Orphans of Chaos

1.

That Saturday was the worst, and also the oddest. After long hours of watching the square of sunlight from the barred window crawl West-to-East across the floorstones, Miss Daw and Sister Twitchett came to the barred door, unlocked it, and let themselves in. Miss Daw was carrying a dress on a hanger, protected by a plastic sheet and smelling of lavender.

Miss Daw gestured to me, indicating that I was to put on the dress she had brought. Because I was tired of silence, I pretended not to understand her gestures, “What? I beg your pardon? Is something wrong with your voice?”

“You must don this, please,” she said. Miss Daw has a voice like silver crystal, soft and pure.

Anyone speaking after Miss Daw speaks sounds like a crow. Sister Twitchett spoke after Miss Daw. “Put it on and no back-talk, or we dope you up and dress you ourselves. Save us work, if you heed.”

After being spanked by Boggin, merely disrobing in front of two school staff did not embarrass me. My shirt and jacket unbuttoned along the front; I wasn’t wearing a sweater or anything else that had to be drawn over my head. Soon I was standing there, just in the iron collar, a swaying ‘U’ of slack chain leading away from it.

“Socks and shoes, too,” said Twitchett.

“Where are the others?” I said. “Are they dead? Are they back at school? Is Vanity safe?”

When neither one answered, I tore the clothes she held from Miss Daw’s hands and threw them on the ground. “I am not getting dressed or doing anything till you tell me!”

Twitchett looked frightened. No one has ever looked frightened of me before. She thought I was the monster from beyond space and time that Boggin said I was. I saw it in her eyes.

She said to Miss Daw, “Let’s open the window and leave. She’ll want to get dressed in the morning, after the snow blows in.”

Miss Daw said to me in a gentle voice, “The other students are quite safe, but they are confined in cells like this one. I would not allow anything to happen to you.”

(That was interesting. Not “We would not allow,” but “I would not allow.”)

Sister Twitchett looked at Miss Daw. “We were told, ma’am, not to jaw with her… ”

Miss Daw inclined her head to Twitchett with a tiny smile. “I would be in your debt, if you only told the Headmaster how cooperative Miss Windrose was. Need I say more?”

Twitchett frowned, but said nothing. Miss Daw put her little gloved hand on the other woman’s elbow, thanked her, and turned back to me.

I said: “Tell me what happened to them! Where’s Vanity?”

Miss Daw said in a voice as soft as ripples on a pond, “Once you are dressed, I will tell you.”

The dress was a peach silk affair, almost too sheer to be an evening dress. The bodice laced up the back, and spaghetti string ties ran over the shoulders. The bosom cups were made of stiff, reinforced fabric and decorated with black and white lace. The skirt was unpleated silk, with tiny darts at the waist, and a handkerchief bottom. The underwear, bra and panties both, were built into the inner lining of the dress, so that it clung very tightly, but with no sign of lines.

Black nylon hose came next, which were suspended from a hidden garter belt, also woven into the inner lining of the lower part of the bodice. Miss Daw knelt to fasten on slender stiletto heels.

“I can’t walk in heels that high,” I said.

“You won’t be needing to walk,” said Sister Twitchett.

The Sister brought over the stool and had me sit. Out from her medical bag, she drew several lengths of chain.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “What are those for?”

Miss Daw said, “This is not as bad as it seems. It is all part of the process.”

“What process? I don’t want to be part of any process!”

Miss Daw said, “I won’t let anyone harm you, child.”

Sister Twitchett rolled her eyes. I could almost see what she was thinking. The shape-changing monster looks like a girl, but it is not a girl.

Twitchett crossed my wrists in my lap and chained them together with a pair of handcuffs. A steel chain wound around my waist, so that I had to keep my wrists close to my navel. A second steel chain, about three feet long, dropped down between my legs. This attached to a pair of ankle cuffs that hobbled me.

Neither one had the heavy, cast-iron links of the collar’s chain. These looked machine-tooled, modern.

I had seen such a get-up before. On some documentary on one of the rare days when we could see television in the Common Room, our program had been interrupted by pictures of some famous criminal (I forget who) being led from a police van in handcuffs, with a belly-chain and leg irons. I think it was an American, because he wore an orange jumpsuit instead of a normal prison uniform.

This increased my hope and my fear. Were they about to transport me somewhere? If my friends were being transported too, I might be able at least to see Victor and the others. If we were all put in the same van, I could talk to them.

Maybe this was a party dress. I began to imagine that I was to be hauled before some ballroom full of guests, Mavors in a tuxedo and Lady Cyprian in a ball gown, with other gods and monsters present, so that Boggin could show them how roughly he was treating me.

Or maybe they were about to transport me more permanently. Boggin may have already failed, and the four of us were being sent to four destinations. Perhaps they had thrown lots for us. Maybe the Satyr or his faction had won me, and insisted I be dressed up before being sent along.

2.

While Sister Twitchett was kneeling down, stringing chains and locking locks, Miss Daw brought out a makeup kit of truly absurd size. It unfolded and unfolded again. There were more brushes than an artist would use, and lipstick, eye pencils, crayons, blushes, and creams. There were little tools and implements I had never seen before. There was a thing that had handles like a pair of scissors, but which led to a curved rubber pair of jaws, meant for clamping onto eyelashes.

Miss Daw’s hands were soft on my face, and I could feel cool touches where she applied various layers of base and blush. I had never worn lipstick before, but it tasted terrible. I also had thought lipstick was just gunk in a tube, but Miss Daw used three or four tubes, and a little pencil. There was something that tasted like spearmint, which she rubbed onto my teeth with her finger.

I was nervous when she painted my eyes, and worried when she kept putting her fingers too close, but I obeyed her instructions when she told me to look left and right, up or down. She brushed my lashes with a little comb the size of a toothpick.

She took out a powder puff and dusted my shoulders and the tops of my breasts where the bodice pushed them up.

Sister Twitchett was done with her chaining up long before the makeup was done. She packed her bag and I was left alone with Miss Daw.

There I sat, chained up on a stool in a very nice, very sheer dress, with Miss Daw standing behind me, combing and brushing out my hair.

3.

In my heart, at that moment, I was convinced that maybe Boggin had told the truth, and that I was only fourteen, not the eighteen or twenty Victor said I was.

“Miss Daw, I’m scared,” I said in a trembling voice.

“Hush. Don’t be scared, child.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” I could not get the tremble out of my voice.

“Nothing ill will befall.”

“Why are you dressing me up this way?”

I could only think of one reason, and it was a very terrible one.

Miss Daw leaned over, and brought out a velvet box one inch on a side. She opened it. Within were drops of diamond no bigger than teardrops.

She lifted them out of sight behind my head. I felt little metal clamps pinch my earlobes.

“Ow!” I said.

“Sorry,” she said. “Most of mine are for pierced ears. This is what I had.”

I would have lifted up my hands to take them off, but I only had about an inch or two of play, up or down, due to the belly-chain.

She held up a large hand mirror from her bag. I saw my face in the glass.

“There,” she said. “How do we look?”

I thought I looked pretty much the same as I always looked, except now I was painted. There was blue eye shadow above my eyes and black pencil around them, and my lips were too red.

But I could feel a lot more stuff on my face than I could see. She had taken my flesh-colored flesh and put flesh-colored hue on top of it. Take a girl’s face and paint a girl’s face on top of it. What was the point?

I did like the earrings, though.

“Are you done? You said you would say…”

At that moment, there came voices from the corridor. I heard Mrs. Wren’s cracked, wavering voice, and Mr. Glum’s breathy growl answering her.

There was a strange noise as footsteps approached. Thump-clack, thump-clack.

Miss Daw leaned and whispered in my ear, “Your friends are safe. The boys are in cells like this one; Miss Fair is in your room, under guard. They are in low spirits, naturally, except for Mr. Triumph, who is not easily perturbed…”

Mr. Glum came to the open cell door, looking more grizzled than usual. His bald spot was sunburned and his jawline had a five o’clock shadow. He was dressed in a long brown jacket, and he had what seemed a broomstick in his hand: a hoe, actually, with a scarf wrapped around the blade of the hoe.

Beneath the hem of his coat, on the left, I saw his brown pants, tucked into the top of his boot. On the right, was a peg. His right leg was gone below the knee.

He put his elbows, one to either side of the metal doorframe, and let the hoe, his makeshift crutch, dangle in his hand. He lowered his head and stared at me.

I should say that his eyes widened, but that is not quite right. He actually squinted. But his pupils dilated.

I became very conscious of how I was sitting, bolt upright on the stool, hands folded in my lap, with cold metal circling my wrists and ankles, and cold air touching my bare shoulders, naked arms, almost-naked legs in their stockings, almost-bare bosom pushed up in its bodice. I have never felt smaller and more fragile than at that moment.

He seemed so… hungry… when he looked at me. Like a starving man. But sad. Hungry and sad.

Glum spoke without taking his eyes off me, “So that’s it, eh? Boggin is to have her. All tarted up and fine. He’s had his filthy hands on her, has he? And Vanity, too! Why should he have both? And him not married! ’Tis clean against the law, that is.”

Mrs. Wren, from the corridor where I could not see her, said something sharp to Mr. Glum. He apparently wasn’t supposed to talk to me. He did not answer her, but twisted his lips and spat on the floor.

Miss Daw put her small hand on my elbow. “Stand up, dear, and let’s have a look at you.”

I stood up, wobbling slightly on the high heels. The heavy chain running from my neck to the ceiling rattled and wobbled, too. Standing pulled tight the chain running from my ankles to my wrists, and I had to push my hands downward, pulling the chain around my waist tightly down against my hips, in order to ease the pressure on my ankles.

Mr. Glum stumped forward, wobbling himself a bit, wincing and half-hopping, half-propping himself on his hoe.

He put his rough, callused fingers, fingers with his dirty nails, on my cheek, and tilted up my head to look at him. I had glanced down to look at my shoes (because I was afraid of toppling) but the moment he touched me (as if the past had somehow changed shape) I had been keeping my eyes down because I was shy.

Or maybe I was afraid.

I heard Mrs. Wren’s voice from the door, “You’re not to touch her, old tree stump, old iron lump, old clod!”

Glum ignored her. He was staring into my eyes.

He said to me, “It were only for a small time, I know. But I had you, me. And you were mine and no one else’s for that time. All made of gold. I were nearly afraid to touch you, like I’d leave a dirty fingerprint, like on a wineglass, or a white china plate.”

I said, “I’m sorry.” And I did feel sorry for him.

He said in a low voice, “I never seen a girl like you before. Girls like you have boys of their own, whole strings of ’em, young men with straight backs and straight teeth and thick black hair. You think me wrong to’ve carried you off? Course I were wrong. But you’d not of talked to me. Were I s’posed to woo you? Bring you posies? Nawr! If you’d watches on both your two wrists and us standing in the middle of a clock maker’s shop, you’d not of told me the time of day.”

“I might have done,” I said in a quiet little voice. “You didn’t ask.”

I have already mentioned that I do not understand myself, or why I say some things I say. Here I was, apologizing to my would-be rapist, for being too stuck up and high-class.

I think I read somewhere that they call it the “Stockholm syndrome” when girls feel sorry for their own kidnappers.

But I did feel sorry for him. I mean, for goodness sake, Boggin made him chop off his own foot with an axe! How mad was I supposed to stay at him? And for how long? Forever?

“Oi? I didn’t ask, did I? Is that it?” He stepped slightly closer, and still kept my chin between his fingers, tilting my head up. It was not as if I were able to raise my hands to push him away. I was scared, and taking faster-than-normal breaths in through my nose. I could feel the stiff silky fabric of the bodice cupping my breasts tightly as my chest rose and fell.

“Miss Windrose—or mightn’t I call you Amelia, seeing as how we been close—?” he said, tilting his head slightly down.

Miss Daw, whom I had almost forgotten was there, said in her silver voice, “That would not be appropriate.”

Well, thanks a bunch, Daw. Here she was supposed to be protecting me. How come she was letting my ex-kidnapper stand there toying with my chin?

I could not nod much of a nod, but I twitched my head back a little bit, and sort of dropped my eyelashes. He was staring at my lips, but he must have seen that tiny motion, and he took that as a nod.

“Amelia—” (he pronounced it with a burr, so it sounded like “Ah, Melia”) “—Ah, Melia, what were I suppose to ask you, eh? What were I suppose to be able to give you, a man like me, what has nothing?”

“Freedom,” I said. “Help free me. Help my friends.”

He stared for a moment, stepping back. His eyes wandered over me, caressing my hair, my eyes, lips, chin, shoulders. His gaze lingered for a time on my breasts, then came to rest on my hands, which seemed so small and white compared to his, folded (as if demurely) in front of me. A moment more he spent drinking in the sight of my legs, ankles, my feet.

I finally understood the purpose of high-heeled shoes. They are not just meant to retroflex your knees, extend your legs, and make you callipygous. They also make you look like you’re standing on tiptoes, like a little girl reaching for a jar of sweets on a too-high shelf.

A delicate little girl. One who can’t run away.

He said, “Free you? Would you sell your body to your jailor to buy the jailhouse key, Ah, Melia? That would make you a right whore, then, wouldn’t it? Nar. You’d ne’er come to me of your free will, Ah, Melia, for you’d have to hold your nose to of done it. To lower yourself. And I’ll not have you lower yourself. You wouldn’t be worth the taking, then.”

I said, “Hold it. That doesn’t make any sense. If…”

He put his hand on the loose hanging ‘U’ of chain depending between the ceiling and my neck, and tugged it. I wobbled unsteadily, started to fall, and sat back down on the stool somewhat more forcefully than I would have liked, even though Miss Daw put her hands on my arms to guide me back down.

I sat down hard enough to make my bottom sting, and it reminded me rather too much of Boggin’s thorough spanking. The sensation of humiliation, of being pushed around, was too much the same. Tears came to my eyes.

Glum was looking down at me with something like awe on his face, as if I were a goddess. I think he thought I was crying for him.

He said, “I’d never let you go. I’d never free you. You’re too fine. You’re gold, you are. If I could carry the sunlight in my poke, I would not let it up, either, but I’d hale it back down to my house below the waves, where all is but murk and filth and gloom, and my house would be the one bright one, and you the one bright thing in it.”

Mrs. Wren, from the door, called out, “Time to walk or hop away, old crab, old five-toe, old Ahab. There is no more for you to see here! Come! Or must granny get her doll and fishhook out?”

Mr. Glum did not argue, but put his hoe under his armpit like a crutch, and hopped and stumped backward and out of the cell, never taking his eyes from me.

4.

I sat on the stool, shaking.

Miss Daw brought out a key ring, and began unlocking the cuffs and leg-irons and belly-chain. She had to pause and puzzle over the locks every now and again; she did not seem as adept at prison matron work as Twitchett. Perhaps it was because Twitchett was Catholic.

The huge, heavy collar stayed on.

Miss Daw took out a cotton ball and some cream in a bottle to wipe my face clear of makeup.

I said to her, “Is that it? You brought him by to look at me. Just him? Just to look? Is that it?”

Miss Daw started daubing my cheeks clean of blush.

I said, “Two hours of making up for two minutes of being looked at by a man?”

Miss Daw said, half to herself, “Now you have had your first lesson in what it is like to be a real grown-up woman in a man’s world, my dear. We are judged by our looks, and men are not.”

“Why? Why was Glum brought here? Why all the chains? Am I some sort of prize to be given to Mr. Glum for his good behavior?”

No answer.

I said, “Am I supposed to seduce him? Were you doing this to mock him, or to make me feel bad, or as part of some spell or some scheme, or… what the hell was the point of that?”

“Please be careful with your language, Miss Windrose.” And she wiped my mouth to carry away the lipstick. It was almost as effective as Mr. Glum’s gag in silencing me.

But when she started daubing the powder off with a small sponge, I spoke again: “Why? Why, Miss Daw? Why should I be careful? Or else you might chain me up and paint me up and put me in a nightie and have Glum come by to ogle me?”

“It is not a nightie.”

“What kind of dress has underthings sewn in?”

“I am given to understand that it is used by ladies of the theater.”

“You mean ladies of the evening, don’t you?”

I have never seen her blush before. The perfect Miss Daw, always so polite, so distant and restrained, had red crawl into her cheeks, and she could not raise her eyes.

I said, “You were just taunting him, weren’t you? Using me to taunt him.”

Miss Daw did not answer that, but said instead, “Swear words, when used in vain, sometimes create echoes in over-space. The thought-energy creates a space-distortion effect, and decreases the distance between this plane of space-time and those achronic entities whom we call Furies, whose business it is to harass and torment the wicked.”

“Define ‘wicked.’ What do you call people who dress up girls and tie them up, in order to sexually arouse men old enough to be their grandfathers?”

She did not answer but curtly told me to close my eyes while she wiped mascara from my eyelids.

With my eyes closed, I tried to look in the direction she mentioned, toward hyperspace. I could see nothing, sense nothing. I could not remember what the other directions looked like, or where they were.

She washed my face with warm, soapy water, and a towel. While she did, my eyes still closed, I tried and tried to look.

But trying hard was not my paradigm. For Colin, for Grendel, wishing made it so. Not for me.

“Stand up, please. I do not think you want to sleep in that dress.”

I opened my eyes. “You did it to blind me.”

“Stand up, please.”

I stood up. Even normally, I was taller than she was. In heels, I was practically Boggin.

I said down to her: “You were so mean to him. Didn’t you see how bad this made him feel? I know you think I am an evil monster. But isn’t he on your side?”

She could not raise her eyes. “He and I are kin. He is a male member of my species.”

“A male Siren? He sings?”

“He does not sing. He dances on the waves, and the waves turn to fury and swamp ships and pull down houses near the shore. He is one of the brood of Echidna, who cannot die, but lives forever to work harm to mortal men. The business of his kind is to slay mariners lost at sea, so that their widows back ashore will never know the hour or fashion of their death. Grendel is not a kindly person.”

“So I am only supposed to feel sorry for kindly people? Who exactly does that leave? Besides Jesus Christ and babies who die at birth?”

That was the wrong thing to say, because it stiffened her backbone and drove away whatever shame she felt. “Your comments are inappropriate, and impertinent. They may even be blasphemy. Nor need you be overly concerned with Mr. Glum. He does his duty, as do we all, whether he will or no. Some duties are pleasant; some are unpleasant. We who serve are given the ability, if we kick against the goad, to make the pleasant ones less pleasant. We cannot make the unpleasant ones more pleasant. You are a dangerous and super-human being, child, and we must take what steps we can.”

Then she said: “Turn, please, so I may undo you. We must have that dress off.”

“If you answer my questions. Otherwise I’ll rip the dress in half!”

“Oh, come now, Miss Windrose. What earthly good will it do you to rip a fine dress?”

“You come now! What earthly harm will it do you to answer me? I’m curious, it’s not hurting you, and you’ll get me to cooperate.”

“Very well. Turn around and suck in. Let me get these laces. Let’s hope Grendel’s power has not made them fast.”

I tried to hold my breath while speaking, and my words came out all squeaky. I said, “What is the range of his power? In his paradigm, how far away can he be and still affect me?”

“Breathe. If you know enough to ask that question, you have nearly deduced the answer.”

The dress fell down around my legs. The silk caressed me on the way down, like a ghost.

I said, “This was a fantasy of his, wasn’t it? To see me all chained up like a white woman kidnapped by Moors, for their sultan’s harem. To see me in all my girlish, female glamour. Why?”

Miss Daw looked away, her eyes becoming distant, as if staring at an unseen horizon. The ashamed Miss Daw was gone, and the remote, dispassionate, polite Miss Daw was back. “Please step. I am really not supposed to be talking to you at all, Miss Windrose. It is possible I will fall under some penalty for it.”

“His power works by desire. You had to enflame his desire.”

She did not look up, but began to blush again. Dispassionate Daw was losing ground. “Your shoes please?”

Suddenly I was short again. But still taller than her.

“But why make it so sick? So weird? Handcuffs and high heels…?”

The ashamed Miss Daw carried the day. She knelt to roll down my stockings. She spoke toward the floor stones in a haunted voice, as if reciting an old lesson, “Desires which are constantly frustrated are stronger. Men who desire wives, children, a hearth and home, all the wholesome things I shall never know, they can know contentment. But men who have unnatural desires, or who dream sad, unfulfilled and unfulfillable dreams, their impossible desires bloat up beyond all bounds, huger than kragen from beneath the sea. See sadistic Grendel, who desires a wife, but only if she is forced with whips and chains to love him; and he dreams only of having a woman he knows he is never worthy of, and to beat her gives him the pleasure other men have from caressing her. Like a man at a feast table, who gnaws the wood and leaves the food to rot, a pervert starves, for what he thinks will sate his hunger never does, but leaves him hungry still. He has lost all taste for wholesome food.”

“I don’t think he wants to beat me. I think he just likes rope.”

“You have a very generous heart, Miss Windrose, which is a credit to your innocence.” The distant, detached Miss Daw was coming back. “Your stockings?”

They were down around my ankles. I had to sit to get them off my feet. I sat on the cot, as the stool was too high. I had to tease them off my heels and toes; they were as sheer as smoke.

I said, “You didn’t really answer my question.”

She straightened up, stockings in hand. “I thought I had done. Grendel’s power, if his desire is strong enough, works both by day and by night, whether he sleeps, or whether he wakes. The distances mean nothing to him, if and when he believes they mean nothing. His greatest desire is to see you as he saw you now: beautiful and enchained, a fair prisoner, unable to escape. His belief will make it so that you are unable to escape.”

I put on my nightgown. Supine once more, I could see the snake of the iron links reaching up to the staple in the ceiling. There was something odd about it.

Miss Daw swung the grate shut and locked it.

I said, “Can you douse the light?”

She did.

It went dark. Into the dark, I called, “What about my friends?”

Miss Daw knew exactly what I meant by the question, for she said, “None of them has been treated as badly as you. Mrs. Wren put the handle of the axe Mr. mac FirBolg used to attack her under his bed, and that stole the power from his limbs. Dr. Fell gave Mr. Nemo an injection. I introduced a disjunction into the nervous system of Mr. Triumph, so that he cannot activate the sections of his brain that control his mattermanipulation abilities. Mrs. Wren and I cooperated, to set up blocks to prevent Miss Fair from activating her attention-energy gathering faculty, from which her tesseract-creation power springs.”

I said, “Vanity can tell when people are looking at her. When she finds an area of space-time where no one is looking, such as inside a wall, she can fold space, and negate the distance, create a shortcut. Space is merely the interval measuring the energy needed to cross it: when the energy level is unknown or undetermined, the space-interval is not fixed. Isn’t it?”

“That is basically correct, Miss Windrose.”

“But some intelligence must act to fill in the details, to make walls and floors that preserve visual continuity, that fit in to the general picture of the surrounding space—something like Descartes’ demiurge: a spirit. That is why you need the help of a witch to stop the Phaeacian power. You don’t really understand what Vanity does, and can’t understand, because it is not your paradigm. Am I right?”

“You were always a very clever student, Miss Windrose. Perhaps too clever. I can see why the Headmaster had Mr. Glum come by to enforce your security.”

Her footsteps receded in the dark.

5.

Then I noticed what was different. The strangling weight that had kept me half-awake with fear and coughing was now gone.

The collar. It didn’t hurt anymore.

I touched the collar with my fingers, but I could not see it, even had there been a light, without a mirror. But it felt lighter and stronger in my hand. It did not chafe, and my sores were gone.

Glum’s fantasies about harem girls did not admit of the slave collars hurting them.

It put me in the first good mood I had known since imprisonment.

At about the time when the moon came up, my mood rose even higher. I realized what it was Miss Daw had told me. She had given me the secrets of all the powers that kept us here. She had told me who stopped whom.

Well, that thought was pleasant enough to allow me to fall asleep. I had not slept a full night in a long time.