Covent Gardens, 1701 (the last)
At the precise moment that our eyes met, there sounded a great and terrible crash. At first I thought it was in my head, the sound of the sudden collision of my soul with Miss Barton's, but as her countenance transformed from mirth to shock I realized that the sound was physical and very real.
What followed next was chaos. One of the house doors flew open and a man burst out and through the foyer into the moonlit street. It took some small time after his passing for me to work out that he was Jim Holly, and he was carrying a musket.
"Oh God!" Miss Barton exclaimed and dropped my arm. She left me standing forgotten in the foyer and dashed back in the direction of the box. Several gentlemen hurried out of the theatre, presumably in pursuit of Holly, and pushed past me like waves around a lighthouse. I took this time, which felt like centuries, to blink my eyes and stare in the direction Miss Barton had disappeared.
As the foyer was steadily filled with bodies, my escort had completely vanished among them. I tried to fight against the current of aristocrats that were now pouring into the streets in droves; but, as a boat on the Thames, I found myself following the flow without even being conscious of it. Just before I was pushed out of the building I took hold of the doorjamb and wrested myself out of the crowd. Now, I was pressed against the wall, but at least I wouldn't find myself carried out to the street.
Through a complicated process of inching along, flattening myself against the wall, and occasionally escaping the grasp of a Good Samaritan attempting to haul me to safety, I found myself at the center house doors.
By now, most of the theatre had been purged of its patrons. It wasn't as difficult squeezing through that door as it had been fighting the mob in the lobby. Overhead, the massive chandelier was swaying and casting evil-looking shadows in erratic patterns over the seats and what was left of the theatre-goers. It was disorienting, to say the least, but my eyes still fell on something red and glistening heaped over a row of seats to the left of the stage. My heart plummeted as the shape twitched and I realized that it was a man.
What struck me first was the red. There was so much of it that I assumed one of the alchemists had ventured out to watch the opera and fallen asleep in his seat. It was only as I drew nearer that my eyes focused enough to see that the red was not the crimson of an alchemist's robe, but the sick scarlet of fresh blood.
I recalled my father's conversation with Jim Holly in the cell in Newgate Prison. Inexplicably, my mind then turned immediately to Miss Barton. I practised in my head how I would best console her when she saw the broken and bloody body of her Uncle Isaac lying splayed over the seats. It is perhaps a testament to the self-centered mind of a clever child that I thought only of how relieved I was that Newton would be out of the way and I would be free to socialize with a pretty young woman ten years my senior.
As I drew nearer, and the somber black clothing of the man swam out of the vertiginous swaying chandelier light, the realization did not strike me of a sudden. Rather, it stole over me, creeping insidiously through my pores and all the way into my bones.
At some point I had begun to run. It was against my own wishes, but my feet seemed to have gotten a mind to disobey my brain, and were not responding to my commands to slow. Above, the chandelier continued to rock and thrash, sending pools of fractured light like mad fairies sliding over the floor, the seats, my body.
By the time I reached him, my father had already stopped breathing. It seemed he'd gotten his wish, and God would not have him live forever after all.
A few things happened then at once. I spotted Miss Barton, leaning over the rail of the box as though she were in the cheap seats for a bear-baiting, and consequently I noticed her scream before I heard the gutwrenching crack of the chandelier pulling free from the plaster ceiling. Miss Barton reached over the rail as though she would catch the falling chandelier, her arms a full fifty feet way from its gargantuan mass.
I heard another scream and was only vaguely aware that it had come from my own throat. The sound came in near perfect unison with the splash of metal and glass hitting the floor of the opera house.
I dove behind the seats that supported my father's body as shattered crystal sprayed through the house. I was conscious of pieces of it sticking into my skin in much the same way that I would have been conscious of being in a shower of rain. I felt it, but it was more an annoyance than anything resembling pain. The sound was more terrible, the acoustics of the opera house amplified it magnificently, and it made the crashing sound that had drawn Miss Barton and I back seem as tiny as the drop of a pin.
As the final echoes died away, my attention was drawn to the blood that streaked my clothes. I panicked at the sight of it, and began wiping it from my skin, trying to soak it into the black parts of my clothes, but it seemed only to get worse. It was then that I realized that it hadn't all come from my father's corpse, and that in fact most of it was still seeping from my own wounds.
Now, as that realization dawned, I began to feel pain. Licks of flame had sprouted up around the wreckage in the room, and it occurred to me that I ought to get out of there before the whole building was engulfed in fire. I pushed myself over onto my stomach and managed to tuck my arms underneath me.
My muscles had gone squishy somehow, and though I pushed and pushed at the ground, the rest of me did not move. Tears seeped from my eyes, feeling almost cold in comparison with the rising temperature in the house. Between the lamp oil that had spilled from the chandelier's reservoirs and the sheer quantity of wood and fabric in the opera house, the fires were growing quickly.
On my stomach, I could hardly see up into the box, but I was certain that Miss Barton was no longer there. I wish I could say that I hoped she had gotten to safety, but my only thought was indignation at the thought of being abandoned. I began to cry then in earnest, the kind of crying that made it difficult for me to do anything else. Sobs dragged the breath from me, and I fell again onto my back. I stared up at the painted ceiling through a cloud of tears.
I began to hear, through the din of the fire, a voice. Even if I had not just heard it soaring over the orchestra less than an hour earlier, I would have recognized it easily. It was a sound that had wound itself around my soul, sinking in thorns and climbing me the way a rose vine climbs a lattice. When her pale face materialized over mine, I wanted to be worried for her, but the only thing I felt was afraid.
When she took me into her arms, it was not a peaceful thing, or good. Pain shot in arrows through my entire body. I was speckled with lacerations from the chandelier's demise, and my left ankle was twisted unnaturally. Still, something like peace washed over me merely from her familiarity. The whole night had been dark and alien. When the white lady from the cellars touched me, something at least seemed to be the way it was meant to, and I let my head loll against her shoulder.
We moved through the flames almost easily, she carrying me like I was only a babe. I did not watch our surroundings, I let my eyes flutter closed, and when I opened them we were no longer surrounded by angry towers of fire. I lay in the centre of the stage, the white lady kneeling by my side.
It took great effort to keep my eyes open, and I fought against my body's desire to lapse into unconsciousness. Now, the noise of the fire seemed distant, though I knew it raged on only feet away. The lady was smoothing my hair back from my face, and it hurt. My skin was tender where the flames had kissed it. I tried to raise my arms and stop her, but they would not obey.
"You are safe," she said. It wasn't a question. I managed to nod my agreement, and something like a smile crossed her face.
"Am I dead?" I whispered. I was not afraid, the question had the taste of science on my tongue. I was only curious.
She shook her head. "No. You will not be dying today."
"Oh." Again, no emotion tugged at my words. It seemed odd to me, that I would still be alive, but I did not question her further.
"Things are not what you imagine, though at times I wish they were. We remember everything, ever, often to our detriment." I had no idea what she was talking about at that point, but I didn't interrupt. I let my eyes glaze over, as some primitive part of me listened and understood everything. "We gather our memories to us, sing them to each other like lullabies."
I turned my head until I could see straight into her cold black eyes. "But out here the words don't matter," she said. "What matters here are the dreams in your head."
She smoothed back my hair from my face again, and this time it didn't hurt. "We like to imagine them as substantial. Dark birds spreading their wings, and taking flight. I still haven't given you my name."
This last sentence was the first thing she had said in some time that made any sense at all, and as a result it did not stick in my brain as well as it might have. My eyes flicked to hers again, this time held fast. "What is your name?" I asked. My voice was barely audible to me, as the sound of the fire had grown louder again.
I heard her answer in my ears, in my head, in every part of me. "Avialle," she whispered, and she leaned down and pressed her lips to mine. My eyes fluttered closed. The fire, the opera house, the night, and even I faded away.
What followed next was chaos. One of the house doors flew open and a man burst out and through the foyer into the moonlit street. It took some small time after his passing for me to work out that he was Jim Holly, and he was carrying a musket.
"Oh God!" Miss Barton exclaimed and dropped my arm. She left me standing forgotten in the foyer and dashed back in the direction of the box. Several gentlemen hurried out of the theatre, presumably in pursuit of Holly, and pushed past me like waves around a lighthouse. I took this time, which felt like centuries, to blink my eyes and stare in the direction Miss Barton had disappeared.
As the foyer was steadily filled with bodies, my escort had completely vanished among them. I tried to fight against the current of aristocrats that were now pouring into the streets in droves; but, as a boat on the Thames, I found myself following the flow without even being conscious of it. Just before I was pushed out of the building I took hold of the doorjamb and wrested myself out of the crowd. Now, I was pressed against the wall, but at least I wouldn't find myself carried out to the street.
Through a complicated process of inching along, flattening myself against the wall, and occasionally escaping the grasp of a Good Samaritan attempting to haul me to safety, I found myself at the center house doors.
By now, most of the theatre had been purged of its patrons. It wasn't as difficult squeezing through that door as it had been fighting the mob in the lobby. Overhead, the massive chandelier was swaying and casting evil-looking shadows in erratic patterns over the seats and what was left of the theatre-goers. It was disorienting, to say the least, but my eyes still fell on something red and glistening heaped over a row of seats to the left of the stage. My heart plummeted as the shape twitched and I realized that it was a man.
What struck me first was the red. There was so much of it that I assumed one of the alchemists had ventured out to watch the opera and fallen asleep in his seat. It was only as I drew nearer that my eyes focused enough to see that the red was not the crimson of an alchemist's robe, but the sick scarlet of fresh blood.
I recalled my father's conversation with Jim Holly in the cell in Newgate Prison. Inexplicably, my mind then turned immediately to Miss Barton. I practised in my head how I would best console her when she saw the broken and bloody body of her Uncle Isaac lying splayed over the seats. It is perhaps a testament to the self-centered mind of a clever child that I thought only of how relieved I was that Newton would be out of the way and I would be free to socialize with a pretty young woman ten years my senior.
As I drew nearer, and the somber black clothing of the man swam out of the vertiginous swaying chandelier light, the realization did not strike me of a sudden. Rather, it stole over me, creeping insidiously through my pores and all the way into my bones.
At some point I had begun to run. It was against my own wishes, but my feet seemed to have gotten a mind to disobey my brain, and were not responding to my commands to slow. Above, the chandelier continued to rock and thrash, sending pools of fractured light like mad fairies sliding over the floor, the seats, my body.
By the time I reached him, my father had already stopped breathing. It seemed he'd gotten his wish, and God would not have him live forever after all.
A few things happened then at once. I spotted Miss Barton, leaning over the rail of the box as though she were in the cheap seats for a bear-baiting, and consequently I noticed her scream before I heard the gutwrenching crack of the chandelier pulling free from the plaster ceiling. Miss Barton reached over the rail as though she would catch the falling chandelier, her arms a full fifty feet way from its gargantuan mass.
I heard another scream and was only vaguely aware that it had come from my own throat. The sound came in near perfect unison with the splash of metal and glass hitting the floor of the opera house.
I dove behind the seats that supported my father's body as shattered crystal sprayed through the house. I was conscious of pieces of it sticking into my skin in much the same way that I would have been conscious of being in a shower of rain. I felt it, but it was more an annoyance than anything resembling pain. The sound was more terrible, the acoustics of the opera house amplified it magnificently, and it made the crashing sound that had drawn Miss Barton and I back seem as tiny as the drop of a pin.
As the final echoes died away, my attention was drawn to the blood that streaked my clothes. I panicked at the sight of it, and began wiping it from my skin, trying to soak it into the black parts of my clothes, but it seemed only to get worse. It was then that I realized that it hadn't all come from my father's corpse, and that in fact most of it was still seeping from my own wounds.
Now, as that realization dawned, I began to feel pain. Licks of flame had sprouted up around the wreckage in the room, and it occurred to me that I ought to get out of there before the whole building was engulfed in fire. I pushed myself over onto my stomach and managed to tuck my arms underneath me.
My muscles had gone squishy somehow, and though I pushed and pushed at the ground, the rest of me did not move. Tears seeped from my eyes, feeling almost cold in comparison with the rising temperature in the house. Between the lamp oil that had spilled from the chandelier's reservoirs and the sheer quantity of wood and fabric in the opera house, the fires were growing quickly.
On my stomach, I could hardly see up into the box, but I was certain that Miss Barton was no longer there. I wish I could say that I hoped she had gotten to safety, but my only thought was indignation at the thought of being abandoned. I began to cry then in earnest, the kind of crying that made it difficult for me to do anything else. Sobs dragged the breath from me, and I fell again onto my back. I stared up at the painted ceiling through a cloud of tears.
I began to hear, through the din of the fire, a voice. Even if I had not just heard it soaring over the orchestra less than an hour earlier, I would have recognized it easily. It was a sound that had wound itself around my soul, sinking in thorns and climbing me the way a rose vine climbs a lattice. When her pale face materialized over mine, I wanted to be worried for her, but the only thing I felt was afraid.
When she took me into her arms, it was not a peaceful thing, or good. Pain shot in arrows through my entire body. I was speckled with lacerations from the chandelier's demise, and my left ankle was twisted unnaturally. Still, something like peace washed over me merely from her familiarity. The whole night had been dark and alien. When the white lady from the cellars touched me, something at least seemed to be the way it was meant to, and I let my head loll against her shoulder.
We moved through the flames almost easily, she carrying me like I was only a babe. I did not watch our surroundings, I let my eyes flutter closed, and when I opened them we were no longer surrounded by angry towers of fire. I lay in the centre of the stage, the white lady kneeling by my side.
It took great effort to keep my eyes open, and I fought against my body's desire to lapse into unconsciousness. Now, the noise of the fire seemed distant, though I knew it raged on only feet away. The lady was smoothing my hair back from my face, and it hurt. My skin was tender where the flames had kissed it. I tried to raise my arms and stop her, but they would not obey.
"You are safe," she said. It wasn't a question. I managed to nod my agreement, and something like a smile crossed her face.
"Am I dead?" I whispered. I was not afraid, the question had the taste of science on my tongue. I was only curious.
She shook her head. "No. You will not be dying today."
"Oh." Again, no emotion tugged at my words. It seemed odd to me, that I would still be alive, but I did not question her further.
"Things are not what you imagine, though at times I wish they were. We remember everything, ever, often to our detriment." I had no idea what she was talking about at that point, but I didn't interrupt. I let my eyes glaze over, as some primitive part of me listened and understood everything. "We gather our memories to us, sing them to each other like lullabies."
I turned my head until I could see straight into her cold black eyes. "But out here the words don't matter," she said. "What matters here are the dreams in your head."
She smoothed back my hair from my face again, and this time it didn't hurt. "We like to imagine them as substantial. Dark birds spreading their wings, and taking flight. I still haven't given you my name."
This last sentence was the first thing she had said in some time that made any sense at all, and as a result it did not stick in my brain as well as it might have. My eyes flicked to hers again, this time held fast. "What is your name?" I asked. My voice was barely audible to me, as the sound of the fire had grown louder again.
I heard her answer in my ears, in my head, in every part of me. "Avialle," she whispered, and she leaned down and pressed her lips to mine. My eyes fluttered closed. The fire, the opera house, the night, and even I faded away.