Weaveworld

X

THE MENSTRUUM

uzanna knew the instant before she stepped into what had once been the cinema foyer that this was an error. Even then, she might have retreated, but that she heard Mimi’s voice speak her name and before any argument could stay her step her feet had carried her through the door.

The foyer was darker than the main warehouse, but she could see the vague figure of her grandmother standing beside the boarded-up box-office.

‘Mimi?’ she said, her mind a blur of contrary impressions.

‘Here I am,’ said the old lady, and opened her arms to Suzanna.

The proffered embrace was also an error of judgment, but on the part of the enemy. Gestures of physical affection had not been Mimi’s forte in life, and Suzanna saw no reason to suppose her grandmother would have changed her habits upon expiring.

‘You’re not Mimi,’ she said.

‘I know it’s a surprise, seeing me,’ the would-be ghost replied. The voice was soft as a feather-fall. ‘But there’s nothing to be afraid of.’

‘Who are you?’

‘You know who I am,’ came the response.

Suzanna didn’t linger for any further words of seduction, but turned to retrace her path. There were perhaps three yards between her and the exit, but now they seemed as many miles. She tried to take a step on that long road, but the commotion in her head suddenly rose to deafening proportions.

The presence behind her had no intention of letting her escape. It sought a confrontation, and it was a waste of effort to defy it. So she turned and looked.

The mask was melting, though there was ice in the eyes that emerged from behind it, not fire. She knew the face, and though she’d not thought herself ready to brave its fury yet, she was strangely elated by the sight. The last shreds of Mimi evaporated, and Immacolata stood revealed.

‘My sister …’ she said, the air around her dancing to her words. ‘… my sister the Hag had me play that part. She thought she saw Mimi in your face. She was right, wasn’t she? You’re her child.’

‘Grandchild,’ Suzanna murmured.

‘Child,’ came the certain reply.

Suzanna stared at the woman before her, fascinated by the masterwork of grief half-concealed in those features. Immacolata flinched at her scrutiny.

‘How dare you pity me?’ she said, as if she’d read Suzanna’s thought, and on the words something leapt from her face.

It came too fast for Suzanna to see what it was; she had time only to throw herself out of its whining path. The wall behind her shook as it was struck. The next instant the face was spilling more brightness towards her.

Suzanna was not afraid. The display only elated her further. This time, as the brightness came her way, her instinct overruled all constraints of sanity, and she put her hand out as if to catch the light.

It was like plunging her arm into a torrent of ice-water. A torrent in which innumerable fish were swimming, fast, fast, against the flood; swimming to spawn. She closed her fist, snatching at this brimming tide, and pulled.

The action had three consequences. One, a cry from Immacolata. Two, the sudden cessation of the din in Suzanna’s head. Three, all that her hand had felt – the chill, the torment and the shoal it contained – all of that was suddenly within her. Her body was the flood. Not the body of flesh and bone, but some other anatomy, made more of thought than of substance, and more ancient than either. Somehow it had recognized itself in Immacolata’s assault, and thrown off its sleep.

Never in her life had she felt so complete. In the face of this feeling all other ambition – for happiness, for pleasure, for power – all others faded.

She looked back at Immacolata, and her new eyes saw not an enemy but a woman possessed of the same torrent that ran in her own veins. A woman twisted and full of anguish but for all that more like her than not.

‘That was stupid,’ said the Incantatrix.

‘Was it?’ said Suzanna. She didn’t think so.

‘Better you remained unfound. Better you never tasted the menstruum.’

‘The menstruum?’

‘Now you’ll know more than you wish to know, feel more than you ever wanted to feel.’ There seemed to be something approximating pity in Immacolata’s voice. ‘So the grief begins,’ she said. ‘And it will never end. Believe me. You should have lived and died a Cuckoo.’

‘Is that how Mimi died?’ said Suzanna.

The ice eyes flickered. ‘She knew what risks she took. She had Seerkind blood, and that’s always run freely. You’re of their blood too, through that bitch grand-dam of yours.’

‘Seerkind?’ So many new words. ‘Are they the Fugue people?’

‘They’re dead people,’ came the reply. ‘Don’t look to them for answers. They’re dust soon enough. Gone the way everything in this stinking Kingdom goes. To dirt and mediocrity. We’ll see to that. You’re alone. Like she was.’

That ‘we’ reminded her of the Salesman, and the potency of the coat he wore.

‘Is Shadwell a Seerkind?’ she asked.

‘Him?’ The thought was apparently preposterous. ‘No. Any power he’s got’s my gift.’

‘Why?’ said Suzanna. She understood little of Immacolata, but enough to know that she and Shadwell were not a perfect match.

‘He taught me …’ the Incantatrix began, her hand moving up to her face, ‘… he taught me, the show.’ The hand passed across her features, and upon reappearing she was smiling, almost warmly. ‘You’ll need that now.’

‘And for that you’re his mistress?’

The sound that came from the woman might have been a laugh; but only might. ‘I leave love to the Magdalene, sister. She’s an appetite for it. Ask Mooney –’

Cal. She’d forgotten Cal.

‘– if he has the breath to answer.’

Suzanna glanced back towards the door.

‘Go on …’ said Immacolata, ‘… go find him. I won’t stop you.’

The brightness in her, the menstruum, knew the Incantatrix was telling the truth. That flood was part of them both now. It bonded them in ways Suzanna could not yet guess at.

‘The battle’s already lost, sister.’ Immacolata murmured as Suzanna reached the threshold. ‘While you indulged your curiosity, the Fugue’s fallen into our hands.’

Suzanna stepped back into the warehouse, fear beginning for the first time. Not for herself, but for Cal. She yelled his name into the murk.

‘Too late …’ said the woman behind her.

‘Cal!’

There was no reply. She started to search for him, calling his name at intervals, her anxiety growing with each unanswered shout. The place was a maze; twice she found herself in a location she’d already searched.

It was the glitter of broken glass that drew her attention; and then, lying face down a little way from it, Cal. Before she got close enough to touch him she sensed the profundity of his stillness.

He was too brittle, the menstruum in her said. You know how these Cuckoos are.

She rejected the thought. It wasn’t hers.

‘Don’t be dead.’

That was hers. It slipped from her as she knelt down beside him, a plea to his silence.

‘Please God, don’t be dead.’

She was frightened to touch him, for fear of discovering the worst, all the while knowing that she was the only help he had. His head was turned towards her, his eyes closed, his mouth open, trailing blood-tinged spittle. Instinctively, her hand went to his hair, as if she might stroke him awake, but pragmatism had not entirely deserted her, and instead her fingers sought the pulse in his neck. It was weak.

So the grief begins, Immacolata had said, mere minutes before. Had she known, even as she offered that prophecy, that Cal was half way to dying already?

Of course she’d known. Known, and welcomed the grief this would bring, because she wanted Suzanna’s pleasure in the menstruum soured from its discovery; wanted them sisters in sorrow.

Distracted by the realization she focused again on Cal to find that her hand had left his neck and was once again stroking his hair. Why was she doing this? He wasn’t a sleeping child. He was hurt; he needed more concrete help. But even as she rebuked herself she felt the menstruum start to rise from her lower abdomen, washing her entrails, and lungs and heart, and moving – without any conscious instruction – down her arm towards Cal. Before, it had been indifferent to his wounding; you know how these Cuckoos are, it had said to her. But her rage, or perhaps her sadness, had chastened it. Now she felt its energies carry her need to wake him, to heal him, through the palm of her hand and into his sealed head.

It was both an extraordinary sensation, and one she felt perfectly at ease with. When, at the last moment, it seemed not to want to go, she pressed it forward and it obeyed her, its stream flowing into him. It was hers to control, she realized, with a rush of exhilaration, which was followed immediately by an ache of loss as the body below her drank the torment down.

He was greedy for healing. Her joints began to jitter as the menstruum ran from her, and in her skull that alien song rose like a dozen sirens. She tried to lake her hand from his head, but her muscles wouldn’t obey the imperative. The menstruum had taken charge of her body, it seemed. She’d been too hasty, assuming control would be easy. It was deliberately depleting itself, to teach her not to press it.

An instant before she passed out, it decided enough was enough, and removed her hand. The flow was abruptly stemmed. She put her shaking hands up to her face, Cal’s scent on her fingertips. By degrees the whine in her skull wound down. The faintness began to pass.

‘Are you all right?’ Cal asked her.

She dropped her hands and looked across at him. He’d raised himself from the ground, and was now gingerly investigating his bloodied mouth.

‘I think so,’ she said. ‘You?’

‘I’ll do,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know what happened …’ The words trailed away as the memory came back, and a look of alarm crossed his face.

‘The carpet –’

He hauled himself to his feet, looking all around.

‘– I had it in my hand,’ he said. ‘Jesus, I had it in my hand!’

‘They’ve taken it!’ she said.

She thought he was going to cry, the way his features crumpled up, but it was rage that emerged.

‘Fucking Shadwell!’ he shouted, sweeping a copse of table-lamps off the top of a chest-of-drawers. ‘I’ll kill him! I swear–’

She stood up still feeling giddy, and her downcast eyes caught sight of something in the litter of broken glass beneath their feet – she stooped again; cleared the fragments, and there was a piece of the carpet. She picked it up.

‘They didn’t get it all,’ she said, offering the find to Cal.

The anger melted from his face. He took it from her almost reverentially, and studied it. There were half a dozen motifs worked into the piece, though he could make no sense of them.

Suzanna watched him. He held the fragment so delicately, as though it might bruise. Then he sniffed, hard, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

‘Fucking Shadwell,’ he said again, but softly now; numbly.

‘What do we do now?’ she wondered aloud.

He looked up at her. This time there were tears in his eyes.

‘Get out of here,’ he said. ‘See what the sky says.’

‘Huh?’

He offered a tiny smile.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Must be Mad Mooney talking.’