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You get separated, somebody’s gone
And I don’t know how; this is wrong.
And I’m so frustrated, falling behind
You were a friend of mine….
“How did London even open the Avid Horizon?”
“I assumed they just cornered some poor Seeker and stuck their foot in the door.”
✬✧✬
I can never go, go back home again
Acadia is gone, Acadia is gone, Acadia is gone—
✬✧✬
This is a place of cold gloom. It is a cavern of improbable vastness that has been your unwilling residence for centuries, millennia. A subterranean sea of rocky outcrops. A flock of bats rustles in the windless airs. This is a starless place, a secret place. It has never been your place; you cut out the part of yourself that would drive you away from it, so antithetical it is to your nature.
✬✧✬
London exits as it entered, with crashes and bangs. The only real difference is that it takes longer to remove London than it did to bring it down. They carry it out, brick by brick on ships, rebuilding it in the skies. The Khanate go with them. Slowly the streets empty, and then are gone altogether.
You sit among the ruins of your failed attempts and cry. There’s little else you do these days.
✬✧✬
It takes you a while to realize that they stayed.
The ones you brought down with you were not invited back to the High Wilderness. They were corralled by the Empress, by the liberation, working together just long enough to get everyone out of the Neath and lock the door behind them. They are as trapped here as you are, now.
(Veils probably hates that.)
✬✧✬
It takes even longer to realize something even more astounding—there are others down here still.
You watch and listen, quiet as the ruined spires that still rise from your carapace. There was plenty of time for everyone to leave, from the poorest beggar to the richest courtier. Why would they chooseto stay down here? You’d have left, too, if you could.
✬✧✬
A wild-haired woman is conducting archaeological digs just beside your carapace, slowly uncovering the remains of the past cities—remains that were fully hidden until now, some for millennia. Her wife has set up a maze of mirrors in the base of one of your spires and spends her days in Parabola, returning with secrets for the few cats that remain, information about the Fingerkings, stories about her adventures in the jungle—and, well, it has become a habit for you to listen to stories, even if they aren’t being told to you.
There are a number of former university students at the dig site. Urchins are stringing ziplines and wire between your spires and you can’t bring yourself to mind; they were mostly destroyed in London’s ascension, and if someone is getting use out of them, then what is it to you anyway? A former Vake-hunter is living with half a dozen others out in the marsh, being independent together.
Rumors spread that across the sea, settlements are popping up, dotting the waters.
It’s not very much like any of the cities before, or even the settlements that the past cities fled to.
You don’t know why it’s so different.
✬✧✬
The Last Glassman is the first of the remaining mortals (though how mortal are they, when they keep coming back? There are rumors that the Boatman only ferries the willing, now, and spends most of his days fishing) to approach you; the Indominable Academic is with her, to translate. She has a question, and a statement. The statement comes first.
“Mirrors is dead,” she says.
That’s true, and you tell her so, in your way. The Academic’s eyes are bright, but she relays you as faithfully as Correspondence can ever be relayed to a human tongue.
“There will never be light here again. Why not retrieve him?”
Beyond the impossible; Mirrors died in Parabola, a fact she knows well. The conventions of the Neath don’t apply, even now, because it was not the Neath’s when it died.
“Don’t you miss him?”
Oh, yes. Every day. That isn’t what you relay to the Academic; you say instead that she should ask the others.
“But I would like to ask you. Do you miss him?”
This question is not about Mirrors.
“It is about Mirrors.”
Correction; this question is not just about Mirrors.
“Do you miss him?"
✬✧✬
I thought you wanted me
(What you want, what you need--)
(I’ll make this perfect again.)
✬✧✬
The Last Glassman is telling a story, and it takes you too long to realize that she is telling it to you, specifically.
It’s a dangerous story.
“It’s hard to remember,” she says. “I think I chose to give up the memory. I felt…bad. I hadn’t realized…I don’t know why it’s back now.”
Ah, yes. You do remember this. You remember Wines, or more accurately you remember pretending to ignore Wines as it sobbed in its spire, drowned itself indrank absinthe and sent out constables the next morning with a box of fine wine to the one who didn’t even remember, then, why they were receiving the wine.
Apparently she remembers now.
“What are the rules, then?” she asks. It’s a question you’d have expected of the Academic, and it’s a little odd to realize that you know which of them would ask it. “Are they born? Are there any natural…whatever they are? Or are they only other things that have been turned into that? Is it always a demotion?”
No, you want to say. No, not always—but usually, yes, usually, being a thing that hoards and claws and screeches and which can be either feral and outcast or serve a Messenger, usually that is a step down.
It isn’t always, though. Veils can attest. And even if it is on the hierarchy, you know that some prefer it, the strange freedom beneath the notice of the Judgements that usually comes with serving a Messenger, to—to—
Do you miss him?
Instead you burn the Correspondence for them into the floor in front of the Glassman—wings of thunder and sharp claws for a thing-that-hoards, a thing-that-serves; outcast, unhappy, unwilling.The Glassman writes it down, and yelps when her pen burns, and you hear through the grapevine that the Indominable Academic has translated it as “curator” and as “chiroptera”.
Close enough, you suppose.
✬✧✬
You knew it would be either Apples or Wines, to first approach the mortals (you still can’t think of a better term to distinguish them from you and your curators, and that bothers you, so you stick with mortals); and after the Glassman tells you her story, you are pretty sure it will be Apples.
You’re right. Apples descends from the spire nearly a year after London leaves. It has been inconsolable about having lost its chance, its only chance, to return back to the High Wilderness and carry out its goals. The apples it loves enough to take a name from are running out, and then its quest will have failed.
(You knew when you took it on that it had a quest aside from your own. You expected no less, from second picks and outcasts among outcasts. You took what you could get.)
It seems surprised to find that there are still people here. You wonder if any of them have really noticed yet, or if they’ve all been moping in their own way; what’s a year, after all, to an eternity alone in the dark? But it’s surprised. It steps out of the spire and looks up in something like wonder at the ruined spires around and above, the ones that the mortals are reconstructing without knowing it is you and it is yours, the ones they are claiming as their own city, not a Sixth City, not a city with any purpose whatsoever.
(You find that they tend to be like that. Even when in search of a specific goal they are aimless in their methods, nowhere near so singleminded as your curators are, as you once were. Mortals are happy if their destination is unexpected, as long as it is considered on the same level as their original end.)
Apples stands there for a very long minute that drags into a long hour. The mortals have been giving the steel door and accompanying spire a wide berth in their reconstructions and redecorations—you know that they know that they are still up there, and you think they half expect them to come back down and tear down all the work. Never mind that you’ve grown kind of fond of watching the mortals create and wouldn’t let your curators do such a thing anyway.
But Apples, Apples doesn’t do any such thing. Apples stares at the new skyline of your carapace for a very long time.
“They’re still—here?” it asks, after a very long minute.
You’re not successful in your attempt to sound like you know what you’re talking about when you tell it yes, and share what the humans have been doing, generally speaking. Apples shuffles a little in the steel door, eyes fixed on the horizon.
“Why are they…” It trails off. Better that it doesn’t ask the question, anyway; you still don’t have a satisfactory answer.
It takes a few more long minutes, nearly another hour, to stare out at the mortal’s little world; and then, instead of turning back around and heading back into the spire, it steps out, hesitantly, then a little further, until it is headed towards the thrum and dance of life, the heartbeat that has always, inexorably, drawn Apples to humans, with their flashpan lives and eager desires. It is the exact opposite of Apples’s goals, the exact opposite of the quiet immutability that immortality affords, that you’ve seen it afford. It burns bright and hot and fast and changes more than even your Curators are allowed. Humans are adaptable; so in their own way are Rubbery-Men and tigers and Snuffers most of all, and all of them in some number are scrambling around your carapace as Apples heads for their makeshift city hall, the largest ruined spire full of salvaged books and artifacts and plans and maps and details and now, a great many humans, all staring at the Master of the Bazaar that is staring right back at them, though they don’t know it, under its hood.
Apples is taller than any of them, and shrouded in cloaks, and imperious and impossible and—afraid. It is as afraid of the humans as they are of it. Every one of them thinks the other will turn them out.
One of the Glassman’s associates, the Florid Assistant, is the first to speak up. “…you’re Mr Apples, correct?” Her voice only wavers a small amount. “I think I recognize you. I used to trade with you. For flowers.” She takes from her hair the dried rose that sits behind her ear.
“Yes,” Apples says, a nervous chitter—though humans couldn’t tell it was nervous, of course. Of course. “Yes, that is me. Apples, and other things, too.”
In the corner, the Last Glassman snorts out a laugh that she covers up. You wonder what exactly she finds so funny.
The Assistant keeps looking at your Curator, uncertain, hesitant, frightened—but less frightened than she was a moment before. “We haven’t seen you or your…associates, around in a while.”
“No, no.” It seems to shrink ever so slightly, its bones trying to force themselves into more human constructions, making itself smaller. “We required time to…adjust, after all.”
“Right.” The Assistant averts her gaze, rubbing the back of her neck. “Erm.”
Her partner, the Dapper Magician, speaks up from next to her. “Would you, ah, care to join us? We were discussing where to clear out next. From all the, er, rubble."
What an insult, to your Curators. Veils would have torn the Magician’s throat for the insult of speaking to it as an equal, in particular; humans, so small, so fragile, asking one of your Curators, their superiors, the true masters of London, asking them to work with them, implying that the decision would be made with or without them—
Veils would have killed them all for it. Apples says “I…yes. I shall join you, yes.”
The mortals don’t really calm down; they remain on edge for the rest of their meeting, discussing mirrors and mushroom-farming, harnessing the strange lights of Parabola, the long term viability should the supplies run out--as they inevitably will, with the Cumean Canal blocked off in London’s exit—and what can be done for the Neath to become, as one of the former University researchers puts it, “self sustaining”.
Apples provides small insights, and with each one, though, the mortals relax a little more, accept it a little more into their folds.
Humans are adaptable. They adapt to Apples’s existence in the meeting room, its input on what can and cannot live and grow in the Neath and what is and is not good for mortals to eat (anything is good for Apples to eat, and you think you might know what the Glassman was laughing about after all). They adapt to the Master of the Bazaar, still taller than all of them but making itself small in a way you did not expect it to, sitting in their midst and being, for lack of a better phrase, one of them. Left behind. Abandoned by London and forgotten by the world above. Still here. Still here.
Still here.
✬✧✬
I wonder what you’re doing?
I wonder if you doubt it?
(I wonder how we ever used to go so long without it.)
✬✧✬
Wines emerges to get more absinthe, exchanges strange looks with the Last Glassman, emerges again and again—its fondness for humans has always been feigned, but you think it is beginning to see what you are seeing of them, what you think Apples may be seeing of them, now that you are watching them be themselves and not watching them as a source of something you need and nothing else. It mourns the stars a little less than all the rest—even if the gates had been open, it would not have been welcome back among its kin, of course, of course. It shows itself to be, you think, a little bit human in its adaptability, in how it adjusts to the new circumstances even among these creatures, fragile and imperfect as they are.
Cups comes out, and even more astonishing, it takes its hood down, the first to do so. There are small gasps among the mortals—but they take it in stride. The idea that the Masters of the Bazaar were bats was not unheard of among Londoners, and after all, humans are adaptable.
Pages hears that the Academic and her remaining colleagues have gathered what remains of the city’s libraries, as many books as they can, and it chitters in excitement, unable to form words. Stones stares out the window and does not say anything. Irons patrols their spire, not venturing among the humans but sticking close, keeping a wary eye out.
Fires, of course, mourns London, and is morose and pathetic, and Apples and Cups finally coerce it out. It does not like what remains, and it picks among the rubble sadly for hours on end. One of the urchins is the first to approach it with a brick in hand, which he holds out. “’Ere,” he says. “S’from Ol’ Ben. House of Chimes. I took it, when they was leavin’.”
Fires stares at the child, and at the brick, and soon there is a growing collection of London memorabilia, of small things salvaged and photographs and plans taking up Fires’ room. There is a pile of bricks, each carefully labelled in violant.
Spices only leaves when Apples implies that Wines is enjoying itself out in the half-city, and does so primarily and presumably to ensure Wines stops doing that at once. It screeches and stomps its feet and the mortals seem fascinated at seeing such an elusive face; it doesn’t notice them at first, but when there is a small crowd it finally seems to recognize that they are staring, and it looks a little embarrassed as it flees back to the spire.
And Veils—Veils—
Veils does not leave the spire, not until the Vake-Scarred Hunter is the first mortal to enter it, to make his way up to Veils’s quarters. You don’t know what he says to it, or how he managed to leave with only severe wounds and time to get himself patched up. You don’t know how he did it, only that Veils leaves the spire the next day, and continues to do so infrequently, the mortals excitedly reporting spottings. You know that none of the mortals have died yet, that the Vake has not attacked. The Glassman asks if you know any reason why your Curators could not go to Parabola, and she begins setting up the largest mirror yet, large enough for a creature with wings that spread across the ceiling to fly through—Parabola is not the High Wilderness, but it is strange and mad and Veils has never been, and when it returns, sated, idly playing with a snakeskin half its size that the Glassman eagerly pokes at, you know that this is not self-sustaining, but that it is satisfying Veils as much as anything can ever satisfy Veils now.
Nothing will satisfy Veils now, but the mortals—they are trying to make it happy. They are trying to make it comfortable. The Masters of the Bazaar, when they held power over London, did not make mortals comfortable. You don’t know why they’re doing this. You wonder what they want in return, when they will say it.
✬✧✬
You’re beautiful—you are….
✬✧✬
The Indominable Academic has a chalkboard set up in the base of your largest spire, the one that was once used as the meeting place for the Masters but is now a meeting place for so many more than just them, and on that chalkboard are names in various handwritings, some scratched out. There’s even one in familiar right-hand capitals. Someone else has put a small star next to it.
They are trying to name their city. You’re not sure how successful they will be at giving this nameless thing a name, no matter how many variants of “Hades” they come up with.
✬✧✬
You do know why the city is different, after all. You don’t know why it took you so long to realize, but then, you weren’t really looking. This nameless city isn’t trying to be anything. It is not a love story, except to itself. It is not a means to an end. It just is.
It is, and you are realizing this slowly, beautiful, in a way you didn’t think mortal things could be.
✬✧✬
In turn and in time, you know why the humans stayed. What is more, you find that you understand. You feel it, too.
✬✧✬
This is a place of cool (comforting) gloom. A cavern of improbable vastness that has been your residence (home) for centuries, millennia. A subterranean sea, strewn with the settlements that have not abandoned this place (their home) yet, and who never will now. Your flock of bats rustles in the windless airs. This is a starless place, a secret place, deep and dark and marvelous.
There are things the humans have brought, that the Judgements never considered. That your lover never considered. Family. Comfort. The idea that there need not be a new chain, or a broken chain—that maybe, somewhere under the earth, the chain, the single-minded duty and purpose of a named and tamed place in the universe, need not matter at all.
You have a daughter who is a mountain and a (friend) who is a dead dragon and (another friend) who once served one of your (flock) (family) family, and none of that matters now. A messenger and an abomination and a thing which should not be and a traitor, and nine Curators who were not always Curators and need not be called such, now.
(“Do you think—” says Veils, as hesitant as it can be— “that the rules of this place apply to us too—”
“I know they do,” says Fires; “I’ve seen it. It warned me, that you’d do the same to me.”
“Well, you hardly need to worry about that now,” says Spices.
Iron says nothing, of course. MAYBE WE COULD TRY.
“Well,” says Wines, “we’ve got all the time in the world.”)
✬✧✬
I’ve been here so very long
(I can slip into you, it’s so easy to come back into you…)
I’ll hide it—can I hide in you a while?
(I’m not sick of you yet, is that as good as it gets?)
I never took you for a trick but sometimes, I don’t know what you want
I could take it if you need to take this out on someone—
If this is just the part I portray,
I don’t know how it got this way.