Page 81

(A veil.)

Squeezing back past the projector, set up on the compartment’s tiny side table, I watched “my” hands travel up past my face, then peel the occlusion free from my head on down, like shedding skin. The image immediately sharpened overall, lightened, though only slightly. The bulk of it fell sidelong, topped with the flat, broad-brimmed beekeeper’s hat it’d swung from, trailing over the closest disused row of seats.

There was one further, small pause, time enough to wonder if “I”—this memory-movie’s unseen protagonist—might be nerving herself up for something. Then, all at once, the gloves reached out once more, snapping a series of switches; the clacking, whirring sound of a film reel kicking into motion, rattling gears mimicking the train wheels below as light splashed against the haphazard sheet-screen in a blaze. And underneath: harsh breathing on the ragged edge of sobs. It rose over the camera’s whir, keeping a gross sort of time.

Don’t look, I thought, as though I had a choice. I’m not going to look, I won’t—

But the real laugh of it was there was nothing there to see. Not immediately.

(In the field, when she came, I kept my eyes closed. My first sin, in a long line of them.)

Just darkness at first, close and hot as the train itself, muffled somehow—only the barest lines of light available to become gradually arching upwards, outwards, the veins of two crossed leaves. A tiny, uneven triangle near the top, centre-hung—a sort of upside-down diamond. But watch long enough (you couldn’t not, I soon found), and things got ever more recognizable, in tiny increments. The lines thickened, greying, back lit flesh over bone. Ten fingers separating with slow discomfort, reluctant, as though under orders; that flesh diamond stretching, breaking open, wider, wider, wider: Hell’s own peep-hole, framing an uprooted, alien world. To show, at last—

A denuded field, bare to the tree line. Dust on the horizon. Ash from a burned-out barn.

Humps of clothing, some hugged together, burnt and swollen faces turned away. Flies rising, probably buzzing, though the lack of sound made it hard to tell.

And bright, so bright, but . . . slanted, somehow. Not lit so much by the still-noontime sun above, burning stationary at its centremost point—the time between the minute and the hour, according to Dzèngast’s long-dead Kantorka—as by something located just off-screen and widdershins, on the sinister left-hand side.

Cameras stayed stationary in the earliest films, but this was memory, no matter the trappings. And Mrs. Whitcomb . . . Iris Dunlopp . . . Giscelia Wròbl . . .

Her head was already moving, even as her hands dropped. Swinging ’round, eyes slightly squinted, to finally see, to face—

The sword, and its bearer. That burning crown. That molten hair, falling to brush those bare, brass-nailed feet. That face—too beautiful to not stare at, yet almost too bright to perceive clearly, without threat of damage. That looming body, silver-white shrouded and figured all over with white-hot gold, a slice of sun itself.

This, this was the real thing, obviously. Real enough to wound. Real enough to tear the wall between worlds like flesh.

Light roared through the gap, a blinding torrent. “I” threw up my hands—sheer instinct—before forcing them and “myself” back down, to one knee. From somewhere, a word came:

Lady.

Nothing remotely feminine—or even human—in the massive force glaring at “me” through that awful gap, so the term rang both hollow and foolish, like calling a volcano “Sweetheart.” Yet it was all “I” had, and apparently, it was enough to merit a reply.

(daughter)

At the sound of it, so killing-soft, so—deplorable, equally bruising to the ears as its speaker was to her own eyes, brain, soul—I felt Mrs. Whitcomb reel, momentarily deafened, almost passing out. Then she pulled herself straight again, still kneeling, and repeated:

Lady, please. I beg you.

So terrible, to be under a god’s eye, her attention. To be pierced through, pinned, like an insect.

(daughter of liska, daughter of handrij, I see you, yes)

(I know your name)

(what would you ask of me? what would you)

(offer)

Not quite so overwhelming, this time, but still a skull-rattling cacophony, still utterly soulless. You know, “I” cried back at her. My son, Hyatt. That he be here, or I be there, with him. I no longer care which.

(ah, but that cannot be)

(he does his duty)

(poor broken thing, gone to feed the earth, and happily)

(knowing, at last, he has a purpose)