The Side Ways 1.1: Stray Girl
When the greenman and the gargoyle brought the girl to me, I thought she was dead at first. Sometimes simpler creatures believe a sacrifice will earn power or influence. That may be true in other domains, but not in museums. The truth is that a gift is only as powerful as its effects. Take your blood and broken bodies to a master of movement. I only see what was.
See and record, of course. What good is a museum without history? Might as well live full-time in the Station of Sense. So I suppose that I do deal in movement… but only as it relates to the turning of pages on a calendar.
I felt them, of course, when they set foot on the concrete steps outside my museum. One of my museums, I should say. The one in which I keep office hours, anyway. The Chronics in the street saw only a tall, thin man with a blue laundry bag on his shoulder and a bulldog by his side. An ugly bulldog. A short, fat, slobbery, cross-eyed, ugly bulldog. I immediately saw across their Seeming and knew the bag was a dead girl and the dog a minor gargoyle. The two stone lions that guard my steps didn’t even bother to challenge them. Very few Reckoners have ever brought anything like a challenge into my museums. None have emerged whole. The lions are there as a warning. I don’t tolerate foolishness.
Why didn’t I know immediately she wasn’t dead? Because I didn’t take the time to look. I could have followed her line or focused down on her as soon as she was brought inside. But I assumed the greenman simply wanted, as do all my visitors, information of some sort. Often an image, a lineage or classification. I don’t care for the new digital media as much, but we have it for the technophiles. Most of my serious clients prefer original artifacts.
The body across his shoulders was inconsequential. I went back to my reading. I even remember the book; "Musical Architecture," by Whynne Breedie. A lovely piece. I believe my copy is only one of three that haven’t been lost to time and trouble.
A few minutes later, though, I sensed the greenman again as he stepped across the first Seeming in the atrium. Again, I noticed it as you might a car horn in the traffic outside, or the shifting of cloud shadow on your window. My museum is frequented by a great number of Reckoners as well as Chronics. Something for everyone, eh? That’s what a good museum is for, after all.
When he began to move against the second Seeming, though, I looked up from my reading and cocked my head for a closer listen. Those who have been here before – and especially my regular clients – know how to request a meeting. You ask a lesser clerk or guard to see if I’m available. They either know my schedule well enough to answer directly, or they call for details. Mostly they know which patrons I’d be willing to see immediately and which need to be calendared.
You don’t just start pushing into the core of my domain uninvited, though. That’s rude. It would be like me walking into your bathroom and chatting you up while you bathed. Bad form, at the least. Possibly even hostile.
And so I stood up, saved my place with a "Dilbert" bookmark, walked out of my private office and into the administrative area. Depending on how well you know the place, whom you wanted to see, and how well you reckon, it could have looked about six or eight different ways. I, of course, see them all at once. I’m the Curator, after all. I won’t bother you with the details.
As I walked down the hallway, several employees and patrons waved or nodded or murmured a word of greeting. I smiled back and wove between the various people, carts and shelves to the door at the end of the hall and went out into the atrium.
The greenman was struggling with the second Seeming. He thought he was moving into a place that looked vaguely like a set of displays, but with taller shelves and hardware made out of black stone rather than metal and glass. Less light, more shadow. That’s a Seeming that I’ve laid on to do exactly what it was doing to him; prevent his entering further without assistance.
I am a curious person, though. As you’d expect. So rather than move out and confront him as he struggled, I opened the second Seeming entirely and let him pass into the
Have you ever been in a museum and felt the presence of the displays? That quiet, musty sense of being watched. Because, of course, history reads people, too. Most dedicated historians, even Chronics, can feel the pressure of the information captured in stored artifacts, artifice and time. The part of your mind that breathes language feels as if it’s either underwater or in the mountains. The mental pressure is different in a museum. And it isn’t entirely benign, is it? You know what I mean. It’s not always comfortable there, alone, among the pieces of the past.
The greenman plunged through the Seeming and into the
It’s been so long since I was first apprenticed to my original master that I can barely recall the time he first pushed me into the museum proper, the place where our true work is done. It was as if I was seeing through a thousand pairs of eyes, hearing a hundred conversations from dozens of eras, all at one time. A rushing and pouring out of pictures, thoughts, sounds, light and shadow. A jungle of places and meaning. For one who is untrained and unaccompanied, it is quite nightmarish. If I remember correctly.
The greenman let the girl’s body roll out of his arms and onto the stone floor. He wrapped his arms around his head and tried to fold in on himself. Tried to keep out the flood of images and sounds. What some of my younger staff have taken to calling "content." It doesn’t work like that.
The gargoyle seemed to be having an easier time. He looked confused – most of his kind would be confused by a pinwheel – but not troubled. Closer to a true Natural than many. He made a slow circle around the greenman, stopping to sniff the air a few times, before looking right at me.
I’ll give him that; he found me quicker than most have.
"Why this?" he growled stiffly. His grey skin was streaked with white. Pigeon guano, if I didn’t miss my guess. He had wings, folded up like a bedroll on his back. Ornamental, probably.
I applied enough control over the Seeming to tone down the rush of images and sounds. My guess is that the greenman perceived the change as a profound relief, as his arms came down from around his head and he leaned his hands on the floor.
And then… Well, why do they think that because we’re bookish we’re slow? There’s this almost inbred notion that academics, professors, teachers, librarians and researchers are plodding, sloth-like creatures. Maybe when we’re out under the sun. But not in our halls and stacks. Not when the life of our words, work and numbers and thoughts weaves around us like the sea’s currents caress sharks, or wind holds hawks aloft.
I knew what he was going to do before his hands even left the floor. These creatures of the world, so prone to violence and chaos that they simply cannot tolerate restraint. I suppose he felt himself challenged or assaulted by my Way, for he jumped up to his feet and charged right at me, long dreadlocks trailing behind him like black smoke. His green, diamond-shaped eyes all bright and wide with anger. So easy to predict. So easy to control.
I let him climb the three steps to the top of the atrium and get within about a yard of me before letting the full effect of the Way of Erasure connect with his mind.
Hard to describe, but here we go. Imagine you could sense all your memories, all your thoughts and feelings, emotions and skills as a limb. An extra arm or leg or maybe an eye. Yes. That’s good. An eyeball is a better analogy. A precious, crystal eye that contained everything that made you you. And imagine that as you were running at someone, you suddenly saw that they had an ice-pick waiting at just the right place to plunge into that jeweled eye. That they could instantly shatter your entire past… every thought you’d ever had, every feeling, every memory and ability.
Not a nice feeling, to be sure. But I don’t like being bum-rushed on my own property.
The greenman had become, as you might guess, quite still. He could sense my Way without really knowing how I was doing it or how it might be avoided, except through perfect immobility. Which he achieved admirably.
"If you move," I said to him softly, "my word will gut your soul. Do you understand?"
He managed to nod without moving his head and I eased back a bit. He sensed that he had enough room to breathe, and just barely managed to do that without falling down.
I felt a slight pressure on my leg. When I looked down, I saw that the gargoyle had his pointy, stone teeth wrapped gently around my shin. He looked up at me with those simple, animal eyes and managed to convey a look of both apology and threat. As clearly as if he had spoken, I knew what he meant was, "I’m sorry to have to do this. But if you hurt my friend, I’m going to bite your leg clean off."
I laughed and released my Way entirely. Not because I was afraid, but because the creature was just so obvious and straightforward. And yet he had managed to come farther into my domain than his supposedly craftier and more intelligent friend. There’s a lesson there for us all.
The greenman visibly deflated and looked at me with suspicion and fear. Good. That’s more like it.
"What do you want?" I asked simply. I hadn’t moved since he first saw me and I sensed that my stillness made him even more uncomfortable. Greenmen are horribly good at reading body language. In my halls, I do not speak in any unintended fashion.
He gestured with his hand at the body on the floor. "She has seen things," he said quietly, "that she does not understand."
"She’s not dead?" I assumed not, but sometimes we ask to be sure.
He shook his head. "Just in shock. She was sprayed with skyblood."
"Then she should be dead," I replied. "Contact with an aethereal humor is almost always fatal for Chronics. It usually presents as a heart attack or aneurism."
"Sure. Whatever," he said. "She somehow triggered a negative Way of some kind."
"You mean a mold. She filled a transition mold."
The greenman shrugged. "Whatever. Look. If I left her there it would have made trouble for the owner of the garden. I don’t want that. I do some work for him from time to time. On the other hand, if I pulled her into the street and leaned her up against a bench or something, somebody would’ve gashed her.
"Look," he stepped backward and rolled the girl from her side onto her back. He moved her arm from across her chest so that I could see her collar-bone. There were several spotty, iridescent blue marks on her skin. Skyblood.
"You’re right," I said. "Someone would have, as you so succinctly put it, ‘gashed’ her. Aethereals don’t have many friends. And fewer bondsmen. Any of the gangs would have thought her a tag."
He just nodded, still staring at the girl’s shoulder. Now that I looked, I could see that she was still breathing.
The gargoyle broke the silence with a noise that sounded, to me, like, "Burf?"
The greenman stood. "I gotta go," he mumbled. "Do you think… I don’t know… I just thought I should bring her here. People say you’re smart." He shrugged again. "I’m not a total dope, but this is over my head."
I waved away his comment, shaking my head. "I’ll take care of it," I said. Which is all he’d ever wanted me to say to begin with. "You can go now."
They both turned to go, but before they reached the door to the foyer I said, "Don’t do anything like this again."
I’m not sure if they heard me, as they didn’t slow or nod or show any sign.
I crouched down on the stone floor to have a better look at her. We wouldn’t be bothered, as the atrium is a place in between other places, and only open to me and some of the senior staff. Staff who know well enough not to bother me when I’m there. Good people are at the heart of a great museum.
She seemed like a standard Chronic to me. A girl. I read her line enough to tell that she was fifteen, almost sixteen years old. Small of stature for that age, though. Her brown hair was cut shorter in back than in front, so that her bangs fell over her cheek. She was lying on her side, and I could see that the knees of her jeans were dirty – not grubby, but actually dirty, as if she’d been kneeling in soil. There was dirt under her fingernails, too. The greenman had said something about a garden. Maybe she worked there? Or had been hiding within?
Her skin was pale, which could have been from shock or injury. Pleasant enough to look at, I suppose. If you don’t mind spending time with Chronics, that is. There’s something so unnerving about them sometimes. I can clench my teeth and be a nice host if I must, but it’s like being around the blind or children that won’t behave. Some part of me always wants to simply get up and leave.
But the cerulean, shimmering blotches near her shoulder hinted at an interesting story. And what kind of curator would I be if I ignored that? I don’t believe that curiosity killed the cat. I believe she was a victim of bad planning.
I called to one of the clerks – whomever was nearest, I didn’t care – to come assist me. Wallace Bradstreet, a mid-level fellow with no real aptitude for serious research, quietly approached.
"Sir?" he said softly. Wallace is a hard worker. I shouldn’t criticize. Maybe he’ll brighten up some year.
"Please bring this person to my office directly," I said.
I turned to head that way myself, but Wallace had made no move to comply.
"Wallace?" I asked, one eyebrow up. "Is there a problem?"
"Sir," he whispered. "She’s… not… you know. Awake."
"I know that, Wallace," I replied. "That’s why I called you. Please carry her to my office and put her on the rug in front of the fireplace."
He still looked baffled.
"Pick her up. In your arms, Wallace. Carry her into my office. Place her gently on the rug by the fireplace."
"I understand that, sir," he said, clearly uncomfortable. "But she’s a… you know…"
Since my home branch acts both as an actual museum and a mundane location, I discourage the use of those derogatory terms usually associated with our less puissant clients. Poor Wallace. Trying to be good.
"I think," I replied, "That I know what she is. And I know what I want. Please do as I’ve asked.”
"Yes, sir," he mumbled, bending over to pick her up. He’d have no problems lifting her; Wallace is a stout fellow. I think he was worried that she’d wake up in my office – my sanctum sanctorum – and become disoriented. Some of the inner workings of our museum have that effect on Chronics. As long as I was with her, though, I could mitigate the effects of my various Ways. What would happen after that was anyone’s guess.
Wallace carried her in front of him, like a groom would carry a bride across the threshold, and followed me through the administration area and back into my office. He put her down, very gently, on the thick, patterned hearth rug, and stood up, stretching his back muscles a little bit. Perhaps not as stout as I’d imagined.
"Anything else, sir?"
"Not at this time, no. Thank you for your help, Wallace."
He nodded and left my office. Most of my staff, especially at the lower levels, understand that I rarely engage in idle chatter or gossip. A very few senior clerks, and of course Mrs. McKey, take the liberty of engaging me in conversation occasionally. Which is to be expected. One of the rewards of long, devoted service is more personal access to one’s superiors. Some of them even had something worthwhile to say once in a great while.
I sat down to read, picking up where I’d left off and didn’t really think of the girl again until I heard her stir. It had been at least an hour or so, I believe, since Wallace had deposited her there. She moaned very slightly and took a deep, loud breath. I turned around to watch as she regained consciousness.
She levered herself up on her hip with one arm, the other hand rubbing her eyes. When she pulled her hand away, I could see that her eyes were very bright green. Rather lovely, actually. Her brown hair seemed to have a bit of red in it not evident earlier in the dim atmosphere of the atrium.
She looked around the room, as if trying to place it. What she would see was as follows: a rather large office with tall, narrow windows on one side, a fireplace opposite, and bookcases everywhere else. The shelves even go around the door and fireplace. There is also a large, antique roll-top desk covered in papers and books and other office paraphernalia; a grey, rather drab couch up against one wall; standing floor lamps in two corners; a stuffed, taxidermy crow on a wrought-iron perch; an old-style office chair on rollers; an old-style museum curator on said chair.
I resolved simply to kill her if the first words out of her mouth were, "Where am I?" Her death was certainly a possibility no matter what, and I do hate to be bored.
Instead, she shook her head a bit, rubbed her eyes some more, looked up at me, squinting as if into a bright light, and asked, "Is the gargoyle OK?"
Excellent! Not totally wearisome after all.
I put down my book, steepled my hands in front of my chin and replied, "He seemed fit when he and the greenman dropped you off."
She nodded, not looking at me. "Good," she said. She still seemed quite foggy. I let her come around at her own pace.
After a few more deep breaths, she sat back on the rug, legs crossed, and looked right at me. "You remind me of Mr. Tandy," she said simply.
"How is that?" I asked.
"You both look old at first," she explained. "But there’s an energy to you. As if you’ve got extra batteries or something."
I nodded sagely. I had no idea what she was talking about.
"Why don’t we," I said reasonably, "start with your name." Chronics often won’t do or say much until their labels are taken care of. It’s certainly understandable when you consider how little they know.
"I’m Kendra," she said. "Kendra White."
"Well Kendra, I am Mr. Monday. Tell me: why do you think you’re here?"
She frowned and rubbed her head with one hand, clearly still a bit puzzled. "The last thing I remember was the tall, alien-looking guy with the dreadlocks spearing the sky cat with a huge blade of grass. It’s blood was blue and when some of it splashed me it hurt like heck."
She looked down at her shoulder and saw the spots. "Doesn’t hurt anymore, though," she commented.
Which wasn’t really an answer to my question. You have to remember to keep it basic with these people.
"Where were you when this happened?" I asked.
"In one of Mr. Tandy’s gardens. The topiary."
And then she laughed. I’m not much of a laugher myself, but hers was very fine and deep, especially for a young girl. I am bored by women who laugh like birds or little yappy dogs. Kendra had a full, honest laugh and for the first time I began to consider that she might live through the day. I had no idea what I would do with her, but I was intrigued by the depth and character of her laugh. It almost reminded me of true speech, as opposed to the limited doggerel we’re forced to use with the Chronic.
I allowed a small, half-smile. "And what," I asked, "is so funny, young lady?"
She shrugged. "This," she pointed at the blue marks on her skin. "You," she pointed at me. "Aliens. Gargoyles. Crazy, nude, blue women. I really shouldn’t have gone off my meds.”
Ah. Drugs. When Chronics come into contact with the real world they often blame their new perceptions on pharmacological effects. Apparently the lack of drugs could also be blamed. That was a new piece of information for me. Two points for the little girl.
“Be that as it may,” I continued, laboring to return to the subject, “Do you have any idea where you are or how you came to be here?”
She shook her head. “No,” she replied. “I’m totally in the dark there.”
I nodded. She began to rotate her head as if to get some stiffness worked out of her neck. Then, quite suddenly, she stood up and stuck out her hand.
“I appreciate you letting me… nap… or whatever… on your rug, Mr… Sir… But I’ve got to get home. I was going to be late before I passed out and freaked out and passed out again, I guess. So now I’m gonna have some ‘splainin’ to do to.”
Her hand was still out. She was smiling politely, waiting for me to shake her hand so that she could turn around, go out to the street, and, presumably, find a taxi or subway home. I was dampening many of the effects of my Ways that would most discomfit a chronic, but not all of them. One can’t completely hide the truth, merely cover it over a bit. And yet, there she stood, polite and confident, waiting for her handshake.
Oh, well. I was curious enough to delve further, so I reached out and took her hand.
Her skin was warm and dry and her grip was pleasantly firm. A good handshake. She pumped her arm politely a couple times and then tried to let go. I did not let her. She gave another brief shake and tried to let go again. I continued to not let her.
“I have to get going now, Mister,” she said. Her tone was wary, but her eyes were steady. Many children in this era grow up very quickly and become hardened early on. I’m not sure if this is a good thing. She looked as if she had been taught a thing or two about men who held onto young girls’ hands.
“I want you to tell me,” I said to her softly, “What you first saw when you woke up this morning.”
She looked puzzled, and I knew she wouldn’t actually answer my question. I didn’t expect her to, and it didn’t matter that she wouldn’t. Simply asking the question generates the response I need. The slightest thought about her morning provided the window. You need to start somewhere, after all.
For her, I believe, the entrance of my Way would feel like going to sleep. Her eyes glazed over and I let her hand slip from my grasp. As the forms and sounds of her bedroom – I assumed it was her bedroom – surrounded us, I lowered her gently to the drab, grey couch. I sat beside her and peered down into a small scene in the drama of her life. To walk my Way through and around the events that had led her to my office.
I saw… I smelled… White blossoms.
Thanks for reading 1.1. If you’ve got any comments or suggestions, please let me know, either here or by email. If you’d like to continue reading, you’ll need the password for sections 1.2 and beyond. Send an email to:
awhavens (att) sanestorm (dott) com
for the super-secret, really tricky password.
Go back to the main "Side Ways" page, or continue on to "Chapter 1.2: White Space."
