From his point of view, Gus’s merciless exploitation of me was a roaring success. He still huddled in the garden shed much of the time, drawing on his own consciousness to supplement the greater wealth he derived from me. Whatever else might be said of him, his anxiety that Margo might die before he could buy her redemption was sincere. But he allowed himself more rest than formerly, smiled more, and lingered sometimes by the Nimble Fire with a drink in his hand. The thrum of agitation that had sung through all his limbs grew subdued.
When I knew he had collected nearly the thousand talens required for purchasing Margo’s citizenship, I felt an unexpected brightening, a lucent anticipation. Even the torture of the umbrastring took on a biting joy, and I yielded to it with new eagerness. In truth, I was beside myself at the prospect of seeing Miss Anura again—for however unreasonably, I considered her a friend. My only friend, indeed, in that dreadful place.
I was rational enough to understand she did not, could not, share this valuation of our negligible relations. I knew that, if she saw me as more than an object, that very more might appall her. I knew I had no way to communicate with her, nor to tell her of my regard. My last attempt had been a notable failure.
All that uncompromising awareness did nothing to stifle the hope that I might find a way to make myself understood, and to understand her in return.
When Gus met the minotaur to draw the last eight talens he required from me, I leaned into the pain with gratitude at what those talens would buy me: a few moments’ nearness to a talking frog. Hope is a habit that outlives life itself.
Gus left the Nimble Fire upright on this occasion. From there he wove through the sinuous alleys directly to that framed patch of wall where Immigration was inscribed in letters of a sharper glow than the general hazy ambiance, and burst through with arrogant suddenness. The startling effect was undoubtedly enhanced by my scream. Miss Anura sprawled atop her papers, pen in hand, and looked up annoyed—and there was something closed in her expression as well, the contraction of slight embarrassment. Gus’s momentum sent me pitching in that narrow space so that I swooped close to Miss Anura’s papers before she could cover them. I saw a series of short lines, the dark clusters of stanzas, and saw as well that they were signed simply Anura. I resolved at once to drop the Miss from my thoughts and style her as she styled herself.
She was a poet! I yearned to read more—what a delight it would have been to peruse even dull, indifferent verses after my long deprivation! Gus no longer read at all, so I had no opportunity to peer at books over his shoulder. But I had at once the feeling that Anura’s poetry was something more than dull.
Her small blue hand yanked official papers over the page before I caught more than the opening words. Once in a hayloft …
It need hardly be said that haylofts were a scarce commodity in Nautilus. It tended to confirm my guess that she came from the unworld just as we did; that she had not been born here, nor whipped up in some frenzy of conjuring. I wondered what had brought her to this place, what personal history darted unseen in her depths.
“I have it!” Gus proclaimed, loud and impetuous, as if the matter were every bit as important to her as it was to him. “The whole thousand! I can make the transfer to you now, then bring back my aunt to be certified in front of your witnesses. Shall we proceed?”
She looked at him in silence for some moments, blinking her scarlet eyes. I found that my previous urge—to kiss her hand—was still very much present, impossible as such an act would be for me.
“I did not expect to see you again so soon, Mr. Farrow.”
“No,” Gus agreed. He deflated before her dearth of enthusiasm. “No, of course. I should have knocked. I found a way—to speed matters to this happy conclusion.”
Her lemon-shaped pupils narrowed and rolled up to my face, and I felt myself pulse in response. Would she address me again? My bright and dark were still in that sickly ebb and swirl that came after Gus’s sessions draining me. Anura’s level gaze was as good as saying that she knew quite well what way Gus had found to his windfall, and that she did not approve.
If she dismissed Gus on my account, I thought it likely that Margo would die in the unworld, and fairly soon. She had not been looking well. I will confess that my spite toward Gus was enough to make me prefer Margo dead, if only to watch him suffer. Toward Margo herself I bore no ill will.
(I have examined my last statement, and found it less than true.)
“How convenient for you,” Anura drawled at last. With that I knew that while she might enjoy provoking Gus, she would not refuse a bribe that was for the most part cruelly extracted from me. Why did I at once forgive her?
Forgive her I did, with an impetuous fullness of heart that was quite unlike me. If I examine the question cynically, I suppose I couldn’t afford anger at the only person in Nautilus who was ever kind to me. I told myself it was better that the talens go to her than stay with Gus.
“And for you as well,” Gus sniped. “Isn’t it?”
The ruby eyes blinked in acknowledgment. A device was brought forth from a tiny drawer in the desk, unwound with ceremonious care. It was similar in some respects to the implement that Gus used on me: it consisted of a thread like gleaming spider silk with minuscule dial that might at first glance be mistaken for a dewdrop dangling near one end. What was missing, of course, was the fork that regularly skewered my fleshless flesh.
By then I had seen enough to know the delicate trinket for a heartstring. It appeared to be the ordinary kind used for ordinary transactions—Gus sometimes paid for drinks with a similar, if cruder, one—though I guessed that Anura’s must be in some way spelled to conceal her bribe-taking.
Gus and Anura each took one end in their mouths. Gus’s face turned pale and queasy at once, while Anura’s battened visibly around a slow smile—which in her case encircled half her body, as if satisfaction clasped her in a tender embrace.
And then something occurred that I think no one present had anticipated. It was subtle enough; to this day, I’m not sure if Gus noticed anything. For me there was a sudden roll, a shifting and yaw to my view, a smeary doubling. I still saw Anura crouched on her desk, but at the same time I saw Gus sickly and teetering, his hair in jerky peaks above closed eyes. And above Gus I saw myself: lightning white and the slick black of decomposition throbbed together around the void of my screaming mouth, topped by a lashing halo of hair.
My disorientation was a mad and flailing thing, but driven through it was a single pin of understanding. I knew that I was looking through Anura’s eyes. More than that, I felt her muscles tense at a sudden sense of invasion. An alien presence brushed against her mind, featherlight and not screaming at all.
What she felt touch her thoughts was none other than myself, and I am sure she knew it. Not the whole of me, of course, but a torn-off wisp, an outlying fiber. It was a sentinel of self that thought with me, felt with me, for all our separation.
Hello, I said, or rather thought. She shuddered, and I felt a bursting release at finding I had crossed that uncrossable barrier between myself and all other thinking beings. It hardly mattered that it was only a single word. A word to me then was a universe of possibility.
But having come so far, the hope of more urged me on. I must speak, and quickly; I did not know how long this odd connection would persist. While she held the heartstring in her mouth? Or not even as long as that?
I was and am very grateful for your kindness in acknowledging me, Anura. To one in my condition, such recognition is everything.
A pause. She had been afraid at first sensing me. Now she reevaluated, and found her fears misplaced.
I am well aware of what recognition can be worth, Miss Bildstein.
We were conversing! In the excitement of my speech coming undammed, I would have babbled on with excessive animation—I wanted to ask about her literary labors, about her life, about everything. But here Gus reeled back and the heartstring dropped from his lips.
With that small slippage, my ability to speak dropped away as well. The rush of words backed up with a choking sensation. What on earth had happened, I wondered, and how could I contrive to make it happen again?
“A thousand! There you have it, Miss Anura. I’ll go fetch my aunt and we can conclude our business. Can you muster up your witnesses on short notice?”
Anura stretched her hind legs, and her gaze stayed stubbornly lowered. On the instant I feared that I had offended her somehow. Why else did she avoid looking at me?
“For the pleasure of concluding business with you, Mr. Farrow, I would have my witnesses dragged from their beds.” Previously I would have enjoyed the implied insult, but now it cut—for if she wished never to see Gus again, it meant she also had no desire to see me.
“Well, then,” Gus sputtered. “I will return as soon as possible.”
He headed for the wall, his chin up in a poor attempt at dignity. I had no choice but to drag along behind him. But I could twist myself to face Anura, and I could lean in her direction like a sapling in the wind.
Now that Gus wasn’t watching, Anura gazed up at me. She smiled, rather sadly I thought. And then I saw that she was holding up a paper hastily scrawled.
Courage, Miss Bildstein.
Then the moment was past, and we were through the wall and hastening toward one of those rabbit holes back to the unworld. His steps were stumbling, veering, from the shock of giving up so much magic at once. Who would wash Gus’s laundry, I wondered, once Margo was brought here? Who would feed him roast lamb and potatoes? But I gave those questions only idle consideration, for there was another that compelled my attention.
How had we communed, Anura and I?
Gus had made other transfers of magic, of course, though only in grudging amounts. On those occasions I had not felt myself sweeping against the consciousness of the recipient, nor had I spoken. I had not thought to try, admittedly. But it seemed likely that the immense sum of a thousand talens, most of it drawn from the workings of my mind, had been enough to carry a scrap of me into Anura—though I had been able to speak only while the transfer was in progress.
This, I realized, was the danger that Gus and the minotaur had spoken of: that using me might in some small way free me as well.
Gus popped up by the orchard, now white and luxuriant with spring blooms in the rising sun. The air twirled with birdsong. And what had seemed such a marvelous development, such a bubbling-up of hope and sweetness, reversed its flow and sucked again into the mud.
It had taken a thousand talens poured all at once into Anura’s mind before I could speak a few desperate words. A thousand! When would Gus yield up so much wealth again? Especially, when would he yield it up to her? When could I ask her anything, or receive the fleeting touch of her sympathy?
The answer, plainly, was never. There was no other living person whom Gus loved; for no one but Margo would he pay such an exorbitant bribe, or any bribe at all. Therefore I would never have another chance to speak to Anura. I would see her briefly while she fussed with Gus’s paperwork, and that would be my last glimpse of her unless we passed her in the street. Oh, I had lost everyone I loved while I was alive, and now this new connection was ripped away almost in the moment it was formed!
The exhaustion, the despondency this thought induced was nearly enough to pitch me back into a state of oblivion. My vow to stay alert was not sufficiently strong to keep me from craving that self-erasure into which my first ghostly span had vanished.
What did stop me was the memory of Anura’s scribbled message. Courage.
I would have liked to ask her what had made her write such a thing. On what possible grounds should such as I choose courage over helpless lethargy?
I did not think Anura was one to induce false hopes.
It followed that there was a way, if only I could see it.
A way to avenge my murder, and with it achieve my release. That it might be release into nonbeing troubled me not at all. At this thought Gus neared the end of his path, and the Farrows’ house flashed, dawn-pinked, through the fluttering lace of blossom.
A possibility struck me: I’d considered myself cut off from all other minds. But my thought-collision with Anura proved that was untrue: I’d entered her via Gus!
I understood, then, that some essence of myself infused him every time he drew power from me. That was—interesting.
Gus lifted his aunt tenderly from her bed with the same hands that had throttled me. He bade her dress while he shoved a few of her effects into a carpetbag. She looked weak, her eyes wandering, but she obeyed him.
I had been generous with self-pity since my murder, and I defy anyone to say I bestowed it without justice. But as I watched Margo hustled with hat askew through the hallways and down the stairs, I had as yet no idea how much pity was owed to her. The old lady offered her beloved nephew no resistance. She suffered him to drag her off to Nautilus and thereby save her life.
Had she refused to go with him, had she insisted on staying to meet her death, she would have saved something far more precious.