On my tenth attempt, my niece wished to live amongst mortal men to nurse her mother. I refused her, and she grew melancholic as she watched near endless persecutions, burnings, hangings, and beheadings. It is what her mother wanted, but my niece couldn’t let her go. Even at a distance, neither her love for family nor her distaste of death waned. Millia Gnu Aye succeeded the throne
Why does this keep happening to us? Nona thought.
She held a missing person poster and ran her fingers across the picture of a young boy. A child no older than fourteen kidnapped in his parents’ home… Nona tried to recall his fate, but he was one of billions. No doubt Morta had already gotten her claws into him.
Nona’s face turned red, and she balled her hands into fists.
Death, what a pathetic farce, nothing but an excuse to tear loving families apart, happiness but a fleeting mercy from the inevitable end of all. Nona worked so hard on the boys and the girls, especially the girls. Decima, too, stayed up late knitting until their fingers bled. Morta took it all away, cutting with that twisted smile. They argued, pulling each other’s hair and calling names. Morta was insufferable, arrogant…
Nona’s arms trembled, releasing her skirts.
Brutish, sarcastic, masochistic…
Her eyes turned glassy, and tears dripped down her chin.
Doting, shy, awkward… Oh, gawds. Nona missed the days when they were girls. Morta always wore death with a serine grace, without blood or cardiac hemorrhaging. Nona looked up to her as her Pallbearer and younger sister. When the nightmares came, she always imagined the strength of Morta’s arms embracing her as she whispered in Nona’s ear, promising that everything would be alright.
She smiled, wiping away her tears.
The gulf between them was wide, but Nona couldn’t bring herself to hate the woman who was as much her sister as she was her adoptive mother.
She crumpled the poster, stepping into the living room, the afternoon sun peeking through the windows and illuminating an old black dial upright Zenith tombstone radio: circular upper speaker grills, rounded dials, and photographic decals of wooden paneling. Nona’s mood brightened, sitting with a thump on the brown carpet and crossing her legs. Gawds, it had the original polished brass and golden tuner pointer! She swooned, rubbing her butt against the floor, her eyes fixed on the instrument’s rectifier tube, vibrator, and insulated battery cables.
There is something wrong with you, young lady. Clotho said.
Nona drooled, a wire slipping out of her nape becoming an antique two-prong brown wall plug.
She shrugged.
Playing the husband in her relationships was unusual, but who was she to question a soothing trickle charge from a ring terminal harness?
Nona crawled across the floor and inserted her plug into the wall outlet. She yipped, electricity coursing through her body, her fingers arching and diode flashing. Her discomfort passed and soon she felt a soothing warmth to the tips of her toes. She sighed, sliding back against the radio and spreading her legs across the carpet.
Oh yeah, that was the stuff.
Snap!
The lights above her exploded, and the house went dark, the radio and old tube TV going silent, sparks dancing against her collar.
“Oh, damn it!” Nona’s chord zipped back to her nape as she jumped to her feet.
The power in this world was so unstable it was frustrating. Nona never thought she’d miss her old bed and the feeling of those serpentine cords and straight blade twelve amp distributors.
This peninsula was a strange place indeed. Those who dwelled beyond the Oort cloud used this place as a control group, magic nothing but fantasy and science fiction, and technology making up for their lack of astral romances, mountain shaping, and glass craft replaced by the Price is Right and I Love Lucy. Faith withered on the vine, love and sex decoupled and self-fulfillment, pleasure, and gratification prioritized over children.
Nona didn’t like this peninsula. As a duchess of fate, fertility, and birth, she felt sick, but there was no place safer for her mother than one far removed from the games played by the lesser gods.
Nona stepped into the hallway, the wood floor creaking beneath her slippers as she slid her hands across the colorful abstract wallpaper. She made her way into the kitchen: white and black linoleum floor, an old kettle, and a toaster. Nona knelt and opened the stove, turning over the red-hot coals with her bare hands, feeling a tingle against her palm. She slipped some of the kindling into her blouse and sighed longingly as she pressed the coals against her breast.
The human world was cold, and steaming water felt like ice against her skin. She missed the molten springs of home, burning away the impurities in thirteen hundred degrees. There, her skin never felt smoother, nor were her nails cleaner, but here, the water just ran against her cheek and her pores remained clogged.
Nona sighed, running her fingers through her hair and pulling at the curls by her ears. A breeze blew in through the kitchen and her teeth chattered. She shut the window by the sink with a thunk, rubbing her elbows, her dress leaving her arms bare.
Short sleeves were all the rage for young ladies in the summer, and Charon insisted.
“Good morning, Mother,” Caladrius said.
He stepped into the kitchen, arching his neck against the ceiling and flaring the chrome ratchet set he used as pinion feathers.
Nona smiled.
To think he would fly on his own just to see her again. He insisted on being her son and she no longer had the discipline to refuse him. She was a mother to all, but no one could blame her for having a more personal relationship with Caladrius. After all, she had an intimate touch in his creation, her blood staining the inside of his gears.
“It looks like you have a piston stuck, sweetheart.” Nona pinched his pseudo-feathers, a few of his tail socket wrenches lying limp against the floor, his nylon muscles straining to lift. Gawds, he was getting tall, and she’d have to replace those soon. “I could maybe…” She scratched her chin, subconsciously fishing through her dress.
A six-inch slip joint with needle-nose pliers would do the trick. A drop of silicone, her strap cutter, or maybe her eighth-of-an-inch oval jawline with a beveled diamond cutter and cushioned grip…
Nona frowned—all the tools she had to leave back at home. The skirts here were too thin, and concealing a tool belt was impossible. Gone were the petticoats of the Victorian era. Did women in this timeline not understand how useful bloomers and a heavy skirt liner were?
She sighed, walking to the kitchen sink, her hands hovering over the cutting block.
A knife was missing from a set of twelve.
“Caladrius?” she asked. “Have you seen your grandmother?”
He pushed over the table, flapping his naked wings. “She went into the basement moments ago,” he said.
Nona’s brow wrinkled. “Stay here, sweetheart. I’ll be back in a moment.”
Her nostrils flared, a faint metallic scent in the air. She fished through the stove and picked out a glowing coal, holding it in front of her like a lantern as she descended into the basement. Nona shivered, a dripping sound echoing from the washbasin, her kindling casting flickering shadows against the wall.
Nona’s mother, Madeline, lay against the basement bricks, hugging her knees to her chest, a butcher knife in her right hand. Hints of gray highlighted her chestnut hair. She smelled of a summer lily, sweet nectar and pollen and wore her age well, with youthful hips and only a hint of wrinkles under her eyes. Blood stained her beige gown and pooled on the floor beneath her feet, dripping from the deep red cuts on her wrists.
“Mother…”
The woman flinched at Nona’s voice, covering her face between her knees like a child.
“We’ve talked about this. Please stop holding knives that way.” Nona twisted Madeline’s wrist, forcing the blade from her hand, which clanged against the floor. “There, that’s better.” She kissed her mother’s wounds, staining her lips with blood.
“Please, my beautiful girl,” Madeline said with teary eyes. “I can’t control it. Daughter of fate, sister of death, please, kill me.”
“Oh, mother…” Nona sat with Madeline, laying her head against her shoulder and closing her eyes. “So long as I hold your fate, I will never let you die.”
— ✦ —
“Nona, you have blood on your face,” Decima said, her legs coiled about her loom, plucking the strands of fate like a harp.
“Hmm? Oh, don’t worry, it’s not mine.” She brushed her lips against her elbow, burying her nose in her work.
An overhanded backstitch, her laps over her loops with silvery strands, drawing the needle through fate’s weave, uneven knots causing the fabric to pucker. Nona frowned, plucking the strands and smoothing the finish, the beginnings of twelve seams, and a proud lion mane, her latticework leading into Decima’s signature Herringbone rib stitch, her cast ons a stately courtyard and her loops the cufflinks of a harsh tutor.
Nona pressed the fabric against her cheeks, breathing deeply. She smelled raspberries and cream, a single seam becoming a distant barn and a blushing milkmaid, forbidden love.
“Sister,” Nona said. “You’re lacing this seam with hormones. I can smell it.”
Decima ran her fingers through her white hair, curled about her thumb like serpents, her freckles swelling, and a mischievous grin spreading across her lips.
“Yes, I did, and what of it? Addled wits and loose clothing are necessary ingredients in conception.”
Decima pressed the man’s fate against her shapely breast like a mother cuddling her child, her hands tracing the patterns with a serine grace. It was hard to imagine her as the girl who once drooled in bed, moaning about lemon meringue. Nona missed that girl but drew inspiration from the confidence of the woman before her.
“Remember what Bastion said, Decima, you’re not a duchess of love…” Nona touched the fabric, gently caressing the seam. “Mixing noble and commoner blood isn’t wise. There are twelve seams. What if they choose violence? What if they kill the baby and hang the mother? You know how cruel Morta can be!”
Decima frowned. “You’re not being fair to her, Nona. Morta doesn’t get to choose, they do. It’s not her fault when their deaths are violent.” She clicked her tongue, the little fingers along her calves strumming her tymbal muscle. “Besides, love is worth the risk…”
“Gawds above you’re stubborn.” Nona bit her lip, drawing her needle through the fabric, resetting her layered stitch. “Are you and Alexander this insufferable?”
Decima’s fingers stopped, dropping her stitchwork, a serious expression clouding her face. “Why won’t he ask me to marry him?” she asked after a moment.
Nona rested her needle against her lap—poor girl. Alexander was dragging his feet, and she was getting anxious. Honestly, how hard was it to read a woman who always thought with her stomach?
“The Gnatu have spoiled you,” Nona said, pressing the reverse side of the fabric against her chest as she wove from back to front. “Courtship takes a while, Decima. Give him time and I’m sure he’ll come around. Although, since we’re on that subject, how about you stop agreeing to marry anything with a biomechanical pulse? He might not react well if he figures out how many times you’ve been carried down the aisle.”
“I want him to see,” Decima said, stretching her toes, more than a dozen thoriated tungsten bands adorning her ankles. “One for every finger and toe. He’ll be jealous and have no choice but to ask me.” She scowled, holding out her hand. “Stop making me sound like the unreasonable one. See? I’m saving my ring finger for him.”
Nona shook her head. “You’re a hopeless romantic.” She smiled. “But that’s why I love you.”
Gawds, even now, her sister was adorable, with that subtle hint of naïve innocence that made a woman like her irresistible. If only Father hadn’t twisted her legs, but she was grateful to Alexander. He gave her confidence in ways neither she nor Morta could.
“Will you be my bride’s maid, Nona?” Decima asked.
“Do I have to say it? Of course, I will.” Nona flipped the fabric across her knees, teasing the lining with her thumb and forefinger. “But are you sure you want Morta as your maid of honor? I heard she died last night.”
“Atropos is keeping her lucid for the wedding. She’ll do wonderfully.” Decima came behind Nona, wrapping her arms around her shoulders. “Our elder sister is beautiful when she wants to be.”
Nona snorted, resting her head against Decima’s chest. “The ball and chain who wears black like it’s going out of fashion? You’ll have to educate me on the finer points of beauty, sister.”
“Can you still hear them?” Decima whispered in her ear.
“Aren’t you a little old for bedtime stories?”
“Please, Nona, once more, for me?”
Nona laughed, turning over and pressing her ear against Decima’s belly. She closed her eyes, nurturing a talent she’d fostered since she was a girl. There was a whisper within, so unlike the sounds of an empty stomach, and she felt a subtle bump against her cheek. Children up way past their bedtime.
Nona smiled. Her sister’s womb held so much potential.
“I’ll let you in on a secret,” Nona said, placing her hands against Decima’s belly. “You may not be a duchess of love, but you will one day carry them within you.”