Read King of Morning, Queen of Day Online
Authors: Ian McDonald
King of Morning, Queen of Day
“[McDonald is] a master for a new generation of sf.” —
Analog
Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award
“Filled with wondrous language, marvelous events.” —
Science Fiction Chronicle
“A brilliant book.” —Charles de Lint
“Cyberpunk’s first lyrical poem, mixing Kabbalah, manga, pop-culture trivia and Zen with enough style and dexterity to actually pull it off . . . [McDonald] does more in a page than most writers do in a chapter.” —Neal Stephenson
“At once disturbing and beautiful; superbly realized.” —
The Times
(London)
“Ian McDonald takes on all the atrocity and strife of the 20
th
Century, radically displaces it, and dares to envision a means of change. It’s a brilliant achievement.” —
Locus
“McDonald is a superior writer.” —
Booklist
“A spell-binding tale of intrigue and empathy.” —SF Site
“A powerful and effective story.” —Jo Walton
Ian McDonald
Emily’s Diary: February 14, 1913
Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: February 15, 1913
From the Private Notebooks of Constance Booth-Kennedy: March 23, 1913
Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: April 12, 1913
Memorandum from Mrs. Caroline Desmond to Mrs. Maire O’Carolan
Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: May 28, 1913
Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: July 2, 1913
Emily’s Diary. July 7-12, 1913
The Beau English Club, Nassau Street, Dublin
Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: August 4, 1913
Emily’s Diary: August 28, 1913
Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: September 4, 1913
From the Report of Constable Michael O’Hare, Drumcliffe R.I.C Station
The Sligo and Leitrim Impartial Reporter
Extracts from the casebooks of Dr. Hubert Orr, Fitzwilliam Street Clinic, Dublin.
Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: October 3, 1913
Emily’s Diary: October 12, 1913
Emily’s Diary: November 5, 1913
Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: November 16, 1913
Emily’s Diary: December 21, 1913
We have followed too much
the devices and desires of our own hearts…
—The General Confession: Book of Common Prayer
O
H, WOULD THAT WE
were many things,
My golden-shining love and I;
Bright-flashing scales, a pair of wings
That draw the moonlight down the sky,
Two hazel trees beside the stream
Wherein our fruit in autumn drop,
A trout, a stag, a wild swan’s dream,
An eagle cry from mountaintop.
For we have both been many things:
A thousand lifetimes we have known
Each other, and our love yet sings.
But there is more that I would own.
Oh, would that we could naked run
Through forests deep and forests fair,
Our breasts laid open to the sun,
Our flesh caressed by summer’s air,
And in some hidden, leafy glen
My striving body you would take;
Impale me on your lust and then
Me Queen of Daybreak you would make.
And we would dance and we would sing,
And we in passion’s fist would cry;
Loud with our love the woods would ring,
If we were lovers, you and I.
If we were lovers, I and you,
I would cast off all mortal ills
And you would take me, Shining Lugh,
To feast within the hollow hills.
For the world of men is filled with tears
And swift the night of science falls
And I would leave these tears and fears
To dance with you in Danu’s halls,
So let us cast our cares away
And live like bright stars in the sky,
Dance dream-clad till the break of day,
For we are lovers, you and I.
—Emily Desmond
Class 4a, Cross and Passion School
H
AIL TO THEE, ST.
Valentine, Prince of Love. Hail to thee on this, thy festive day!
We, thy adoring servants, praise thee!
We stole the statue of St. Valentine from its niche in the corridor by the Chapel and smuggled it up to the dormitory. If the Sisters were ever to find out what we did to it we would all be expelled, every last one of us, but I have made all the girls take blood oaths of utter secrecy, and we will have it back in its rightful place before even Mother Superior comes on her rounds. At the last stroke of midnight, the first stroke of St. Valentine’s Day, we stood the statue on a chair we had placed on a table and decorated it with the snowdrops and crocuses I had instructed the others to collect in botany class. We placed a crown made from chocolate wrappers on his head and, with much giggling, Charlotte and Amy got the thing they had made out of stolen modelling clay and erected it in front of the statue. Then we all performed the St. Valentine’s dance in our
déshabille
and went up one at a time to kiss the clay tiling and dedicate ourselves to the service of love. Then we sat down in a circle around the statue to read, by the light of one small candle which we passed around, the love poems we had written. Everyone thought mine was the best, but then they always think my ideas are the best; the whole St. Valentine’s Day celebration was one of my ideas.
Charlotte told me that Gabriel O’Byrne, the groundsman’s son, had told her that he had been trying to give me a letter for over a week but hadn’t been able. I wonder, she said, what it’s about? and nodded at the clay thing she had made for St. Valentine.
I should wonder: as if I didn’t know, from the way Gabriel O’Byrne stops work every time I pass, and doffs his cap and smiles at me. All that waving and smiling. Well, she can just tell him I don’t want any letters from Gabriel the groundsman’s son. I don’t want his dirty little affections; I want, I deserve, better than him. I deserve a faery prince, a warrior hero, strong-thewed and iron-willed, with raven black hair and lips like blood.
A
FTER THREE WEEKS OF
sleet, snow, and lowering clouds, last night the sky was at last sufficiently clear to permit me my first view of the newly discovered Bell’s Comet through the Craigdarragh eighteen-inch reflector. For all its doubtless charms and graces, County Sligo is not blessed with the most equable of climates for the astronomer; namely, those clear-as-crystal skies beloved of the astronomer-priests of ancient Mesopotamia and noble Greece. And since the notification of this object’s entrance into our theatre of interest in December last’s
Irish Astronomical Bulletin,
it has been a source of major frustration to me (my dear Caroline would declare that I have become positively ratty on the subject) that I alone of all the country’s—no! damn it!
Europe’s
astronomers—have been unable to observe the phenomenon. That is, until today. At about four o’clock, as I was taking my usual ill-tempered post-afternoon-tea turn about the rhododendron gardens, generally bemoaning the nation of Ireland and the county of Sligo in particular, its winds, weathers, and climates, bless me if the wind didn’t blow (capriciously as ever in this part of the globe), the clouds part, and a glorious golden late-winter radiance suffuse the countryside! Within half an hour the sky was clear blue all the way to the horizon, a sight so gladdening to the heart that I at once returned to the house and informed Mrs. O’Carolan that I would be taking supper in the observatory that evening. It was some time before I was able to locate the subject of my observations in the eighteen-inch reflector; the comet had moved across a considerable arc since first observed by Hubbard Pierce Bell of the Royal Observatory at Herstmonceux. Finally it lay squarely within my cross hairs and I was without doubt the only man in Ireland for whom this was a novelty.
In my excitement at finally being afforded the opportunity to observe Bell’s Comet, I had forgotten how cold the night would be on account of the clear sky. I was shivered to the very pith of my bones. But, oh! Most estimable woman! Most worthy servant! With typical foresight and wisdom, Mrs. O’Carolan came through the frost to provide me with rugs, comforters, a steady stream of bricks warmed in the kitchen range, and, most welcome of all, a bottle of potín, a present, she maintained, from the widows of the parish. Thus fortified, I returned to my labours with enthusiasm.
No tail had yet developed, Bell’s Comet being still beyond the orbit of our Earth. I noted positions, luminosity, apparent and proper motions in my observer’s notebook and made some sketches. On returning to the telescope, it seemed to me that the object’s luminosity had altered, a thing I at the time dismissed as a defect of vision in adapting to the Stygian blackness of space. By now the cold had confounded all Mrs. O’Carolan’s ramifications, and for the good of my health, I decided to take a series of timed photographic exposures through the telescope and withdraw indoors to the comforts of hearth and wife. I was familiar with the local meteorology, as an astronomer must be, and I knew that this clear, cold weather would linger for several days.
This morning, on developing the plate, I noticed the anomaly. To be certain that it was not an imperfection in the emulsion (a series of such imperfections had caused me to terminate my arrangement with Pettigrew and Rourke Photographic Suppliers of Sligo, a pretty bundle of rogues, indeed), I quickly produced a full set of prints from all the exposures. Patience is the keystone of professionalism; the amateur would have hurried the job, and in his haste smeared the photographs so badly as to render them worthless. I bided my time, and when the little alarm clock rang was therefore able to see immediately that what I had recorded was no photographic error, but an unprecedented, and quite extraordinary, astronomical phenomenon.