Radiance

“You fell onto George and smashed it.”

“You’ve got me there. Your honour, Maximo Varela murdered George the kinesigraph camera in cold blood. I saw it with my own eyes. Take him away!”

“Baby, you should listen,” says Erasmo softly.

“I did kill you,” the Mad King of Pluto whispers. “But I did it after you died. On the Clamshell. Erasmo and Cristabel cut Radiant Car for you. As a way to say goodbye or a way to keep you alive, I don’t know. It took them weeks. Konrad and Franco brought food to the darkroom and left it outside the door. We didn’t see them or the boy for weeks. It was like they’d vanished, too. And all the while, I still had that static in my head. That horrible static filled with voices, our voices, sawing on my skull every minute. I can still hear it.”

“You never told me that,” says Erasmo.

“I don’t tell you much, Raz. But it’s true. And then, a month out of lunar orbit, the three of them emerged from their exile. They asked us all to come to the cantina for a screening. They even made popcorn. Trying to make some little happiness. And we watched The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew. It was a hundred and twenty-seven minutes long. When the lights came up, everyone wept. They hugged each other, kissed foreheads and cheeks. In movies and books they always say: A spell had been lifted. But it had. They were in grief. But they would live.”

Severin Unck leans toward her lighting master. Her breathing quickens. “Was it good? Was it good, Max? Did I do okay? Did I make something…right? Tell me it was wonderful. I have to know it came out all right.”

And Percival Unck rises from his seat to take his daughter into his arms.

“That’s my girl,” he says. He kisses the top of her head. It’s nice to have made a person to commiserate with, he thinks, and Severin knows his thought without hearing it.

“I always thought you were going to be taller.” Percy laughs. His voice goes softer. “I always thought we’d patch it up someday.”

“We did,” Severin says. “Just you wait.”

“It was beautiful,” Max admits. “Sad, and terrible, and monstrous. But beautiful. People would have kept watching it as long as they knew how to work a projector. And that’s when I killed you.”

“Oh, Max,” sighs Mariana.

“The static crawled in my head, and my dead, obliterated Mariana crawled in my heart, and I couldn’t get a second’s peace, not a moment’s quiet. The static sent hideous knives of lightning though me, and the lightning spoke with your voice. It said, over and over: They have killed a Nereid. And she was full of roe. Full of roe. Full of roe. Like a nursery rhyme. Once Radiant Car started playing, Mariana began to sing along with the killing of the Nereid in my bones. Twinkle, twinkle, little dragon, won’t you come and pull my wagon. The two of you did not sing in harmony. Utterly atonal. I wanted to die. And when it ended, and you disappeared out of the frame like a cheap jump-cut trick, I heard you say a new thing: A mother is a person who leaves. I knew then how to stop the white noise from burning me out from the inside. The way princesses know things in fairy tales. The way you know things in dreams.”

Maximo Varela cannot go on. He sobs, guilt and lymphatic fluid seeping out of his grey skin. Erasmo finishes his confession for him.

“While we slept, he stole everything. All the reels, the scraps, the outtakes, everything. Even the unusable stuff. He dragged it all up to the observation deck and laid it

out in the sun to overexpose. You tried to stop him, Anchises. Maybe you remember. Hopefully not. I don’t know how you could even have understood what would happen to film left in the light, but you tried to grab it all up in your little arms like so much black spaghetti. You held it tight to your little chest and hissed at him. And Max…well, he hit you until you let go. Hit a kid with his fists. Stomped on your hand. I never forgave him. Never will. Radiant Car fried all night. Chemical fumes everywhere. Smoke but no fire. By the time we figured out what he’d done, those four miserable pieces were all we could salvage.”

“I killed you,” Maximo insists. “It was all that we had of you, and I burned it. I turned the big spotlight on it and it burned and I made that child bleed and I didn’t care. I killed the heart of you. But the static burned out, too. No more roe. No more twinkling dragons. No more mothers leaving.

“We have all come here to mend. But there’s no forgiveness in the Wizard’s bag for me.” Varela blinks and shakes his head, as though he doesn’t quite know why he’d said that last bit.

Severin stubs out her cigar on her filmstrip-hand. A glowing hole pops into life in her palm, like an open mouth. “You’re right,” she says. “There isn’t. No heart, no courage, no brains for you, Max. And no supper, either.” She considers carefully, a rakish Rhadamanthus, before delivering her judgment. “Go sit in the corner. That’s your punishment.”

And so he does. The King of Pluto faces the wall.

“I never seriously considered Varela a suspect,” Anchises informs the room.

“That’s not what you said at Setebos Hall.” Cythera snorts.

“I am wiser by far now. No, the evidence leads us to one conclusion: Calliope is the villain in our midst. I accuse you, callowhale! What say you?”

The callowhale tries to snarl, but she had only ever been drawn smiling, so that children would love her. She smiles and smiles, and in her singsong advertising jingle voice she trills, “She stank of death and life and a million never-sleeping eyes! Don’t give me your smug primate smirks, Anchises St. John! You touched our dying limb and took our spores into your tiny, insufficient flesh. A new star guttered in the dream-net of the callowhales. It wanted to live, but it had no vigour. We felt you in us; we thought you were part of us, lost, dying. We came for you, and destroyed the cage you languished in. Only afterward did we understand our mistake. We are very embarrassed about it. But your parents should have taught you to keep your hands to yourself! You touched Severin’s face in gratitude; Mariana struck you in fear—new stars guttering into very little of note on the edges of our dreams. We would not be fooled twice. We ignored them. Told them we were on to their tricks. But Severin came so close, right into my parlour, and her stink woke me like burnt bacon. I told her to go away, and she did. I am not sorry! She is small and I am big. She drank my milk without asking. I will not be made to apologize!”

“What about me?” asks Mariana Alfric. “I didn’t come close. I didn’t get a chance.”

Calliope shrugs her cheerfully drawn shoulders. “You let that doctor cut us out of you. You could no longer live separately. When our child died, you died. It had already converted much of your fluid and tissue. Children are so hungry in their first hours.”

“Your child?” gasps the sound engineer.

“What did you think it was? A disease? A wound? You guzzle our milk and think we never bear young?”

“Ooh!” exclaims Mr Bergamot. The animated octopus slides off his mossy sofa and draws himself up onto his tip-tentacles. “May I have the seafloor? I’m quite keen on marine biology, you know.”