Radiance

The Deep Blue Devil

The Man in the Malachite Mask

Doctor Callow’s Dream:

Teatime for Mr Bergamot

There are stories so old and strong that they travelled from Home to the Country of Seeing and Being Seen, the Land of Wild Rancheros, the Land of Purple Corn, and the Land of Milk and Desire. The stories were stowaways: they hid in the ships with settlers, only coming out to breathe and stretch when absolutely necessary. And when the ships made landfall, the stories, having conserved their energy, burst free and ran wild, changing into local clothes and dancing up on stages and wearing flowers in their hair. Stories are like that. They love havoc, especially their own.

Many of these stories involve sleep. That is because we are all afraid of sleeping. We know it deep in our blood and our marrow. A panther, a bear, a Cro-Magnon may find a child while she’s sleeping. And so we tell tales of a girl who pricked her finger on a navigational array and fell asleep for a hundred years. A girl who ate an apple that wasn’t really an apple and fell into a deep sleep until a handsome businessman with a Kleen-Krop patent came along and kissed her awake again. A wise scientist who gave away all his notes for free, so his assistant put him to sleep in a tree forever.

It was like that for Anchises. For Doctor Callow.

He didn’t prick his finger or eat an apple—a real apple or otherwise. He didn’t give away his magic books.

It was only that he had a hundred fine, long, coppery-golden hairs tangled in among his own, stuck to his skin, snagged in his boots. It was only that he smelled like sumac and ozone and coffee and possibilities; and his mother’s callowmilk bisque; and Hesiod’s cigarettes; and the tops of the twins’ heads when they were first born; and thick, good paper that had been drawn on over and over and over so that it was all black from corner to corner. It was only that he hadn’t been hungry for moth-steaks or fried nutcake or piglet pies or cassowary custard and had stuffed himself with callowmilk meringue and sweet callowmilk cheese with apricot (which is not really apricot, but a charcoal-coloured, crunchy, caramelly fruit that shrinks away from any human hand that tries to grasp it) and callowmilk pandowdy and blancmange and callowpudding and zabaglione and callownog, everything with cream and milk and cheese in it, everything with callowmilk thick and spicy and pale folded in and poured over it. He had eaten like he had never really known how to eat before. He had eaten like his bones were hollow.

In stowaway stories like these, the solution is often simple. Too simple for anyone to think of until later, when the kingdom is asleep and the spinning wheels are all burnt up and there are dwarves building a coffin of glass and a wizard has been buried in the foundations of a castle. Oh. Oh. I should have known it. If only I had known.

A mother knows the smell of her young. Even when she is sick, even when she is mad, even when she cannot see her own hand before her, she knows her child. Her poor, tiny child—what can have gone wrong with this one? He’s so little, impossibly little—no child so thin can be healthy. What can she do, what can she possibly do to make him grow? To make him strong, to make him right? Nothing could be more important than a child so ill he only has four pitiful, withered fronds and a tubule that looks like it couldn’t hold a mouthful of milk.

Oh little calf, little bull, come to our breast. We did not see you there. It isn’t your fault, poor lamb. We have only ourselves to blame. Hold still. Don’t squirm. We will make it better. We will kiss it and kiss it and kiss it and kiss it until it doesn’t hurt anymore. Until nothing can hurt anymore.

* * *

Little Doctor Callow did not fall asleep for a hundred years. He fell asleep for ten. But he did not sleep a person’s sleep. A person did not tuck him in and tell him: Close your eyes, my darling—don’t open them; don’t even peek. Say your prayers. Count sheep-which-are-not-really-sheep. Hush now. Soft now. He slept the sleep of a callowhale. And, in sleep, a callowhale may move, may quiver. The sleep of a callowhale is not like our languorous, thick, sprawling, deathlike primate slumber. It is not really sleep at all. It is a spiky, spinning sword tip pricking the surface of the world a hundred times in a hundred places (though it is really an infinite, intangible intaglio of prickings) but never cutting.

It is not really sleep. It is not really milk. It is not really a whale.

Place a strip of film in a projector. Run it forward. Stop. Run it backward. Stop. Run it forward again. Now take it out and put it back in horizontally. Diagonally. Folded in half. Folded three times. Four. Twelve. One thousand and four. Put it in front of the light. Run it forward. Stop. Run it backward.

That is how a callowhale sleeps. It is like sleeping. It is also like jumping. It is a sleep like a panther.

But always, always, a callowhale dreams.

This is what Doctor Callow dreamed at his spinning wheel, in his glass coffin, in the roots of his tree:

Whales travel in pods. So did Doctor Callow. The sea he travelled in was every colour. He felt no arms or legs, though he knew he had them. He felt no effort in swimming. He felt large. Doctor Callow dove and spun through the waves, and each wave was a country like his own beloved Land of Milk and Desire, but he did not stop, could not stop, to look at them.

Beside him swam a whale, which was not really a whale but a dark, sullen child with raggedy hair and a sour expression. She wore a dress of poppies on her body that was a whale’s body but also a child’s body, like his own. She turned to him in the Sea of Every Colour and said:

Better run, Your Majesty, or I’ll eat you all up.

He swam harder after her. Harder and harder. She was so fast.

Come find me in two years, she called back over her flippers that were not really flippers.

But I’ve found you now, he answered her.

And then she was sitting at the bottom of the Sea of Every Colour, her lacy dress spread out all around her, the orange flowers opening and closing like bloody kisses. The water carried her hair up, fanning it around her head like a black serpent-crown. She drew in the sand of the ocean floor with a stick. This is what she drew:

She looked up at him.

Are we going to live here forever? she asked.

I think so.

The little girl sighed. Bubbles flowed out of her mouth. I miss someone.

I miss lots of someones, Doctor Callow said, into the sea.

The girl nodded. Do you know what this place is?

It’s where the callowhales live.

Yes, the girl said, though he could not tell if she was happy about it.

Chamomile?

That’s not my name.

What is your name?

Severin.

Severin?

Yes?

I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.

Severin started. She gave him a strange, searching expression. Her voice sharpened, grew older. Why did you say that?

I don’t know. It seemed like a good thing to say.

You said it like you were quoting something. What’s Kansas? Is it a planet?

Doctor Callow suddenly felt confused. He forgot how to swim in the Sea of Every Colour and dropped abruptly to the sand beside Severin. I think so? Maybe? It sounds nice.

Maybe it’s one of the other places.

What other places?

Mr Bergamot lives everywhere.

What are you talking about?

She gestured to the callowhales overhead, as massive as suns, and circling, circling forever. Mr Bergamot loves teatime. At teatime he eats worlds. And egg salad.

I’m lonely, whispered Doctor Callow.

Don’t be. There’s a million million worlds to play with.

I’m lonely, he whispered again, because he didn’t know what else to say.

That’s okay, Severin Unck answered. She put her small hand on his. The colours of the Sea-which-wasn’t-really-a-Sea got so bright Severin and Doctor Callow had to shut their eyes, which were not really their eyes. Doctor Callow looked up through the waves-which-were-not-really-waves and saw a callowhale—thousands of callowhales—soaring through the surf. They looked back at him as one creature, their infinite faces-which-were-not-really-faces as radiant as the spasms of stars, as the first frame of a film that is perfect, that is impossible, that is complete.

That’s okay, Severin said. I’m here. There’s no place like Home.