What happened, in the end? The tutors were uncertain. In the last days, the survivors had made few records, and what they had made was mostly lost. Orpheus, who"d seen the aftermath, said that perhaps it was better not to know. It was likely that the ghosts that the scholar-princes had called up had escaped. Perhaps, having opened the way to the deeper spheres, worse things now came boiling up, eager to remake Mars in the image of their own h.e.l.ls. Or perhaps the scholar-princes themselves had learned, as their empire fell, to take leave of their bodies, to become pure spirit. In any case, the darkness that had hovered over the mountain of the Eye now spilled down onto the plains below. Great rivers of fog and ash and shadow ran slowly but implacably across the plains, devouring whatever they touched. They poisoned the water, they blackened the sky, they turned forests to ash, laying waste to whatever had survived the war. Those who crossed their path went mad with fear, with hunger; or fell from the sky dead. They were too heavy, too terrible. Mars could not tolerate their presence.
There was nowhere to run from them; you could flee twice around the world and still run into them. Those who survived turned inwards instead. Refugees of a hundred scattered nations came together under a black and choking sky and pressed forward into what had been the territory of the Eye. In Orpheus" opinion, they hoped only to hasten their deaths. Silenus was of the opinion that they had been seized by a holy wisdom.
~ What they found there, Hyacinth said, is best not spoken of. But since our guest has begun the story, I will end it as well as I can. In the abandoned fortresses of the Eye they found the secret of the crossing, and they set out from their tower-tops into the dark and the s.p.a.ce between worlds, where there was nothing for their wings to drift on but moonlight. Some died, and some were lost, and some came to the white moon. This city was here when we came, and it was empty. We do not know who built it.
~ I have seen dead Mars with my own eyes, Orpheus said. I have seen the storms and the darkness. I have heard the whispering. I have fought with the few savages that still exist in the ruins living a half-life of madness and hunger; fought them for sc.r.a.ps. I have felt the fingers of ghosts clutch at my soul.
The tutors watched warily. The light of the red moon was very bright.
~ I thought that if I told you, I might see-I might see what you are, Orpheus concluded. But I still don"t know.
Josephine said nothing.
Orpheus moved back to the window in a single, elegant open-winged leap, and crouched there. He stared; she felt him probing at her thoughts. ~ We came here as strangers-lost. We care for the lost. That was always our way.
~ Thank you.
~ But if you are our enemy ...
He leapt from the window, and as Josephine staggered back, he swooped on her. She had no time to be afraid. She lashed out in anger, with her will, and he spun aside, striking his wings against the wall and landing crumpled in a corner.
The tutors scattered to the corners of the room and readied themselves for further violence.
Orpheus stood. ~ You"re strong, he said.
She was. She was clumsy, perhaps, and she was lost, but her mind and her will were strong. She was too angry to be surprised. Hadn"t Atwood said she was strong? Hadn"t Jupiter?
Orpheus paced, muttering to himself.
~ But what does that mean? I don"t know what to do. I"m afraid. Something must be done. I can"t stand still.
He rushed to the window.
~ Wait, she said.
He turned back to her.
~ Yes?
~ Wait. The fortresses of the Eye-do they still exist? Have you seen them?
~ A dangerous question.
~ Have you?
~ Of all the dark places on Mars, those are the worst. We do not go there.
~ They knew how to travel between the worlds. Perhaps they had a way to travel to the Blue Sphere.
~ If they had, they would have already laid waste to it.
~ Let me go with you.
The tutors rushed forward and began to interrupt and argue and panic. She swept them aside.
~ You"re strong, he said. But I doubt you are strong enough. And I don"t trust you.
~ But- ~ Perhaps when we know what you are. When another revolution has come and gone; or a hundred of them.
~ That may be a long time in my world. I think we are shorter-lived than you. Everything may be gone.
~ In time, everything will be gone.
He leapt from the window, spread his wings wide, and rose into the night.
Chapter Thirty.
Orpheus was gone before she could think of chasing him. Josephine rounded on the tutors. ~ I must go with him.
Impossible, they said, fluttering around her, enclosing her, patting and stroking her wings to soothe her.
~ You can"t hold me here. A prisoner. It"s wicked-it"s wrong-you said so yourselves.
They argued. Silenus seemed hurt, outraged; Hyacinth, amused. They explained to her all the reasons why it was very important for her to stay where she was, for her own good, and for the good of others. A buzz of motion and colour. She closed her eyes and they continued to argue in her head. She pushed past them, knocking Born-on-the-White-Moon to the floor, and fled, out of the room and up narrow winding staircases (too narrow and too steep; made for whoever or whatever had built the city) into the upper empty rooms of the towers. She wanted to weep in frustration, to stamp her feet. She wanted to laugh. She felt like a child.
She paced the room. It was empty, dusty. White stone was lit pink by the light of the red moon. The ceiling was arched in an odd off-centre way. Two arched windows looked out over empty buildings. An empty room in a ruin. The tutors, wisely, didn"t come after her-if they had, she might have thrown them downstairs. She knew now that she was strong-stronger than them. Not that it had done her much good; it was her strength that had brought her into Atwood"s Company, and it was her strength that had brought her out here, but she was still lost. Strength outstripped wisdom. She felt both powerful and helpless; she felt furious.
She thought of the story Orpheus had told her. The scholar-princes of the Eye-she pictured a nation of Atwoods, a nation of Jupiters. The ruins of their fortresses-she pictured Atwood"s house in Mayfair, the books on his wall, the paintings, the star-charts, all the paraphernalia of his magic. She couldn"t imagine the danger being worse than what she"d already faced.
Hours went by. The light of the red moon waxed. It was coming very close now. It seemed to accelerate as it approached-an illusion, no doubt, the way dawn seems so slow at first and then so sudden. She could feel its approach: in her bones, in her fingers, in her wings. Contradictory sensations, wild tidal forces pushing one way and then the other. One moment there was a sense of horrible impending pressure, the next a sense of lightness, as if you might take off, pulled into the sky towards the moon. One moment there was fear; the next, antic.i.p.ation.
Who"d built this city? Who"d built this room, and what was it for? They were gone now; but they too must have their history, must have lived and loved and fought and died long before Mars fell, long before Greece or Rome. Their language was lost. Their city was a refuge for strangers. London wouldn"t last so long if Londoners abandoned it. St. Paul"s might stand for a century or two, and the British Museum, but the house on Rugby Street would be dust in a generation or two. One day London would be gone-or in a thousand years, which was not so very long from the perspective of the universe. Things stranger than she could imagine might settle in the ruins. A parade of improbabilities, green and red and blue and yellow, men like Egyptian G.o.ds, with the heads of elephants and parrots and dogs and b.u.mble-bees-taking the place of Londoners, and the Londoners gone who knows where in their turn. A great parade, an endless series of heavenly revolutions, coming and going, pa.s.sing from sphere to sphere-a universe of vast and eternal flux ... She felt dizzy. There was something in the air.
The tutors came up the tower. Hyacinth bustled in first, self-importantly, a.s.serting authority by her very posture. But before she could speak, Josephine demanded ~ I have to go with him.
~ Impossible. That you would even ask!
~ I"m not afraid.
~ You should be.
~ I have to find him. Go away. Go away!
She shouted with her mind until Hyacinth recoiled, hopping downstairs. If she"d had skirts, she would have hiked them in a panic.
A horrible notion entered Josephine"s head. When she"d first arrived on this strange moon, she"d hoped every day that Martin Atwood or Jupiter might suddenly appear to rescue her. Now she wondered if perhaps they had come after her; but what if they"d looked for her on Mars itself? What if they"d instead found the ghostly horrors Orpheus had warned her of? Even Atwood didn"t deserve that. And what if Arthur had followed her to Atwood"s house? What if he"d ended up in the same danger? They might even now be sitting down around a table in Mayfair, Arthur and Atwood and Jupiter and Sun, all of them hand in hand and ready to venture into the void, towards the haunted surface of Mars.
Next it was Silenus who came to lecture her, but she saw him off too. Then it was Mercy"s turn. The two of them argued for hours, and when she pushed Mercy, Mercy pushed back. All the while the red light grew brighter, and her mood became wilder, and the tutors became angrier; until at last she pushed them all aside and ran up the stairs to the tower"s highest window.
An archway opened onto a curving, sloping platform-there were a series of them around the top of the tower, rather unpleasantly reminiscent of the gills of a mushroom. She stood uneasily out on the topmost platform. There was little wind-even now, with the red moon bearing down close and the feeling of a storm in the air, the city was still and quiet. Behind her, she heard the tutors coming up the stairs. The tower rose above her to a horn-like point. Nearby towers resembled nails, church steeples, pyramids, honeycombs. As far as she could see, she was alone. She unfurled and stretched her wings. Always a strange sensation. Muscles moving where no muscles should be.
Before she could think twice or lose her nerve, she stepped out to the platform"s edge and stepped off, snapping out her wings as wide as they would go. At first she felt nothing, nothing at all as she fell through the thin lunar air, nothing that would halt or slow her descent. Then she felt instincts coming swiftly to life, a warmth creeping through the edges of her wings, and those strange unwieldy things began to move of their own accord, not beating but stretching, contracting, arranging their complex fronds and entanglements so as to catch not air but light: the faint light of the sun, reflected from the surface of Mars, and the thick light of the red moon. Her fall slowed, then she began to rise. In a matter of seconds, the tower was far behind her, and the city was a blur below. She didn"t know where she was going. The tutors would pursue her, she supposed, and so she turned towards the heart of the city, where she might lose herself in a crowd. That was her last coherent thought for some time: a thousand new sensations cried out for her attention, and she was lost in them.
Not air, but light, or forces more fundamental than light. Astronomers might talk-in that way they had, that made the universe sound rather ugly and cluttered-about rays, and spectroscopic something-or-other, and solar winds and so on. Or perhaps Atwood might have a better idea-perhaps the forces at play were more his sort of thing, telekinesis or the Odic Force or astral light or pure vril. Perhaps the conditions were peculiar to the Red Sphere. It was absurd and impossible to imagine bright blue Martians fluttering like a swarm of summer b.u.t.terflies through London smog. Everything had its proper place. Hers was here, now, under the light of the red moon, high over the white city.
She swooped and turned between the towers, swiftly, effortlessly. The wings were weightless, buoying her up. When she tried to turn to see them behind her (so huge!) the result was that she rolled and fell, tumbling, laughing at the speed and the danger until she was able to catch herself on a thick rolling current of light and rise up again, soaring over a great grey dome. Something followed her across the stone below. It wasn"t until she was far past it that she realised it had been her shadow.
The tower-tops were above her now, and she could see pedestrians on the streets below. They were all looking up. At first she thought they were looking up at her, but of course there was nothing remarkable about what she was doing. Not here. Here, flight was no more remarkable than riding the omnibus. They were looking up at the red moon.
In the heart of the city there were crowds. It was an out-of-doors sort of evening on the moon. Martians leapt from window to window between the towers, and she was frequently forced to swerve to avoid collision-now that caused them to stare at her! They were negligently careless of collision, like Londoners striding out into traffic.
Long tower-shaped shadows unfolded beneath her and folded away again. There was pollen in the air. The flowers were upturned, open, expectant. Red light flickered on polished stone. From the air it resembled campfires; the armies of Greece beneath the beetling towers of Troy. Martians staggered through the streets, drunk on red wine-had they been Londoners, they"d have been arm in arm and singing. Others perched like gargoyles in windows or on rooftops-no, more like cats on the hunt, watching, and waiting. Beneath her the streets opened into a square where packs of Martians fought, charging and swooping at each other, skirmishing, cutting and parrying with their wings. Was it a riot? Some Dionysian carnival, a night of madness? No-on closer inspection, they were sparring-readying themselves. She felt an urge to join them.
The thrum and whine of their wings made messages.
~ Good luck!
~ Be ready!
~ Follow me! Follow me! Join us!
A flock of Martians surrounded her, beckoning. They had no idea who she was, no idea that she was not truly one of them. The thought was delightful. What were they doing? Where were they going? She followed them for a while, drifting from window to window of the high towers, where the flock perched, clamoured, rattled their wings, urgently beckoned out into the night. They were raising the alarm, rousing sleepers, rallying the city"s defenders. Against what? She hardly cared. Her thoughts were not entirely her own. She moved with the crowd, angry and joyful and wild-hardly even remembering why she"d fled the tutors" tower, or what she was looking for; just one of the defenders of the ivory city against whatever was coming.
The flock wheeled around a horn-shaped tower-she didn"t see the signal and nearly turned too late-and then pa.s.sed through another flock pa.s.sing in the opposite direction, a thrilling cacophony of wings and signs all around her. Wheeling and banking again, she found herself in a part of the city that she knew. Old Piccadilly lived there.
She said ~ This way!
The flock ignored her. Whatever authority they recognised, she didn"t have it. She split off from them. They didn"t seem to mind, or even notice. She searched from window to window along the street until she found her friend"s window. She knew it was his because he was standing in it, leaning out to watch the preparations below. He staggered back as she approached, as if he"d seen a ghost-which, in a way, she supposed he had.
She entered through his window and stood before him, breathing heavily, her wings trembling with excitement.
Piccadilly occupied a room on the middle floor of a mostly empty tower, in a street of no particular significance. The room was as spartan as any other. Piccadilly had retreated from the window to stand in a dusty corner. He was trembling; he looked terribly old. In his sudden retreat from the window he"d spilled a crystal decanter of red wine.
There was something about him that was not so different from a pensioner in London. An old man forgotten in a dusty room. Threadbare wings. The drink. Memories of the dead.
She stepped forward. His wings opened in surprise and alarm, as if to shield himself.
~ Why are you here? Now? Tonight?
~ I don"t know what"s happening, she said. Everything"s moving-everything"s moving, so suddenly. I don"t know what"s happening. They taught me grammar, and philosophy, and science, and nothing I needed to know.
~ How did you find me?
~ Luck. I didn"t know I was looking for you. I thought I was looking for someone else. Can you help me? Will you help me?
~ Of course. Why now-I saw you at the window and asked, why now? But this is the night of the red moon, and everything is chaos. Anyone may find themselves swept up and whirled anywhere. Why not here?
~ I escaped.
~ That was a good place. That was where you should be. They said they would teach you. Make you strong.
~ At first, perhaps. But then all they did was ask me questions.
She saw that he was drunk. His lips were stained red.
~ I was glad when they took you away. I couldn"t look at you. It was harder than I expected. I"m sorry. Shall we talk now? After all these months? Now, on the eve of the red moon? Yes. I shall not last through another one. That"s well enough. I have lived to speak with an angel, and to see the dead wake. And for a little while, I was the leader of a school, and people listened to me because of it. That will do.
~ Who was she?
~ No one now.
~ How did she die? What happened to her?
~ You"ll see. Very soon now, you"ll see. You"ll see what they do.
~ They?
~ Our brothers and sisters of the red moon. They didn"t tell you?
~ No.
He went to the window, stiffening as he pa.s.sed her. She wanted to throw her arms around him and hug him, the way she would have hugged her father when she was a child. But she didn"t know how the old Martian might react, what that gesture might mean to him. And then it was too late-he was standing at the window.
~ They should have told you, he said. Perhaps they were afraid to tell you. Afraid of what you would remember-afraid of what she would remember. Do you remember?
~ I don"t know-I feel afraid, and angry. Our brothers and sisters of the red moon-brothers? Sisters?
~ Have they told you how we fled Mars?
~ I don"t understand.