On my fifth attempt, I allowed the duchess of life to weave on her name day. She kept her promise, twelve seams and the right to choose, but then my herald lay with a mortal woman and broke my daughter’s heart, so I killed him, and the tower fell. Millia Gnu Aye succeeded the throne.
Nona sat patiently in a pew near the front of the cathedral. She crossed her legs, Charon lying in her lap, his lens glowing green, purring like a cat as he stretched his limbs over her knees. She smiled, petting the back of his neck and scratching under his spur gears.
“I didn’t think you would manifest conduits so soon after mastering your diodes,” Bastion said, his pinkies spinning violently, hollowing out intricate f-shaped patterns in a rosewood plank. “Well done.”
He hunched over, the tattered rags of a forgotten era nailed to his spinal column, and the long leathery bellows of his neck stretching and retracting, his lens twisting, extending outward like a telescope as he worked on tiny wooden pegs and metal clamps. He reminded her of an old carpenter, his fingers band saws, drill bits, and brass, high-precision scribing tools.
“Bastion,” Nona said, spinning her hair between her thumb and forefinger. “You were my father’s conduit, right?”
The gears spinning in his scapula protested as red tree sap dripped from his pectoral pockets and abdominal drawers, the barrels of loaded thirty-five caliber weapons lying dormant against his knees. He spread his hands along the intricate shape of that rosewood plank, massaging the red varnish deep into the grain and affixing black-colored spools to the neck.
“Um, I can come back later if you’re too busy.”
“Nona, I always have time for you,” Bastion said.
He sanded the ebony fingerboard and chiseled a rectangular pegbox seventy-two millimeters long and nineteen millimeters wide, dimensions scaled, his movements precise, not a hint of imperfection in the craftsmanship.
“What are you making?” she asked.
“An instrument for your sister. Strings will help focus her passions and steady her hands,” he said, applying a clear adhesive to the neck. “Lachesis improved her needlework, but she still has to learn to guide and not force the strings. Music will be the tutor Decima needs and an outlet for her aching heart.”
Nona chewed on her lips, grimacing at the iron powder stains on her white stockings. “You always know what to get for her birthday,” she said.
“Handmade things mean so much more to the ones you love, do they not?”
Nona’s frown deepened. “I suppose you heard about what she did to herself. I feel so guilty, Bastion.” She hung her head. “We make her food every year but, this time, I want to do something special. I want to, as you say, put her troubled heart at ease.”
Bastion spun tuning pegs in his free hands, his voice deep and metallic. “Daughter of fate, your heart is in the right place, but I suspect you didn’t come here to ask me for ideas. I’ve never known you to lack imagination. No, you came to ask for my permission, did you not?”
Nona bit her lip. “Decima longs to be loved by a boy, so I want to make her one with my own hands.” She clenched her fists, drawing the fabric of her dress above her knees. “You said it yourself, didn’t you? About how handmade things mean so much more, I mean.”
Bastion made a guttural sound, his chest heaving, chuckling as he guided a wooden dowel through the f-shaped opening of the instrument.
“Bastion! I’m being serious! Please don’t laugh at me!”
“Forgive me, Nona. I’m impressed at how much you girls have grown in such a short time.” He placed the neck of the instrument at his feet, curling his fingers against his brass palms. “Fear, passion, hunger, and love. Truly, I see the shadow of Adelaide in all of you.” He lifted Nona’s chin, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “I think that is a marvelous idea, little one, and you should pursue it with all your heart.”
“Y—you really mean it?!” Nona’s breath caught in her throat. “But I thought you’d be against it!” She jumped to her feet, squeezing Charon against her chest, his legs beating like a spider caught in a net. “In that case… I was thinking… No… It has to be an unplanned pregnancy.” She paced at the foot of the pew, nearly running into a mound of taconite. “A garter stitch would work best for the first and second trimester but, beyond that, it must be wave knit,” she said. “I can handle the conception and birth, but everything after the tenth I’m lost. Can you help me, Bastion?”
He shook his head, running strings of catgut, nylon, and steel between his fingers. “In this regard, I cannot. Perhaps you should ask your sister for help.”
“Bastion, I can’t. It would ruin her surprise.
“I wasn’t talking about Decima.”
Nona snorted. “You mean, Morta? Are you serious? I doubt she’d agree and, even if she did, what help would she be?”
“You are too hard on her, Nona. Your sister likely feels as guilty as you and would relish the opportunity to make it up to Decima.” Bastion scratched his metallic chin, picking the instrument up and affixing an ivory tailpiece to the base. “Morta will be here before long. Why don’t you ask her? You never know, she might just surprise you.”
— ✦ —
“Her birthday is coming,” Nona said, clearing a mound of taconite from the pew so she could sit.
“Yeah, and?”
Morta held a golden tapestry over the Origin Well, searching for that feeling of sediment between her fingers. Twelve seams as promised and not even a ruffle in the stitching. Gawds, Decima was talented, her needlework guiding the strands of fate into beautiful fabrics, basting, blanket, and back stitches. Somehow she made unusual combinations seem fluid and natural, like the current of a clear spring brook.
Morta’s brow furrowed.
Why did she always have to be the villain? Why did she have to be the one to tear apart what her sisters made?
Remember, that place where the sediment is thickest. That’s the stagnation in a mortal soul.
Yeah, yeah, I know that already, Atropos.
“But, Morta. Don’t you want her to be happy?” Nona asked.
“Just get her something to eat. I’m convinced that girls got three stomachs in her somewhere.”
“But we get her food every year. This time, let’s make her something special.”
“Like what?” Morta asked, glaring at Nona, who was fidgeting with the back of her neck.
Ruffle-trimmed trumpet sleeves, cold shoulders, and a midi-length skirt with a lacy chord tied around her upper midriff to accentuate her bustline.
When did her baby sister start growing into a young woman?
“I dunno,” Nona said, blushing. “I thought, maybe, we could make her a boy to play with?”
“Out of the question.” Morta snapped, tugging on the tapestry like yanking a steam engine horn. “She has us. Why does she need anyone else?”
“That’s not the same thing, and you know it!” Nona stood with her hands on her hips.
“Well, why don’t you explain it to me since you’re so experienced?”
“I would if you weren’t being such a stubborn cow!”
“Half-breed!”
“Whale!”
“Witch!”
“Bitch!”
Steam rose from the back of Morta’s neck, her face red and her hands balled into fists. Nona too flushed, her fingers tearing at the loose lining of her skirt. Morta sighed, looking towards the rib vaults of the cathedral and then back to the tapestry.
She ran her fingers along the fabric, stopping where it was grainy and coarse like a wet blanket in the sand. That was it, the place she needed to cut. Her diode flickered, blue light emanating from her left pupil as the knife exited the cavity from the back of her neck, wires and metal framing draped over her forearm.
“Stop ignoring me!” Nona shouted.
Morta cut, slicing through the tapestry with quick jerking motions until the bottom half fell into the depths of the Origin Well. Blood dripped from the remains of her sister’s masterpiece and she saw flashes before her eyes—screams, internal hemorrhaging, and cardiac arrest.
Sudden blunt trauma.
“Sister!”
Morta cut a smaller piece from the now graying tapestry and stuffed the fabric down the front of her dress—another spirit friend for Decima to play with. “Go away, little girl,” she said, stepping away from her work, the isomerase bundling up fate once more into the tiny balls of yarn that hung from the rib vaults.
“Please, Morta, can we at least talk about this?”
“What’s there to talk about? I gave you my answer.”
“Pretty please?! It would mean the world to our sister!” Nona clasped her hands in front of her chest, biting her lip.
Morta sighed, lying across a pew and stretching. She didn’t bother clearing the taconite, instead letting the pellets roll around between her legs.
“Nona, have you forgotten what I do for a living?” Morta asked, holding up three fingers. “Internal hemorrhaging, aneurysms, and sudden cardiac arrest.” She dropped each finger as she listed them. “Not necessarily in that order or those three, but you get the idea. I’m the scion of death. I kill people, remember?”
“Please, do it for Decima.”
“Gawds above you’re annoying,” Morta sighed. “This romance nonsense has gone too far. We can’t mingle with mortals, Nona. They’re ephemeral. Even if Decima were to find love, they’d be parted soon after and she’d be hurt. Who do you think would have to kill the one she loves? I don’t want her to hate me.”
“But what about her children?!” Nona’s face turned bright red, steam rising from her nape. “They will be her comfort long after he’s gone!” She dropped to her knees, resting her head against Morta’s belly.
“What are you doing?” Morta asked, trying to sit up.
“Hold still.” Nona closed her eyes, listening closely as one would the shell of an egg, ready to hatch. “I knew it. You’re a hypocrite,” she said.
“Nona, you don’t even know what that means!”
“I heard a voice, Morta!”
“What are you talking about?!”
“I’m the scion of birth, and no woman alive knows her kiln better than I do! You will have a child, and how else could you have one unless you mingle with mortals?!”
Morta sat upright, her heart skipping a beat. “That’s not possible,” she said. “The dead can’t conceive. My kiln is desiccated, Nona, I don’t bleed!”
“Say what you want, but it will happen, hypocrite. I knew it was a mistake to ask you!” Nona stormed off, lifting her chin with a humph, her skirts trailing behind her like a wedding gown.
“But it can’t be…” Morta’s lips quivered, her eyes wide as she touched her belly. “I can’t possibly create life, can I?”
— ✦ —
Morta tossed and turned in bed. The metal framing closed around her, layers of wiring acting like sheets. There was no bed rest, no comforter or pillows. She hung from the closed petals of an iron flower, stigma tickling her toes and style wrapping around her ankles.
Morta felt like clothing dangling from a closet, a dusty broom, static, and no mothballs to speak of. How was any of this fair?
Sleepy yet? asked the woman in her head. You’d be more comfortable if we traded places, little sis.
Morta snorted. Yeah, and have you dress me like a schoolgirl in the morning? I don’t think so, Atropos.
Suit yourself, but girls need sleep to become healthy young ladies. This is my body too, little sis.
Stop calling me little sis. She smacked her head, causing her ears to ring.
How the fuck was she supposed to sleep now?
Morta sighed, her body swinging like the pendulum of a clock. She kicked her feet, but only made things worse, smacking the side of the bed pod with a thump.
“Oh, enough of this!”
She reached behind her back to pull the cords from her neck—a male straight blade fifteen-amp three wire industrial grade grounding plug.
Morta was always the husband in her relationships.
She yanked the cords apart, static giving her a jolt and causing her black hair to frazzle as she tumbled, smacking the rounded curve of a basement petal.
“Owe,” Morta said, rubbing her butt, wires gathering around her like snakes covering her body up to her chin, a fifteen-amp 3 prong outlet with a T-blade adapter trying to sneak its way up the sleeve of her nightgown towards the back of her neck.
“No.” She covered her scar with her hand. “Not tonight, please.”
The wiring receded like the ocean’s tide, pooling in her lap to warm her legs.
That’s the trick, she thought, yawning loudly as she lay back against the curve of that iron petal.
Morta nodded, her eyelids drooping as she pulled her warm wire blanket to her chest.
Do you think a boy will ever love me?
Her brow furrowed, Decima’s words drilling into the side of her head like a six-lobe pan-headed screw.
Hypocrite, you get to be happy, but our sister doesn’t?
Nona’s words were like blunt-tipped shoulder screws stripped at the cap and whining in Morta’s ear, smoke, sparks, and a ruined drill bit.
“Fine!” she shouted, throwing cable bundles off of her. “Have it your way!”
She wasn’t getting sleep anyway.
“Let me out.” Morta pounded on the walls of the spare bed.
The iron flower bloomed, petals opening until the corners touched the ground and a sea of wires spilled onto the floor like sheets pushed from a mattress.
Morta swung her legs over the petal and slid down like a slide. She stood, stretching as she yawned, her feet making a sticking noise against the floor.
This wasn’t the first time she’d had to use the couch. Nona wasn’t in the mood to share anything with her tonight.
Morta yawned, walking from the corner of their room towards the bed. Nona tossed and turned, having stolen all the orange twenty-amp extension cords and three-prong surge protectors, Decima lying on the floor, lines of drool staining her face, and droplets of blood bleeding through the dressing around her knees.
“Oh, sister…” Morta shook her head, hauling Decima off the floor and tucking her into bed. She knelt, kissing the bandages like a mother fawning after her child. “Feel better soon, okay?”
She grimaced, a pang of guilt filling her heart. Was it her fault Decima did something so horrible?
“I’m sorry if what I said upset you. It wasn’t what I wanted,” Morta said, her lips quivering.
Decima mumbled, turning over and draping her arms over the bedside.
Morta sighed, sitting next to Nona. “Hey, are you awake?” She tugged on the extension cords.
There was a clicking noise, a sound Morta was all too familiar with. The cocking of a loaded nine-millimeter barrel and the groaning of a brass digit hovering above a hidden hair trigger.
“It’s me, stupid,” Morta whispered, staring at Charon, who hung above the bed. “Point that thing at me again and I’ll have you turned into scrap.”
The little machine quivered, its blades, elbows, and stocks retreating into separate compartments within its chassis. “Nona’s sister,” Charon said, slowly, as if computing a new parameter. “Scary.”
Morta growled, pulling the sheets away from Nona forcefully. The girl clung to the cords, her hair done up in a bun, leaving her neck exposed where a thermoplastic locking plug met her tamper-resistant double-pole outlet.
She always got to be the woman in her relationships. It wasn’t fair.
“Hey,” Morta said, pinching her. “Wake up.”
Nona moaned, kicking Morta’s shoulder and turning away from her.
“Hey, I said wake up!” She pinched her sister’s cheek hard.
Nona’s eyes fluttered open, her pupils glowing a brilliant green color.
“Gawds, sissy,” she said, yawning. “Leave us alone. Nona’s practicing her waltz.”
“Clotho, be a good girl, and go get her for me.”
Nona’s eyes closed and her head bobbed until she was asleep again.
“Clotho!”Morta slapped her.
“Gawds, Morta! We’re tired!”
“Do it right now.” Morta grabbed the locking plug inserted into the back of Nona’s neck. “Or else.”
“You wouldn’t dare! She’s still in there!”
“I know about the safety measures, Clotho. She’ll be forced out if I break the connection and you’re not her dominant personality. Make it easy on yourself and just go get her.”
“Gawds, sissy, you’re so rude.”
Nona’s head went limp, her eyes gray and lifeless. After a few seconds, her eyelids fluttered and color returned to her cheeks.
“Wha-where am I?”
“Good, you’re awake.”
“Morta?”Nona yawned. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought about it,” Morta said, ripping the plug from Nona’s neck. “Let’s make Decima a boyfriend.”
This was a bad idea. Morta thought, strands of a tapestry draped over her lap, loops horizontal and diagonal, zigzagging like a lacy umbilical cord across her knees. She paused, twisting the pegs on Decima’s loom. The instrument sang, a thousand keys, pedals, and knobs turning over but never in the right direction overlapping her needlework, her stitches uneven and poorly spaced. The loom corkscrewed, warped and pale, a Leviathan’s jawbone, unlike any tool she’d ever worked with.
“Morta! That’s not how Decima does it!” Nona shouted, pacing back and forth.
“Don’t yell at me, stupid!” Morta shot back. “I told you I didn’t know what I was doing! Besides, this was your idea!”
Morta wrapped the strands of fate around the pegs, making her first layer to prepare for the second, but knots formed while she worked, kinking the tapestry and making the patterns uneven, the colors all wrong, and the feel not quite right, her laps under loops and her loops over laps.
“No, no, no, no!” Nona scrambled her hair, sweat forming across her brow. “You have to make twelve seams, Morta!”
“Fuck that shit!” Morta bit her lip, clumsily fumbling with the needle dangling from Nona’s neck. “I can’t make twelve. Besides, there is only one woman I’ll allow him to fall in love with.”
“But Morta, it’s garden law that mortals must have a choice!”
“Last I checked, Bastion said it was Decima who had to follow that rule, not me.” Morta poked her thumb with the needle. “Gawds! Fine, you know what, Nona?! Why don’t you do this yourself?!”
“I told you, I can only see a mortal’s infant years! You work with humans of all ages, and I thought you’d be a natural at this!”
“I kill people! That’s not the same thing!”
The girls fumed, cheeks red and steam rising from their necks like tea kettles past the boiling point.
“Just do what you want…” Nona sat on her knees, hanging her head and slumping her shoulders, twitching as Morta yanked the doll string from her neck.
Nona’s needle reshaped into a knitting hook, the handle smooth and the end sharp. It felt wrong in Morta’s hands. Such a stark departure from the knife, an implement for creation now wielded by one who destroys.
Morta licked her lips, lifting the bottom strands of fate over the pegs without disturbing the top loops, but her stitch was shaky and loose, bare thread sticking out and catching, pulling on her seam. Her fingers trembled, lifting the top layer, disturbing knots of hair, teeth, and eyes quivering beneath the fabric.
A teratoma.
This is a bad idea, little sis.
Morta grimaced, undoing the mounds of fur, ripping out the teeth, and plucking the eyes. Blood spattered across her nightgown as she wrapped fate around the pegs again, keeping the first layer but sorting the basement loops with a steadier hand. She used a knit and purl stitch, working counterclockwise like she’d seen Decima do with her feet. Her tapestry puckered, Morta’s needlework more suitable for sweaters and stockings than arms and legs.
“Oh, Gawds,” Morta said, running her fingers through her hair.
The patterns came out all wrong, spots instead of stripes, checkers, not chess, and his fate felt rough, like rubbing her hands along forty-grit sandpaper, benign tumors bubbling up under the seam.
“Let me see,” Nona said, gasping as she touched the tapestry. “Oh, Gawds!”
“I told you this was a bad idea.” Morta sighed, taking the knife from the back of her neck. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Absolutely not!” Nona held the tapestry tightly against her breast, glaring at Morta.“He’s been born. I won’t let you kill him before you have to!”
“Sister, I don’t think that thing counts as being human. He won’t feel a thing, so quit being a baby and give it here.”
“No!”
“I said, give it here!” Morta pulled on the tapestry, but Nona clung to it, digging her heels into the floor.
“No!”
Morta pulled with a sharp jerking motion, but Nona wouldn’t budge, her face bright red; the fabric stretched to its limit in a perverted game of tug-o-war.
“Fine!” Morta let go of the tapestry, causing Nona to stumble backward into a pew.“ He’s your problem,” she said. “But do you really intend to give that thing to Decima for her birthday?”
“Yes, I do,” Nona said, smoothing the tumors that formed lumps in the fabric. “Handmade things mean so much more to the ones we love, even if they didn’t turn out how we intended.”
“Look, sister, your heart is in the right place, but I’m just not good at weaving. Let’s get her something to eat instead, okay?”
“No.” Nona smiled, her nose buried in the folds of the fabric, her diode flashing many shades of green. “This will do just fine.”
— ✦ —
Bastion clamored into the cathedral, rust grinding off the gears in his calves, six of his arms finding purchase against the pillars and pews. He was an aging raptor from a bygone era, the empty barrel in his spine spinning red-hot as his toes dug into the marble and steel floor. He extended himself towards the dormant fingers of the isomerase, an abstract, rubber-necked giraffe surveying the central dogma of fate.
Bastion prodded the innumerable helical strands teasing the tight coils and fibers until he could make out the individual tapestries sealed within loops and positively charged metallic beads.
The one he was looking for was easy to find.
There was only a single seam, its pattern displeasing, the hair growing inward, forming pustules in the fabric. Crooked teeth sprouted from the stitching and blank vestigial eyes formed like sour grapes from the vine. Still, the tumors were benign and the cup half empty, a vessel ripe with potential.
Bastion curled his fingers, signaling the isomerase that undid the coiled fibers until the broken boy’s fate hung from the rib vaults. He touched the sickly seam, which wept like a fresh wound.
“Morta,” he said, making a tsk noise. “You disobeyed me.”
He’d turn a blind eye this time. After all, those born with a single fate were useful tools as, with a few minor alterations, the outcome was all but assured.
“Well then, Alexander, you didn’t think I’d let you court my daughter without conditions, did you?”
Needles sprung from the joints in his knuckles, prodding the tapestry for a suitable spot, a layer absent of patterns and stitching. Spools twisted beneath his clavicle, binding colorful embroidery floss to his fingers. He used two threads, upper and lower, entwining them through the same hole in the fabric, the tension mechanisms in his fingers keeping the strings taught and the spacing even, a straight stitch geometry laced with a sinister blueprint.
Horizontal struts, counterweights, balances, and beams. The root of a solid foundation beneath the permafrost, anchored and sealed. Bricks before stone, cement, rebar, iron, and steel. A heaven-piercing tower woven into a seamless lockstitch.
“You’ve lost, Millia Gnu Aye,” Bastion said, spinning his knuckles and twisting the garment. “The boy will be my herald and the tower her salvation. She will return to me a sharpened tool and the mistake I made all those years ago will be put right.” He held the tapestry up to the cathedral’s light, his throat trembling with laughter. “Yes, I can see the finish before the start. This time, the throne will be mine.”