the cart. A circlet of fresh garlic was thrown around her neck. She felt ill. The men were screaming at her. “Blight! Nixie! Filthy cradle-robber!”
They locked her up in an iron cage and hung it from a stout pole in the center of the market. Dresdemona sat there day after day, exposed to the elements as winter clawed closer, quietly sobbing as she faced the jeers and taunts of the townsfolk. She was given no food except the rotten vegetables that splattered against the bars of the cage after being thrown up at her. She felt constantly ill and her only solace came as she perversely tried to aim her vomit down at some uniformed officer below. After a few days the unrelenting thirst was the worst of it. She grew weaker and weaker until she felt they must soon let her die. So this is how it ends, she thought over and over. Sitting in my own filth in a cage. This is how it ends.
Then one morning the cage was lowered and opened.
“Come along then.”
“What for?” she asked, her voice a dry rasp through cracked lips.
“Good news! Today’s your trial day, lassie. Step lively now.”
She knew what the trial meant; she’d witnessed a few of these travesties from her high perch in her cage. A faery was bound to a whipping post in the market and cold iron was used to burn their skin over and over, thus determining their guilt as a faery spy. Of course there never had been any doubt, most of them were too weak by that stage to even disguise their appearance.
And neither did Dresdemona bother wasting energy with a glamour. She was bound to the post, plain-faced, pointy-eared and all. The front of her shift was torn down, exposing her bare breasts to the crowd. This type of indignity did not even register on her any more. She feared only the cold steel.
Two guardsmen stepped forward. One was a middle-aged man with a wide, faery-hating grin on his face, the other a serious-looking young fellow. The older man hefted a long iron rod and waved it menacingly in front of Dresdemona’s nose, playing to the jeering crowd. The young man drew his rapier and whipped it through the air. He jabbed the point at the base of Dresdemona’s neck with extreme accuracy, providing just a feather touch without pricking the skin.
“Don’t bother with the steel, boy,” said the older man. “The iron’s the thing. Burns their skin right away, it does. Great fun, great fun. I want to hear this one scream.”
“I prefer the steel. It’s quicker.”
“Well, I don’t like it! You hear?”
The young man spun round and shoved the rapier
straight into the older man’s chest at the point of the heart. “I’m sure you don’t,” he quipped.
In a flash he leapt above the whipping post, coming down on the reverse side. Dresdemona felt her bonds slacken and drop away.
“Threadneedle,” the man whispered in her ear.
She fell to her knees. “What?”
“Threadneedle, that’s my name.” He hauled her up. “Come on now. Have you strength enough to put on one more glamour?”
“I don’t…”
“You have to,” he shouted over the clang of alarm bells. “Come on.”
Dresdemona took the form of a nondescript young farm girl wearing a plain brown house dress, a common sight in the crowded market place.
“Splendid,” said Threadneedle.
“Where… shall we go?”
“My place.”
Chapter 10
“All right, all right,” said James. “Let us settle down. It’s like a room full of children in here.”
The half dozen Changed Men in the room paid him little attention. One man stood atop the table stomping his foot perilously close to their Sunday dinner. Another was turning cartwheels in the small room, repeatedly crashing into anyone nearby.
Some of the Changed Men were green-skinned, some blue, others had long pointed noses and ears, others had developed doe’s feet or goat’s horns. All were servants of the Grayson family who had been caught out on the courtyard several years ago when the monstrous Chrysalid arrived. The Chrysalid, an ancient being believed to be responsible for the genesis of faeries on the Earth long ago, had eventually been banished by James’ parents, but not before altering the poor souls who had witnessed the event, leaving them in various hybrid states of human and faery. Gregory Hardison was one of the worst afflicted. He’d been saddled with a pair of large round owl’s eyes of yellow and black, and a beard of thorny brambles. He seemed particularly agitated tonight, circling the room, darting in and out of every corner, as if chasing imaginary mice.
“Alright, everyone off the table or there’ll be no dinner. I mean it!” James chased Sergio Amanes away from the food, but had no real way to quell the rest of the bedlam. It had long been his habit to take Sunday dinner with the Changed Men as, tucked away beneath Barrow Downes, they had very little other interaction with the outside world.
“Roderigo,” James said, “Can’t you do something?”
Roderigo could no longer speak, considering his nose and mouth had been warped into something akin to a dog’s muzzle. His beard more resembled a nest of twigs than human hair, and his skin had the brown, mottled texture of old wood. He nodded his head vigorously and rushed out of the room.
Sergio Amanes approached James, staring at him as if he’d never seen him before and thought his face particularly interesting. He came forward until standing uncomfortably close. “The Moon says hello,” he said. The Chrysalid had turned his skin a muddy green, turned his nose at a near right angle and sadly twisted his mind as well.
“What?”
“The Moon! I went up last night. It called to me and I went outside. I saw the open sky, the stars. My daughter was there too, dancing in a circle.”
“Perhaps, you were dreaming,” James replied. “I don’t think your daughter was here last night.”
Sergio gasped as if someone had just died right before his eyes. “I saw her. I see her every night. Every night. The Moon brings her. That’s what it is. The Moon talks to me all the time. He’s a very kind fellow.”
“The Moon is a man?” asked James. This was the first time he’d heard that one.
“No, not a man,” said Sergio. “He’s a walrus! I’ve seen him. A big glowing airship in the shape of a walrus!”
“Airship.” That was a new one also. James was spared from further nonsense just then as Roderigo returned with his harp and began to strum a calming tune. In all his years Roderigo had never shown the slightest aptitude for music, but after the change his fingers had become quite eloquent and his troubled mind found solace in composing beautiful songs. His music slowly calmed the raucous group, and James hoped he might actually seat them for dinner in another minute or two. He paused to listen as well. Quite often he and Roderigo would play duets with James struggling to keep up with him on the violin. James could not match the Changed Man’s wild creativity and ability to convey deep emotion with just a few key notes.
Roderigo ended his song with a flourish and James urged the others into their seats. There was a footprint in the bowl of mashed potatoes but James stirred it away. He took it upon himself to slice the ham.
“Gotcha!” roared Hardison. He returned from a corner of the room just in time to ruin everyone’s appetite, his owl eyes flung wide, a limp mouse clutched in his jaws, a trickle of blood at his chin. After a chorus of assorted groans and complaints, he sat in his place, suddenly embarrassed, and took the mouse form his mouth. He tucked it underneath one of his thighs.
“The vicar,” James announced, doling out the mash, “has urged me to bring some of you fine gentlemen to Sunday services. He worries over the state of your immortal souls. I think it a noble idea, but there’s going to have to be a certain amount of decorum maintained in the—”
“I have to get out!” screamed Sergio. He leapt up from his chair. His eyes had gone wild and crazy in his green face. “I can’t stand it any more, you hear? I have to get out. Out!”
He tore at his skin with his fingernails, scoring both his cheeks with rough red lines.
“Hold him!” said James. Two men grabbed his arms but Sergio possessed the strength of the mad and shook them off.
“He means to hurt himself,” said Hardison.
“I know.”
James had only one option, to open his mind and try to link with Sergio and soothe his suffering. This was a procedure he had used with the Changed Men many times before, especially with the often-troubled Sergio. It usually helped to settle him temporarily.
He motioned for the others to hold Sergio down on the floor and took up a place opposite. He placed his hands on Sergio’s cheeks, his face quite close, engaging his eyes. James opened up his mind and the rest was easy; Sergio’s troubled spirit lashed out at him. James stood firm, holding the thrashing mind of his friend at bay.
“Let me help you, Sergio,” he whispered into the link. “Trust me.”
Sergio’s tormented soul collapsed at his words, falling into total disarray like a grieving widow collapses at the foot of her husband’s casket. His thoughts were thrown open to James, but James knew he must tread carefully. Wandering clumsily through a disturbed mind could cause more harm than good. He fixated on the source of the trouble. Sergio’s daughter.
Sergio had last seen his daughter the day before the change, ten years ago when he’d still been living in Graystown. A family table, the pleasant face of his wife, the youthful excitement of his wonderful daughter. An embrace, a kiss on the cheek. A smile. Sergio did not seem to understand that ten years had passed, his daughter grown now to maturity and—oh, yes—he did understand that. His daughter was to be wed. The banns had been posted for her at the parish church in Graystown. Sergio knew. He was losing his daughter just as he had lost the past ten years. Just as he had lost so many things. Now it all came bubbling to the surface— the loss of family, the crazy impulses, the constant sense of panic, the terrible loss of control. “I’m not a man,” Sergio whined. “My humanity is gone. Gone.”
This, James knew, was the long-suffering lament of the Changed Men.
“It’s going to be alright,” he said, smoothing the ripples in Sergio’s mind as best he could. “Trask will find a cure. You just have to be patient, my friend.”
Sergio drifted down to sleep and James released the link. He smoothed a few stray strands of hair away from Sergio’s distorted face. Not good enough, he thought, but it’s the best I can do. If only Trask could come up with something more permanent. But the alchemist had been working at the problem for over a year already and progr
ess was slow in coming.
Chapter 11
“Some things just can’t be allowed,” Theodora said. “We’ve got to make it clear to them. They can’t just go wherever they want, anytime they want.”
“I know,” Moonshadow said softly. She took Theodora’s hand as they entered the lift at the base of Everbright’s newest tower, an elegant spire bordering Seelie Park. The Municipal Building was the tallest structure in all of Everbright, already stretching six stories high. The faeries had never had a municipal building before. They’d never needed one.
“I’m sure we can work something out,” Moonshadow added. “Let’s hear what Eccobius has to say. He usually has a reasonable solution to these sorts of problems.”
The lift was a square wooden cage not more than five feet across. Theodora gave Moonshadow an inquiring glance to be sure they were both ready and Moonshadow returned a curt nod. Theodora released the starter catch. The lift operated via a system of counterweights designed by Eccobius himself. Somewhere far above, at the rear of the structure’s mechanism, a massive chunk of granite began to fall. The cage lurched and shot straight upward. The two passengers turned to the open face of the cage to enjoy a breathtaking aerial view of the garden park as the lift rocketed skyward.
The city gleamed below them, bright morning light glancing off white stone buildings, crystal fountains and arched alcoves topped with garden ledges. The main core of Everbright, with its vast central park and its shifting streets and avenues, was surrounded at its farthest reaches by a deep trench. The trench was a work in progress, meant someday to be supplied by a series of freshwater wells extending below the water table. When finished it would become a deep watery moat, a time-honored and effective barrier to intrusion. There was talk also, spoken only in hushed tones beneath Barrow Downes, that Moonshadow might cast a spell to enable the entire city to submerge into the moat in the event of an emergency. But for now, the moat was nothing more than a rugged ditch, a jagged scar gouged out of the red clay of Northern England.