Only a droplet touched her tongue. In disbelief, she tapped it against her lips, then inspected it more closely.
The vial had been emptied.
Perfidious fire witch!
Too late, Paytim’s betrayal grew plain: she had insisted that Saloona come along solely to make use of her prism ship and steal her share of the Antidote, doubling her own protection. At this moment, she would be stealing another conveyance outside, while her naive neighbor perished from Paytim’s treachery. Desperately, Saloona sucked at the crystal tube, attempting to absorb some particle of resistance before she succumbed to the Black Peal.
But even now a new and haunting tune replaced the melancholy note. Fairy horns and tambours, flutes and sonorous oblelloes joined a bolero that swelled and quickened then died away, only to resume in a frenzied, even brutal, cadence. Saloona stumbled toward the room’s perimeter, as around her dazed revelers batted fretfully at the air and stumbled past each other, like children playing Find Your Lady.
“Variana! Oh fair Variana, what betrayal is this?”
“Never shall I part from you, Capiloso, you have my heart.”
“Essik Longstar, oh my poor sweet child…”
The air rang with wrenching cries: all mistook the living for those long dead. The music dissolved, only to return, with renewed and clamorous vigor. Mothers lamented slain children; betrayed lovers gouged their own cheeks and breasts. Janissaries rent their livery and grappled, mistaking colleagues for adulterous sweethearts, and Saloona paused in her ill-timed departure.
She knew this wild lullaby—surely it had been sung to her in her cradle? She hesitated, and her feet began to pick out a series of complex steps upon the tiled floor.
Yet some speck of the Ubiquitous Antidote still moved within her. She kicked the unwieldy silver-toed mules from her feet and fought her way to the wall. There she paused for breath, and gazed about the atrium for sign of Paytim Noringal.
The fire witch had disappeared. On the royal dais, groping masquers surrounded the King, who stood with mouth agape as though to catch the cascading notes upon his tongue. Trills and subtle drumbeats, a twanging volley of zithers and bandores, sweet mandols and violones—all swelled to a deafening roar, as the savage rhapsody employed the bewitched guests as its orchestra.
The King’s gaping mouth unhinged. Strands of pliant flesh unfurled from his sallow face to form a crimson lyre. Ribs sprang from his chest like tines and commenced to play a mesmerizing glissando. With an echo of kettle-drums, his skull toppled from its gory spindle and cracked, and the garnet-studded Crimson Crown rolled across the tiles.
So it was that every guest in that company became an instrument upon which Blase’s notturno played—all save Saloona Morn. Sanguine piccolos shrilled, accompanied by lyres strung with sinew and hair, the clatter of skull castanets and sternum manichords tapped by fleshless fingers. An audience of one heard this macabre symphony, sustained by the power of even the small amount of the Ubiquitous Antidote she had been able to consume; though gladly would she have missed the performance.
The infernal symphony swelled to a crescendo. With each note, a fragment of the fortress toppled, a rain of crimson stone and painted tiles crashing around Saloona’s motionless form. Overwrought as she was, she could not move; only watch as the fortress was reduced to a vast ruin of cinnabar and garnet, slick with blood, where the gleam-ants fed. So ended the rancorous line of Paeolina, which had begun with a gavot.
The Black Peal ebbed. The sanguine orchestra fell silent. Saloona Morn started, her ears throbbing, and with alarm noted what remained of the edifice crumbling behind her. The wall fell away, to reveal a violet turbulence.
“RUINATION CATACLYSM DOOM DOOM DOOM.”
With a cry, Saloona recognized her prism ship, petals unfolding as it hovered in the dust-choked air. She lunged into it with a gasp.
“Thank you!”
The ship’s plasma field surrounded her. Saloona pressed her hand upon its membrane to impart the proper coordinates.
But the ship had already banked. Silently, Saloona stared down at the wreckage of the Crimson Messuage. Cabrielots and destriers lay buried beneath smoking heaps of stone. Of the fortress, nothing remained save a glowering wreck of vermilion rock wreathed in somber flame. Despite the fire witch’s perfidy, Saloona sighed in remorse.
“I told you so,” said the prism ship, vexed, and bore her home.
The ship returned just as magenta dawn stained the sky above the foothills, and the last mal-de-mutes roosted, whispering and fluttering, among the topmost branches of the evergreens.
“You may sleep now.” Saloona touched the ship’s membrane. It whirred softly, then settled into a quiescent state.
Saloona hopped out. The mossy ground felt deliciously cool beneath her bare feet. She lifted the hem of her silken gown, hastening toward her cottage, then wrinkled her nose.
A short distance from the front door, the ground was charred. Moss and lichen had been burned away in a circle an ell in diameter. Saloona looked around, confused, until she spotted a small sinuous form crouching behind a blackened rock. She winced.
The basilisk.
Saloona bit her lip, then held out her hand and made reassuring chuffing sounds. The basilisk hissed weakly, tail erect with distrust, turned and slunk toward the forest, a trail of singed bracken in its wake.
In the days that followed, Saloona attempted to lure it with tidbits she thought might be enticing—spruce planks, knots of hardwood, the rails of a broken chair. The basilisk only stared at her reproachfully from the edge of the trees, and sometimes scorched her spore nets for spite.
I’m surprised it hasn’t starved by now, she thought one chilly afternoon, and began to assemble another desultory meal for herself. Moments later, a commotion rose from the prism ship’s paddock.
“HALLOO! BEWARE! EN GARDE!”
Saloona peered out the window. A tall, black-clad figure strode through the mossy field, the basilisk in its arms.
Saloona met her at the door. “Mother’s sister’s favored child,” she said, and watched in trepidation as Paytim stooped to let the basilisk run free inside the cottage. “Your arrival comes as a surprise.”
Paytim ignored her. She straightened to gaze with disapproval at the usual farrago of unwashed dishes and dried fungus scattered around the kitchen. Her clothing was disheveled, her black robes smirched with ash and rust-colored stains. There were several unhealed scars upon her arms and face. After a moment, she turned to Saloona.
“You have a wholesome look,” she observed coolly. A second, garnet placebit now winked beside the one formed of the lutist’s fingerbone. “Your antidote is indeed more powerful than I imagined.”
Saloona said nothing. The basilisk nosed at a basket of dried tree-ears, sending up a plume of smoke. When Saloona tried to shoo it off, it yawped at her. Yellow flames emerged from its mouth and she quickly retreated.
Paytim shot Saloona an imperious look, then marched across the kitchen to the hearth.
“Well then.” With a flick of her hand the fire witch ignited the cookstove, then grabbed a saucepan. “Who’s ready for lunch?”
Uncle Lou
Nina’s Uncle Lou lived in Hampstead, on a narrow, leafy side road that overlooked the Heath—from this vantage, a seemingly endless sweep of green, studded with ancient oaks where ravens clacked and acorns rained down to be gathered by small children and, sometimes, over-eager dogs loosed for a run. Nina could remember collecting acorns with her parents when she was that age, not much bigger than a small dog herself, and carefully piling them where squirrels could find them.