Work Text:
April 1892
What dealt the killing blow to your sensibility?
Perhaps it was the laudanum. Maybe it was one of the many bottles of Greyfields 1882. A convincing case could be made for the viscous liquid seeping from the mysterious plant growing through the parlour floor.
It was probably when you decided to mix them into a tincture, drank the entire thing, and blacked out for six hours.
Staggering up - or is it down? - the staircase, you clutch at the wall, at the air, at your clothes, at everything but the railing. (You're convinced that it's an anaconda in disguise.) The maid and butler are asleep. So are your pets. Even the plant droops, as if it was taxing to spend the day being disgusting.
Now the journey...somewhere is illuminated by forgotten candles. Everywhere you turn. Occasionally, where you don't. Light, light, light. What's the point of being a mile underground if it continues to hound you? Annoyed, you grab a candle and blow it out. It's satisfying. You do it again, but neglect to swap the candle you're holding for a lit one. Irritation renewed at its refusal to cooperate, you toss the candlestick aside then stomp off until you reach a hallway that's mercifully devoid of the ugly nuisances.
You stumble into a room at random. When you happen to glimpse the mirror hanging on the centre of the far wall, you halt dead in your tracks.
No, it's not a spider-council. Not a Fingerking. Oh, no, those would be a welcome sight; those would be explicable. Defeatable. Who is this wild-gazed wastrel with mushroom wine in their hair, loose hair falling into their eyes, and eye shadow - defying all reason - smeared at a corner of their lips?
It is you, you know. But it can't be.
You raise your hand. Your reflection follows. You scowl. It scowls back. You flash an obscene gesture, and it -
"D__n you!" you yell, snatching the nearest available object and hurling it at the glass. The vase shatters upon impact, as does your rage.
The fragments on the floor are hilarious. Your shocked expression is the funniest farce you've ever witnessed. Life morphs from tragedy to comedy, returns to satirise your reality. You laugh and laugh and laugh, culminating in a guffaw that's halfway to a howl. In an instant, tears of mirth run into sorrow. You dissolve into broken, hiccuping sobs.
(At the back of your mind lurks the goal: an audience with a merry gentleman wearing a stovepipe hat, with eight fingers and twinkling eyes. The Manager of the Royal Bethlehem takes special interest in lunatics. Nobody goes mad for fun. Hopefully this time you will catch him before he catches you.)
Presently you discover that you've sunk to the floor and have been staring downwards for at least a minute. The rug beneath your knees is red. Good. That's good, though you can't quite remember why. The stranger in the mirror regains your attention. Dear God! What would they do to you on the Surface? You're not so unusual here, unidentifiable as spectacle. These people have never seen a meteor shower, or an eclipse, or a simple sunrise. Then again, neither had over half the population of York, choked by factory fumes as the sky had been the last time you - you -
Red reasserts itself in your field of vision. Hands - yours, presumably - fly to your cheeks while a weak sound dislodges itself from your throat. You assure yourself that your face is your own; your voice is your own; your thoughts float by in roughly the same category. Random recollections further reinforce your sense of identity. You have rubbed shoulders and other bits with an assortment of London's denizens. You have written verse in honour of fungi. So much verse. You have practiced for the Marvellous with a monkey. You have been chased by mobs spouting recriminations using your Christian name and several of the profane ones. Annoyingly, predictably, your eyes well.
Soullessness is supposed to deaden emotions. You'd say you want a refund, but you're fairly certain that actually gaining one would only make it worse.
The floor is quiet, inviting, friendly. Opposites do attract, after all. Wood shifts against your palms like grass. Lying down, you close your eyes, folded hands pillowing your head. Just for a nap. Just to build your strength for the harrowing journey back up and/or down the staircase.
Dreams provide lives you haven't, every kind under a sun you barely recall. When you walk, you walk with steady feet. When you touch, you touch, texture unmistakable beneath your fingertips. Warmth tingles on your skin. You feel. And when you fall, you plummet faster than a falling star. No matter the height, there is always lower. There is always lower.
If you scream, it fails to disrupt your slumber.
You wake in your darkened bedroom, still dressed in yesterday's clothes, lying on your back atop the blankets and duvet. Both of your eyes and ears are present. All teeth seem to be accounted for, as well. Your head throbs in protest when you remind yourself of your sobriquet. The inside of your mouth tastes like a wet frost-moth. You stretch - and stop.
The man in a stovepipe hat is sitting at the foot of your bed.
“Hello,” you say, warily.
The Manager of the Royal Bethlehem smiles.
“Your front door was unlocked,” he explains, without apology.
“Have you waited long?” A silly question. One he should be asking, not you.
“Oh, you have no idea.” He rises, extending his hand; it's wizened, at odds with his seemingly middle-aged face. “Let's take a stroll, shall we?”
In the morning fog of the city, in the residual fog of your mind, light is a crueller joke than usual, dim as it may be. You shield your eyes from the murky glow of gas-lamps as you walk down the winding streets, the Manager by your side.
The Manager has an unexpectedly authoritative bearing about him. It seems foolishly impertinent to immediately demand information. Thus, you oblige his merry mood, seizing the opportunity to observe his behaviour. His pace is brisk, his conversation meandering. Whenever a Clay Man lumbers across your path, he freezes for a second.
You halt at a corner of Ladybones Road.
“Did you wish to speak to me?” His smile stops an inch short of total sarcasm. “Or were you merely entertaining yourself last night?”
“I have questions about the Topsy King. Tristram Bagley.”
The Manager listens to your tale of the quest to initiate the Marvellous, ending with the latest obstacle: how are you to convince a contented madman to play a card game in order to win his heart's desire? The Manager thinks he may be able to help.
“...But one cannot give when others sell. Why, Dr Schlomo and Mrs Plenty would roast my hat! Here is my bargain and my downfall,” he concludes, and flips you a little silver coin.
Ah. Today's meeting is, ultimately, a business transaction - as are most things near the Bazaar. Judging by the quality of his brass buttons, he must not want for any material goods you can offer. The Royal Bethlehem is extravagant, the Manager rumoured to be ancient, so wealth is surely at his disposal. Instead, you offer your dreams: dreams of drowning, dreams of soil, dreams of raging inferno and dreams of roaring thunder. You'll throw in a single memory of light, glad to be rid of it; never mind the pang in your chest as soon as the suggestion leaves your mouth.
The Manager lets out a longsuffering sigh. “Dreams, dreams, dreams. I grow tired of them, I do. You can't imagine how long I've let them run through my toes.” He pauses. “Well, perhaps you can.”
Then he makes a show of examining his fingernails for such an unreasonable amount of time that you seriously consider knocking the hat off his head. Eventually, he capitulates. Weighty, he calls your dreams. Substantial.
“Tristram's passion was always music,” the Manager reveals, once the final traces of dreams have faded from your already-misty memory. “In these days of beggars and stolen paintings, he's forgotten the opera. His opera. The solution is simple: stage what he couldn't. It's dangerous, of course!” He regards you with passive amusement. “But you can play the hand you've been dealt, can you not?”
“Is it that simple?" you question. “You believe that his mind would be repaired if I complete one of the things that destroyed it?”
“That wasn’t the opera's fault," the Manager says. "He wagered his sanity in the Marvellous and lost. Spectacularly.”
“Anyone who wagers their sanity doesn't possess enough of it to begin with.” You sniff, unnecessarily. “With respect, sir, you know as much about madness as a shepherd knows about being a sheep.”
He lays a hand on your shoulder - you cannot tell whether he's attempting to reassure you or holding you in place. “I know that your heart and mind tend to drift from each other, as well as your body. The sizes of the gaps are at the mercy of time. They will always exist.” A shadow of sympathy dulls the menacing glint in his eyes. “You dwell in the abyss, searching for the sun. Distance is a sort of madness.”
“Allow me to test that claim by walking away.”
The Manager laughs, releasing his grip. “Go! We'll speak again.”
Ominous. Intriguing. You turn and, for the first time in weeks, follow your word.