Prose: Dark Shadows Put to Flight
Dark Shadows Put To Flight
"Veni, veni Emanuel" Lyris sang as she moved about the front room. "Captivum solve Israel." Coming up from his workroom, Bastion paused in the doorway to listen, leaning against the lintel. His eyes followed her as she strung glass beads of different sizes across the bay window. He didn’t recognize the language she sang in, but he could hear snowdrifts falling in her voice.
"I don’t believe I've heard you sing that before." Bastion noted after the song had come to a quiet close, and peeled himself from the doorframe. "From your homeland?"
Lyris shook her head as she removed the red velvet cloth from an end table and folded it. "I don't know where it's from." she answered, replacing the red cloth with a blue one edged in gold and silver knotwork. Songs from many cultures had passed through the opera house at one time or another.
Bastion raised an eyebrow. "What is it about?"
"It's a song from a midwinter festival, beseeching an absent god to return and save his people."
Bastion snorted. She was doing it again.
Every year they had been together, as the time drew closer to the middle of winter, Lyris began to research local customs and then proceeded to prepare and decorate their quarters for whatever holiday or festival was celebrated there. And, Bastion had found, there was no shortage of midwinter festivals. Every culture, no matter how big or small, urban or rural, seemed to have some sort of mid-winter tradition.
"Whatever deity or hero they supposedly honor, all midwinter festivals spring from the same source." Bastion could remember explaining to Lyris the first time she had taken down the familiar paintings and gilt frames of their quarters in Cresce, and replacing them with etchings of snowflakes and the local goddess of light. "They are a long outdated carryover, based on ridiculous superstition traceable all the way back to our primitive ancestors." Bastion's long, thin fingers had danced eloquent patterns in the air as he spoke, punctuating his words.
"Do you know what man’s first great stroke of brilliance was?" he had paused long enough to be dramatic, but moved on without waiting for a response. "Fire! To our primitive ancestors winter was a seemingly endless hell of cold and dark. Against it they were helpless, weak and small. Can you picture them Lyris... their huddled forms wrapped in the stinking furs of animals they'd slaughtered while the world around them cooled like a corpse... the tiny, flickering flames the only thing that stood between them and the endless night?" He had let the image sink in before continuing in a more scholarly tone. "At times like these they took comfort in telling stories of a great hero, a savior oftentimes associated with the sun," he waved a hand dismissively "which would come and rescue them from the grip of the cruel and frosty giant that held them. Of course each year the sun returned in spring to fulfill their prophecies, warming the earth in a miraculous resurrection!" Here he had gestured grandly. His sarcasm could have cut glass. "So you see," he had gone on to say at last "it all boils down to the fears of ignorant children, cowering in the face of something they could not understand. All these celebrations are merely the surviving remnants of stories that allowed them to cling to feeble-minded hope."
Lyris had paused in what she had been doing then, to look back at him. He hadn't been able to read her expression then, and all she'd said was "Everyone needs hope Bastion." and then turned back to her work.
And here she was doing it yet again, as she had last year, and the year before that, and so on. He looked about the room, decorated in blue and silver and gold for the Celebration of the Singers and shook his head. It wasn't that the decorations were garish. The decorations were never garish. Bastion had always left the interior decorating of their quarters up to Lyris, and she had always opted for a tasteful elegance with just a hint of opulence perfectly complimentary to his profession and his pride. The midwinter decorations, though prominent, were lovely and in keeping with the refinement of the home that they kept. No, it wasn't the decorations that bothered him, it was simply that he couldn't understand what made Lyris, who in every other respect seemed to exude sensibility, succumb to the whims of superstitious tradition.
The next few days brought snow, nature's seal of authenticity, signaling that winter was officially entrenched. The morning after a particularly heavy fall, Bastion and Lyris bundled into their winter wear, locked the door and set the wards into place, and made their way to the public market. Bastion had to see a man about some "business" supplies, and Lyris needed to fetch groceries and do some shopping of her own. Despite the profusion of snow the market place was quite busy, and everywhere small plumes of white punctuated the air as vendors shouted their wares to passers-by, housewives haggled, and friends waved and called out to each other. Bastion and Lyris parted ways in front of a book vendor who occasionally carried tomes from Alderode.
"We'll meet back here in one hour." Bastion said, and Lyris nodded. She watched his black back sweep elegantly up the main thoroughfare until it was obscured by the crowd and then turned went about her own business.
The shopping took rather less time than she had expected and she made her way back to the book vendor's a full half hour before Bastion was to return. The butcher had taken one look at her as she came in and cut and wrapped her usual order ahead of the customers already waiting. He'd even thrown in some soup bones for free and winked at her as she left. Sometime soon, she knew, she was going to have to do something about that man. His attentions to her were growing more obvious each market day. For the moment though, she put him out of her mind and sat down on a nearby bench, arranged her bags next to her, and resolved herself to a long wait.
She watched the people as they passed, making observations, and hazarding idle guesses about what their lives were like. Only a few minutes had passed this way when one shopper in particular caught her eye. A small girl, she couldn't have been more than eight, wove up the market wandering from stall to stall and cart to cart. Blonde, pigtailed puffs of curls peeped out from below her hood and large blue eyes stole furtive glances down side paths as she went. Occasionally she squinted at something held in one fist. She moved from one side of the main market street to the other, looking hopefully up at signs, but never seeming to find what she wanted. She moved right then left then back again in a ragged zigzag, and once, as Lyris watched, turned in a full circle around herself. Once or twice she paused and opened her mouth as if to ask one of the many busy shoppers passing her a question, but in the end she always backed away without saying anything. She stopped finally, two stalls from the book vendor, and began to cry.
Lyris rose immediately and crossed over to her, laying a hand gently on her shoulder. "Are you lost?" she asked softly so as not to startle the little girl. The child looked up, blinking tears away from wide, surprised eyes. After a moment she shook her head slowly from side to side.
"'Live that way" she pointed down the market to the southeast as if to prove it.
Inwardly Lyris smiled. "What is your name?"
The child had no solid reason to trust the woman before her, but there was something in the combination of Lyris' face and voice that few children could resist. It said that here was someone who understood them.
"Amberle."
"Well, Amberle," Lyris squatted down to be at eye-level with her "If you aren't lost, why are you crying?"
The girl sniffled and shuffled, but Lyris was patient, and finally the full story came out. Amberle explained that this was the fist time she had been allowed to go to the market place alone and her mother had given her coins to buy candy. She opened a grubby fist to show Lyris two much-smudged coins. "But I been all up and down the market 'n I can't find the sweetshop!"
Ah, was that all? "I can show you where it is,” Lyris explained "but first dry your eyes." She proffered a handkerchief. The little girl sniffled and looked hopefully at Lyris, then nodded her head emphatically, setting her curls to bouncing. She took the handkerchief and blew messily into it before handing it back, folded over. Lyris stuffed it back into her pocket and then took her by the hand.
Together, they walked down one of the side avenues and around a corner to a sweetshop run by a large, grey-haired woman with spectacles and an obvious love of children, Both Lyris and the candy lady waited while Amberle scrutinized the shop's selections, and after much deliberation selected two sugared mint sticks and a toffee roll in exchange for her two coins.
"You have a lovely daughter." The candy woman said as Lyris held the door for Amberle on their way out. Lyris only smiled, but Amberle turned back and regarded the women.
"She's not my mom."
"Oh? Well who is she then?"
Amberle cocked her head for a moment and then beckoned with one finger for Lyris to bend down. When Lyris had, the little girl asked, in a whisper loud enough the candy-woman heard it too, "What's yer name?"
"Lyris."
"Oh." Amberle turned back to the old woman. "She's Lyris." she said, as if that answered everything, then, candy in one hand, she tugged Lyris out of the store. Together they walked back to the book vendor, Lyris carrying her bags and Amberle happily sucking on one of her mint sticks, which didn't seem to interfere a whit with her happy chatter. "Momma always said I was too little to go to the market without her," she explained while Lyris listened. "But I turned seven last week" here she let go of Lyris' hand long enough to hold up five fingers along with the thumb of the hand that clutched her candy. The seventh finger lifted only partially, trailing sticky strings of sugared mint. "My daddy says maybe next year when I'm..." here she paused for the briefest of seconds, her small brow furrowed "... eight, maybe I can go with him to the docks..."
They arrived back at the bench by the bookseller, but Amberle showed no desire to leave. She had a few questions for Lyris, but they were few and mercifully short. "Where do you live? Does your ma have gold hair like you? You gots a pet?" Amberle, like most children her age was most fascinated by the wonder that was her own small life, and Lyris listened attentively as the small girl told her about her mother and father, and "five and a half" brothers and sisters. "Niea was only came out of momma's tummy two months ago so she's not a whole person yet." she explained, nodding sagely. "And boys turn into monkeys at night! That's why their rooms are so messy! I been sittin outside my brothers' room after momma and daddy go to bed. One of these nights, I'm gonna listen real careful, and then throw the door open and WHAM!" she threw her arms wide. "There'll be MONKEYS in the bed, and I'll grab one by the tail, and I'll have a monkey pet. Monkeys is better than brothers cause...” Suddenly, Amberle stopped short and stiffened.
Kemp’s prices were getting ridiculous Bastion thought to himself as he stalked past the shops and stalls of the market, making his way back to the meeting place. "If he wasn't the only man that carried rattan paste, imbrian candles, and black flent powder..." Now that he thought about it, why was that? "Perhaps he's found a limited supply and is dominating it... Perhaps he's found a way TO limit it..." It's true Kemp had been a useful man when first they came here. He didn’t ask too many questions, and managed to find items that were rare and obscure, but necessary to Bastion's work. "Perhaps I have gotten too soft". Bastion thought to himself, "relying on someone else." Tomorrow he would start sniffing out other potential suppliers. Or he could even go back to doing things the hard way, ordering supplies individually from the far-flung corners of the earth, and stockpiling them. But that required one to keep track of all one's supplies in careful detail, and Bastion detested such mundane minutiae. It took time away from the true, pure pursuit of knowledge.
Lyris on the other hand seemed to thrive on organization. Perhaps he would add "stores-clerk" or "supplies acquisition and management" to her list of duties. She was better suited for it after all. Satisfied that he had found his solution, Bastion was free to observe the market around him. He came around one corner, and through a side street that opened across the way from the bookseller. Ah, and there was Lyris, practically where he had left her. That's when he caught sight of the child. What was she doing? Talking to a child? Bastion hung back a moment, irritated for reasons he wasn't sure of. Something was different about Lyris. He watched the little girl, and he watched his assistant. There wasn't much occasion for associating with children in his line of work. That's when it struck him what was different. Lyris was smiling.
Even from this distance he could see it. Her entire countenance had a soft glow to it. It wasn't that he had NEVER seen her smile, only that it was so rare. Like those flowers he'd seen as a child on a visit to Tain, that only bloomed on midsummer's night every seventh year. She was bent over to be more near the child’s level, more closely approximate the child's height and as he watched, she actually laughed. He wondered idly what they could possibly be saying. Suddenly, he was tired of waiting, and he stepped out of the shadow of the side street and made his way over to them.
Even as Amberle stiffened, Lyris recognized the sound of Bastion's boots behind her. The small towhead's eyes widened. The necromancer had said it himself once. "No little child loves a necromancer." And the littler the child, the less logic and social custom had worn away pure instinct, the more likely it was that they would fear him, even without being told what he was. The little girl was rooted to the spot as Bastion approached but every line of her body shouted her desire to escape. Her eyes besought Lyris wordlessly, begging permission. Lyris sighed inwardly as she sensed Bastion over her shoulder, but managed a small smile and nodded for her. The nod broke the spell, and Amberle darted off through the crowd in the direction of home. Bastion watched her go as Lyris straightened.
"Were you able to get the rattan paste?"
"Yes. Though Kemp has raised his prices yet again. May fate see fit to put him in his place, Lyris, It's highway robbery I tell you." His grousing was only mild, Lyris noticed. He seemed preoccupied. All the same, she didn't bother him about it, and they made their way home discussing the supplies situation and the solution Bastion had found.
On the day of the celebration, their kitchen was transformed into a small sweets factory as Lyris created tray after tray of candy for the Celebration of the Singers. Local tradition held that at the beginning of time, when light had retreated to the edges of the world, three brave men and three brave women, had stepped forward and sung a song so beautiful, and so welcoming, that the light had come back to listen to it. Each year in celebration, children went door-to-door, singing songs of welcome and thanks to the light, receiving candy in thanks.
"No children are going to come here." Bastion pointed out as he watched Lyris wrap the small candies she had made in gold and silver paper. "You shouldn’t waste your time on that."
"Am I behind in my duties?" she asked in a dangerously neutral voice.
"Oh do stop." Bastion responded irritably. "There’s no need to be defensive." She knew very well that she wasn't behind in her duties. He snitched a chocolate from what must have been the sixth full-size tray of them. Good grief, she must have blown at least three months salary, if not more, on this silliness.
That wasn't what I meant and you know it." he said through a mouth full of chocolate. "You can do with your time as you please, but it is a waste to make candy for children who aren't coming."
He had a point. Open advertising was a hazard Bastion couldn't afford in his line of work. There was no sign on their door proclaiming Bastion's profession, no bills on the town notice board exclaiming "Get your zombies here!" But even so, through word of mouth or other means, enough clients found their way to Bastion to pay their bills and then some.
In the same way, though Lyris and Bastion were not social creatures and rarely stayed long enough in any one place to alienate the neighbors, those who lived near them tended to avoid the house almost instinctively. Of course there were wards to deter those who might wish a skull-pilot harm, but that still did not account for the mere trickle of even door-to-door salespeople. Bastion didn't complain. Solitude was often a necessity of his work, not to mention his sanity, and unwanted interruptions or intrusions into his precious working time were the twin banes of his existence.
Of course this meant that there was a snowball's chance in hell that any children would be singing on their doorstep come nightfall.
The neighborhood kids will come." Lyris pointed out, unperturbed, and Bastion sneered.
"They’re only beggars."
He wasn't just being his usual disdainful self either. 'The neighborhood kids' was how Lyris referred to the pack of orphans that sometimes ran wild in the alleys of their quiet corner of the city. Nobody really knew, or cared, who they belonged to or where they had come from. They were tolerated along with the occasional stray cat (though they rarely got a bowl of milk in kindness). They did not appear overly starved though, and most of the neighborhood ignored them.
Lyris was undeterred. "They’re still children." she answered.
Bastion changed tacts. "I can already hear their little screeching voices." he said, and adjusted his voice into an imitation of a child's falsetto. "Welcome welcome, love and light." he sang and rolled his eyes. "Welcome welcome warmth and good." He stopped long enough to snitch another chocolate. "How a singer of your caliber can bear such torture is beyond fathoming."
"Temperamental harpy." Bastion muttered, not five minutes later, rubbing the welt on his temple where Lyris had beaned him with one of the hard candies when his nay-saying had become more than she cared to listen to anymore, and she had chased him from the room. Bastion lamented that they weren't still in Cresce where the holiday was celebrated with small, SOFT, cakes.
Why did she insist on doing this each year? Bastion knew she had a more open-ended view of theology than he did, but at the same time, he also knew that she didn't actually believe in the stories or any of the local gods celebrated in the various midwinter festivals they had seen during their time together, so why did she do it? To win the adoration of a handful of beggar children she would in all likelihood never see again? It just didn't make any sense.
He thought of the little girl in the market place and wondered if Lyris had invited her to come tonight. Given their sudden parting it seemed unlikely, and Bastion found himself wondering again what they had been speaking of to make Lyris smile so. He remembered the first time he had seen her smile. She had been standing in front of the window, framed in the light of the setting sun. He had been coming out of the kitchen, and almost dropped the sandwich he had made. He had seen it for just a second, just a flash, before she had heard him come in, and straightened and returned to her duties.
He'd gone to the window to see what it was that had tempted her lips into curling, but there had only been some local ragamuffins kicking around a ball. He wondered if one of them had done something amusing, like fall down. Or perhaps she had been smiling at the sunset, but then there had been prettier ones in their time together. Maybe it had been a memory, but then she had always avoided talking about them, and Bastion had gathered that she didn't like to think about her past at all when she could help it.
It was true that she was never annoyed, and seemed to even enjoy interacting with children the rare times they crossed paths with the short little blighters. He had always shrugged off these brief interactions, chalking them up to Lyris's being a woman, and susceptible to the irrational fascination of her sex for the mewling and helpless. But it didn't really add up, and he knew it. In the new light cast by what had happened in the market, he re-examined that first smile and wondered. Had there been children involved each of the rare times she had smiled since then? He couldn't remember. For that matter, now that he thought about it, every tradition she chose to participate in had something to do with children. She never bothered attending the ceremonies or rituals, the religious gatherings... unless of course it involved giving something to children. Bastion pondered. Could it be as simple as all that?
Bastion stood silently, thinking to himself a little longer. Finally, he called back over his shoulder to Lyris that he had to go out, and snagged his winter cloak from its peg by the door. He had work to do.
That night Lyris lit a special candle in the window to signal that this was a house that welcomed the singers. She had already laced the front door with mage lights, and had breathed gently on each one, lighting them. Arranged by the door was a chair, and next to it sat the first of three large baskets, piled high with candy. She'd made too many as usual. She did every year, basking in the light of possibility. But the day after the holiday she always awoke to baskets of leftovers and had to suppress her feelings as she went about her duties, her glow visibly dimmed.
Her preparations finished, she seated herself in the chair by the door and waited.
Bastion had returned about an hour ago. He'd not told Lyris where he had been, and she'd not questioned him. Since then he had kept himself scarce, keeping out of her way in either his workroom, or his study, but now he seated himself surreptitiously in the front room with his pipe and a book. He opened the book and puffed carefully as he watched his assistant over the top of the pages.
When the first ring of the bell came, both necromancer and assistant looked expectantly at the door. From the other side, small voices could already be heard singing in unison as Lyris rose, basket in hand, and opened it.
Most of the kids weren't sure what it was that drew them down that particular street and toward the unassuming door glittering, lit with the dancing glow of mage lights. For some it was a feeling like dreams, impressions of gingerbread and grandparents or faint memories of happy days, ghosting across the sleeping hindquarters of their brains. They weren't promises understood with their conscious minds; they simply knew that something good was waiting down that road. The spell drew them like the faint smell of baking cookies, wafting on the winter breeze. Something good was waiting.
Lyris's facial expressions were hard to read at the best of times, but as she opened the door to find, not the neighborhood kids she had been expecting, but an entirely unfamiliar sea of little faces, but Bastion could read the surprise hidden in the subtle lift of her brows. She passed out candy into each waiting hand and nodded at the chorus of thank yous as the children scattered again from the porch, waving goodbye and dancing off to the next lit house. She shut the door and shook her head bemusedly. She had barely sat down again when their came another ring at the door. She shot a startled glance to Bastion, but his eyes were hidden studiously in the pages of his book.
The children came in a constant stream the rest of the night. When the candy she had made was nearly gone, Lyris refused to blow out the signal candle, but instead sent one of the boys on her doorstep to buy the last bags of wintertide candy from the market before it closed. Perhaps it was a sign of the season that the child actually returned with the candy in hand rather than pocketing the money for himself. When the last of the store candy had run out, Lyris gave out whatever she could find around the house. The "neighborhood kids" when they finally came went away not with candy, but whole ham and cheese sandwiches cut from good thick brown bread, and sugar cubes for dessert. A young boy got a broken stiletto dagger with blunted edges. Later still, a little girl went away with a necklace made of glass beads, cut from the garland around the front window. Child by child and piece by piece Lyris dismantled the decorations until, as the last dancing mage light bobbed away up the street cupped carefully in a child's fingers, the stream of children dried up.
It was long past midnight. Bastion closed the book and rose from his chair. At'gwe but he wanted his bed. He felt tired and drained, and more children had shown up than he had thought lived in the entire town. If he had to listen to one more off-key little warble singing one more song of welcome, he would have to hunt down some kittens to club. Lyris leaned over and blew out the candle, then looked back at Bastion through the fading light of the dying embers in the hearth.
"Thank you." She said simply.
He hadn't told her about the spell, and only grunted, refusing to acknowledge that he'd had any part in the events of the night. "Goodman Brown is coming tomorrow," He reminded her instead. "And all the arrays in the lab need to cleaned and recalibrated. You need to write that letter to Demse, and we still have to go over the books from last month. It's going to be a long day," he finished, his way of saying she should get to sleep. She straightened and nodded, business-like, and made her way to the stairs. He stood at the bottom of them waiting. He wanted his bed more than anything, but he was damned if he’d be the first to retreat. He stood sentry, and as Lyris passed, she ghosted a hand across his shoulder, squeezing it in an almost-embrace.
"Thank you," she said again. He didn't reply, but watched the light of her candle as she turned and ascended into darkness.