On my fourteenth attempt, the Gnatu proved adequate substitutes for Nyx, placating my daughter’s wish for love but too shallow to satisfy her. She grew so very fond of Alexander, and I was one step closer to seizing the duchy. However, I buried the knife too close to my eldest’s heart and death never woke. Millia Gnu Aye succeeded the throne.
There was a hiss, a roar, and then a wave of cheers. Morta sat with her legs crossed in her elliptical amphitheater, staring over the liquid sands of the Colosseum. A string of purple grapes lay across her shoulder. She popped a fruit in her mouth, chewing slowly, fixated on the mock naval battle.
The Gnatu flooded the basement membrane with dense fluid and took command of elaborate rafts with cast iron carronades. The volleys came fast, the acrid scent of gunpowder filling the air as splinters of wood ruptured and peeled.
Morta smiled, a chunk of ivory rosewood slapping against her knees.
She loved ringside seats.
The booming thunder of a belching long-nine and the shriek of spherical cast iron shot colliding with the mast. She licked her lips, savoring the taste of metal and sawdust, sulfur burning her nose.
Gawds, it felt nice to be home, but Morta missed the screaming. The Gnatu used to scream for her when she was a little girl, but now they just saluted, going down with the ship beneath the oily waters of her limestone dynasty.
It wasn’t always limestone once it was the deck of a proud battleship. The Gnatu pulled her up twelve hundred feet less than two hundred miles from some coastal city—a gift for her coming-of-age party.
The ship came in two sections, the bow, and the stern, and it took Morta a week to unwrap them: powder burns, ruptured seams, cracked bulkheads, and pointy shrapnel. A fleet of Curtiss Helldivers did more than those decrepit submersible coffins ever could. After all, the Mark 13 aerial torpedos with Torpex warheads were leagues better than the Mark 14s. Still, they both fell short of the oriental 93 long lances. She kept one in her living room and rode it as if she were dry-humping the arm of a couch.
They sure knew how to make a girl swoon on her birthday.
The Gnatu worked tirelessly to stitch the remains of her new battleship into the garden. They sanded the powder burns, stitched the seams, patched the bulkheads, and removed the shrapnel.
Morta wasn’t pleased.
The explosion that sunk the pride of the Imperial Navy deserved to be remembered. So, she filled the munitions room with six three thousand-pound AP Type 91 munitions and launched her long lance through the opening of the nearest shitter hole.
Bastion wasn’t pleased.
She didn’t understand what the fuss was about. The explosion was controlled. She only blew a hole in the ballast tank and flooded seven compartments with plasma. The Gnatu scrambled to patch the ant hill, molten metal pouring into the living quarters as fires broke out in the mess hall and spread into the captain’s quarters. Morta could hear the screams of the long-dead crew as she pleasured herself in the barrel of a sixty-nine-foot type 94 navel-long gun.
Happy fucking New Year.
The Gnatu took it well. They patched and polished the ship until she was good as new. Well, save for the munitions room. They left that bitch exactly how she left it, buckled, burnt, and broken. Morta often sat in there, getting moist just thinking about the force of a blast required to send pin-sized shrapnel through her battleship’s four-hundred-and-ten-millimeter thick waterline belt—the largest explosion in naval history.
The Gnatu now knew better than to clean out the munitions room.
She felt sorry for them. Igor too. Caring for her was like scratching an orca’s back in a tank two gallons short of a lake. You never knew if she was going to nuzzle your feet or pull you underwater, dislocating your shoulder, breaking your neck, and dragging you by the scalp until she grew tired of a doll that no longer squeaked when she squeezed.
Boredom blew holes in the sides of the Yamato.
Boredom left scalpels in the belly of her date after a botched tummy tuck.
Boredom started in-flight engine fires in Pratt & Whitney turbofans.
No wonder they built her a colosseum. It kept her finger off the trigger.
She held her hands against her chest and closed her eyes. Her heart quivered a sickly motion like the twitching leg of the freshly dead. A full twenty-four hours and her blood was pooling at her feet, her skin as pale as the moon.
“My lady, you’re due for another dose of heparin, and you need to rest,” Igor said, hovering over her shoulder, his booking lung glowing red hot and brass fangs clicking together. “It’s almost time.”
“This is as close to rest as I’m going to get.” She popped another grape in her mouth, her hands shaking, a numbness spreading from the tips of her toes to her calves. “Gawds, Atropos, not now. It’s just getting good…”
I promised to keep you lucid until after your sister’s wedding and not a moment sooner. I’m done covering for you and it’s past your bedtime.
Morta dropped the fruit onto the floor, her arms limp and shoulders twitching. She frothed at the mouth and shivered violently. Igor came close, warming her with the light of his booking lung.
“At least I-I got to see the w-wedding,” she said, drool dripping down her chin. “S-she was beautiful, wasn’t she?”
“You were beautiful, my lady.”
“Y-you’re such a tease.” Morta smiled, but only one side of her face moved. “Don’t let Atropos dress me, okay? Pick out something nice for my funeral.”
“As you wish.” Igor lifted her into his many arms and wrapped her in steel wire and silk. “Till next you wake, mistress.”
“W-watch over those girls, Igor. Promise me…” The light in her eyes faded and her body went slack.
“I promise,” Igor said, closing her eyes.
— ✦ —
Decima woke with a yawn, stretching her body until the tips of her fingers scratched the walls. She always dreamed of when she was a little girl. Things were so much simpler back then. Ice cream after dinner, and naptime after mass. Now she was a woman and was expected to give up girlish things—no more accessories in her hair or stories before bed.
She sighed, rolling over and wrapping her arms around her husband. He was three foot six with nickel pincers, a surge protector, and a six-outlet swivel wall tap with ethernet and coaxial protection. He preferred one hundred and twenty-five-volt double pole, three-wire grounding plugs. Her husbands were always particular about the ways they slept together.
Decima sighed.
Snuggling with circular saws, screwdrivers, and chrome-plated cylinder wrenches wasn’t easy, like making meatloaf with celery sticks and applesauce. It just wasn’t right.
Decima pushed her legs, which fell out of bed with a thump, hissing and clawing at the floor like a disturbed centipede. She yawned, pulling herself up and covering her nakedness with the sheets.
“Lia,” she whispered, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
A human-sized doll with embroidered floss and skin-tone threading sat in the corner of her bedroom. Its head jerked, the gears along its jaw spinning.
“Lia,” she repeated, clapping her hands and projecting a stigma in her voice, an invisible finger that passed through the doll’s wooden shell and hubless spur gears stimulating the tattered fate near where her sister cut.
Decima’s dolls weren’t like any other. There was muscle beneath the wood, actin, and myosin filaments arranged in bundles with striations and nuclei. Stainless steel miter and browning bevel gears spun within its belly button with the tattered remains of human fate wrapped around the luminescent marbles in its skull.
The doll woke, standing with jerky, unnatural motions, Decima working its movements with invisible strings.
She was quite the ventriloquist.
“Anna,” it said, voice disembodied, as if coming from a radio.
“Good morning, Lia. Can you help me dress?” Decima asked, thumping her legs against the floor like a dolphin’s tail.
The doll stroked her scalp with a shaky wooden hand. “You’re so hopeless, Anna.”
“I know.” Decima smiled, closing her eyes. “Thanks, Lia.”
Getting dressed was always a pain. With her legs curled around each other, she was practically paralyzed from the waist down and most of her garments were changed to fit her condition—no pants, slippers, or socks. Skirts had to be just right, too short, and she refused to leave the bedroom, but too long, and her heels chewed on the hem.
“This’ll look cute on you,” said the doll, holding a red gown from the closet.
A sweetheart neckline, adjustable cami straps, and a lacy string waist tie with sashes, bows, and cherry-flavored nail polish. She sighed as the doll fussed over her measurements.
Some things never changed.
“What should we do with your hair today?” asked the doll as it tied a velvet sash across her waist and adjusted the hem over her knees.
“I don’t know, Lia.” Decima ran her fingers through her medium-length snowy bangs, layered, curly, and more than a little famished. Her cowlick growled at her, wrapping around her thumb like a serpent.
By the tower, she was hungry, but then, when wasn’t she? Five minutes after the weekend brunch buffet at La Costa Verde, her tummy was bellyaching. She could gnaw the leg off a table after finishing a seventy-two-ounce steak and polishing the kitchen sink—three bananas, eight scoops, toppings, nuts, and a cherry. There wasn’t a food challenge in human history that conquered the black hole in her belly, her resting metabolism running at the rate of a gymnast on steroids.
Gawds, and for whatever reason, she couldn’t get the taste of blood out of her mouth after her wedding nights.
Decima frowned, poking her legs, causing her fingers and toes to twitch like spiders’ feet.
She often wondered if there was another stomach in there somewhere.
“I could get you something to eat, my lady,” said a voice behind her, metal pincers wrapping around her shoulders.
Decima stroked his claw with her fingertips. “Husband, please don’t call me that,” she said. “I’m your wife. You’re not supposed to say ‘my lady’ anymore.”
“Then what should I call you, mistress?”
“My name? My love? Honey?”
“But you’re not golden, drippy, or sweet.”
Decima frowned. “I don’t mean literally. Husbands call their wives that because they believe they’re metaphorically golden and sweet.” She sighed. “Never mind. It loses its meaning if I have to explain it.”
She made fists against her lap; her face turning red. If only Alexander would ask her to marry him already. These pretend relationships weren’t cutting it anymore.
Decima tensed when a knock came at her bedroom door. “Come in,” she said.
The bleached skull of a horse peaked around the corner, eight spinnerets working steel wool and wire, a saddle made from black fifty amp extension cords grafted into his back.
Gawds, Morta really did have shit taste.
“Are you decent, lady Decima?” Igor asked, rubbing his snout against the door hinge.
“Come in, Igor.” She tied her hair up, her ponytail squealing against the bonds. “I’m sorry. I just heard the news from Lachesis.”
He stepped inside, his hooves clicking against the floor as he knelt by her bedside.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her fingers in his triple-wire mane, scratching the helical gears along his cheek. He purred, nuzzling her lap.
“Cheer up. She’ll be back soon enough,” Decima said. “Come on, why don’t we plan her funeral together?”
— ✦ —
Nona stood on the top rung of an unsteady ladder tying a noose-shaped knot and hanging it from Caladrius’s metal clavicle. She pulled the loop and string taught, wrapping the other end around his ribs and beginning her second lap. The muscle fibers took shape along his neck, cartilage, dermis, and the epidermal collar of a loose feather follicle. Fisherman’s knots made up his cardiac tissue, and she stitched an epidermal layer beneath his abdomen, grafting nerves and capillary beds.
“How does that feel?” she asked.
Caladrius rubbed his beak against her belly, purring loudly. “That feels so much better, mother!”
Nona smiled, tipping his chin and scratching his neck.
He was growing up too fast. She sniffed, rubbing her eyes. To think he would leave the nest, his heart stolen by a girl… She hadn’t even had the talk with him yet.
Caladrius lifted his loosely hung naked wings and flapped, squawking loudly. “Don’t cry, mother.”
Nona brushed her cheek, smearing tears across her face. “I’m just so happy, sweetheart.”
She smiled, threading the eye of her needle and pulling Caladrius’s wings straight, starting a basting stitch near a visible seam along his bare flesh, dermis, and scar tissue puffy and white, spaced five-eighths of an inch apart.
“Caladrius,” Nona said. “Do you like that girl?”
She pierced his skin; her needle running a stitch through his dermal and subcutaneous fat. His flesh puckered as she brought the needle back, drawing a second stitch near the surface.
“She’s my friend, mother.”
Nona pulled a warbler feather from her corset, yellow vane glinting in the candlelight. “I know that, but do you have feelings for her?” she asked, fitting the stem beneath her basting thread and tightening the stitch, setting the hollow shaft and downy barbs.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, like…” She blushed, holding the needle against her lips. “Caladrius, do you know where babies come from?”
“Of course, from chimneys! You taught me that, mother!”
Oh, gawds.
Nona slapped her hand against her face.
She was terrible at this.
“Maybe it’s better if we talk about this another time.” Nona sighed, stepping down the ladder to reach the tips of his wing fingers.
She worked on the next feather, repeating her running stitches across the length of his naked wings and along his neck, covering him in a smooth layer of plumage.
“Am I finished, mother? I want to go and play!” Caladrius said, his tail feathers bouncing in the air.
“Sweetheart, you take that child straight home, do you hear me?” She pinched his cheeks. “No detours, no limestone, and absolutely no lava hopping.”
He slumped his shoulders. “Yes, mother.”
Nona wrapped her arms around his neck, embracing him tightly. “That’s my boy,” she said, kissing his beak. “I don’t mind if you play a little, but we have to satisfy the regulations of the Federal Trade Commission before you go frolicking on the peninsula.”
Nona Pulled his pectoral feathers, stitching a folded, rectangular piece of cotton to his body with instructions printed in black. She tugged on the fastened tag and read over the details.
50% Iron, 10% copper, 12% Nickel, 8% Keratin, 14% Water, 5% Protein, 0.6% Lipids,
0.4% Nucleic acids, Glycosamines, Proteoglycans, etc.
Made in the Oxidized Garden
of domestic metals and imported tissue
Hello, my name is Caladrius
Hand wash 40° Celsius
Do not bleach
Air dry only
Do not Iron
If lost, please return to Nona
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, a sixpence in your shoe
Nona nodded to herself, wiping the sweat from her brow as she stepped off the ladder. “Okay, my love, you can go, but remember, no detours.” She stowed her needle and thread, patting his tail feathers.
“I love you, mother.” Caladrius nudged her shoulder, and she giggled, pressing against his beak.
“I love you too,” she said. “Now, go play with your friend.”
He left the cathedral’s basement, barely squeezing through the narrow corridors and leaded pipes.
“I worry about him,” she said, pressing her sowing kit against her chest.
“Caladrius has a gentle heart. I see much of you in him, my lady.” Charon stepped behind her, laying his hands on her shoulders. “I will have the sentinels watch over him. Be at ease.”
“Thank you, Charon.” Nona squeezed his hand, resting her back against the black chords that made up his tailcoat, bowtie, and gloves. “She died, didn’t she?” she asked.
Charon stretched his neck, his collection of expressions stored in the leathery folds and swapped like lenses on a pair of bifocals. “I’m sorry, mistress. Your sister passed early this morning,” he said. “Igor and Decima are making the arrangements. You are to be her Pallbearer.”
“Figures.” Nona’s lips quivered, and she snuffled. “Will there be cake at the wake?” she asked.
“There’s always cake at your sister’s wakes.”
“Alright.” She rubbed her eyes, tears dripping from her chin. “Clotho, I guess you’re up.”
— ✦ —
Morta woke, her fingers glued to her thighs and her knees stiff. She moaned, but the sound died in her throat and her eyelids felt heavy. She bit on her lip, forcing her left eye open. Morta was in a casket and was wearing some kind of checkerboard plaid skirt with a holster strapped to her inner thigh, the butt of a revolver rubbing against her skin.
A schoolgirl uniform with a colt forty-five? She was going to fucking kill them.
“Is she dead?”
Morta heard someone talking as she tried to move her fingers.
Decima appeared, looking into her open casket and holding her hand over Morta’s forehead, shutting her eyes. “Yeah,” she said. “She’s dead.”
“Gawds, sissy! Out of the way!” Nona shoved Decima to the side, her eyes glowing a brilliant green color. “Ewwww!” She poked Morta’s cheeks.
Morta was going to fucking kill her.
“Sissy, I don’t think she’s dead.” Nona bent herself over the casket as if bobbing for apples, feet kicking in the air.
Morta grunted, forcing her left eye open, her lashes fluttering.
“Eeek!” Nona lept from the casket. “She’s not dead! Decima! She’s so totally not dead!” She screamed, running from the stand.
“Clotho! Wait!” Decima sighed. “Charon, please keep her out of the flower arrangements. I worked all night on those!” She looked back over the casket, shaking her head. “Sorry about her, Morta. I promise Nona is coming to the funeral, but Clotho wanted to try the cake first. You always have good desserts at your wakes so, you know,” she said, playing with her fingers.
A voice called to Decima.
“Yeah?” Decima looked back over her shoulder. “No, I’ll take care of it,” she said, pulling the pillow out from under Morta, whose head thumped against the wood of her casket. “Bastion says it’s too early for you to be up, so I’m going to have to put you back to bed.”
Morta tried to protest but could only growl like a cat.
“Sorry.” Decima held the pillow over Morta’s nose and mouth. “It’s time to sleep, sister.”
Morta couldn’t breathe, her knees buckling and fingers shaking, fight or flight, but she hadn’t the strength to do much but twitch.
“Sleep, Morta, Sleeeeep.”
She let out a final gasp, her arms and legs going limp, the numbing, sweet embrace of darkness’s touch caressing her cheek like a loving mother.
Maybe a nap wasn’t such a bad idea.