On my third attempt, I allowed the duchess of death to claim the life of the prophetess. My half-blooded niece grew depressed without her mother and came to hate her cousin. In the end, she smothered death in her sleep. Millia Gnu Aye succeeded the throne.
Nona pushed her way through the crowd, sweat glistening across her brow. She could barely hear her breath over the shouting and screaming: antique soiled gowns and dirty aprons with leather-bound shoes, puffy white collars, unsettling wax wigs, fancy buttons, and wrinkled trousers. Her nose stung, the smell of sweat and incense heavy in the air.
“Burn the witch!”
“She took my child! Where is my child?!”
“Devil worshipper! Kill the witch! Protect our young folk!”
Nona made it through, ducking under the railings and through the guards who carried brass inlaid flintlock muskets and wore wrinkled uniforms, their coat of arms stitched into the linings of their vests. Behind them was a small theater and a woman standing chained before raised wooden benches. The magistrate sat above the stage, pounding furiously against the desk with his dark wooden gavel.
“Order! I will have Order!”
Nona dashed across the stage, stumbling around, invisible to everyone except the woman chained by her wrists. She was middle-aged with a hint of wrinkles under her eyes, but her figure had the unmistakable firmness of youth, unnatural to those around her. She carried herself without worry, untouched by the stones, rotten fruit, rusted iron links, and pointed accusations.
“Mother!” Nona shouted, wrapping her arms around the woman’s waist and burying her nose in her dirty apron.
The woman smiled, crouching to kiss Nona’s forehead. “My little girl,” she said, stroking her cheek. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I’ve come to save you, Mother!” Tears dripped from her eyes, the shouts from the crowd growing louder.
“Burn her! Burn her!”
“She stole my baby! Give him back to me!”
The soldiers fired into the ceiling, bits of wooden chips raining on the people who screamed and cursed, trying to claw their way toward Nona’s mother.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said, wiping away Nona’s tears. “You’re becoming such a beautiful young lady.”
“Mother, come on!” Nona tugged on her sleeves. “I’ll get you out of here!”
The woman’s grip tightened against Nona’s back as the wooden gavel came down again.
“The Jur’rs for o’r Sov’r lord and lady the king and queen, present that Madeline Brooks, widow of Ebenezer Brooks, in and upon the twelfth day of November last in the year—”
“Mom, what are you doing? We have to go!”
The woman shook her head. “No, my love.” she kissed Nona’s cheek. “Please, sweetheart, let me die.”
“detestable arts called witchcraft and sorcery wickedly maliciously & feloniously hath used practiced and exercised—”
“What are you saying?! Let me help you!” Nona grabbed handfuls of her mother’s skirt, pounding her fists against her knees. “I can help you!”
“Nona, please.” The woman shook her head, pushing her away. “Daughter of fate, sister of death, please let me go.”
“Sentenced to be burned at the stake on the sixteenth day this month, her ashes scattered to the four corners—”
Let me die. Let me die. Let me die.
Nona covered her ears, her face turning red and her nails digging into her scalp as the needle slipped out of her neck and dangled across her back. “Shut up!” she shouted.
The room went silent, the crowd frozen, their lips and tongues wagging uselessly, not a sound uttered from their throats. The magistrate’s eyes grew wide, his gavel mere inches away from hitting the desk. They seemed to notice her now, instinctively, like the moment before disaster, too late to change course. Fate’s tapestries hung visibly from the ceiling flowing from the garden, each fabric drawn towards the body and spirit of its owner.
Nona stepped from the stage and climbed onto the magistrate’s bench, taking the gavel from his hands. The man’s lips quivered, his fingers and elbows shaking and his eyes frantically darting around the room.
He couldn’t move.
“You want to burn my mother?” Nona whispered in his ear, knocking the wig from his balding head. “Not if I stop you first.”
She cupped her hands, the gavel melting like metal into a strange puddle and then becoming silky smooth, a fabric bearing the knots and grain of beautiful rosewood.
“You like playing with wooden toys?” Nona grabbed the tapestry dangling above his head. “I do too.”
The man soiled himself, sweat dripping down his neck as she stroked the weave with her needle.
Nona overlapped the fabric of the gavel with human fate. She pierced the upper lip with her needle, starting an eighth of an inch from the end and weaving a hidden knot between the two layers. She completed her first full stitch, securing the seam and angling her needlework, seamlessly merging wood and flesh—Nona’s signature whipstitch.
The man couldn’t scream, his eyes becoming polished basswood marbles and his tongue a rosewood strut, an oak lever jutting from his neck. Knots and tree rings appeared as blemishes upon his flesh and his fingers became plywood cylinders, his toes box-shaped matches.
Nona smiled, spacing her stitches half an inch apart, running them parallel with the edge of fate. She licked her lips, making a half-stitch with the golden thread she’d hidden in the lining of her dress.
“Nona.” A voice came from the court.
She looked up from her work to find a little girl standing in her mother’s place. The child wore a satin slipper evening gown, her chestnut hair tied into tight sausage curls, and her eyes glowing a vibrant green color.
They were practically twins.
“What do you want, Clotho?” Nona asked, driving her needle through the fabric.
“This is against garden law and you know it.” Clotho sat on the magister’s bench, putting the small man-shaped doll in her lap and working the lever, opening and closing his mouth.
“Don’t even try to stop me.”
“This is a dream, sister. Wake up.”
Nona bit her lip, pulling the fabric to flatten her stitches. “No, Clotho, this is not a dream,” she said. “This is a memory.”
— ✦ —
Morta leaned against the pillars of the bell tower, letting the rays of the immaculate sun brush her cheek. It was hot out, but then, when wasn’t it? She wiped her brow, swinging her legs as she looked towards the sun-scorched landscape. A seemingly endless desert as far as the eye could see, the remains of sunken vessels sticking up from the dunes like rusting trees and oxidized shrubbery.
The garden was like that. An unusual bazaar of sand, iron, copper, and brass, the horizon littered with the bows of once proud seafaring vessels. The custom-built terminal of an ultra-large crude carrier, the broken fixed-wing aircrafts of amphibious assault ships, and the 24 double-ended boilers and reciprocating steam engines of an Olympic-class luxury liner.
She humphed, crossing her arms.
The oxidized garden indeed. The Gnatu preferred discarded things and there was no better place to find them than on the bottoms of the peninsula’s many oceans. Iron and steel frigates, their port sides ripped open by the violence of nature or a well-placed shot of a swash-plate piston engine, Otto fueled, Mark 48.
Morta giggled.
A broadband guidance system with a proximity fuse launched at five hundred fathoms. What sweet bliss to call the aftermath home.
She frowned.
The Gnatu were so damned lucky. She’d trade sixteen bells for a propulsion assembly and a monopropellant bath any day of the week.
Igor twisted in her lap, his many toes needing against her legs, tiny rotating gears and beveled joints producing blue sparks within his exposed cavities.
“What’s wrong, My Lady?” he asked.
“Nothing.” Morta leaned far back, still swinging her legs. “Well, I mean.” She chewed on her lips. “Why do you guys do that?” she asked.
“Do what, My Lady?”
She sat up, looking towards the garden.
Below her, the Gnatu scurried, shading themselves from the potent rays of the immaculate sun. They pitched fire-resistant fabrics, polished iron and steel, and sold unusual wares. Stainless steel muffin trays, industrial-grade strap cutters, crescent pliers, and a mound of iron-toed, leather-bound work boots. They clomped around awkwardly in their attire, swapping utility outlets for candelabra base incandescent chandelier bulbs and Western series halogen lights. The larger species dragged the carcasses of ships behind them, trading the hull of the Santa Maria for the stern of the Belle Weather.
“That,” Morta said.
“Mistress, we covet material things as mortals do because your father recognized that living beings, metal or flesh, fight much harder when they have something to lose.”
Morta frowned. “Why do you and my sisters envy mortals so much?” she asked, hugging her knees and squishing Igor against her belly. “Flesh is weak. I wish I were more like you.”
“Please don’t say such things.” Igor scrambled out of her hold. “You were born in the image of the woman your father adored. It’s a feeling I know well, for my kind was made to envy mortals, the birds, the lizards, and even the snakes.”
“And what about you, Igor? Do you envy mortals?”
His lens shifted, a spark of blue light appearing in the center. “I was born to adore only you.”
“Stop it.” Morta blushed, hiding her face on her knees.
“Still, I don’t fully understand you, mistress. Why do you paint your nails red before black and wear your sister’s dresses while she sleeps? I know you love more than mortar shells and .208 rounds.”
“I said sto—wait.” Morta jerked up, her face bright red. “How do you know about that?!” She balled her hands into fists. “If you tell Nona, I’ll turn you into scrap!”
“Why deny the part of you that would bring you so much closer to your sisters?”
Morta chewed on her lips, sighing heavily. “I wear the mantle of death, Igor.” She rested her cheek against her knees. “Pretty things just don’t fit right, no matter what my heart wants.”
She looked up, shielding her eyes.
The sun’s corona spread to the four corners, creating an image of a wall of flame causing the denser liquids to bubble and boil, the metals to glow red, and the sands to shimmer, fine grain and glass. She yawned, covering her mouth. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between dusk and dawn. After all, the sun never set in the garden.
Igor tugged at the corners of her skirt. “Please, mistress, what’s bothering you?”
She stood, placing her hands behind her back and pacing around the cathedral tower. The Gnatu who polished the brass and copper bells dropped into a staggered column formation, saluting her as she passed.
“You said your kind was given desires so they would have something to lose,” Morta said. She stared longingly at the horizon, still chewing on her lips. “What about me? Do I have something to lose?”
Igor studied the Gnatu formations, tapping his glass lens and correcting their stances, forty-five degrees, and too much rust on the elbows. “I don’t understand,” he finally said.
Morta licked her lips, playing with her fingers.
She remembered a time running around with Nona in the bell tower. That little girl smiled brightly, dangling from the bell gongs and playing hopscotch against the bricks. She cried when she lost ‘eye spy’ or ‘where’s the red Gnatu’ and secretly stuffed tools in her dresses, playing babysitter with her charges. Nona was a drama queen, a closet tomboy with wrenches, bolts, and screws.
Morta was so very fond of that girl.
“Can Nona die, Igor?” she asked.
He didn’t respond, his lens twisting, and the circuits along his neck snapping.
“She’s half-human, and she bleeds like a stuck pig whenever something cuts her. What if she bleeds too much? That’s one way mortals can die, right?”
“I don’t know,” Igor admitted.
Morta sighed, pressing her back against a pillar and sliding to the ground. “I’m the scion of death, yet I don’t hold any actual power.” She sniffed, hiding her face as her eyes grew watery. “I don’t get to choose for them. What if I don’t get to choose for her either? I love her, Igor. I don’t want her to die.”
“My lady.” Igor warmed her with the heat of his booking lung. “She’s a fateweaver, like your father. I’m sure she can’t be killed so easily.”
Morta rubbed her eyes, yawning loudly as she lifted him into her lap. “You’re right, Igor.” She smiled. “I’m just worrying too much.”
“Please, join your sisters, mistress. You’re up well past your bedtime.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Morta stood, squeezing him against her chest. “I’m going.”
Well, she had to make up with Nona eventually.
— ✦ —
Morta heard screams and burst through the door, finding Nona twisting violently on their bed wrapped in a bevy of chords and plugs. Decima lay on the floor, her serpentine calves draped across the bedframe, still sound asleep, a dopey grin spread across her face.
“Mom! Mom! Please don’t kill my mom!” Nona’s lips twisted in agony as she tossed and turned, trapped in a terrible nightmare.
“Gawds above.” Morta crawled in next to her, wrapping her arms around Nona. “Shhh, it’ll be okay,” she said, finding the chord on the back of her sister’s neck and pulling. Nona went still, the connection broken, and her doll string slack.
A three-poll twenty-amp yellow straight blade? What the hell was her sister thinking? Even Morta knew Nona preferred trickle charges to sudden amp overloads. Morta sifted through their sheets until she found a male DC solder connector, pulling the chord closer to Nona’s nape, her sister’s doll string shifting into a matching plug.
“There,” she said, twisting the connectors together. “No more bad dreams for you.”
Morta kissed Nona’s cheek, hopping off the bed and rounding the corner where Decima lay sprawled as if trying to make snow angels against the floor.
“Oof.” She lifted Decima into her arms. “You’re heavier than you look.”
“Apple mousse.” Decima drooled on Morta’s shoulder.
“Gross!” She grimaced, laying the girl into bed and brushing off her sleeve. “Aww, this was my new gown too…” She placed her hands on her hips. “What am I going to do with you?”
Decima mumbled, happily twisting around as she smacked her lips, her nose leaking and her calves purring.
Gawds, she was such a cinnamon roll.
Morta held her hand against Decima’s flushed cheeks. “Do you have a fever?” she sighed.
Oblivious, as always.
Morta dipped a clean cloth in a bucket of cool water, twisting the fabric and pressing it against the girl’s forehead.
“Lemon meringue,” Decima said, licking the edges of her mouth.
“I hope it tastes good.” Morta kissed her cheek. “Night, sis.”
“Love you, Morta…”
Morta smiled, pulling off her stockings and draping them against the foot of their bed. She lay between them, her doll string slipping out of her nape and resting against her back, becoming a male two-pole screw terminal.
Morta never got to be the woman in her relationships. It wasn’t fair.
“Watch over them, please,” she said, looking towards the ceiling where Charon and Igor hung like spiders, their lenses glowing softly in the dark. “There’s nothing more precious to me in this world.”
“You needn’t ask, my lady.”
A soothing warmth filled her breast as she twisted onto her side, wrapping her arms around Nona, who was sleeping peacefully. “I won’t ever let anything bad happen to you. I promise,” she said, closing her eyes.
Maybe sharing a bed a while longer wouldn’t be so bad.