On my eighteenth attempt, my niece struggled to hide the skeletons in her closet. Bloodhounds from the peninsula sniffed her out and my eldest, in a fit of rage, secured her knife and killed them all. An entire crop was reduced to ashes after a single misstep and she was no closer to fulfilling her purpose than on my first attempt. I grew disheartened. Could fate truly be changed? Millia Gnu Aye succeeded the throne.
Nona tripped, rocks tumbling over the side of a steep ravine and echoing about the mouth of the chasm. She slammed her back against the cliffside, hyperventilating as she peeked over the ledge and saw a river, white rapids, and pointy rocks five hundred feet down.
“Oh, gawds! Oh, gawds!”
Her knees shook, the wind howling and the dirt loose beneath her heel. She looked at the branch dangling precariously above her, a warbler nest within reach.
Nona took a deep breath, her heart beating fast and her hands sweating. “Just don’t look down,” she said, inching closer, her back square against the cliffside.
“My lady.” Charon appeared over the ravine wearing a black-tailed suit made of AC power cables and a pair of neutral wire gloves, hands clasped behind his back. “Allow me to assist you, at least.”
“N-no need. I got this,” she said. “What kind of mother would I be if I can’t do this much, right?” She tried to laugh, but her voice shook.
Nona gulped, pressing her breast against the rocks, craning her neck to see the nest. It was big and made of bent twigs, dried moss, and the sharp red and blue abdomens of artificial fly hooks. Nature’s pot-pourri.
She steadied herself on an exposed root, moist from the early rain, standing on her tiptoes until she was face level with the nest. She saw eggshells, and a torn page from the local gazette, blue ink running like a river against the moist paper. Opaque, beady eyes stared back at her, mouths opening wide and chirping incessantly.
“Sorry, little ones,” she said. “I brought nothing to eat.”
Nona reached into the nest, holding onto the branch with her other hand and digging her heels into the cliffside.
Sunflower seed shells, tinsel, and pieces of a blue garbage bag. She sifted through the trash until she reached the bottom, a layer of feathers making up the bedding.
“Perfect, just what I was looking for.” Nona plucked a few of the bright yellow feathers from the nest and stuffed them into her corset. “Thanks, little ones.” She smiled, patting the mewling naked pinkies. “Okay, Charon, I’ve got wha—” Her nose tickled, a strange feeling buzzing on the roof of her mouth. “I’ve g—” She arched her head back, squeezing her eyes shut and forcefully breathing through her mouth. “Achoo!”
She let go of the branch, her heels slipping out from under her as she tumbled over the edge, skirts billowing in the wind.
“Charon!”
He vaulted off the cliffside, clawed feet puncturing the stone and anchoring him against the chasm. Steam erupted from his ankles as he dashed down the ravine, catching Nona by the arm. She dangled, teary-eyed, a drop of blood running from a cut along her chin.
“Oh Gawds, thank you!”
Charon cradled her in his arms like a father would his infant daughter, his expressions shifting, leathery patches swapped from the compartments in his neck by metal tuning forks. “I will never allow any harm to come to you again,” he said, wearing confidence, a seriousness in his voice as his fingers tightened around her.
Nona blushed, her lips quivering as she laid her sweaty palms against the three-prong grounding plugs that made up his notched lapel.
Gawds, he was so handsome.
“My lady, are you still frightened? I’ve detected elevated patterns in your heart rate.”
“What?! No! I mean, I’m completely fine!” Her blush deepened. “Just take me home, okay?”
— ✦ —
Nona rang a washcloth, letting the water drip into the bedside basin. She sighed, laying the cool towel across her mother’s forehead.
Madeline tensed, sweat dripping from her cheeks, her skin clammy, grey, and burning.
“I hear her calling to me,” she said, turning from side to side, the sheets soaked.
Nona held Madeline’s hand, her fingernails brittle and peeling off like scales. “Mother,” she said, taking the thermometer from her lips. She shook the device, lifting it to the light. “You have a fever, but it’ll be okay. I’m going to take care of you.”
She rested her hand against her mother’s forehead, strands of the woman’s hair coming out at the stem and decorating the pillows. A thin waxy film pulled away from her skin, something wriggling beneath the surface, a snake shedding its scales.
Nona crossed her arms, pursing her lips.
So her mother molted from time to time. What about it? This wasn’t the first time she’d helped her shed. It kept her youthful, better than a skin cleanse in a sulfur vent. This was hardly evidence of a curse or proof that death was necessary, but it was an illness of the soul.
Nona rolled up her sleeves, went down on her hands and knees, and crawled under the bed. She worked at a loose floorboard until the tile popped out, retrieving the gold and silvery strands of a mortal tapestry.
She sat cross-legged, resting fate between her knees and sliding her fingers along the weave. The silk felt coarse and thirsty, like a desert in the summer heat. Tissue bubbled beneath a horsehair stitch, causing the fabric to buckle and warp. Nona pinched the growth, pulling until it separated from the fabric, bloody discharge, and pus draining from a buttonhole, basting, and blanket knot.
“There,” Nona said, returning the tapestry to the hidden floorboard. “All better.”
Madeline visibly relaxed, her breathing less shallow and her hands steady. New fingernails were growing in place, and fangs retracting beneath her inner lips.
All she needed was a little pruning—no big deal.
Nona leaned over and kissed her mother’s cheek. “Get some rest. You’ll feel much better in the morning.”
Madeline’s eyes opened, a silvery sheen reflecting a dark and terrible hunger. She grabbed Nona’s wrist and squeezed. “Kill me, please.” The words sounded like a hiss. “Before it’s too late. Before I take another.”
“Mother, we’ve been over this.” Nona frowned, pressing her fingers against her lips. “No more talk of death.” She wrenched her hand from her mother’s grip. “I’m watching the kitchen knives. Don’t get any ideas.”
Madeline’s eyes turned frantic and glassy. A prisoner locked in a rubber room without rope and an unbalanced stool. Nona sighed, brushing her skirts and collecting the tray and empty soup dish.
She missed how her mother used to be before the ascension. Back then, Nona was just a normal girl and didn’t even know she had sisters. Madeline was always gentle with her, whispering sweet lullabies and telling stories about the stars. Things were so much simpler. No fate, duty, or distant empty thrones. If only she could return to those innocent days…
Nona’s heart ached, remembering thoughts of her sister Morta tucking her into bed and Caladrius hopping with joy.
No.
She wiped a tear from her eye.
There was no going back now, not if that meant losing the love of her sisters and the warmth of her children. Besides, Madeline would be back to her old self once she found a way to prune what she couldn’t see.
Nona smiled. “I love you, Mom,” she said, stepping from the bedroom and closing the door behind her.
She whistled to herself, a jump in her step as she made her way through the hallway and down the stairs into the living room. The Gnatu gathered around the Zenith radio, its lights flashing, dated music from an old-time romantic comedy blaring from the speakers. They gathered close, furs, silk skins, paws, and claws adorning their metal frames, camera lenses flashing beneath beaks, snouts, retractable fangs, and red button noses.
“Don’t sit too close,” Nona said, grabbing one by the collar and moving him back with the others. “You’ll ruin your lens, and I’ve replaced enough of your auditory sensors.”
She sighed, stepping into the kitchen and dropping the tray on the table. Charon stood before the sink, inspecting the dishes, his fingers buffing the glass and ceramic, leaving a glossy finish.
She sat for a moment, losing herself in his movements and the delicacy of his touch. She licked her lips, resting her chin on her hands.
What would her father think if he knew she had feelings for her retainer, or was this by design? Just another means by which he bound her to the garden? Nona didn’t care. Charon became everything she wanted, even the things she didn’t know she wanted. Assertive, protective, her butler, her housecarl, and, perhaps most importantly, her unknowing suitor.
“You shouldn’t spoil them,” Charon said, eyeing the edges of a worn butter dish with a jeweler loupe.
“Who do you mean?” Nona spun her fingers around the empty soup dish. “Morta spoils Decima worse than I do.”
“I said ‘them’, my lady, not ‘her’, and I was referring to the newborns.” He placed the dish in a cupboard, dipping his hands into soapy water and scrubbing a coffee cup. “They are born to serve, maintaining the cathedral of fate for you and your father.”
Nona frowned, placing her hands on her hips. “Charon, I do nothing to impede their service. I merely wish for them to be happy. Birds, dogs, cats, and mice. It’s what they want and won’t slow their hands or make them any less clumsy.”
“It’s unorthodox.”
“I am duchess now. I will determine what is or isn’t orthodox,” she said. “If my father doesn’t like it, then maybe he shouldn’t have died.”
Charon turned the coffee cup over, tapping his fingers on a chip and making a tsk sound. “My lady, you’re stubborn,” he said, shaking his head.
Nona stood, wrapping her arms around his waist and laying her cheek against his back. “What about you, Charon? What is it you wish to be?”
“You already know the answer to that. I was born to share your desires, wants, and needs. I am your conduit, your retainer, your right hand.”
“Oh, you think you know me so well, do you?” Nona licked her lips. “Then tell me, what is it I desire right now?”
Charon spun to face her, resting his hands on her shoulders, wearing confusion, elevated eyebrows, and a cocked chin. Brass digits worked the leathery flesh along his cheeks, creating a more dynamic expression that searched her eyes and traced the lining of her jaw, hopefully seizing a hint from the color of her lips and the invitation of her smile.
“I will protect you till the end of time,” he finally said, touching her chin.
“Oh, for the love of…” Nona sighed, grabbing his ear and pulling him to meet her. She stood on her tippy toes and kissed him, holding the gesture, a youthful petition for a deeper relationship. “I want more than a protector, Charon,” she said, falling back on the balls of her feet and licking her lips, metallic with a tinge of salt. She spun around, hiding her blush. “Just think about that for a while, okay?”
Did she really just do that?! Nona slapped her hands over her cheeks. Gawds! She was an idiot!
“Uh, I-I’m going to go work on Quartz for a while,” she said. “When you finish here, could you turn down my mother’s spare bed?”
Charon returned to the dishes. “As you wish, my lady,” he said, forgetting his jeweler loupe and leaving a dirty cup on the drying mat, his fingers experiencing some loss of motor control.
Nona slipped from the kitchen, returning to the living room as red as an apple. She sat on the couch near her crochet set, took a deep breath, and pinched her cheek. Quartz climbed onto the cushions away from his brothers and sisters, metal toes probing her lap like the antennae of a skittish moth. His lens focused on her, chassis covered in a patchy display of yellow, purple, and green feathers.
“I want to be a bird,” he said. “Like brother Caladrius.”
“I know that. Come here.” Nona picked him up and laid him
across her skirts, his legs spinning. A turtle flipped on his back. “Now, where did I leave off?”
She pulled her hair back, letting the needle spill from her nape as she pressed against the smooth, leathery flesh stitched to his pistons and flywheels. She fished through her pockets digging through squirrel toes, frog legs, and rodent teeth. Plucking the warbler feathers from her corset, she began with a catchstitch, weaving her needle through the stem and into the soft tissue of his underbelly, forming a crisscross pattern and tightening the seam. She transitioned into a chain stitch, creating an outline along his appendages and contours to stage his soon-to-be wings.
Nona lost herself in her work, daydreaming about the miracle of childbirth as she set a lost and found tag near Quartz’s collar.
She’d been practicing her mending threads and her overhand twists improved, yet labor remained painful and dangerous. The nature of a woman’s kiln couldn’t be fixed with a simple ladder stitch. Pleasure and pain were brother and sister, not soulmates, and Nona’s experiments led to those who sought the ladder for the former, a mistake she couldn’t undo.
“Mamma,” Quartz said, nuzzling her cheek. “Thank you, mamma.” He flapped his plumage and splayed his tail feathers. “Can I go play now?”
Nona closed her eyes, the needle returning to her nape. “Of course you can,” she said, pinching his cheek. “Just don’t forget your chores. Charon wouldn’t let me live it down.”
Quartz hopped from her lap, huddling with the others near the radio as a dramatic voice previewed the next episode of ‘The Horse and the Hair’.
She rolled her eyes, sinking into the couch and yawning loudly. Another Gnatu wearing patterned furs and greasy white paws tugged at her skirts.
“Mother, I can’t move my back leg.”
“Let me look.” Nona lifted the mouse into her hands and lay her on her side. She pinched her hipbone and pulled back the fur and tissue, revealing the gears and spurs, rusted, chipped, and stripped. “Sweetheart,” she said. “You haven’t been brushing and when was the last time you flossed?”
The mouse hung her head, her ears drooping.
“I need to cap this with a new spur and lug nut, and then you and I will have a serious conversation about the bad habits you’ve picked up.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Nona lay the mouse on a nearby cushion. “I’ll be right back,” she said, stepping into the kitchen and rifling through the drawers. “Charon!” she called up the stairs towards the spare bedroom. “Have you seen any extra lug nuts?!”
“Check the car!”
Nona sighed, dropping her head and slamming the kitchen drawer. “Damn it.” She wiped her hands on her skirt and proceeded towards the basement stairs and out the door into the carport.
The morning light was blinding, and she shaded her eyes, the sounds of birds chirping and children playing, a summer symphony as they cracked eggs on the asphalt and sold lemonade, waving fans and lining up for a dive in the neighborhood pool.
Nona shivered, drawing her cloak over her shoulders and taking what she could from the distant sun.
An autumn model scarlet colored Bel Air—smooth straight panels, wrap-around glass, triangular rear lights, and a classic shoe-box chassis. Nona wasn’t much of a car girl but appreciated the design and the Gnatu were accommodating, always eager to find and refurbish what others threw away. It was an appropriate prop to complete her disguise in a peninsula that had long progressed beyond the Industrial Revolution.
Her father would be so proud.
Nona licked her lips, popped the hood and checked the dipstick.
She knew her way around a six-cylinder inline and it wasn’t her first time tapping a three-speed synchromesh manual. Perfect primary and secondary engine balance with a polished crankshaft decorated with a slew of orange-sleeved pistons—an even-firing two-stroke engine igniting at sixty-degree intervals, minimal vibrations with six unpaired unique phases. Nona practically drooled, wiping her lips and smearing oil across her face.
“Ma’am,” said a voice from behind her.
She didn’t notice, testing the main bearings between each crankpin, a delicate balance of flex and stability. If only she could tighten the lining and shore up the spaces. She licked her lips, loosening a bolt with a socket wrench and freeing a washer.
“Ma’am!”
Nona screamed, jumping out of the engine, the hood slamming shut with a bang.
A man stood beside her, tall and lean, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, a cleanly pressed tie, and an overcoat, his forehead glistening with sweat.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
She pressed her hands against her chest and exhaled sharply.
Careful sister, said Clotho with an unmistakable yawn. Your tomboy is showing.
Nona yipped, dropping the socket wrench and kicking it under the car. “N-no, no, I didn’t hear. Can I help you?”
“Travis James Clark with the Drywood Police Department.” He offered his hand. “I have a few questions about your neighbors, if you don’t mind me taking a minute of your time.”
Nona took his hand, her eyes meeting his, a firmness in his grip and a sharpness in his searching gaze prying out clues honed to a razor edge. She’d never met a man like him before, the cleanliness of his collar and the polished brass tips of his pen and gilded notebook suggesting an eye for detail, a bloodhound’s nose, drawn to the scent of a fresh kill.
“I don’t mind,” she said, looking away and scratching her nose. “But I don’t know them well.”
The contours of his face, the squareness of his jaw, and the angle of his chin… There were still ways she could improve Charon, after all.
The man riffled through his jacket pocket, pulling out a picture. “Have you seen this child around?”
Nona took the photo, scrunching her nose. A young boy with a childish smile and curly red hair covered in spots. She’d seen him before on the missing person posters. Was he yet another victim in her sister’s crusade before tossing the knife? How long would she have to wait to be free of her family’s prudence?
“Is he the missing boy?” Nona asked, handing the photo back. “I’m sorry. I moved here a few years ago to care for my mother.” She stared at her feet, nudging pebbles with her slippers. “She’s not well, you see, and I haven’t had a chance to get to know anyone here. I’m sorry I can’t be more help.” She gasped, all those years of etiquette snapping at her heel. “Gawds, please forgive my rudeness. My name is Nona. Would you like to come in for a cup of tea or maybe coffee?”
James dabbed his forehead with a small towel. “That would be kind of you,” he said.
Nona opened the kitchen door, stepped inside, and froze. Her sister Decima hung from the ceiling like a bat, stuffing her face with a loaf of bread, her legs coiled about the kitchen lights, a line of half-finished Gnatu, birds, squirrels, deer, and raccoons offering to marry her with purple, gold, and silver washers.
Nona yelled, spinning on her heel and slamming the door behind her. “Oh, I’m sorry!” She lay her back against the doorknob, barring his path, her mind racing for an excuse. But, oh gawds, those searching eyes. “Y-you see my mother had an episode in the kitchen and-well and…” She balled her hands into fists, bit her lip, and met his gaze. “Forgive me, sir, but right now isn’t a good time.”
“That’s fine,” James said, adjusting his fedora. “But if you think of anything, you can reach me at the station.” He handed her a business card and stepped out of the carport.
Nona watched him until he was out of sight. She breathed a sigh of relief and then returned to the house, walking into the kitchen and glaring at Decima, her hands on her hips.
“Are you out of your mind!” she shouted.
The serpentine woman licked her lips with a satisfied grin. “Does Charon know about your secret dalliance?”
“You can’t be here! What if he saw you?! What if he saw them?!” She pointed into the living room where the Gnatu huddled like scared children.
“Well, I guess someone needs to be more careful about the men they invite into their bedrooms.” Decima’s eyes narrowed as she slithered down from the ceiling and sat on the countertops. “You’ve always been a scatterbrain.”
Nona growled, picking a purple tungsten band off the floor and then lifted herself onto the counters. “Do you know how long it took me to find this place?” she asked. “Peninsulas that lack the astral romances are rare. I can’t uproot my mother again, sister.”
“It is a strange place.” Decima splayed her hands, admiring her nail polish. “But it makes sense. Without runes, people rely on technology. A world of father’s design. The uncapped potential of a true industrial revolution.”
“Decima, are you listening to me?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, waving her hands. “I promise I won’t do it again.” Decima spun her white hair between her thumb and forefinger, refusing to meet Nona’s gaze, thumping her feet against the floor.
“Sister,” Nona said, flicking her forehead. “I know that look. You want something, just come out and say it.”
Decima’s freckles swelled, her dress bunching up between her knees as she squirmed. “I-I’m going to ask Alexander to marry me.”
“But didn’t you want him to ask you? Wasn’t that your dream?”
“I don’t want to wait anymore, Nona. I—” Decima stared at her lap, making fists against her skirt. “I really want this, but I’m scared. What if he rejects me?”
“Oh, by the tower, he won’t reject you.”
“Then why won’t he ask me like the Gnatu do?”
Nona sighed, swinging her feet back and forth. “Sister, we’re not girls anymore. You know well that the Gnatu are programmed to behave the way they do. Soldiers for Morta, children for me, and, well, husbands for you. Conduits are kind of the opposite of that, and Alexander is like your conduit. He won’t do what you want him to do and, let’s be honest here.” Nona blushed. “Doesn’t that drive you wild? You can’t dictate his actions and everything he does for you means that much more. Isn’t that the essence of genuine passion?”
“You’re right, sister,” Decima said. She tilted her chin, a look of iron determination flashing in her eyes. “Will you be my maid of honor, Nona?”
Nona smiled, resting her cheek on her shoulder and squeezing her arm. “Of course I will,” she said. “But only if this is the last time.”
— ✦ —
It was a home like any other. White paint, gray shudders, an old picket fence that partially lay in the lawn, and a bright red front door. However, smoke came from the chimney, the only house in the township of Drywood that kept their stove burning in the summer heat.
James flicked the remains of a burning cigarette into the street, leaning against his police cruiser as he jotted down notes.
A car that didn’t run, an unpaved driveway, and a murder of crows missing beaks, claws, feathers, and black beady eyes. He swore he heard the shutter of a camera lens from the misshapen head of an old raven perched upon the gutters like a gargoyle, watching and waiting.
Something was wrong with this place. James felt it in his gut, a wave of anxiety, the same feelings that came from being followed. The seeding lawn, the overgrown garden of thistle and yellow wildflower, and the parade of mangled wildlife tapping on the shutter-drawn windows.
“Come on, James, admit it,” said John, wiping sandwich grease on the front of his uniform. “You just want to get into that young woman’s skirt.”
James thumbed his chin, tapping a pen against his lips. “How many women do you know could fix a car like that?” he asked, nodding towards the Bel Air beneath the carport.
“What can I say? It’s a new world, buddy.” John shrugged, squirming uncomfortably beneath James’s gaze. “Okay, few enough, but so what if she’s a scrapper? That hardly makes her a murderer.”
James grunted, jotting down the name Nona.
There was something unnatural about her—the softness of her step, the glassiness of her eyes, or the curl of her hair. He could’ve sworn he saw a glowing green disk in her right eye, her arms and feet jerking as if stirred by the hand of a ventriloquist practicing his craft. Even the blemishes of her skin looked painted, doing little to mar the surface of a factory-fresh marionette.
“Come on,” John said, slapping his back. “You can’t be considering her a suspect?”
“I can and I am.” James snapped his notebook shut, climbing into the driver’s side. “I trust my gut.”
“God, is this a big city cop thing?” John sat in the passenger seat, rolling down the window. “She must weigh ninety pounds soaking wet. How is she going to pull a boy through a bathroom sink?”
“It’s an experience thing.” James thumbed his chin, laying his notebook on the steering wheel and doing a quick sketch of her face.
John rolled his eyes. “I bet she’d give you an oil change if you asked nicely,” he muttered, staring out the window.
“Listen, John, have I ever told you about the first case I worked on? About that woman whose baby nearly drowned in a bathtub?” He curved the edge of his pencil, drawing the lining of Nona’s lips and nose and the beginnings of an unnatural scar at the base of her neck hidden beneath her hair.
“Oh, please, not another one of your stories,” John said, opening the top buttons of his uniform and resting his chin in his hands.
James sighed, putting his pencil down. “You want to make it into the big leagues, right? Then shut the fuck up and listen. I’m trying to tell you what those leagues are like.”
John shook his head, gesturing for him to continue.
“I’ll never forget it,” James said, biting his tongue. “They seemed like your typical suburban family, a beautiful young wife, a budding daughter, and a firstborn son.”
“Yet, that was only skin deep. Her daughter came from her first marriage, and there was a suspicion that her son was illegitimate. She accused her second husband, a known drunkard, of attempted murder. It seemed an open-and-shut case. He drank, had anger issues, and may have learned that his son wasn’t his. It’s not a stretch to believe he snapped and tried to drown the baby in a bathtub.”
“So, what was the issue?” John asked.
“We found him passed out on the couch not an hour after the supposed incident. He reeked of booze, but his clothes were dry as a bone.” James drew a circular ring along the eye of his sketch. “The woman was hysterical and refused to listen. How else would her baby have ended up face down in knee-high bathwater? I knew something was wrong, but I ignored it.”
He could still see the water running from that open bathroom as a woman screamed, her baby crying against her shoulder. A young girl with streaming pigtails sheepishly peeked around the corner, steely determination flashing in her brown eyes, her skirt dripping wet.
“She divorced him after that. There was enough evidence, dodgy though it was, for her to claim custody of both kids. She moved into the city and that was supposedly that.” James wrinkled his nose.
It was the smell you never forget. Rotting meat, festering gases, the bloated corpse of the recently dead floating in a tub.
“I take it that wasn’t the last you heard from them,” John said.
“A month later, we were called to investigate the murder of that woman’s baby. She found him, once again, face down in knee-high bathwater. He’d been there nearly two days. She was a terrible mother.”
“So she was the culprit, after all.”
James shook his head, finishing the curve of Nona’s jaw. “It was that little girl, John,” he said. “She’d grown jealous of her baby brother stealing all the attention. She tried to drown him twice and succeeded the second time.”
John sat silently, his lips curved in distaste, sweat glistening from his forehead.
“You see,” James said, tapping his finished sketch with the end of his pencil. “If the big city taught me anything, it’s that evil can come from the most unlikely sources.”