I looked back again and saw the fungi swarming about Sala. She flash-fried clumps of them with gouts of jade fire. Albertus cast away his spent rifle and drew his sabre. He had chosen a grim face of iron for this journey, and his opticals gleamed red as blood in their deep sockets. It was a demons’ face. A face made for killing. A mask sculpted to defy the dangers of any given Affinity. On stage Albertus was a master thespian, but long before he joined the Rude Mechanicals he had been a great warrior. Now and again he told us tales of ancient wars, and the horrid slaughter of battles long forgotten by the Urbille.
Watching him skewer and hack at the flying beasts, I realized he was still very much a warrior. This gave me hope that Harmona and I would still be ourselves after Conversion. Our love would endure the loss of our Organic bodies as Albertus’s warrior spirit had endured Beatification.
Beyond the pair of obelisks the dusty road stretched on through the bleak wasteland. One by one our company ran between the pylons and disappeared from sight, shunting through the invisible vertical plane of the porte. They had already arrived in the next adjacent Affinity. When the steam carriage finally rolled through, nearly half our number had already passed over.
Harmona and I raced toward the porte. Only a few more steps to go. Behind us one of the fungus creatures attached itself to Chancey’s head, its tendrils writhing about his face and ears, seeking any entry to his brain. It was difficult for the beasts to pierce a Beatific’s metal skull, but Chancey’s bone skull would give way far easier. Brix pulled his dagger and sliced at the creature. Black gore rained across Chancey’s head and shoulders, but the creature released him. It fell to the ground squirming and bleeding. Brix and Chancey ran toward the porte while Specious stomped the wounded thing into the dirt.
Skiptrain fired his ancient pistol, thunder exploding from his raised fist. Harmona and I plunged through the porte. The sounds of battle ceased instantly as the fabric of etheric reality contorted for one brief second — no sound, no gravity, no heat or cold, only a gulf of eternal nothingness that could smother us like tiny flames beneath a tidal wave. Then it was over, and we stood on the other side of the porte.
Chilling rain spattered our faces as we kept running. The steam carriage rolled on before us. The road stretched gray and shining like a serpent’s back across the flat ground. A forest of shaggy willows rose on either side of the Lesser Thoroughfare. Rainwater dripped from hanging branches, stirring ripples in pools of blackish slime.
“Wonderful,” Harmona said. “Another swamp…”
She had wanted to take the Great Thoroughfare. We had endured one unpleasant Affinity after another, and there seemed no end to them. The main road would have been far easier, but Sala had insisted we avoid the highwayman’s path at all cost. I trusted her decision, even if it meant trudging through a series of hellish landscapes. The Urbille lay somewhere ahead of us, and that’s all that mattered. That, and Harmona’s hand in mine.
They came through behind us: Sala, Albertus, and Skiptrain, the last to arrive. The fungi would not follow through the porte. Such creatures abhored the spaces between the worlds. Rarely would any threat follow a caravan through the portes. The trick was surviving long enough to reach the next pair of pylons. We had done well enough so far.
“Did everyone make it?” Sala asked. The gears inside her chest popped and creaked as her interior cogs slowed to their regular speed. The opticals behind her gold-and-ivory face stared through the rain as she counted our numbers. She nodded. The steam carriage had stopped to wait for us. The quartet of Organics gathered about the green flame atop Sala’s staff, huddled like moths about a guttering gaslight. We had gone instantly from dry, scorching day to shivering in the cold, wet night. Such extremes were common when moving between Affinities. Beyond the tops of the willow trees constellations of strange stars lay hidden behind the scudding black clouds.
“Set up the big tent,” Sala said. “We’ll camp here until morning. Perhaps the rain will stop by then.”
“I don’t like the look of this place,” said Albertus. He peered into the gloom of the marshland. Whatever looked back at us from the sodden wilderness must have surely trembled before his killer’s face.
“Oh, let’s take the Lesser Thoroughfare,” Specious said. “It’ll save us from the horrible Surgeon…” The opticals in his aluminum face rolled with a mocking expression, and his fingers wiggled in a parody of fear.
“The highwayman is real,” Skiptrain said. “And it was Sala’s decision.”
“Right,” said Specious. He removed his face and wiped a spatter of fungal gore from its surface. His naked silver skull gleamed dully in the glow of his opticals. He replaced his face and trundled off to help set up the tent.
An hour later we had achieved some little comfort. The rain pattered on the canvas roof. We four set in a circle about a small fire that Chancey had built to warm our skins. The Organics formed an inner circle at the center of the greater one. The Beatifics didn’t need a fire’s warmth. At that moment I envied their durable bodies, so immune to fatigue, cold, and hunger. It wasn’t the first time I envied them so. Harmona shivered, so I pulled her closer.
Brix stirred a pot of stew over the flames. Our four bellies growled. The Beatifics spoke among themselves, deciding on the details of future performances, while the Organics ate quietly in their midst. We drank rainwater caught in tin cups. It was cold but satisfying, perfect compliment to the hot stew. I felt the food warm my guts in a pleasant way, and that warmth spread into my arms and legs. I would miss the sensation when it was no longer possible or necessary to eat.
“Are you looking forward to it?” Harmona whispered after the meal. Her head lay against my left shoulder.
“You mean Beatification?” I asked.
“What else?”
“Of course,” I said. “Every child of the Urbille dreams of his Conversion Day.”
“True enough,” she said. Her hot breath warmed my neck. “But most children do not get to see the things we’ve seen or go to the places we have been.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. Only you matter to me, I thought, but didn’t say it.
“It does!” she said, pulling gently away. She stared into my opticals. Hers were full of dancing flamelight and sparkling wetness. I had grown addicted to staring at those lovely opticals. They would change — we would change — as all things must.
But we would change together.
“I know,” I told her. “I know.” I squeezed her hands in mine.
She smiled at me. I saw sorrow in the smile.
“You say the kindest things.” She would have kissed me then, I sensed it, but we were surrounded by the Beatifics. It would have been too brazen, too insulting to merge our flesh when they could see us doing it. The rain fell from the upper dark, and we had no idea what lay beyond our ring of firelight. There was no chance of sneaking off to cuddle and conjoin tonight.
“Are you frightened?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “But also excited. We’ll be Rude Mechanicals.”
“We already are,” I said.
“No, we’re apprentices. As long as we wear this flesh that is all we can be.”
She was right. “That is the custom. Who are we to deny it?”
She nuzzled her cheek against my arm. “Will you still love me when we no longer share this wonderful weakness?”
“Yes,” I said. I meant it.
We lay down on one side of the fire, Brix and Chancey on the other. About us the Rude Mechanicals sang and whispered and chattered all night, keeping their opticals on the dark swamp that engulfed us. Some practiced soliloquies or traded lines at the edge of camp. I fell asleep with Harmona in my arms.