As I came closer I held out my hands to her so she could take hold, but she shrank back, kicking at me with one foot, the boot half-fastened.
My reflection was distorted in the round eyes of her mask—a spindly monster enveloping her in the half-dark, my endless arms struggling to pull her back in.
What else could she do?
She let go.
My sight lit up from the rush of oxygen, and in my view she was a flaming June in a bottle-green night, falling with her arms outstretched like a bird until she was too small to be seen, until every bright trace of her was gone.
For a moment no one moved; then the rails shuddered under us as the gills fanned out, and we slowed.
Anderson said, “We’re coming up on Paris.”
“Someone should tell them about the tear,” said Bristol.
“Patch it from here,” Anderson said. “We’ll wait until Vienna.”
In Vienna they assumed all conductors were lunatics, and they would ask no questions about a tear that only human hands could make.
I heard the first clangs of the anchor-hooks latching onto the outer hull of the Underneath before the church bells rang in the New Year. Beneath us, the passengers shouted “Hip, hip, hurrah! Hip, hip, hurrah!”
That was a sad year.
Once I was land-bound in Dover. The Conductors’ Society there is so small I don’t think ten men could fit in it. It wasn’t a bad city (I had no trouble with the regulars on my way from the dock), but it was so horribly hot and cramped that I went outside just to have enough room to stretch out my arms, even heavy as they were with the Earth pulling at them.
A Falcon-class passed overhead, and I looked up just as it crossed the harvest moon; for a moment the balloon was illuminated orange, and I could see the conductors skittering about inside of it like spiders or shadow puppets, like moths in a lamp.
I watched it until it had passed the moon and fallen dark again, the lamp extinguished.
It’s a glorious life, they say.
THE LADY WHO PLUCKED RED FlOWERS BENEATH THE QUEEN’S WINDOW
RACHEL SWIRSKY
Rachel Swirsky holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop and is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in a varietyof venues, including Tor.com , Subterranean Magazine , Weird Tales , and Fantasy Magazine . Her story“Eros, Philia,Agape”was nominated for the 2009 Hugo and Sturgeon awards, while “A Memory of Wind” was a 2010 Nebula Award nominee. Her most recent book is Through the Drowsy Dark ,a short collection of feminist poems and short stories. She lives in Bakersfield, California,with her husband and two cats,and is seriously considering whether or not to become a crazy cat lady by adopting all four stray kittens which were recently born in her yard.
My story should have ended on the day I died. Instead, it began there.
Sun pounded on my back as I rode through the Mountains where the Sun Rests. My horse’s hooves beat in syncopation with those of the donkey that trotted in our shadow. The Queen’s midget Kyan turned his head toward me,sweat dripping down the red-and-blue protections painted across his malformed brow.
“Shouldn’t… we… stop?” he panted.
Sunlight shone red across the craggy limestone cliffs. A bold eastern wind carried the scent of mountain blossoms. I pointed to a place where two large stones leaned across a narrow outcropping.
“There,” I said, prodding my horse to go faster before Kyan could answer. He grunted and cursed at his donkey for falling behind.
I hated Kyan, and he hated me. But Queen Rayneh had ordered us to ride reconnaissance together, and we obeyed, out of love for her and for the Land of Flowered Hills.
We dismounted at the place I had indicated. There, between the mountain peaks, we could watch the enemy’s forces in the valley below without being observed. The raiders spread out across the meadow below like ants on a rich meal. Their women’s camp lay behind the main troops, a small dark blur. Even the smoke rising from their women’s fires seemed timid. I scowled.
“Go out between the rocks,” I directed Kyan. “Move as close to the edge as you can.”
Kyan made a mocking gesture of deference. “As you wish, Great Lady,” he sneered, swinging his twisted legs off the donkey. Shamans’ bundles of stones and seeds, tied with twine, rattled at his ankles.
I refused to let his pretensions ignite my temper.“Watch the valley,”I instructed. “I will take the vision of their camp from your mind and send it to the Queen’s scrying pool. Be sure to keep still.”
The midget edged toward the rocks, his eyes shifting back and forth as if he expected to encounter raiders up here in the mountains, in the Queen’s dominion. I found myself amused and disgusted by how little provocation it took to reveal the midget’s true, craven nature. At home in the Queen’s castle, he strutted about, pompous and patronizing. He was like many birth-twisted men, arrogant in the limited magic to which his deformities gave him access. Rumors suggested that he imagined himself worthy enough to be in love with the Queen. I wondered what he thought of the men below. Did he daydream about them conquering the Land? Did he think they’d make him powerful, that they’d put weapons in his twisted hands and let him strut among their ranks?
“Is your view clear?” I asked.
“It is.”
I closed my eyes and saw, as he saw, the panorama of the valley below. I held his sight in my mind, and turned toward the eastern wind which carries the perfect expression of magic—flight—on its invisible eddies. I envisioned the battlefield unfurling before me like a scroll rolling out across a marble floor. With low, dissonant notes, I showed the image how to transform itself for my purposes. I taught it how to be length and width without depth, and how to be strokes of color and light reflected in water. When it knew these things, I sang the image into the water of the Queen’s scrying pool.
Suddenly—too soon—the vision vanished from my inner eye. Something whistled through the air. I turned. Pain struck my chest like thunder.
I cried out. Kyan’s bundles of seeds and stones rattled above me. My vision blurred red. Why was the midget near me? He should have been on the outcropping.
“You traitor!” I shouted. “How did the raiders find us?”
I writhed blindly on the ground, struggling to grab Kyan’s legs. The midget caught my wrists. Weak with pain, I could not break free.
“Hold still,” he said. “You’re driving the arrow deeper.”
“Let me go, you craven dwarf.”
“I’m no traitor. This is woman’s magic. Feel the arrow shaft.”
Kyan guided my hand upward to touch the arrow buried in my chest. Through the pain, I felt the softness of one of the Queen’s roc feathers. It was particularly rare and valuable, the length of my arm.
I let myself fall slack against the rock. “Woman’s magic,” I echoed, softly. “The Queen is betrayed. The Land is betrayed.”
“Someone is betrayed, sure enough,” said Kyan, his tone gloating.
“You must return to court and warn the Queen.”
Kyan leaned closer to me. His breath blew on my neck, heavy with smoke and spices.
“No, Naeva. You can still help the Queen. She’s given me the keystone to a spell—a piece of pure leucite, powerful enough to tug a spirit from its rest. If I blow its power into you, your spirit won’t sink into sleep. It will only rest, waiting for her summons.”
Blood welled in my mouth. “I won’t let you bind me…”
His voice came even closer, his lips on my ear. “The Queen needs you, Naeva. Don’t you love her?”
Love: the word caught me like a thread on a bramble. Oh, yes. I loved the Queen. My will weakened, and I tumbled out of my body. Cold crystal drew me in like a great mouth, inhaling.