Empire Dreams (6 page)

At last Dom Perellen lifts his hands from the manuals and the vast music dies away until only the tiny whispers and susurrations remain. In the silence after there is the sound of two hands clapping.

Dom Perellen turns and she is there, smiling and applauding.

She makes to leave and Dom Perellen is beside her.

“Why have you come? Why are you here?” She will not reply but leads him on a thread of perfume made from the crushed wings of night moths out of the music room and along the passage to the bedchamber. And there, under the plaster cherubs and peacocks and virgins, she gives herself to him and stops his questions with her mouth. By the light of cobwebbed candelabra their love builds like a symphony, like the stratified music by which Dom Perellen called her out from the hidden places of the city. Dom Perellen’s hands grip great fistfuls of dark hair, he has never known such joy as she gives him her breasts and her mouth and the hidden places of her body on the divan that is wide as all the sea. Together they scale the pinnacles of pleasure in a love that threatens to consume them both and leave nothing but ashes. Yet there is something amiss in her lovemaking, something passionless and mechanical, as if they were two animals caught in the frenzy of rut. She does not utter a word, not a sigh or moan.

At the height of their passion she drives her teeth into his shoulder with such force that she draws blood. Dom Perellen scarcely feels it, swept away on the tide of his own pleasure. It is only afterwards, in the sadness that always follows, that he notices the smell, the smell of something sweet, something rotting, something ancient and foul. It is familiar but for the moment he cannot place it. Then it is forgotten as Serenade bends to his lips again. He looks into her gentle eyes and there sees a thing which freezes the very pith of his being.

Around each iris, in tiny stenciled letters, are the words
Brothers Ho, Taxidermists
.

Then he knows what his replicate brothers have done to him. He knows why Serenade has come here; and the nature of her business among the abandoned warehouses of Sessereth. He sees her opening her lips to the carniphage’s poisoned kiss and recognizes the stench of the Rage. He feels the inhuman machinery beneath her skin, and the warm welling of blood from his shoulder. He makes a despairing lunge for the bell-pull but it was too late from the morning he saw her before the cloisters of the Hall of Weeping. Then the fire blossoms in his brain and red red pain sweeps away his reason as the Rage takes possession. He is given time for one final look at Serenade, the last memory he will take into insanity, then his humanity blows out like a candle and the animal is set free.

* * * *

Last of all we see a boat waiting in the dawn light by the steps beneath the Bridge-of-the-Virtues. In it stand three men in white wearing identical funeral masks. In the bow sits a strikingly beautiful woman, but there is a touch of strange about her perfect stillness, something too precise, almost mechanical. The three men have their hands crossed on their breasts and the air of focused attention of those listening for a distant sound, perhaps the cry of some naked, twisted creature of the night turning away from the burning light of day. A corpse-boat glides by, silent and serene as a swan, journeying out to Elder Sea. Taking its passage for a sign of some kind, the three men turn their boat away from the Bridge-of-the-Virtues, away from the Sea, and journey inwards into the City of Man to claim their inheritance.

WHEN THE DAY
is so hot that it scorches the tips of the sea grass into tight brown spirals arid sends the columns of ants stigger-staggering across the sand, the beach is a good place for a boy to play. He can splash through the waves as they wash on the shore. He can build castles and fortifications in the sand and watch the sea flood his moats and crumble his ramparts and capture his standard, a single gull’s feather stuck into the topmost battlement. He can set a driftwood dreadnought afloat and bombard it into submission with stones from his shore batteries, or he can write his name with a stick in the damp sand and let the tide wipe his words away. There are a thousand different games a boy can play with the sea.

If the tide is low there are the hulks, tired gray men of the sea that have been slumping into the sand for centuries. Some have settled so deeply that only the points of their ribs protrude from the swallowing sand, and a boy can imagine that they are not the bones of ships at all, but the bones of prehistoric creatures.

But if the tide is high there is always the Cannery. It lies half an hour’s walk down the beach, but is worth the effort, for it was made in heaven for a small boy. There are rusting steam cranes and disused canning machinery, there are chutes and slides and sluices, there are rails and dollies and hoists, but most of all there are the buildings, made from planks of that gray-brown wood that always feels warm to the touch, so old that they have begun to bulge at the sides. All the windows are broken and the doors off their hinges and light shines through the roof where the autumn gales have swept the shingles away. Parents do not trust it. They say the pier is unsafe and forbid children to play on it, but their restrictions take nothing from the magic of the place, a magic of a different kind from that of the hulks (for after all this pier has never sailed beyond the rim of the world), but no less magical for that. For above all other places, this is a boy’s place.

Your
place.

When the day is so hot that it drives the customers indoors and Ma wants you to run errands and Da wants you to collect glasses and Sister is too busy serving and Brother too busy practicing the mandocello, when not even Mr. Cat has time for you, the Cannery is a good place to be.

Ma’s shout chases you along the beach but you easily outran it and soon all there is to hear is the rush of surf and the mewling of the gulls slipping down the wind. The sun is bright and the sand is hot and you think that on a day like this anything could happen. So you search the sky for the telltale flickers of daylight shooting stars that you have been told are the trails of ships arriving at the edge of the world. You squint through your fingers, for the sun is very bright, but though you peer and peer you do not see even one.

But you do see three colorful shapes dancing high on the air. A moment’s concentration reveals them: kites, one like a festival dragon with a long tail, one with a great smiling sun painted on it, and the third one, so high up that it is barely visible, no more than a dead black speck. Someone is flying kites from the end of Cannery Pier.

There is a gaily painted caravan with a skewbald pony munching the tough sea grass in the dunes by the foot of the pier. The caravan door is open and you decide to sneak a quick look. Why not? After all, isn’t the kite flyer trespassing on the end of your pier?

The caravan is filled with kites. There are no pots, no pans, no sink and no stove, no bed or books or bootlocker, just kites of all shapes and sizes and colors. There is one with a painted moon, and another with a cross of stars that actually twinkle, and a blue kite with clouds on it, and one with a whirlwind and crisscrossing lightning bolts, and another blue one, but with a painted rainbow, and one so black that your eyes skid off it like glass, and many many more, too many to take in with one single glance, so that all you get is an impression of lightness and brightness and color.

You are so taken up with gazing that you do not hear the creak of the step or the tired sigh or feel the cool of a shadow falling across your back.

“Oh,” says a voice. You turn, seized up with dread. The tall gray man before you takes a step back in surprise. “Oh,” he says again, at a loss for something better. It is hard to tell who is more surprised. You stand and stare openmouthed at each other for a long and silly time. Then the gray man frowns and says,

“But what are you doing in my caravan?”

At any other time you would have wilted with embarrassment, but the shock of discovery has made you defiant.

“What are you doing on my pier?”

The gray man gapes. A look of puzzlement crosses his face.

“I’m sorry, I was unaware that the pier belonged to anyone. It seemed to me just to be a good windy place well away from all the people where I could fly my kites in peace.”

And because he has not laughed at you like any other adult would, you decide to trade this kiteman trespass for trespass.

“I don’t actually own the Cannery, nobody does, but it’s my special place. But because you think it’s special too, you can fly your kites there anytime.”

“Thank you,” the kiteman says graciously.

“I came in here to look at your kites,” you continue. “I saw them through the back door and came on in, because if you don’t want people to go into your caravan, you shouldn’t leave your back door open.”

“True,” the kiteman says. “Can’t deny that. Well, having seen them, then, what do you think of my kites? Aren’t they grand?”

What you think is that it is silly for a grown man to be playing with kites, but you keep your opinion to yourself.

“Aye, grand,” you agree, but it is as if this gray kiteman can see right inside you, because he smiles and says,

“Ah, you’re only saying that to keep a stranger happy. I can see that you know little of their true charms and mysteries. But you have the look of a boy with too much holiday time heavy on his hands; perhaps I might instruct you a little in the appreciation of kites? How would that sound? In return for the use of your Cannery?”

“Sounds fine, mister.”

“Call me Christian,” the kiteman says.

“Fraser MacHenry,” you reply, remembering your manners.

“Glad to make your acquaintance, Fraser,” the kiteman says, and he goes and picks up a great kite almost as gray as himself. On the kite is a painted cherub blowing a gale from apple-round cheeks and at its lowest point an ocean wave is breaking.

“What would you want with such a dull thing on a bright afternoon like this?” you ask.

“Because I think it’s time we had a squall,” Christian says, and, tucking the stormkite under his arm, off he sets; past the skewbald pony, who gives you a terrible look, up the dunes and across the tussocky grass to Cannery Pier where the three kites strain on the wind. A thought strikes you.

“Who’s flying the kites if you’re not there?” you ask, ready to feel betrayed.

“Oh, never worry, Fraser, I have this little black box I adapted from a ship’s sheet monitor I picked up in the market in Corpus Christi. Clever little thing, but cost me a fair penny, as clever little things always do; it senses the shifting of the kites on the breeze and winds or releases line accordingly.”

At the end of the pier lie the kiteman’s few possessions: a crumpled coat of blue pilot cloth lying across a tall wooden staff with silver caps and the little black box clamped to an iron bollard. The kiteman sits himself down. He motions for you to join him and you come and sit down beside him and dangle your legs beside his over the glinting water. He nods at his kites.

“Well, which one would you like a go at?”

You squint into the painfully bright sky and pass your critical eye over the hovering kites. The sun one is pretty, the dragon exciting, but neither so exciting as the black one, which must be the twin of the one you saw in the caravan.

“The black one, please.”

Christian shakes his head. “Sorry. Try again. You see, though I may be able, I hope, to teach you how to fly a kite forwards and backwards, and up and down, and side to side, that black one has to be flown
inwards
and
outwards
too, and to be honest, I don’t think I can teach you that.”

“
Inwards
and
outwards
? How do you fly a kite inwards and outwards?”

“Good question, Fraser. Wish I knew. But tell me, have you heard of people who can do something without being certain of how they do it? Well, I must be a bit like that with that kite. Now, which of the other two would you like, or would you prefer this one?” He holds out the gray stormkite, but you shake your head and say,

“The dragon kite, please.”

“The dragon kite it is, then,” says Christian, and unhooks the flying line from the little black machine and hauls down the big dragon kite. Close up, it is bigger than you had ever imagined. Then he shows you how cleverly it is constructed, how it generates lift from its geometry, how light and how delicate it is and yet how strong. He shows you how to fix the flying line to the bridle line, how to launch it and control it so that it holds steady in the windstream, not dipping and bellying like the rowdy gulls. Then he reels it in once more and hands kite and spool over to you.

You botch the first two attempts and your ears burn with horrible embarrassment. But again Christian does not laugh at you. “There’s always time enough to do it well,” he says, and on your third try the great sky-dragon skips and jumps and hiccups along the pier but then the wind catches it and whips it into the air so strongly that the line sings off the spindle in your hands. You cheer as your kite climbs high high past the startled delinquent gulls, high over dirty Cannery Pier, and the bright dragon’s eye looks down to see the small dancing speck on the end of its line that is you and the larger gray spot that is Christian. He grins and unlashes the sunkite from the little black machine and together the sun and dragon tumble through the sky. Presently they are joined in their game by the gray stormkite, but within the hour you must hand the dragon kite back to Christian because the wind has grown too wild for you to master. A horizon-wide line of evil black cloud is advancing on the Cannery and gusts are tugging at your ears. Christian casts an eye on the sky and says,

“Go on, get out of here before it starts.”

“Will you be here tomorrow?” you ask.

“Oh, I should think so. Look for me under … a blue kite, I think.” And with that the first knuckles of rain rap on the shingles and chase you all the way up the beach to home. Da is bent over the wireless listening to the Coast Guard weather forecast and shaking his head.