Page 48 of The Shape of Monsters
“Would Lyric Aharté like one? It can be done right over here at our—”
But Lyric is already shaking his head. “Thanks given to the Mirror, but that is too elaborate for Lyric.”
“And speaking of perfection,” River says loftily, “this River sees Anis entering with one of Anis’s husbands.” As River leads Lyric by the elbow again, fanning anself as if it’s merely something to do with ans free hand, an explains quietly, “Anis is perhaps the greatest artist in the crater city. Not a designer at all, if Lyric can believe such a thing exists. Anis makes art for display, painting and sculpture, and no few design schools would like to snatch Anis up to teach.”
River introduces Lyric to Anis and Keys of Chimera, both of them married to Amado the Reconciler. Anis the artist is a Pir-pale woman with eyes as golden as the manor walls, her neck slightly too long, and her limbs as well, making her strange and elegant and beautiful in the way of weeping cherry trees or watercolor paintings—not in a humanway. The husband trailing just behind her is masculine-forward and looks remarkably like Garnet. Such familiarity cuts like a sharp knife, and Lyric breathes carefully to maintain his composure. He says to them, “Amado the Reconciler has been kind to this priest.”
Both spouses look pleased, but before further conversation, other courtiers crowd in, asking what Anis brought to play with, and Lyric tries not to be overwhelmed by the human design modifications. Slit pupils and rainbow irises are the least of it, but nothing quite shocks like the Mirror’s flowers. Lyric extracts himself bit by bit, until River notices and ensconces them at one of the tables surrounded by art supplies. “Does everyone have—use?—human redesign?” Lyric asks quietly.
“Only those who can afford it,” River answers simply. “Or marry a genius. Or both.”
Lyric stares at the ink sticks, pencils, stiff-looking paper, leather plates, and bowls of beads and glue gems—and real gems—and has no idea what to do.
Suddenly Iriset kneels beside him and stares. Lyric looks back.
“You gave up easily,” she says in mirané.
Lyric’s stomach burns. Did he even eat anything this morning, or just pick at the food? He looks back at the art, then out at the bright courtyard. There’s so much activity, laughter, bartering. “That’s what you think of me,” he murmurs. He drags a piece of stiff paper toward himself and chooses a pencil randomly. It’s bright blue. One thing Lyric does not know how to do is draw.
Iriset sighs deeply. She takes the paper and begins sketching.
Lyric watches her every move, as she draws potential masks and discards them, then bites her lip and looks up at him. She holds her hand up to his face, as if measuring it, and goes back to drawing. Landing on a skull design, she works quickly, pulling a stylus out of her sleeve and stitching force along the edge of the silk.
What she puts together fits coolly against his skin. Several people gasp, and there’s a spattering of applause. “How strange!” he hears, and “What creativity,” “This designer has never seen anything quite like it…”
“It looks like Lyric’s skull grows out of Lyric’s skin,” says Irsu River. “Very creepy.”
Lyric tilts his face up to look at Iriset, but she isn’t looking back.
A skull siren mask, he thinks. She made him into a skull siren, as if she knows he’s flailing and faltering with broken wings, and it’s her duty to snap his neck.
Night of Chimeras
The crater city at night is unreal.
Lyric has already wandered hours by the time the sun sets, dazed by the variety of wonder and horror available everywhere he turns. There’s a garden of trees with candle flame leaves, an alley covered in vines bursting with bubbles that pop to scatter glittering lights, a market square of quartz and topaz flagstones surrounded by buildings of seamless glass. A row of houses grown from living trees. He sees lizards with hot-pink tail stripes, quite mundane compared to the iridescent stag beetle the size of a ribbon skiff whose hard outer wings have been designed into a carriage chair. It trundles along, lights dangling from its horns and sniffing at the air with feathery antennae. The couple riding it snuggle close, and one of them Lyric is fairly sure has a third eye. There are apartment platforms high in the air, balanced, it seems, on single foundation pillars as thin as needles. Small castles floating on low clouds, clustered in the north of the city. Perhaps their inventors will escape and become the Cloud Kings. There are two kinds of dragon he’s only seen illustrations of: a feathered dragon slinking over the rooftops and an iron-scaled fire dragon on a leash being walked like a pet.
And the people. Though outside the Moon-Eater’s fortress fewer folk have obvious displays of human architecture to make them appear more beautiful or strange or exotic, Lyric sees plenty of evidence of cheaper design: accentuated eye color, hair that might be design or might be art, and occasional oddities like the fully articulated gleaming wooden hand on a street vendor he buys fried sweet potatoes from, or the contraption that is either a corrective lens or a magnifying glass growing over the eye of an artist piecing together tiny dolls out of thin flower petals in the same market.
As the darkness grows deeper, more people appear in wild masks, holding hands with friends or family, trailed by children in elaborate costumes of beasts or chimeras. At least Lyric thinks they’re costumes. And real chimeras, too—there’s one that is some sort of dog limping on crab-like legs and a yellow bird in a cage with three flapping wings and a choking song. Lyric turns away from such things. Perhaps he lacks imagination, but he cannot think of any reason such creatures should be made. Especially if their destiny is to die tonight.
(Thatiswhy many of them are created. Just for the party.)
The energy throughout the city is bright and lively. Buildings are covered in billowing streamers, and pennants snap freely, untethered by poles or strings. Flowers float in the air, and streams of colorful smoke drift about. Strangely, there is no design graffiti that Lyric can see. He wonders how people learn news and gossip here.
Several catlike creatures dart past him, making calls like laughing barks, then they use overlong arms and prehensile tails to scurry up the side of a spiraling tower. Two stop to stare back down at him. They have faces like human children.
Lyric swallows against the rock in his throat.
Perhaps he should have remained in the fortress, meditating at the crater shrine. Except, the Moon-Eater was correct that in order to introduce Aharté successfully in the city, he needs to understandthe city. The Moon-Eater claimed it as his own, but someday it will be Lyric’s, if he can initiate the transformation. Perhaps that begins with Aharté, or perhaps it begins with drawing out Maimeri Sarenpet. Lyric doesn’t have to decide tonight.
He continues to wander, vaguely searching for the less affluent streets, the pockets of difference, diffidence, rebellion he knows must exist. That is where he will find Aharté if she is here. That is where he is certain to find the longing for her, if she is not. But in the glow of all the sparkling lights it’s difficult to read the patterns of forces or the energy of the people. Better, he supposes, to stay in the more crowded areas for now, while alone.
Before he left the Moon-Eater’s little mask-making party, Amado the Reconciler arrived and invited Lyric to their family celebrations in the Chimera fortress. Lyric declined gently. He said he was charged by the Moon-Eater to explore, and so Amado gave him a small purse of money—chips and coins of silicate that were valued on weight and clarity—and a defense necklace. Lyric frowned as he accepted it. The necklace is twisted wires in steel and copper, and the pendant a nest of the same, cradling an object like a thumbprint in pale blue clay. Amado explained it protects against concussive attacks if Lyric taps it once, and a temporary air shield if tapped twice, in case of gaseous death-design. “The Night of Chimeras is rarely violent in the past decade, but if Lyric goes out alone, it’s better safe than sorry. Unless,” Amado said, brows raised hopefully, “Lyric would consent to take a soldier from Chimera with Lyric, or one of Amado’s combat-designers?”
“Is this priest in that much danger?” Lyric asked.
Amado made a thoughtful moue. “Amado requires this Chimera’s family and personnel to have a defense necklace at minimum when traversing throughout the various fortresses.”
