Dirigible (part 9)

There are no more shots. Perhaps the glider’s pilot thinks he’s hit her. It tells her something: first of all, they don’t want the dirigible to crash. If they did, there are more efficient ways than sending a glider pilot with a gun.

Secondly, they’re after a passenger. No bullets have entered the passenger cabin, and the angle of the shot means that none of them could.

Engaging the autopilot has caused the craft to resume course. Patrishia mutters a curse. If she’d set the new destination before engaging manual control, the Phoebus would continue the way she’s been guiding it. But she engaged the manual first.

Shit. They’re on their way to the Spokane moorage now, just as originally planned. If she survives the rest of the morning she’ll get to offer two completely different explanations of her fuckup to two completely different groups of people. If she survives.

A shadow moves at the passenger cabin entrance.

A Night Out, part 3

He has to make an effort. Both to remember the directions, and to keep them private. There is no intuitive knowledge of which way to go, no arrow blinking at the periphery of his vision to remind him if he misses a turn. Instead there’s this:

“Walk to the third spiral and take it down six levels.”

The spiral is an extension of the slidewalk. Taking it down six levels is dizzying; most people would ride a bubble instead. But he’s been told to take the spiral, and since he doesn’t know where he’s going, he can’t plot an alternate route.

Probably deliberate.

“Follow the slidewalk on that level for half a mile, past the maglev station.” Half a mile. Who the hell still talks in miles? Who the hell still thinks in them? But he knows exactly how many steps it is, and when he reaches the last one there’s an alley on the left and he turns down it.

It’s dark and it’s quiet. Even the ambient is a muted buzz, as though nothing and no one has ever noticed this place and nothing and no one ever will.

He could die here and no one would know.

He keeps walking.

Showdown

“Are you ready?” he says. He stands behind her, just as he always has. This has been them, for over half their lives. Only the circumstances have changed.

“No,” she says. It’s dark in here, within the gate. Safe. As long as they are prisoners they are still alive. Out there the day is bright, the sand of the killing ground glowing in the sunlight like fire. “But would I ever be?”

He nods against her hair.

She turns to face him, swallowing her breath before it can become a sob. She does not care if he sees her tears, but the multitude out there will not.

“Whatever happens, remember,” she says. This will probably make things worse, but she must say it. “Remember that it was not your fault.”

The beasts snarl, on the killing ground. She readies her sorceries, so familiar, so practiced. So much less than they are reputed to be.

“I love you,” she says, and walks into the sun.

Sundown, part 8

Part 7.

Ultimately she’s glad to be far enough away that she can’t see what’s going on terribly clearly. A vampire birth is horrific to watch, and hearing it isn’t much better. Accounts of the experience from those who’ve gone through it are rare; not because vampires aren’t willing to talk about it, but because the few Cassandra has gotten to speak rather than immediately attempt to kill her claim not to remember.

She stays well back through all of it, and the subsequent caretaking, which she finds disgusting for entirely different reasons. It’s hard not to twitch, hard not to make a sound.

She holds still.

The return to their lair is slower than their travel to this place: the new vampire will have trouble controlling its balance and movement for several hours. They surround it in a loose ring, on guard now, wary.

She could take that as a compliment, but mostly she finds it aggravating.

Shattered Temples, part 9

With every step she thinks how she should turn around and go back home. Even as the moment past which she cannot be home before dark passes by, with no discernible change in the world around her, as though she has not just done a most momentous thing.

She has never stayed out overnight in the Wild before. Not alone. With her father, yes, when they go hunting together in the valleys near the farmstead. But she has never been this far west even with him. She does not even know where the campsites are, and which sheltered places she may safely stay in and which are the abodes of mountain cats. Or wolves. Or even possums or raccoons.

She keeps walking.

She keeps walking because if she stops, she will be so paralyzed with fear that she will not be able to start walking again.

The sun sinks behind the green, rounded mountains before her. The air begins to grow cool.

Traveler’s Tale: Kerameikos

She thinks she’s going back to her hotel. It would make sense. Take some all-around images of whatever’s in the package, send them back to HQ, arrange to ship the thing itself and then go enjoy the rest of her day. This is far from the strangest assignment she’s ever been sent on, but it strikes her as borderline useless, and she hates wasting her time.

But then her feet carry her past the hotel. Past an art shop with a giant oil painting of a pomegranate, past a courtyard cafe, past a babble of languages from all over the Mediterranean and the world. Past archaeological sites left bare and open to passing tourists, their bones bleaching in the sun.

Past a bus station, down a sidewalk, to the entrance to yet another archaeological site, still with the burlap-wrapped package under her arm.

She knows the name of the place: Kerameikos, ancient cemetery lining an equally ancient sacred road.

She does not know why.

Tales from the Keyring: Brand New Key

There are 24 magical doors in Mr. Parsons’s house. Each one has its key.

When I started working here, there were 23.

I came into work one morning and when I opened the front door, I immediately noticed a green, glowing mist covering the floor. It’s the kind of thing you notice, you know.

So I asked the butler what was going on, because George always knows, and he said Mr. Parsons was opening a new door.

“It’s not going well,” he confided, with a hand next to his mouth. By then I’d learned that Mr. Parsons is, at best, an indifferent magician, though he makes up in meticulousness what he lacks in talent. “Best not to bother him. It only makes him flustered.”

And I wouldn’t have, except he came running into the library half an hour later, asking for a reference book on metallic properties. Now his library is a large one, taking up more space than, strictly speaking, fits inside the house, but the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics is not among our holdings. It took me awhile to find a copy–and in fact, I ended up going down the road a ways to Smith College, and photocopying the necessary pages from their print edition, as computers don’t work reliably in Mr. Parsons’s house and don’t even ask about the Internet.

When I got back, the mist had filled the house and was making everyone cough and choke, with watering eyes. Trudy, the housekeeper, was shouting that Mr. Parsons should have lined up what he needed ahead of time, and how was she ever to get the smell out of the curtains?

I gave him the pages and went out to the garden, where there was nothing to smell but herbs and apple trees.

It was midafternoon when he joined me, holding out a plain stainless steel key that sparkled in the sun.

“There it is,” he said. “Brand-new key to the 24th door.”

I made a joke about roller skates, but I don’t think he got it.

The most important moment of that night

It’s a walk on a beach after dark, a damp winter night with a hint of spring.

They have walked in silence for over a mile.

She stops him. “Look. It’s a heron.”

“What?” Just that. “What?”

“Right there, at the edge of the water. See?”

“Oh.”

There is a long pause, then.

“Let’s go home.”

Drop (Through the chain-linked gate, part 9)

She watches as the cat passes through. Its movement is relaxed; clearly it has forgotten all about her. But she stays perfectly still until it has passed through the cat door and the flap has stopped swinging. It could still get up here, if it sees her.

After considering the envelopes and the paper bag in equal measure, she takes the latter and unfolds it. It won’t catch much air, but with her injured wing every bit helps.

She has the bag mostly unfolded when the air in the room moves with the entrance of something huge. She freezes again, the bag in her hands, staring.

A human woman is standing in front of the desk, staring back at her.

Last Time with Paris

“I know you think it’s complicated. You’re being offered these dreams, wealth and wisdom and power beyond imagining. I can see their offers in your eyes. You’re taken by the glamour of it, and believe me, I understand. I’ve seen it before.

“So what do I offer? Only my advice. You are being asked to choose beauty. Instead, choose desire. Which of us can give you what you truly want?

“Empires? You never cared for anything beyond your own mountain until the Queen of Heaven set stars in your eyes. Wisdom? Of what wisdom does a shepherd dream?

“But love? What young man does not want love?

“Ah. I told you I understood.”

–

Let’s play a love game, play a love game
Do you want love or do you want fame?