CHAPTER TWELVE

Mutter liked things in their places, with clear delineations between them, but everything in the house was changing. All of the rituals, hierarchies, and conventions were sliding over one another to find new settling places; Ishmael moved freely between the third floor and the attic, and the camera obscura had become a focal point for them all, even Ghertrude. Mutter’s collection of the crates was the only thing that continued, unchanged, twice a week.

Through Ishmael’s constant use, the spaces were becoming his own, his domain. Each place had its own sound, and Ghertrude and Mutter were able to track his movements from any part of the house. He could often be heard pacing and moving about in his rooms, rearranging furniture and adjusting the layout. In the attic, the strings would sing his presence, often for hours at a time. It was no longer an access space; he was making it important in its own right.

The tower of the obscura was marked by silence, quieter than sleep itself when he was there. His commitment held the house still, lifting it by its scruff, so that it could be felt in its roots. But that was the one place he did not go: where she most feared he would be drawn, where he might betray her more easily. She left nothing to chance and had Mutter double-check the padlocks and barriers to the cellars almost daily. She told him clearly that it was forbidden to all, and that was the only rule of the house. He did not answer but nodded in intelligent approval. Even so, she instructed Mutter to keep an eye on him and on the cellar door.

Being in the house now made Mutter uncomfortable. He did not know when or where the cyclops might turn up, and he was still a little startled by his appearance. Furthermore, Ishmael was becoming more familiar: He sought interaction, asking him questions about his employment, his family, the outside world. Mutter had never been a great conversationalist, and with this weird creature he found it easier to scurry away or hide in the yard, with the horses. He enjoyed their dumbness; the rich smell of their bodies and the perfume of the hay soothed him, and he would often take his lunch out to where they grazed. He smoked his bitter cigars in their mute company and watched the seasons turn, unhurried, and mostly safe. Sometimes, he felt keenly that he was being watched from above. He imagined his likeness, smeared on the circular table of that ungodly machine, the gloating eye tasting it like some terrible fish. The idea chilled him and made him move farther back into the stable, reassured by its shared warmth and temporary concealment.

—

Returning to the house late one day, he found the cyclops standing near the stairs of the ground floor, looking in the direction of the prohibited door. It worried him; he knew that he should say something or take some action, but it was a position he was neither designed nor equipped for, and he could find no frame of reference with which to begin the necessary conversation. He stood, jaw open, vaguely moving his limp arms in unison, like a broken gate in the wind, or a disused pump, trying to raise a spoonful of water from some immeasurable distance.

“Herr Mutter, where are the old crates?” Ishmael asked, stepping into the doubt and reversing it, making the question his own. “I wanted to check something before you return them tomorrow.”

“They are in the tack room, next to the stables,” the yeoman replied thinly.

“Show me,” demanded the cyclops as he walked towards the door. Mutter opened the door for the young master and pointed, expecting his honest direction to be noted and the matter closed.

Instead, Ishmael strode out of the door and across the yard, leaving Mutter without words or action. The cyclops slid back the bolt on the tack room door and walked briskly inside. Mutter blinked hard, hoping that the rapid movement would return all things to their proper place, that this impossible thing would rewind and he would be exonerated of the stupid mistake he had just made. But alas, that was not the case. He dashed across the cobbles and erupted himself at the side of the escapee, who was casually examining the side of a long, thin crate. Showing no sign of agitation, the cyclops asked, “At what time will you take these away tomorrow?”

“At eleven o’clock, sir,” answered Mutter automatically.

The word “sir” had entered Mutter’s mouth out of habit and because there was no alternative. It was the first time Ishmael had been given status, and it marked a further shift in their dynamics—he knew now that the old man could be easily bent.

“And where will you take them?”

“To the warehouse.”

“Good. I would like to go with you.”

Mutter’s heart ceased its beating and leapfrogged into his mouth. The cyclops walked past him into the yard and stopped and looked up to the rooftops, then beyond them to the fleeting clouds.

“But, sir,” Mutter stammered, “it’s impossible, the mistress…”

“…will never know,” finished Ishmael. “It’s not the mistress who pays your wages or cares for your family, is it? It’s not the mistress who cares for me, not really. The person or persons who look after this house are responsible for our well-being, Mutter. It’s my family that employs yours. And now I wish to make a brief visit to them, to see, for a moment, the one other place that I know to be connected to me.”

“But, sir! I was told to take nobody there. Not even my sons may visit before they are ready to be trained in my job.”

“Sigmund,” said the cyclops in curved, enduring tones. “Don’t you see that everything is changed now? I am no longer a child. I have the house. Soon enough, it will be me who employs you. Ghertrude need never know about our little trip.”

Mutter was silent and horribly perplexed. He looked from his scuffed boots into the pleading eye, then back again.

“Unless you’d prefer that I go by myself?”

Mutter followed his gaze towards the gate and saw that it was held on a draw bolt, not double-locked as he had been instructed. He knew that the cyclops was agile and could reach the gate long before him; the only way to stop him would be to cuff him or tackle him to the ground. He assumed that such an act would not be looked upon favourably by his unseen masters. He was beginning to panic, when Ishmael smiled and inflicted the coup de grâce.

“I have no desire to get you into trouble, Sigmund. And I’m sure neither of us want Ghertrude to know about this afternoon’s little mistake; she is scared of me running away, and it makes her overreact. So I shall say nothing tonight when she visits, and in the morning we will make a brief, discreet visit to the warehouse, yes? What do you think? Can we make our little adventure together and return without anybody knowing?”

Mutter gave in; there was no alternative. The delighted cyclops clapped his hands together in satisfaction.

“Excellent! Come, then; let us go over my plan,” he said, propelling the deflated old man towards the stables and telling him to pick up his tools on the way.

—

The next day, they waited in different parts of the old property for Ghertrude to leave. Mutter stayed in the stables, with the crates loaded onto the carriage, while she and Ishmael ate breakfast together. When it was over, she left by the front door, calling to announce that she would be back by seven that evening. Ishmael waited impatiently for her nippy steps to vanish from the lane outside, then sprang to his feet and unlocked the front door. He hurried over to the stables, slipped quietly inside, and stepped onto the waiting carriage.

The long, thin crate that had been “Lesson 318: Spears & Bows (Old Kingdoms)” was securely strapped into the open rig. Its contents had been removed and now lay hidden behind a dusty old curtain in the far corner of the stables; their replacement crouched expectantly in his hiding place. A hole had been drilled in the side of the box, about a foot from the closed end, and Mutter saw the glimmer of an eye as he fastened the gates behind them. He hadn’t said a word that morning; his instinct had been to obey in a stoic, inert manner, while desperately wishing for it to be over and done with as soon as possible.

The crazed and rattled fragments of the outside that Ishmael saw amazed and excited him. The confusion of scale and the smells of the factories unleashed sensory responses that he did not know existed. The colours were much brighter than the tower projections, and he felt the enormity of everything as the town burst with unbridled life. He had been right about their eyes; Ghertrude had told him the truth, and soon he would find out if Luluwa had too.

By the time they reached the warehouse, he was brimming with questions and choking with answers. Mutter unfastened the gates and led the horse through into the courtyard, tying the steaming beast to the front of the loading-bay banisters and returning to the entrance to seal them within. He pulled a huge bunch of keys from under the driving seat of the carriage before knocking brusquely on the cyclops’s crate. Ishmael emerged, his one eye squinting as it adjusted to the light.

They entered the warehouse. Mutter went about his usual business, seeking notes and collecting the details of the next batch of crates. He turned to explain the importance of this function to the cyclops, but he was not there. The old man finished his tasks and waited for Ishmael to return to help him lift the boxes, but the minutes passed and he became impatient and angry and decided to load the carriage himself. The two new crates were different from the rest, their labels no longer stencilled red, but now painted a regal blue.

As he loaded the wagon with his cargo, Mutter was desperately trying to construct a feasible story about how he had found himself in this position. His lies were monstrous and each more ridiculous than the last; even he could see they were totally unbelievable. By the time the escapee returned, he had decided that the truth was the only option.

“Shall we go?” said Ishmael.

The slim crate had remained on the carriage, and the cyclops squeezed back in, pulling the lid tight after him. His coffin journey home, though still eventful, was overshadowed by the stranger things in the warehouse; his mind raced with them. When the bumpy ride was at an end and they were enclosed in the stables once more, he slowly pushed his way out of his confinement with theatrical vigour.

“Thank you, Herr Mutter,” he said. “Our secret will stay intact. No one will ever know of our time together today.”

The servant opened the door to let him in. The sense of relief was wonderful, and he locked him in place at once, returning home before Mistress Tulp arrived; he had no intention of dealing with her as well that evening, or of letting her look into his far-too-honest eyes.

The next day, with a great lightness in his heart, he returned. He planned to tend to the horses, to spend the day in their magnificent, uncomplicated company and let the intricacies in the house take care of themselves.

He was beginning to feel at home again, the busy muck fork in his hands, when the voice of the warehouse boomed suddenly and gravely in his ear:

“Herr Mutter, you have disappointed us and grievously betrayed our confidence. For this, you will be punished. If this should happen again, the punishments will be amplified, and our blessings on you and your family will cease and turn against all. The hands of your first son, Thaddeus, have this day been removed. They have been crossed over and sewn on backwards, right to left and left to right. His palms will always face outwards. He will receive the best medical care until he is healed. His hands will be useless for work, but perfect for begging. You may save him from such a future, but not from the operation. That is the price you owe to us. Be calm, Herr Mutter, and remember our care and protection of your family over all these years. Accept your wrongdoing, repent, and return to our favour.”

—

When Mutter ventured home that night, he dreaded the reality that the voice had promised but hoped that it might have been a delusion, a befuddlement. He entered his home with permafrost rotting his heart. The rolling wave of warmth and the hug of coiled noise did nothing to thaw him. His wife took his heavy topcoat and seated him at the solid table as his daughter, Meta, brought him a mug of thick, black beer. He watched them flurry back and forth with steaming pots and clanking plates. The sumptuous energy of home, rich and seamless, stirred the glow of continuity out of the shards of necessity. The food was served, and everybody ate enthusiastically. But Thaddeus’s chair was empty, and Mutter stared dumbly at his meaningless dish, its smell arousing nothing within him.

“Where is Thaddeus?” he choked.

“Oh! Wonderful!” his wife chirped. “A letter came with the possibility of employment, so he went to the eastern quarter; he should be home soon.” The table fell away, and sharp, inward tears fell to make a razor chain of slow constrictions inside his throat; it tightened with every joyous mouthful his family ate. No one noticed the change, not even his lifetime wife, and he swamped his horror and guilt in thick, heavy beer that stung with each strangled gulp.

Thaddeus did not return that evening. Nor was he seen the next day, or the one after that. Mutter went to the warehouse and knelt in his son’s absence; he gave his word to the building that he was, forever, a loyal and unflinching servant. He returned to his duties, weighed down by despair.

—

Early the next day, Thaddeus stood outside the family home, a worn exhaustion in his confused but settled eyes. He was immaculately dressed in a silk suit, his hair elegantly styled like that of a prince, his beautiful new shoes shining in the dusty sunlight, his wrists bandaged, his hands open at his parents’ door.

The wind groaned and bellowed around the tiny rooms where Mutter’s family slept. The yeoman heard it rise and fall, gasping against the corridors and the empty kitchen, where mice, smaller than blurs, darted like needles trying to stitch the gusts. He watched his wife sleeping fitfully, her judders in and out of time with her breathing. He knew that the next day she would tell him that she did not get a wink of sleep that night. He would not remember if he did. He tossed in a thorny bed of guilt and vengeance, anger and defeat. He did not know how he would face his family or the world, or how he would continue in the employment he could never end. His hollow home sighed, and he tried not to think about the coming day or the creature he now loathed.

From Mutter’s hunchback dwelling, the wind curved upwards to the gleaming mansion of the Tulps. Ghertrude slept in the enforced lie of her childhood room, facedown on her soggy pillow, her duvet pulled over her head to diminish the tapping that she hoped was only the sound of the trees lashing against the windows.

There was less turbulence in 4 Kühler Brunnen. The doors there were firmly shut, the craftsmanship precise and tight; the wind could be heard only where damage had occurred. It snarled in the locked lower floors and whispered perilously near the stairs above the ancient well. It droned in the attic but remained ethereally quiet in the room with the cyclops’s empty bed. In the tower, it watched the occupant focusing on the moonlight, examining the dim glow from the miniature maze of the desolate streets. Ishmael was naked, goose pimples shifting over his pale body, as if offering an index, or a rarefied notation, to the observations of the table. His eye was very close to the surface; like a spoon, it glided among the streets.

The dry storm could have reached the moon that night; such was its magnitude. But a stronger force was demanding its attention, and it billowed northwards, under the influence of a far greater, more dominant presence: It was being swallowed forever into the Vorrh.

Ishmael had only Ghertrude to talk to now. Since their adventure together, Mutter had avoided him entirely; no matter how hard he tried to initiate conversation, the old man refused to be drawn. He barely made eye contact, and when he did it was baleful and suspicious. Ishmael thought it a dramatic and surly way to behave over such a small breaking of the rules. However, he would not be diverted by a servant’s bad humour. He had noticed the market square changing over the last two days, its simple frame being decorated between its daily functions. Something was being prepared. He cornered Ghertrude when she arrived to change his bed linen.

Her visits had become less frequent recently, and she seemed remote and uninterested in his questions. She had certainly lost her appetite for mating, having nothing new to show or explain to him. He still possessed an active interest in the subject, but when he suggested that they might try other ways of doing it, she became defensive and limp. Not wishing to disturb his comfortable position within the house, he chose to let his desires go untended.

Besides, his need to be outside again and explore the city in detail was of greater importance. She had told him of the perils, explained that a rarity such as he would be in danger from the mob. She told him the story of a small, ornate bird she had owned as a child. Its plumage was vermilion, with a trim of yellow. Its voice was exquisite, and she often put it in her window so that it might sing to the sun. Local, indigenous birds would flock to the areas nearby to listen to it and admire its splendid colours. One day she sat, with the bird tamely on her finger, talking to the brightness of its attention. She did not notice the window’s slight opening, and as the curtain swayed, the bird smelt the air and flew to freedom. In horror, she ran to the window and watched it flutter and swoop in poor, close circles. She called to it and it turned in her direction; she saw the excitement in its eyes, just before it was torn to pieces by the same grey flock that had watched it before.

That would be his fate, she had explained. His exotic originality would be seen as a threat; they would call him a monster. But he knew he was superior to the double eyes, and he had proved it. She did not know this, and the time to tell her had not yet dawned.

“Ghertrude?” he said, as she worked with her back to him, “why are the streets below being decorated?”

“Oh!” she exclaimed happily. “That’s for the carnival!”

“And what is ‘carnival’ in this place?” he asked.

“Well, every year, the people have a party to thank the forest for its gifts. It lasts for three days and nights, everybody stops work, and the streets are alive with music, food, and dancing. Everything is decorated, even the cathedral. The people dress in costumes that they have spent all year making. Lords and ladies mix with peasants and rogues, not knowing each other’s rank or status.”

“How is that possible, when everybody recognises each other here?”

“Because of the masks!” she whooped, carried away in the joyful momentum.

“Masks?” he queried.

“Yes! Fanciful, mysterious masks of every description, angels and demons, animals and mons—”

“Monsters?” he ventured slowly.

She had become suddenly quiet and unsure of where to look.

“Could it be,” he pressed, “that on such an occasion, a ‘rarity’ might hide its strangeness, that an exotic bird might conceal its beauty, and that a monster would be safe among so many others?”

And so it came to pass that the beast went to the ball.

They stood just inside the gate of 4 Kühler Brunnen. They made a fine pair, plumed and bejewelled, masked and covered, loose and sensuous silks flashing provocatively beneath their cloaks.

“Will it be like the story you read me, the one you liked so much? With the clock and the coloured rooms, the one that gave me nightmules?” he asked.

“Nightmares,” she corrected. “Yes, but not so solemn. It will be much ruder. Everybody is drunk and behaves badly.”

“How badly?” he asked, apprehensively.

“Behind a mask you can be anybody, do anything. No one is found guilty, no one is innocent; there are more children sired during these three days than the rest of the year. And no one looks too closely for family resemblance, nine months later, when the babes are born.”

“And nobody is ever unmasked?”

“Never!” she said, with more certitude than she felt. It was true that one felt a certain freedom under the protection of disguise, and she had committed petty crimes and minor malices before under the mask. But she had never possessed the nerve to engage in open debauchery. Until now.

They peeped through the gap and plucked at the springboard of their nerves, readying to be jettisoned into the whirling throng of dreams that bustled and shoved in the streets outside. The noise was colossal. Hurdy-gurdies and pipers roamed the streets, confusing the vast steam organ that played from the heart of the market square. There were fireworks and pistol shots, trumpets and singing, screaming and laughter.

Suddenly, the gate was open and they were gone. Mutter locked it hard behind them and spat on the wet cobblestones.

Ishmael was intoxicated with the number of people he had touched and seen in the first two hours of his freedom. His entire body was becoming luminous beneath the costume. Was it the same for everybody that thronged the streets, opened their doors, and gave themselves up for molestation? He had lost Ghertrude somewhere after the third house and had no idea where he was, which made him even more excited. He entered a grand house full of music and laughter. Women and men held him and felt beneath his robe, making joyous sounds of pleasure at what they found there. He wanted to explore the rooms more, so he pulled away and slunk close to the lushly carpeted floor.

In a magnificent room lit by flickering torchlight, he felt a different perfume and crawled across the floor towards it—an animal of his own making, his long, white proboscis sniffing, his whiskers quivering, as he nodded from side to side. His rangy, pale legs seemed to both tiptoe and slide on the polished wooden floor. The top part of his body was clothed in a silken green skin, which caught the garish light from the blazing flambeaux on the balcony outside the windows. The lower half of his body was naked, its huge, swollen phallus swaying like an independent entity as he approached his next engagement like a creature possessed.

The last bed was in great disarray, the covers pulled messily around the softly snoring body of its spent occupant. The room was full of whispers and laughter; small, animal noises of hunger and fulfilment rippled the landscape of opulence. Sighs gilded the tangled scent of incense, musk, and intoxication.

He reached the next bed and slid his gloved hands beneath the sheet. They were instantly gripped by the smooth, trembling grasp of the woman who waited there. She pulled the beast inside and drew the covers over them both. Her form was older, large, and voluptuous, and she was dressed like an owl, black feathers accentuating the ivory wideness of her eyes. He slipped a catch on his beak and pulled it backwards, leaving the lower half of his face exposed, so that his mouth was visible and active in their lovemaking. Pulling him close, she kissed him passionately. He jumped back, startled, almost falling from the bed. Neither Luluwa nor Ghertrude had ever done such a thing; it had never been explained to him, and Ghertrude had always looked away when they mated.

“Don’t be shy,” she said.

He let her suck his mouth again, and it was sweet and arousing. He kissed back, and his manhood surpassed previous dimensions and expectations.

Even in the overpopulated room of revellers, the sounds of the Owl and her new companion rose above all others. Their bedding thrashed wildly, and something else wallowed out from their conjunctures; other couples and trios found their attention hooked and pulled across the pulsing darkness, away from their own compacted intimacies, peering towards an unnameable eminence that was outside and beyond their own little shudders and sighs.

It was almost dawn when he crept from her bed to search the rooms for his black velvet cloak.

When the Owl awoke, she began to cry. She pulled her mask away and started to shout. She stumbled to the window, her hands on her face, and began to scream.

The Owl was Cyrena Lohr. She was thirty-three years old and had been blind since birth. In the early light of post-carnival, with anxious friends and strangers standing by her side, she shivered, naked and overpowered, at the window, watching the brilliant sunrise, yellow and crisp on her first visual day.

How had he done this? Who was this miracle worker who had entered her bed and given her sight? She had to find him. The moment she could be sure she was not dreaming, she would find him and thank him on her knees.

The remaining revellers in her mansion were dressing quickly. One brought a dressing gown and wrapped Cyrena in its warm folds, while attempting to steer the emotional woman away from the window and back to the bed. But she would not be moved, so they brought her a high-backed armchair and seated her safely within it. Most of the crowd that had occupied her many rooms had disappeared; the combination of unmasking and being a witness was too much for their frail identities to bear, and they had fled as the whisper slithered through the house. Miracles are never comfortable; for the hungover, the debauched, and the anonymous, they are intolerable.

Four weeks later, she had settled with her sight. All available tests had been completed, and it was unanimously agreed: She had excellent and enduring vision.

With the help of various companions, she spent two of those weeks visiting the city she knew so intimately, adding colour, shape, and tone to its sound and texture. She stared for hours at the faces of her friends and the few of her family who were left. The new details were catching up and beginning to make sense. Only her dreams remained slow and auditory; the pictures came but would not attach properly, flopping and draping over the hard skeletons of sound and becoming transparent. It would take a year for them to solidify into trust.

She redecorated her splendid house. She gave all her old clothes to the poor and went on a lavish spending spree to dress her body in the rich colour and sumptuous design of her wildest imaginings. She burnt her white sticks, unceremoniously, in the gardener’s fire, the sweet scent of leaf smoke disguising their brittle stink of anguish. And then she focused her zeal on finding him—to become his devoted acolyte, or to make him her own.

Ghertrude had returned to 4 Kühler Brunnen first. She’d expected him to be there already and climbed the stairs to listen at the doors, but he was still out, even though the carnival had ended the night before. Fleetingly, she thought that perhaps he might never return, and the idea bounced far too blissfully for a while. Then she became anxious for him, anxious for them both, and, finally, scared of being found out.

They had stayed together for the first three hours, coupling deeply in the first room of the first house that the party had surged through. He had pinned her to the silk wall, as she looked over his shoulder at another pair, who drank ferociously from each other’s cups as they lounged on the sable carpet. Their hands had gripped tightly in the excitement of wrongdoing, before sliding apart in the grounds of one of the great houses, where the throng of dancing fantasies surged and bumped, entangling and repartnering at will. She had been whisked away by a small, bubbling party of young people dressed in shimmering foliage. The Green Man theme was rife that year. She spent the first night with a willow, whose languid courtliness extended into all of his surprising attributes. Her time with Ishmael had paid off; the last of her inhibitions had fled. She relished the contrast she had discovered; the willow and the cyclops had little in common, and she marked and compared the difference, trying to decide where her true taste lay. She balanced passion against technique, hunger against restraint, and dominance against submission. By the morning, she knew she needed even more comparison. The carnival would accommodate her experimentation. She would rise to the challenge of expanding her knowledge of the hidden intimacies of manipulation and the breadth of her own sensual appetite.

She thought that she had seen him the next evening at a tableau vivant in the hall of the De Selbys’. He, or someone dressed like him, stood as motionless as the naked figures that formed the classic scene of Mars disarmed by Venus and the Three Graces. The room was packed and concentrated. New arrivals were hushed as they spluttered into the hall, and she saw him whisper to the woman standing next to him, saw her squeeze his arm and quietly laugh, her hand covering the serrated teeth of her beak. Ghertrude assumed the woman to be one of the countless numbers of whores and courtesans who gate-crashed the homes of the wealthy. She had an urge to confront them and reveal the truth behind the mask but decided that she preferred the lasting prospect of her secret to a quick demonstration of her power. Besides, some of the company there may well have relished his deformity; many of those women may have found it perverse enough to arouse their jaded and cankered passions.

Ishmael had arrived back at 4 Kühler Brunnen in the midafternoon. He had been lost in the empty streets, exposed in his costume. He was not the only one to be walking dazed, or sleeping in the parks or back alleys: Many denizens of the revels still staggered in their grotesque outfits, now stained and wet from nights of rain or morning dew. But, unlike him, they were all unmasked, to share in their embarrassment and have it forgiven. Anyone who wore his disguise past the magic hour of unveiling was prey for abuse, or even attack. The same crowd who crossed so many boundaries, who permitted so many exchanges of lies, fluids, and dreams, instantly returned to the stiff rigour of the other three hundred and sixty-two days of the year. Everything of those three nights was forgotten forever; it was mutually agreed by all, and strictly enforced. Masked strangers, continuing into the fourth day, were renegades and a threat to the contract. Worse, they blatantly challenged the anonymity of the group with their audacious arrogance and became a target for all, from lords to dogs. He would be unveiled and disclosed by any who crossed his path; he would be beaten and driven through the humiliated streets.

Ishmael had not been aware of the rules as he’d left the Owl’s bed earlier that day. As he walked across one of the circular arteries of streets, his efforts had gone into trying to retain his bearings against the combined effects of alcohol and lack of sleep, not to mention the stalwart attentions he had paid his companions. Bunting and strings of paper flowers were hanging wet and wild in the air, the wind giving them a disturbing sense of animation; they flapped against what should have been normal gravity with an insolent abandonment. Just as he walked past them, he heard voices calling out to him:

“You’re late, friend; there’s nothing to hide now; the hour has sounded!”

He ignored the two men and the woman, who had turned into the road from a narrow alley, just ahead of him.

“Did you hear me?” barked the taller man, stepping away from the other two, who seemed to be propping each other up, interlocking against inevitability. “I said take it off, show yourself!”

He stood in Ishmael’s way, but the cyclops was quick and deftly stepped around the big man, who was dressed as a penguin. His movement incensed the man, who shouted a warning to his friends. Ishmael was caught between them when the first man turned, growling. “What gives you the right?” he spat. “Better than us, eh?”

Ishmael leapt, but the second man stuck a foot out into his stride and he tripped badly, falling into the leaves and hard cobblestones and banging his knee and the side of his head with great force. Some of the paste jewellery he was wearing broke in the fall and lay strewn across the gutter. The big man was laughing as he dragged him up onto his good knee and tore away his mask; a string of fake emeralds, with which he had been garlanded, snapped and spluttered down, skidding into hiding in the cracks of the murky road.

“That’s better.” He leered. “Now you’re one of us.” Then his eyes focused on what he was so firmly gripping. He let go instantly, his fingers splaying out, as if he had been scolded or electrocuted. Ishmael remembered a sound the Kin had sometimes made, and he screamed it out across his rolling tongue. Both men ran, leaving the woman to slide down the wall. She had not seen his face when she hit the pavement. On impact, her yelp turned into giggles.

“Now you havta carry me!” she squealed.

He bent down close to her face and grinned with the exaggerated gusto of a demon prince. She looked up at point-blank range and screamed. He punched her over into the gutter and kicked her in the head until his shoe broke and she had stopped crying out. She lay, quietly sobbing, as he limped away, calculating a safer route home. He picked up his crushed muzzle and skullcap from where the coward had dropped it, and refitted it onto his face. Most of its whiskers had fallen out, and its damaged length now gave him a new comic appearance, not unlike toys that become misshapen by too much love; squeezed and hugged into character, remodelled by the damp affections of their owners until they are abandoned.

He had found his way eventually and hobbled back, bruised, wet, and tired, with a rising feeling of nausea. The day was distilling his triumphs of the nights and converting his prowess and conquests into a hollow gruel of cold disgust. He desperately wanted a hot bath and a long, dreamless sleep, so that he might unwind himself from all those sticky, desperate bodies that had embalmed his light with the thickness of their embraces. He wanted to remove every last atom of the tastes and scents that he had so recently cherished; to comb out all their rotted sighs and smiles and never touch a human being again.

It was three days before he would speak, locking himself away in his rooms and refusing to acknowledge Ghertrude’s pleas. On the fourth day, when she let herself into the house, she heard the music. She followed its source, climbing the stairs as she listened, spellbound by its eerie resonance. By the time she reached the attic, its volume and complexity had increased. The Goedhart device had been tuned and set in motion. The lead balls with their attached quills had been tied to the ends of the cords that hung down vertically from the ceiling. They swung in long, pendulum arcs, each of the feathers strumming one of the horizontal piano wires with every passing, sending the shivering strands of metal into melodic voice. Thirty or so such strings played in the dusk, each of a different length and pitch. Plucked harmonies echoed back and forth; the light from the open window shimmered on the pendulums’ movements. Everything sang.

Ishmael sat in the far corner, his back against the wall, hands folded in his lap. Ghertrude found her place and also sat; she knew better than to attempt to open a conversation now. Over the next hour, the pendulums lost their momentum, the pulses changing and the volume dropping, each feather only lightly scraping against the strings, eventually coming to a rest against them. Towards the end, their hearing strained into the attic to fetch each little tremor of the heart-stopping sensitivity. When the concert was over, they sat in silence for a long, intuited amount of time.

“It’s getting cold,” he said at last.

“Yes,” she answered, “hot days and cold nights.”

“I am going to leave, Ghertrude,” he said, finally. “For good.”

She got colder and hugged herself. Her eyes flickered to the floor; she knew it was useless to argue.

“Where will you go?” she murmured in half of her voice.

“To the wilderness,” he replied. “Away from all people. To the Vorrh.”

Cyrena Lohr combed the city and caught three names, which now wriggled in her teeth. Two had been regular partygoers, inconsequential gentry of deplorable reputation, the kind of creatures whose very existence is antagonistic to miracle. The third had no name. He was said to be the companion of a young woman whose family Cyrena knew. She made more enquiries, buying information and paying street eyes to unwrap small morsels of sight or whisper.

She found out that the man she so desperately sought had arrived at the carnival with the affluent heiress Ghertrude Tulp and that, whatever their relationship was, it allowed them to slip separately into many different beds over those three spectacular days, which had been such travesties of life. She discovered that, some time after he left her bedchamber, he had been involved in a street altercation, in which an aging doxy had received permanent damage to her saturated brain. She knew that Ghertrude and the man lived at 4 Kühler Brunnen and that he had never been outside in public. She could not be sure but suspected that the Tulp girl held some power over him; that she imprisoned him there, her prize, her possession, which she bitterly hoarded.

She stood before the double gate, magnificent in her knowledge and the certain triumph of her discovery. Taking a quick, deep breath through her feline nostrils, she stepped forward and hammered on the shaking wood.

In her heart, she felt sure that he would open the door to her love; that she would see him, beautiful and beaming, moved by her persistence in finding him. As the scene played in her mind, she saw Ghertrude unlock the great secret and give in to her overpowering enquiry and rightful passion. What she did not expect was the hump and shuffle of Mutter, whose sour response did not even seem to recognise her grandeur.

“Is your master at home?” she asked, unprepared for the sound and need of her stilted formality.

Mutter gawped at her through bleary eyes. He removed the dead cigar stub from his wet mouth and said, “I have none here!”

She jittered slightly. “Your mistress, then?”

“Out!” he said, as he started to shut the gate.

“Where is he?” she demanded, her hand against the gate, equalising Mutter’s pressure from the other side.

“Who?” he said, genuinely unaware of whom she meant.

“The man,” she said softly, through a nervous smile. “The mysterious young man who lives here.”

There was a long pause while Mutter came to, looking into her working, expectant eyes. “Gone,” he said. “He’s gone. The monster has left.” And with that, he shoved the gate shut.