writing_shadows

I've been resisting writing Widow's origin story because it was conceived of by

rebel_wulf. But he's my ST and he said "write it," so I have. It's to fairly set parameters, those being 1. Her Creator dies as she awakens; 2. Her creator is her soulmate, and thus she loses her soul (or most of it) when he dies; 3. the incident made her call herself Widow and 4. the incident means she has devoted her life to the Stannum refinement (called "Furies," hence the title), rather than the little time most Prommies spend in that refinement.

I have entirely invented the Creator, and those who see an homage to a certain character as writ by a Somerville graduate who was later lauded for her translation of Dante (to wit, D.L.Sayers) are not imagining things, as the ending makes clear. There are one or two lines taken virtually verbatim. The epigraph is Lord Byron, who is quoted elsewhere as well; the Creator speaks Othello's epitaph with his own.

Anyhow, here it is. I will probably take it down tomorrow as I realise how drastically it needs spannering, but most of you are at zg tomorrow, and I'm frivolling, so here it is for now.

************

Hell Hath a Fury

Yes, love indeed is light from heaven; A spark of that immortal fire with angels shared, by Allah given to lift from earth our low desire. (Byron)

In the darkness, his voice.

“…not the most auspicious day, I fear, but I simply cannot find a decent haruspex this far from the Empire. If any self-respecting seer would listen to me, that is, with ten years’ growth upon my chin like any base barbarian. Any reputable gentlemen’s club would deny me entrance on sight. Still, it disguises this rather silly face of mine. It was rather well known at one point, you see. Or I hope you will, very soon.”

There was a sort of pause, which she was not yet aware enough to qualify as anxious. The voice took a deep breath, and continued. “Although I suppose one can’t be picky about empires, these days. Alexander I believe held this part of the world quite dear in a major-throughway-to-India sort of way. There was a man who knew what conquest was. I look forward to reading the accounts with you, beloved. You shall bolster my fading civility, and we shall be served history from the revered hands of Thucydides.

“More recently, the Soviets held sway, of course. Not just one man, not the charisma of an Alexander or a Charlemagne—he was French, helped define it, it wasn’t a slur in those days—but an entire machine. Awesome in its might, considering how it imposed itself upon unresisting histories and rewrote them. Impoverished them. Impoverished everyone, really, that its shadow fell upon. These mountains. Few of us live up here, and those who do are refugees from one thing or another. Sometimes even each other. Still, they’re barren enough that they bear with my presence, even for months at an end. The plants wither, though—you’ll soon learn why. Only the poppies still grow, in flame-coloured profusion. It’s a landscape blasted by divine fire.”

She felt his physical presence, then, quite near, and her soul rose to meet it. “Speaking of divine fire, beloved, I have invested rather a lot of my own in you, you know. If you could possibly see your way clear to acknowledging anything I’m saying I would be unutterably grateful. Far be it from me to rush you, but you will pardon me perhaps if I hold your hand?”

She felt it then, the flicker of fire at her centre, meeting his flame as they came into contact. Slowly, so slowly, it began to pulse, defining her body to her, one area at a time, warming to him.

“Ah,” he breathed. “’Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horizon’s verge.’” He fell silent. She willed him to speak, needed his voice to continue to come to be. After a time he did, though his voice sounded somewhat strangled to start with. “You’ll have to forgive me, beloved. You took me somewhat aback. There isn’t—or I haven’t found—a manual for this sort of thing, you see, and contact…”

He kept hold of her hand. “Yes. Well. I’ll just run on then, shall I? But anytime you feel like speaking, do. I find myself rather interested to know what your first words will be. I wouldn’t half blame you if they were ‘For the love of God, shut up.’

“I haven’t told you where we are. We’re in Afghanistan, in the ruins of what the CIA wrought. Two giants wrestled over the earth, without regard for the wrack left by their embattled footsteps, caring for nothing save superiority over the other. I’d like to say this was unique in history, that humanity, in this world I have brought you to, is more than a succession of wars defining itself, but alas, the evidence is overwhelming. Oh, people resist, and they resist with such beauty—you’ll see, I promise you, you’ll see—they strive to define themselves rather than be defined. Art, literature, poetry, so much you, beloved, are born to, and part of. I have some books in the hut; we’ll read them together. Unlike others of our kind, we must journey backwards to our starting point to find ourselves. The others journey forward, to what they cannot foresee, to beauty. We are born to perfection, you and I. We are the journey’s end. To progress we must find the spark of inception, and understand what drives artists to it, and why it puts them at odds with the rest of mankind…”

His other hand touched her lightly: her arm, her chest, her thigh.

“Humanity is art, I suppose, but art where there are so many artists at war with each other and themselves that it obscures the end product. Some say destruction is an art, some say war the art of birthing it, but I…”

His voice cut off, and his physical presence receded. It was the first pain she knew. Now the heat seared rather than warmed, coursing through her uncontrolled. Her body spasmed and her hands clenched, ripping runnels into the earth.

When he returned, his voice was different. “Oh, my love,” he said, and his arms encircled her. “I don’t suppose you could sit up? Only I don’t think we have all that much time left as leisure, you see. Here, I’ll support you. Only try to come to, beloved. There’s smoke, you see, and it’s not from Mahmoud, not a signal fire, and there’s no one else for at least a day’s travel.” She managed to sit up, leaning against him, her body drinking in the contact, wanting nothing else. Calmly, but with a sense of urgency, he talked her into her body, helping her open and close her hands, move her feet, her legs; bend her knees.

“You must open your eyes, beloved, or we are both lost,” he said, finally. He passed his fingers lightly over them as he spoke, and her lids lifted at his touch. The sun hung still and there was nothing for one but the other. Then, at last, the mountains echoed. “I am very much afraid,” he said, still gently, “that that was a grenade. Walk with me, now.”

He got to her to her feet and walked her a small distance to a hut, and brought her inside. He took a small and battered rucksack and put various things quickly into it, including a tatty blue hardcover book, which he hastily scribbled inside. “This is mine,” he said. “Take it with you. Keep it. Come back for these other books if you can—especially Miss Austen, for her claustrophobic society can teach you much about our own.”

They could hear shouts on the air. The voices resembled his, but were flatter, broader. He grimaced. “Americans. Shouldn’t be here. Unless they’ve come to destroy what little they left or…” He cut off again. She looked at him, still mute.

“Or someone talked,” he finished. “For God’s sake, listen, my love. I don’t have time to explain how I’ve survived. Take this bag and take these field glasses—you look through them—and get to Mahmoud, as fast as you can. Follow the dry gully down to where it branches. That will give you some cover. Then climb. Keep to cover where you can.”

He sketched some outlines on a piece of blank paper. “It looks like nothing, I know, but you’ll recognise these places when you see them, I promise you. Mahmoud speaks English. He’s actually Oxford-educated, believe it or not. We have an understanding. He’ll set you on your feet.”

He put the rucksack on her back and adjusted the straps. The shouting got louder. “You’ll have to learn to run, I’m afraid.”

He wrapped his arms around her and she around him. She lifted her blue eyes up to him and he pressed his lips to hers, fiercely. When at last they broke apart, he gasped, “Good God, I can’t do it,” and kissed her again.

He drew apart then, and picked up a rifle. “’No way but this,’” he muttered, his mouth quirking oddly. “’Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.’”

He kissed her again, sweetly this time, the last. He wrenched a rotten board out of the back wall. His face set. “Go.”

Still not quite understanding, she went, down the gully. When she got to where it branched, she realised he was not following, and looked. She saw him running through the poppies as if through flame, dodging and weaving. Other figures materialised, odd popping and cracking noises filling the air, echoing off the barren slopes.

As much because she could no longer see him as because he had told her to, she started climbing. Manoeuvring her body upwards took all her concentration; but at least, not knowing what balance should be, she didn’t think to consider herself off-balance with the rucksack on her back and the glasses around her neck. At last, shaking, she had to stop; sat on a boulder beneath a mixed scree slope. She couldn’t see him. The binoculars weighed on her chest. “You look through them,” he’d said, so she did.

Her startled eyes took some time to figure out what they were seeing, but she managed to find him. The hillsides afforded decent cover, and he clearly knew the land better than the Americans pursuing him. She lost herself in watching the distant figures as the sun started fading behind the jagged horizon. Once there was a report and he spun as something hit him in the shoulder, but he shook it off and continued onwards. It happened again a few minutes later. For some reason this incensed his pursuers, and the shouting increased, bouncing horrifically around the barren slopes. The next shots, when they started, seem to glow in the fading light. Small objects she couldn’t quite see arced through the air and landed near him, gouging out substantial portions of the natural redoubt he’d hidden behind.

He got up and staggered onwards, increasingly slowly, and though several of his pursuers had fallen to his shots, there were more of them. At last, running, he fell, his body rolling and coming to rest in the poppies, and moving no more. They closed around him and fired.

The first sound ever to come out of Widow’s throat was a scream. The warmth of his fire seemed to go out in an instant; her scream went on for an eternity. Above her the mountains responded, slowly at first, and then gathering in intensity, the scree starting to slide and picking up bigger and bigger rocks till it reached where she sat on the boulder and swallowed her.

In the darkness, there was no noise. She willed herself to join the silence but she could not. Over painful hours she clawed her way out of the fall, emerging to full night. She climbed again, to see where she was, to retrieve his body, to do something, but when she looked down, all she saw was flame.

The poppy fields were burning.

Ragged, she walked through the night. The glasses had been smashed but she still had the rucksack. When dawn broke she sat down and brought out the book he had written in. Slowly, tracing the writing with a finger, she began to make out, not knowing how she did: “My name is Byron. My father called me Death Bredon, but I knew early on I would not be ruled by wimsey. And you, beloved, are certainly not a whimsy. My heart breaks to leave you. As another Byron wrote, ‘The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain.’ Exist, beloved. Be.”