“A Mother’s Missed Fortune”
When they discovered that Cinza had smuggled Albin out of the mob’s clutches, Mr. Talquin was livid, and Mrs. Talquin was no more. She did not die right away. But it could be said that the realization that her beautiful daughter of gold had stooped to protect the unlucky boy somehow started an unraveling that completed its work a few years later when Mrs. Talquin used the last of her wits to tie a few knots and dangle herself from the loveliest chandelier in Stormhenge.
But in that moment in the boat when Mr. Talquin tore open Cinza’s pack to find Albin still sound asleep with his beads, Mrs. Talquin seemed to resign herself fully to the idea of death, and accepted her fate as a woman doomed to raise a cursed child. Mr. Talquin, remained as sentimentally unaffected by Albin’s existence as he always had, except this time there was nothing to pass onto his progeny. Having traded an inheritance for an heir, Mr. Talquin also found resolution in Albin’s perpetuated existence: a kind of melancholy quest to rebuild some semblance of legacy to gift to his son. He began fraternizing with a terrifying new sort of people, trading his old aromas for sharper accents of iron lock picks and dried blood. Mr. Talquin believed in a hierarchy of thievery, and having fallen from the elegance of embezzlement to the gutters of pilfering and petty theft, Mr. Talquin’s pride took a similar dive. Soon, the only presence of Mr. Talquin in the new home in the slums of Stormhenge was the money that Cinza would use to do the shopping. And that only trickled in for so long before Mr. Talquin finally cut his losses and followed his instincts north to Bottletown—where drunkards go to die.
But as for Mrs. Talquin. Between finding her miserable fate in the dinghy and finding her end two years later, the undone woman dutifully raised Albin with the same attitude as a mantis courting his fatal mate: defeated, deflated, and fully resigned to the ensuing demise. Even so, her commitment to the supernatural did not waver. Somewhere along the way, Mrs. Talquin picked up a stalwart belief in the afterlife. She vehemently declared this had always existed in her tenants of superstition—crammed somewhere between the luckiness of blue birds at dawn and the wickedness of left-handed folk—but it was not until Albin that she began to shift her attentions to posthumous investments.
Thus, Mrs. Talquin raised her wretched Albin: grimacing as Cinza held his hands for his first steps, snarling as Cinza fed him mushed bits of her own dinner, rolling over in bed with a groan as Cinza would comfort the wailing thing in the middle of the night, and screaming at the little devil when its first words dared to be: “Ci-Ci.”
Though she hated the creature, Albin seemed to be the only thing that could rally Mrs. Talquin’s spirits. She spent much of her days asleep, with eyes closed dreaming of her coming paradise where she would be rewarded for dutifully rearing Cinza and the ugly child, or also with eyes open where the grey reality in which she lived slipped ever more into a despairing blur.
It was a gradual eclipse but irrevocable. At first it was just a fog at the edges of her life, but it gradually overtook her. The furniture all began to blend into the floor and the walls. And every one of her dresses began to look more and more the same—their only differences being the number of holes in them. Soon, even Cinza appeared as no more than a bizarre smear of gold in her depressed stupor, and only the sight and sounds of Albin could appeal enough to her hatred to bring her life back into heated clarity. But that was only on the rare, furious occasion.
Otherwise, Mrs. Talquin floated through sea fog—occasionally finding solid footing when Albin would cry out in the night, and then her feet would touch down on the jagged shards of her life: slums of Stormhenge, ruined luck, fraying husband who only came home for a place to fall apart or a wife to fall on top of. Then stopped coming home altogether. Slipped away into the misty oblivion.
As often as she could, Mrs. Talquin drifted higher and higher into her grey sky. Sometimes her flights into the fog would take her out of bed and to brilliant grey places, chilly and exciting, and for a moment a voice or two would echo through the mist and she would respond enough to make conversation and the grey fog would bloom with pleasant pinks and hot reds and bursts of light. Blooming like fire. Making her bones laugh again. And she would be the luckiest girl in the world. Then she would awake to find that she was in Stormhenge and it was morning and this was not her house and it was not a bed and that man was not a man (not that one there nor that one either) and she did hurt a little but it felt so good to feel lucky again.
Then she would float back to her house to put on a different dress—one with fewer holes in it—and the grey would tuck back in around her. And Cinza would appear in the doorway. Golden child a halo of muted light. Say something sweet. Then that little monster would appear. Dagger of a boy. Tiny hands like knives would reach for her. Slice through her grey silks. And Mrs. Talquin would scream and scream. Get it away from me! Out! Now! The little devil! Oh, Cinza! I’m not well. Get it away! Away!
Both boy and girl would disappear, and Mrs. Talquin would sink into her bed—exhausted—to take another journey through the clouds and dream of the bright afterlife that was preparing to burst through her grey waiting.
Mrs. Talquin did not have to wait much longer. So fixated was she on her coming life that she barely noticed when Mr. Talquin left. By then Cinza was doing all the work of pick-pocketing to feed her family. Truly it was as though Mrs. Talquin died in that boat two years prior, and each day after was merely anticipation for the signal that she was free to enter her rightful paradise. So when she gave birth to her last child, she took it as a sign that her labors were at an end.
It was Cinza who ran to find someone to help her mother when her labor began. Alone in her bed, pain broke through her clouds of grey like inspiration, and Mrs. Talquin knew that her new life was opening before her. Cinza was able to convince one of their neighbors to help deliver her new sibling and even assisted in the process. More than once, she had to bring Albin into the room to shock her mother into cooperation, but eventually the two siblings were able to free their new brother from their mother.
A boy. Mrs. Talquin managed a smile. A chance to counter Albin’s wickedness. That boy who swallowed her daughter and husband—her luck and her life—would now be brought to heel by this new son. Content with her fortunes, Mrs. Talquin sank into the deepest sleep of her life, leaving Cinza and the spontaneous midwife and little Albin with their weeping, nameless brother.
When she finally awoke, Mrs. Talquin roused herself for one last flight through the city. She passed her usual haunts, floated up and up through the cobblestone streets, past taverns and alleyways, up and up into the realm of the aristocracy. Her hands fluttered over the decorative railings of the fancy high-town streets. Tracing gracefully the heavy gates that shielded wealthy from poor. Those glittering paradisal mansions with their chandeliers. She flew onward, away from palaces and into the merchant district. Past the bright displays and sing-song jangle of keys locking up for the night. They barely pricked the quilt of grey cloud wrapped around her mind. She smiled at all the spectral voices echoing through her, drawing her to the store she had seen once long ago while living in that house with her husband and their beautiful daughter on the edge of the sea.
She walked onward. Night fell and she felt nothing. All was a grey sea except for the one pinprick of light calling her forward. Her memories continued to lead her through the city. To the locked doors of that corner store. Her bright light whispered to her behind a tall window. Her fingers licked the familiar glass. And inside the lights were dimmed and there was not a sould but the chandelier—her chandelier—staring back at her. With a beautiful exhalation, Mrs. Talquin struck the window.
Again and again she beat the pane, threw herself against it. Fists first, then elbows, shoulder, feet, head. Kicking punching, shrieking, laughing, and laughing. Midnight crept closer and closer over the Sea Wall, but in her grey world, all was high noon—the magic hour. With a shriek, Mrs. Talquin finally smashed through the glass that separated her from her paradise.
She tumbled through the window display into the store. Glass sliced her to life. Sang release into her skin. Her hands prickled as they pushed her shivering body from the black hardwood of the floor that now twinkled with little shrapnel stars.
Up and up her head did turn and there found the light of her afterlife, clinking in the breeze that crept through the broken window. The chandelier swung in chilling darkness, like the silent blade of a guillotine, yet for Mrs. Talquin, it was lit from top to bottom with every kind of brilliant candlelight. Glittering and gold, its three rings goaded her. Mrs. Talquin grasped for it with bloody fingers that could not reach. Not yet.
Humming a merry tune from her childhood, she retrieved the ladder she knew to be tucked in the corner beside the candlesticks. The wax-carving knife added to her song when she sliced her dress into long beautiful strips, then braided them together like a young girl playing with her sister’s hair. The blood from her scalp trickled merrily down her cheek and across her grinning lips.
Her craft complete, she twirled her daisy chain of soiled cloth around her neck, and tied it tight so none would steal her treasure. Like a queen at her coronation, she dipped toward her chandelier. Took a magnificent step toward her staircase to the heavens propped open beneath the chandelier. Another victorious stride and she was at the first rung.
But in her regality, she froze—her entire spirit limp for a moment as a memory of her own little princess pricked her reverie. The smallest stab of fear threatened to bring her back to Stormhenge as she imagined for one horrifying instant Albin swallowing the last of Cinza’s good light and fortune should her mother—her last guardian—make this ascension.
Mrs. Talquin—despite everything else she might have been—was still a mother, and in those final moments marching toward her doom, her last thoughts truly were on her children, if only for a few remunerative seconds. Even the thought of ugly little Albin began to drag her back toward the ground, and it seemed as though she might jump back through the window, sprint with her shredded gown through the dark and hurry back to her home—take her children into her weeping self and beg their forgiveness. But then the chandelier made a beautiful moan. Mrs. Talquin’s eyes shot upward and again caught all the light glittering from the world that belonged to her. The world she had earned by her labors. The world where Albin would never haunt her again and where Cinza would surely follow her. Why, she could go back to the house and take Cinza with her! Into that beautiful, bright world.
Had Mrs. Talquin more time, it is possible that she might have attempted this horrible arrangement. But at that minute, the clock tower began its midnight call and the bells broke Mrs. Talquin’s schemes. The world was tipping into its dark, capricious hours, and she had not seconds to lose.
Clever and broken Mrs. Talquin skipped to the counter where she dug madly through the bric-a-brac. By the second bell, she had found ink and paper. Her fingers trembled with glee as they scribbled out her last words to her ruined grey world. Between the sixth and seventh, she made her final scratches, folded the paper in hand, and turned for the chandelier. Eight. Nine. She was at the top of the ladder. Fingers tickled the little crystal baubles as she tied her rags to her golden gateway to paradise and the tenth bell rang out—bright and excited and terrified. Eleven.
Somewhere far away, Albin’s cries pierced the night and Cinza rushed to his side, her gold hair dividing the darkness. And the nameless brother slept resolute in the arms of the midwife, still as a sheathed knife. And Mr. Talquin drained the belly of his tankard, slicing his lip on the rim. And the leaves on the trees sharpened themselves on the wind’s edge that scraped across the world—whirling up out of the black sea and swooping down upon the cities and plains and gutters and the filthy orphan slums and the drunken port towns and the little shops peddling light and twinkling glass to eager creatures who could never afford them.
In dwarvish, the name of the glorious chandelier is örvae. There is no direct translation into common tongue. It is meant to embody the consuming sensation one feels when staring into the abysmal chasms beneath the Dûrdn mountains. Or the feeling of arid hopelessness in surmounting a dune in the South Sembren desert only to find the sea of sand still stretching out in all directions. Or the terrible tremor that rattles the spine when the beholder stares too long into the black pit of the human eye. It is a word that shudders and struggles to contain its own definition. Despair deified: it is the infinitude of intimate and final hopelessness. And what better way to bind it than in gold and crystal?
Along the three halos of the chandelier, the artist completed his dismal epiphany where the shining inscriptions chant:
Every quest for starlight dies in the darkness between.
For despite all our eager reaching,
the stars do not reach back.
Had it been high noon, it could have been certain that some lucky happening would have rescued Mrs. Talquin from her fate. Some passerby would have investigated the broken window and, seeing her rising on the ladder, pulled the broken woman back to safety. Or perhaps the weight of Mrs. Talquin would have snapped the chain holding örvae aloft and brought them both crashing back to earth. But it was midnight and there was none to pass by and Mrs. Talquin had grown too ghostly to descend to the earth again and all her lucky hours were spent. Tossed overboard on that black night two years ago.
Watching her burning house slip into Bastion Landing Mrs. Talquin had resigned herself to midnight in the dark confines of the little dinghy—watching her home burn, hating her child, and cursing every power and person in the worlds but herself. Failing to realize that in the erratic magic of the midnight hour, her curses were rebounding upon her.
Q’villia had spoken words of truth all those years ago—not because she was a prophet but because she was mother, and as a mother she knew: the fate of all children is to collect the fortunes of their parents, and it is the glory of all parents to guide the flow of that gold into their children. But Mrs. Talquin, whose mother and father were the flash of stage light and the dirty grandeur of circus rings, knew nothing of the good current of fortunes that mothers direct into their children. To her, luck was a but a quarry that ought to be prospected and protected by any means possible—hammered into chandeliers to hang out for the neighbors to admire but never touch. Little did she understand that her mission to hoard her blessings for fear of poverty was akin to demanding her heart stop beating for fear of bleeding. And oh, how she bled.
Collecting her trinkets and superstitions and cautions, her golden babes and chandeliers, her spoils of luck did fester and rot. Mrs. Talquin’s life became an endless ebb and flow of luck: Luck and Fear of the lack of it. And just as the waves struggle to gather sand from the shore, so did Mrs. Talquin whimper and clutch at the grains of fortune that slipped ever through her liquid fingers, forgetting the wealth that already flowed through her and glinted in the sunlit portions of her life. And in taking her eyes from those shining waters, she became unable to traverse her blacker seas and made the fatal move: combined the light and dark for the cool numbness of grey mists. And invited the fog to begin its campaign deep into her body.
Unbeknownst to her, she slipped her Will to Live between the seventh and eighth bells, and the two years that followed were merely the sonorous march unto this, the last and chosen midnight. Floating through mires of disappointment, disillusionment, then despair, and arcing ever unto örvae.
Twelve.
Mrs. Talquin tipped her head back and gazed into the shining embrace of the chandelier, her grey fog ripped away and she saw her lucky world rushing toward her. The chandelier bloomed over her and she leaped into its embrace. With a choking laugh, her feet kicked the ladder away as the swing of the bell roared for the final time. And Mrs. Talquin danced.
She danced for all the beautiful years she had lived as a child of tents and colors; she danced for all the brilliant nights performing with her family, daring to swallow the sharp edges of death. She danced for her husband who showed her power and wit and passion and abandonment. She danced for all their years on the edge of the sea. She danced for Q’villia and for luck. She danced for Cinza, radiant Cinza, and all her promised fortunes. She danced for her son: her nameless son who could undo the wickedness of Albin and rescue Cinza’s future. And she danced for Albin. She danced him into the ground beneath her fluttering feet so far away now as she flew to her paradise.
High and higher she rose. Through the clouds of grey. Through the purples and reds of hot Stormhenge nights. Up into the golden air where chandeliers and crystals dance along. She was almost upon it when the dark closed over her eyes. Mrs. Talquin jerked to a halt in her dance of too many years, shackled there in the quiet almost—dangling just out of reach of her chandelier. Just below the surface of paradise.
The wind oozed through the shattered window. It billowed about the shop and caressed all the objects hanging in the windows and from the ceiling and from the chandelier. The wind played at the paper in her hand but could not pry away the note clutched in her cooling fingers. Passing on, the wind wafted up along the length of the chandelier—rising to all the places Mrs. Talquin could not go and spreading out across the ceiling.
Mrs. Talquin’s smile was carved into her face in a smear of glee even as the gold reflections fell one-by-one out of her irises. Those eyes rolled down, away from the crystal—doomed to look ever on a broken ladder tipped sideways on the floor. And the sea air pulled the shards of glass across the windowpane and tickled the chandelier. The great, gold skeleton giggling as sweet and unattainable as starlight.
And Mrs. Talquin swung back and forth, paddling through a thick ocean. Ticking eternally through the magic midnight hours.