“Kafira Kristos,” hissed Saba Colbshallow. “You could have knocked me over with a feather when they told me that building belonged to you.”
“Who else would it belong to?” asked Governor Iolanthe Dechantagne Staff. “Why do you care anyway?”
Unlike other recent meetings, which had taken place in her bedroom, the two of them stared at each other over the vast oak expanse of Iolanthe’s desk, in the office of the Colonial Governor. It was a room designed to impress and intimidate. The ceiling was more than twenty feet high and the entire south wall was made up of large windows that looked out over the now expansive city. The opposite wall was filled with two large world maps. One featured Brechalon, the rest of Sumir, and the western hemisphere, while the other featured Birmisia, the entirety of Mallon, and the east. She leaned back in the leather-clad chair and pressed her fingertips together. His chair was within arms reach of the globe, so large that it took two people to turn it on its axis.
“I’m not talking about the building,” he said with a sigh. “I don’t give a crap about the building.”
“What is it that you think you give a crap about then?”
“It’s that Kafira-damned machine!” He looked at her as if she were suddenly stupid or insane. “That thing is dangerous! You know that it is! Senta’s brother died seeing the original was disposed of.”
“That’s the story, anyway.” She pursed her lips. “All we really know is that Senta destroyed a good portion of Mallontah.”
“Even if you don’t believe it, that thing has been trouble going all the way back to the beginning—to Suvir Kesi.”
“It may be, and I’m not saying that it’s true, but maybe, that particular machine became tainted with evil magic. If that’s the case, it doesn’t matter now. It’s gone. These machines are new. They have not been infected in that way. They are ready to be used as the designer originally intended.”
“For what?”
“For civic planning, for engineering, for education.”
“I guess I mean for whom?”
“For me.” She stood up and leaned over the desk. “They’re mine. They’re my machines. They’re nobody else’s. They are of no concern to you.”
“Anything that concerns you is of concern to me,” he said.
She stared at him, uncomprehending.
“Whatever concerns you concerns me. Whatever this relationship is that we have…”
She laughed. “Is that what this is about? You’re jealous? My husband invented the Result Mechanism and that’s somehow a threat to your manhood?”
“I don’t think you know what you’re saying,” said Saba. “Perhaps we should discuss this later.”
“Upset that another man got to the holy land before you? Other men have. Better men.”
Saba took a deep breath and slowly let it out. He stood slowly up.
“So this is how it ends.”
“Nothing ends until I say it does,” said Iolanthe.
“You just did.” He turned and started the long walk to the door. The trip across the deep red carpet seemed like a journey of a fortnight, like a journey that would never end. He expected at any moment to be stopped with a word or to be called back, but he wasn’t. He put his hand on the knob, turned it, and a second later was in the outer office, next to Mrs. Wardlaw’s desk.
And he knew at that moment that he would never be with Iolanthe again—never be in her bed again. He had loved her as long as he could remember. In fact, his earliest memory was of loving her. But he would never have her again. He would never touch her and feel her purr into his neck. He would never taste her lips again.
“This is what it feels like,” he said. “This is what it feels like to be cast out of heaven.”
“What’s that, Chief?” asked Mrs. Wardlaw from behind a file folder.
“Good day, Mrs. Wardlaw.”
* * * * *
“Why the long face, Police Constable?”
Saba didn’t look up at first.
“It’s Police Chief…” he started to say as he walked the winding cobblestone path through the empty lot south of the Gurrman Building. Then he glanced into the charcoal-lined grey eyes of the image before him. He stumbled slightly and his foot landed in moist soil, wetting his sock.
“Zurfina!”
The vision might have been something out of dream or a nightmare, but it wasn’t. It was out of his own memory. Standing in the shade of an apple tree, she leaned against its trunk, her knee-high red and black leather boots crossed at the ankles. She was wearing some strange little leather skirt that didn’t quite come down to her knees, and left her garters, decorated with little red and black bows visibly holding her fishnet stockings, up almost, but not quite, to the bottom of her skirt. Her torso was covered with the type of leather corset that the sorceress Zurfina had made famous, red and black leather, hiding very little, low enough to expose the star tattoos above each bosom, and with a cutout specifically designed to show the one around her navel.
“Did you miss me, my little Saba?” she said in a deep, breathy voice.
“Senta!” He launched himself across the distance between them to capture her in a fierce embrace. “Thank Kafira.”
“But that was my best Zurfina impersonation.”
“You can’t fool me, Senta.” He squeezed her tighter. “Besides, you’re too tall. I heard just the other day that you might be alive, but I didn’t dare let myself believe it.”
“You thought I was dead?” She shrugged his arms off of her. “How could you think that?
“You were gone for more than four years, without contacting anyone. No word to me. No word to Hero. No word to your daughter.”
She crossed her arms. “Sen.”
“Are you going to say you had forgotten about her?”
She gave him an embarrassed smile. “I was going to say that. It would have been a lie though. It’s actually quite frightening how often I’ve thought of her.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why is she living in your wife’s house?”
“It’s my house and she’s my daughter. Did you expect her to live with Kieran Baxter and his new wife?” He watched her carefully and felt a guilty satisfaction as her face turned pale.
“His what?”
“A lot of things have changed around here in the past four years,” he said. “Not all of them good. Not all of them what one would expect either, I suppose.”
She stared at him for a moment more. Then she snapped her fingers and disappeared.
Saba stared at the spot where the sorceress had been, and then started once again toward the spot where he had left his car, his wet sock squishing with every other step. The fire chamber was completely cold, so he had to shovel in some coal, and wait for it to heat up the water after he had started the fire. As he was sitting behind the steering wheel, waiting for the hiss of steam, he suddenly chuckled to himself. He didn’t want to admit it, but it had felt good seeing Senta’s face when she found out Baxter was married. It felt good to know that he wasn’t the only one who had lost something.
What would Baxter’s face look like when he saw Senta? Saba burst out into a loud laugh. Now that would be something! Then again… Some things went beyond the bounds of what would be funny. One might laugh heartily if a man accidentally hit himself in the face. When that same man gouged out both of his own eyes… well, one didn’t laugh at that.
When the steam carriage indicated that it was ready, Saba drove home. Turning off the brick street and onto the red chert drive, he came to a stop in front of the machine shed, just adjacent to the kitchen door. One lizzie came running out from the kitchen and another from behind the shed. He paid them little attention as they opened the rolling door and pushed the vehicle into its berth. In four steps, he was inside without having cast even a single glance at the great mansion across the street.
After grabbing a bottle of soda water from the froredor, he stepped into dining room to find his two daughters sitting at the dining table. Both were drawing pictures on large pieces of white paper with colorful wax crayons. Both were scribbling wildly past the edges of the paper and onto the expensive tabletop.
“Does Mummy know what you’re doing?” he asked.
“Uh-huh,” said DeeDee.
“She said she could care less what I did,” added Sen.
“She did, did she?”
“Daddy?” asked DeeDee, stopping and looking up with her oddly-hued eyes. “Does that mean she cares quite a lot or only a wee bit? Iolana always said that if a person was to say ‘could care less’ that would tell you that they had to care at least a little.”
“You should write to Iolana and ask her. No doubt she will have the correct opinion.”
“Iolana says opinions are neither correct nor incorrect?”
“Iolana should…” he stopped and looked at his sweet, innocent daughter’s face. “She would appreciate a letter from you in any case, in my opinion. Why don’t you go write her now? I need to speak to your sister.”
DeeDee stood up and hurried into the other room. A few seconds later, Saba could hear her bounding up the stairs. He sat down in her still warm seat.
“So what have you been doing today, besides drawing a picture of… um, what is that a picture of?”
He turned his head this way and that, but couldn’t make out anything more than a multicolored blob.
“It’s love.”
“Oh, an abstract. Very creative, my little darling.”
“Thanks. Throwing rocks.”
“What?”
“That’s what else we were doing.”
“What were you throwing rocks at?”
“Velociraptors.”
“Sen! If you see a velociraptor or a deinonychus, or especially a utahraptor, you must come into the house immediately! They are very dangerous.”
“It’s okay. Allium ate seven of them, but then she was so full she didn’t want to play the rest of the day.”
“That’s fine,” said her father, “but promise me that you will stay away from any of those beasts.”
“Okay.”
It was at this point in the conversation that Saba realized the girl had not looked up at him once. “I want to talk to you about something important. Can you look at me for a moment?”
“Yup,” she replied, still drawing wildly.
“Do it, please.”
She set the crayon atop her paper and folded her hands in front of her. She gazed up into his eyes giving every impression of humoring a subordinate. He found it unnerving.
“Dear, I have some very good news. We thought that your mother was in heaven. As it turns out however, she’s alive. In fact, she’s back in Birmisia.”
“Yes,” said Sen. “Allium told me already.”
“She did? Well, that was convenient. Have you seen your mother yet?”
“No.”
“I’m sure you will, very soon.”
“Maybe.”
“I’m quite sure. She loves you very much.”
“No she doesn’t.” The girl picked up the crayon and returned her attention to her paper. “I don’t love her either.”
His audience at an end, Saba watched the girl for a moment and then left her to her work, as he took the stairs up to his room. He suddenly felt almost too tired to make the trip, but at last he was there and sat down on the foot of his bed to remove his shoes and socks, one dry and one damp. Then without getting up, he took off his jacket and waistcoat, tossing them on the floor. His tie and shirt soon followed.
“You’re home early.”
He looked up to see Loana in the doorway. He wasn’t surprised that she was still in her evening gown. Neither spoke for several minutes. Finally she entered the room, stepped over the clothing on the floor and sat down beside him.
“Senta’s back,” he said. “She’s not dead, turns out.”
“That’s lucky for you.”
“How is it lucky for me?”
“Mr. Baxter is married now. You can have Senta.”
“I don’t want her and she certainly doesn’t want me. It wasn’t like that. It was just one time.” He stopped and laughed.
“What?” she wondered.
“She’s the one woman in the world I could claim ensorcelled me and forced me against my will.”
Loana giggled briefly.
“I won’t say that. It’s not true. It was just stupid. It was just one stupid time and it produced that sweet little girl down there that her mother has completely ruined. You and I haven’t helped her either.”
“I can’t love her,” said Loana. “I’m tired of trying.”
“She’ll be going back with her mother soon. No doubt there. I don’t know if that’s good or not, but it will leave just us. You and me and DeeDee, and my mother, I suppose.”
“And one ghost.”
“I don’t blame you for Virgil’s death,” he said. “I was just hurt.”
“Don’t you think I was?” she raised her voice, but not as much, he thought, as was probably warranted.
“Of course you were. I know.” He was silent for a long time. “I suppose it’s too late to try again.”
“For another child?”
“No. I mean us—the two of us—to try again. Marriage and love—is it too late?”
“Probably,” she said.
“That’s what I thought.”
* * * * *
“Good morning, Mr. Baxter,” said Miss Lorikeet.
Baxter thought again about how fetching his secretary was. Too young for him, even considering that his wife and former mistress were both a decade younger than he was.
“It’s good to be back. Let that be a lesson to you to stay out of vacant lots, young lady. They’re full of mischief.”
“I’m just glad you’re back, sir, and that you’re going to be okay. The work is piling up and you know I don’t have a head for such things.”
“We’ll soon have it all tickety-boo, as my wife would say.”
Stepping through the doorway to his office, he closed the door behind him and took his place at his desk. Looking around through the glass walls, he could see every employee on the floor, and more importantly perhaps, they could see him—back at work, no worse for a little wear. He opened the file on the S.S. Comet. It was due in any day, a smaller ship as far as displacement went, but she was a classy little number, sure to be filled with an equal number of the newly rich commoner and recently poor aristocracy, the latter hoping to meet the former and the former up for pretty much anything.
When he looked up a few minutes later, he saw one of the clerks, Gaspar, talking to a tall woman in a bizarre mixture of leather corset, lace skirts, and fishnet stockings. His hand shaking, he tried to pick up the glass of water on his desk, but succeeded only in knocking it over. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t her. It couldn’t be her. She was gone. She wasn’t coming back. As he stared, they both turned in his direction, Gaspar pointing and the woman smiling and starting toward him. Oh, sweet Kafira, it was her. But it couldn’t be her. She opened the door to his office and stepped inside, closing it after her.
“Get out!” he hissed.
She seemed surprised. “Not the welcome I was expecting.”
“You’re not her! You can’t be! She’s dead!” In his peripheral vision, he could see the people in the outer office looking at him. They could hear him through the glass walls. He was shouting. “You get out!”
“Kieran,” she said, soothingly. “I had to go away. I know it’s been very hard, but I’m back now.”
“No!”
“Don’t worry. I’ll make it all better.”
“Pantagria or whatever demon you are, this is your last chance!” He whipped a pistol out of his jacket pocket and pointed it at her. His hand was shaking wildly.
“Baxter, it’s me.”
“Get out now, or I’ll kill you!”
Her eyes and her mouth opened wider. The look of shock slowly transformed into a frown. Lifting up her right hand, she snapped her fingers and disappeared with a pop.
Baxter dropped the gun on the desk and dropped himself into his chair. He began shaking uncontrollably. He knew people were watching him, but he didn’t care. The chiming clock on the wall told him when thirty minutes had passed. By that time, he was almost breathing normally. Then he saw it.
Sitting on the desk, looking at him, was the doll. He knew it was the same doll he had found in the vacant lot, even though it looked different. Its face was freshly coated with paint. And its clothes were different. It was wearing the same strange outfit that the woman had worn—the little leather skirt and the red and black leather corset.
He snatched up the doll and looked at it. It had been her! It had been her and he had chased her away! He slid from his chair onto the floor and curled up under his desk with the doll. It had been her, and he had lost her again! Suddenly he started weeping uncontrollably.
* * * * *
Bryony Baxter walked smartly down the black and white walkway that ran much of the length of Marigold Avenue. It was almost a hundred yards from the trolley stop to her destination, so she was already feeling quite overheated when she stopped a door down from Edeline’s Eatery to check herself in the reflection of a store window.
She looked quite nice, she thought. Her burgundy day dress was a bit dark for summer walking, but she found it so tiring, having to divide her daywear between walking and sitting apparel. The cascades of black lace that dripped from her bodice to her heels matched her black boater. She compared the hat with her black parasol and black lace gloves.
“Oh, I look like I’m going to a funeral,” she said.
Then she noticed a strange image in the glass beside her reflection. It was a very lifelike figure displaying the most bizarre undergarments, draped in far more black than she was. If she was surprised to see such unmentionables displayed right out in the open, Bryony was more surprised when she saw the figure move, and more shocked still, when she turned to find that the image wasn’t something inside the store, but a woman standing right next to her on the sidewalk.
“Well hello,” said the strange apparition. “If it isn’t Bryony Byenthal.”
“In point of fact, it is Bryony Baxter. No need to wonder who you are, I suppose”
“No. No need. Everyone knows. I’m Senta the Magnificent.”
“I have to tell you, Miss Bly,” said Bryony, “that most people I’ve spoken to thought you were dead and gone, though there were a few perceptive individuals who knew that could not be the case.”
“And what did you think?”
“I confess I belonged to the former group.”
Senta stepped next to her and draped her arm over the shorter woman’s shoulders, pulling her close.
“What will we see if we look deep inside you, Bryony Byenthal? Only two names? That’s disappointing.”
“Only two names,” replied the brunette. “Bryony Baxter.”
The world around them seemed to drift away, leaving them alone in their own little bubble universe.
“You’re quite striking,” said Bryony. “I can see why men fall all over themselves. I like to think I’m pretty. My eyes are on the large side, and I’m very fond of the shade of blue that they’ve been blessed with. But look at you—that wild blond hair, those classical features, and those grey eyes that look right into one’s soul.”
“I’m looking into your soul right now, Bryony.”
“I’m afraid there’s not much to see, is there, Miss Bly? St. Admeta Orphanage, Madame Kissington’s Preparatory School for Underprivileged Girls, two years in the Women’s Public Axillary Army Corps. No torture, maiming, or mutilations. Not a murder in sight, I’m afraid.”
“But there is more, isn’t there?” whispered Senta, with a vulpine smile. “There would have to be. Let’s look deep inside and see what you’re greatest fear is.”
“I would prefer you not,” said Bryony.
“I’ll bet you would.” Senta’s smile turned into a frown, as she let go of the other woman and moved back toward the curb.
“Did you see it?” asked Bryony stepping forward.
Senta instinctively stepped back.
“You did, didn’t you?”
Senta didn’t answer. Her lips curled like they had tasted something sour.
“Come by my house for luncheon tomorrow,” said Bryony. “I’ll make sure that Kieran isn’t going to come home to eat. I have a story to tell you. I’ll expect you at eleven.”
Senta nodded.
“And please dress appropriately,” said Bryony. “I mean, like a lady. It’s a quiet neighborhood.”
With that, Mrs. Baxter continued on her way. The sorceress followed a dozen steps behind as she entered Edeline’s Eatery, walked to the back of the restaurant, and took a seat opposite a woman in an expensive grey walking dress. Bryony’s companion had a long and complex arrangement of salmon-pink hair. As Senta watched, the other woman turned and looked at her through gold-framed spectacles with darkened lenses.
* * * * *
The next morning at precisely 10:57 AM, Senta simply appeared on the cobblestone walkway outside the small yellow cottage on Ghiosa Way. No one saw her pop into existence, as no one was watching. Had anyone seen her, as she made her way between the large ferns that lined the front steps, nobody would have thought anything about it. She perfectly fit the surroundings, her long blond hair carefully coiffed beneath a black and white boater, and her body carefully encased in corset, bustle, and black and white walking dress, the front panel of which featured the white embroidered imagery of a dragon in flight, on a black background.
When she reached the top step, the front door opened and Bryony Baxter stepped out with a pleasant smile.
“What perfect timing,” she said. “Please do come in, Miss Bly. Or may I call you Senta?”
Senta gave her a curt nod and squeezed past her into the small but carefully arranged parlor. She waited as the hostess closed the door and turned around.
“Tea is ready. Shall we go ahead and sit down?”
The dining room was really just an extension of the parlor and that extended on into a kitchen beyond. All of the furniture in the rooms were new and represented the best of Birmisia’s local manufacturing. The dining table was laid out with fine silver flatware and beautiful porcelain dishes. Bryony waved to one seat, which Senta took, and then she took the other. Removing the cozy from the teapot, she poured two cups and handed one across to the sorceress.
“Cream?”
“What are you doing with my dragon?” demanded Senta, suddenly.
“Your dragon? Zoey, do you mean?”
“Who the hell else would I mean?”
“Well, I don’t know, I’m sure. You are the Drache Girl, after all. One might suppose you to have any number of dragons flying around.” The brunette smiled. “To be honest, I don’t think of her as a dragon. I’ve only seen her as such on two occasions. I suppose I just think of her as a person who can change into a dragon. We have become good friends though. I invited her to tea with us, but she declined. She’s afraid of you, of course.”
“Good sense,” muttered Senta.
Bryony began passing out the food. She had scones and vegetable sausages, a nettle salad, and sliced tomatoes.
“I didn’t know if there were some things you wouldn’t eat.”
“Food’s not important,” said Senta. “You said you had a story for me.”
“Why yes I do.” Bryony began as she continued to distribute the items of the meal. “It begins four years ago. I wasn’t here, but I know the story. I’m probably the only one that does, or at least the only one that appreciates it.”
“Go on.”
“It begins with your disappearance. I gather it wasn’t a shock to anyone that you should just disappear one day. But after you had been gone several days, Kieran began to suspect foul play—that something had happened to you. He began searching. Of course, he didn’t find much of anything. There were some strange men seen in town and he developed an unlikely theory that you had somehow been kidnapped. At that point he began hiring people to track you down, spending a great deal of your money, or at least the money that he could get at.
“No one else believed that any such thing could have happened to the most powerful sorceress in the world. Popular opinion was split. Half the people just thought that you had left to end up Kafira-knows-where. The other half believed that Kieran had killed you, in your sleep when you were most vulnerable maybe, and that he had perhaps buried you in the garden.”
“Ridiculous,” said Senta.
“Of course it was, but with him spending more and more of your money on what seemed to many like a silly and fruitless search, soon more or less everyone came to believe that it was true. He decided then that he had to go find you himself. And it was at that point that Police Chief Colbshallow filed for custody of little Senta.”
“He had no call.”
“He is the child’s father, isn’t he?” asked Bryony. “In any case, enough people knew that Kieran wasn’t. As a guardian with no paperwork, nor any real connection to the child, he had no standing in court to fight to keep her, but he did anyway. And he lost. Sen went to live with the Colbshallows and Kieran left Birmisia in search of you. I don’t know everywhere he went, but he was gone for well over a year. When he returned, he was a shadow of himself. He had suffered a sort of break down.”
“And you were here to put him back together.”
“No, I wasn’t. I don’t know that I would have been able. You have to understand. He was completely destroyed. He thought that he had failed you. The poor sweet man was sent to the psychological hospital in Mallontah.”
Senta’s mouth opened in shock.
“Oh, it’s not a place of horrors, like the old mad houses. They were good to him. They helped him. It was they that put him together, as you say. But that is where we met. He was already well on the way to recovery when I first saw him. I was volunteering. I used to read to him. I read him The Adventures of the S.S. Flying Fish. It was the only thing that I could find to read to a man. At first, he never responded, but eventually he commented about something in the book. Something wasn’t right with the description. Then we began talking and I found out how he knew, that he had been a naval officer. Finally, he told me his whole story. I couldn’t help it, falling in love with him. After all, he is an almost perfect man.”
“Yes, he is,” said Senta. “And he’s mine. I want him back.”
“You can’t have him,” said Bryony. “We’re married, before God and Kafira. You are nothing more than a memory to him. I know it’s impossible, but it would really be better if he never finds out you’ve returned.”
“He’s found out already,” smiled Senta. “He didn’t say anything?”
Byrony frowned. “That’s why he was so distracted last night. I don’t think you know just what you might do to him—how he might react. I have to ask you though. Why did you leave? Why did you come back?”
“What if I told you that I just felt like being away for a while? What if I told you that it was nothing but a whim?”
“I wouldn’t believe it,” said Mrs. Baxter. “Kieran loved you and he couldn’t love anyone who would do something so horrible, to just up and leave her daughter and the man who loved her so much.”
Senta picked up a scone and scooped strawberry jam onto it.
“I’m going to put my life back together. You may believe me or not, but I have had to kill more than a few people to allow me to do just that. From where I sit now, you are the one remaining impediment to my happiness.”
“So why haven’t you done something to me? What is it you do anyway? Turn people into toads and squash them? Burn them alive? Poison them with an apple?”
“In the past, I enjoyed transforming them into conchoraptors, but lately I’ve been reducing them to a pile of dust. It’s not really as satisfying, but it is easier to deal with afterwards.”
“Then why haven’t you?” asked Bryony.
Senta took a big bite of her scone and chewed slowly.
“The other day, you said you were looking into my soul,” continued Bryony. “Can you really do that?”
“Yes.”
“What did you see then?”
“Your greatest fear,” said Senta. “You know what it is.”
“No, not really. Is it something horrible?”
“You’re greatest fear is seeing Kieran hurt.”
“I suppose that’s true.” Bryony smiled. “He is everything to me, and I am everything that he needs. He will always come first with me—always. Can you say the same?”