Marianne, the Magus & the Manticore (20 page)

She returned from her foray for stockings to find Helen reading the paper. Everyone in the city read the paper—copies of it littered the gutters and blew along the building fronts.

"Tomorrow's shut-down day," said Helen, folding the paper into a club with which she beat the countertop in a steady thud, thud, thud. "Shut-down day. I won't be in."

"Shut-down day?"

"Don't be on the street after noon, girl. I mean it. There's plenty to eat back there in the kitchen, plenty of cleaning to do to keep you busy. Stay in. That's all. No—don't ask me.

I told you. Don't ask questions."

"You said not to ask strangers."

"We're all strangers, girl. Just do what I tell you."

That evening there was a tap on the window, and she looked out half fearfully to see a black, hunched form against the glass and knew it for that persistent follower who had come after her from the library. The watcher tapped on the window, refused to give up when she attempted to ignore him, but went on with the slow tap, tap, tap, not threatening, merely continuous until she could bear the sound no longer. Almost fearfully she went to the window to see a message thrust against the glass. "Not all who are here are Manticore meat! Will you join us?" She did not know what this meant and did not want to encourage the watcher, but neither did it seem wise to anger him. She wrote upon a napkin the word "perhaps" and held it to the pane. This seemed to satisfy him, for he scribbled, "I'll come back another time," showed it to her briefly, then disappeared into the wind-scattered shadows of the street. Though Marianne sat in the dark, watching the window for some time, he did not return. ____

Marianne told herself she would retrieve her books and look for Number Eight Manticore Street very early in the morning, only for an hour or two, returning to the shop well before noon.

She left just at first light, wearing her cape, scarf tied over her head. The markets were closed. There were only a few people on the streets. Those who moved about did so furtively, scurrying short distances from this place to that like mice in a strange place. The odd looks directed at her made Marianne walk close to the buildings, staring behind her at odd moments, hurrying her steps. She went south on Billings, counting the blocks: First, Second, Third.... By the time she had come to Seventh the walks were completely empty. Tattered posters glared at her from the walls, full of reaching arms and frightened eyes. A hand showed briefly at a window, flicking a curtain into place.

When she crossed Twelfth, she was almost running. The blinds were drawn in the bookstore, but the door was not locked. She eased it open, tiptoed to the back of the store to fumble out the books she had hidden there, then hurried back to the street, the door swinging closed behind her with its insistent oing, oing, oing. She turned back to Twelfth, turned right at the comer, searching for the numbers. Eleven. Thirteen.

Odd numbers. The light around her was beginning to dim, to pulse, to waver before her eyes. She ran across the street.

Number Six. Number Ten. No Number Eight. Panicky, she huddled in a doorway, seeing the street crawl before her as though seen through moving air or flawed glass. It couldn't be noon yet. Helen had said stay off the streets after noon.

No, she cried to herself. Helen had said stay
in!
Her feeling of panic was growing. Number Six. Number Ten. East. East!

She scurried from the doorway, turned right, pattering down the sidewalk with the heavy books clutched to her chest, gasping as though she had run miles, across Billings Street where the numbers began again, only to stop, transfixed.

The corner shop was Number Four, a taxidermy shop, so labeled in golden script which slanted across the window in which the Manticore poised, rampant, claws extended and teeth bared in glass-eyed fury, huge and horrible. The beard of the Manticore seemed to rustle with evil life; the eyes seemed to see her. The eyes were dark and familiar, glaring at her, staring into her, transfixing her until she trembled against the glass, hypnotized as a bird is said to be by a snake, poised between surrender and fear.

Fear won, barely. She broke away from the window, ran past a vacant store to a narrow door numbered eight at the foot of equally narrow stairs. Behind her, as she fled up this flight, came a crash of breaking glass, a hideous scream of rage, a palpable wave of fury which thrust her before it up the last few steps and through the opened door where Mr. Grassi caught her, pushed her aside and leaned his whole weight against the door. It gave slowly, slowly to close against the sounds below.

"My dear," he said, panting, "you cut it close, very close.

Another moment would have been too late."

She staggered after him as he went to the window where he pulled the curtains together to peek through them at the street below. It was hard to see the street. It boiled with shadows, ran with flickering. Thicknesses of air transgressed upon sight. Things shifted, were there, were not there. Clouds of tiny beings came and went, a slightly darker surge in the general flow. Striding through it all, pace on pace of its lion feet, tail arched high above its giant man-head, came the Manticore, scorpion tail lashing as the beast followed its own manic howl along the dream-wrapped street.

"There will be others," whispered Cani Grassi. 'Troops of mandrakes, legions of Greasy Girls. The Manticore will lead them, and woe to those abroad upon the streets."

"She said noon!" complained Marianne. "Noon! It was hours yet to noon."

"One of the conditions of this city is that time changes, speeds, slows, does what
they
want it to do. In this case, they speeded it. A trap for the unwary."

"They? They who? Why do
they
care? Why do they care about me? Who am I that they should care?"

"Oh, Lords of Light," he fretted. "I hoped you knew. Truly?

Oh, that makes it so much more difficult. I
know
you are someone very important, but I have forgotten just who. Just now it seems you are something less than that." He took her chapped hands tenderly in his own. "Cleaning lady, is it?"

"Dishwasher," she replied absently. "What am I doing here?"

"Ah. Why, you are suffering a malign enchantment. That much I am sure of. I thought you might have guessed."

She collapsed into one of the chairs beside the window, staring out blindly at the raging street below. "I hadn't guessed anything. Except that it was odd I couldn't remember anything before the library."

"Many people here are like that," he said. "They have forgotten, or been forced to forget. Even I, even I have forgotten some things I am sure are very important. Some people can remember nothing. Particularly those in the library."

"So many? And all enchanted?"

"An accumulation, I believe. Some have been here for a very long time. Not only those enchanted by
her!"

"Why? Who is she?"

Cani Grassi shook his head, tilted it, thrust his tongue out at the comer of his mouth. "I kept only a little information when I came after you, only the tiniest bit, to be sneaked through, so as not to attract attention, you understand. Too much would have alerted them, her. But a little bit, well, Macravail thought it would be safe enough. When he sent me, that is. To rescue you, whoever you are."

She scarcely heard this, for her eyes had been caught by a fleeing figure in the street below. "Helen," she cried. "It's Helen. I must go let her in...." And she ran toward the door, only to be caught in Grassi's arms and held fast, struggling.

"Not anyone real," he shook her. "Not real. Don't be so quick, Marianne. Look out the window. Look!"

The woman fled toward them; behind her the Manticore pursued with a roaring howl of madness, tail flicking steaming drops of venom onto the pavement where she ran, her hair streaming behind her and her face distorted in fear. As she ran past, she dwindled, became two-dimensional as though made of paper, a fluttering tissue which then appeared whole once more as it ran away from them down the endless street.

Then the papery figure turned its head, stared over its own shoulder, neck folding oddly, pleating upon itself. The figure swerved close to the wall across the street, opened its mouth to scream once more and collided with the wall to hang there, a pasted-up poster figure, mouth forever open, arms forever outstretched, dress forever twisted and hiked up by the act of running. Marianne heard her own voice crying and found herself held tight against Grassi's shoulder as he patted her back, murmuring, "My dear, my dear. Shh. Shhh. They aren't real.

Not in the way you suppose they are. Shh, now. Shh."

"It was Helen. Truly Helen."

"I know. I know," he said. "But you must not give way like this. You must watch and learn and understand. Otherwise, how are we to rescue you from anything? How are we to send word to Macravail? Come now."

"How are
we
to rescue me? Gods, Mr. Grassi, how would I know? And you don't seem to know any more than I! What is this hopeless place we have come to? Why are we here?"

"My dear pretty lady, do think, do. This is no minor enchantment, no trifling play of an apprentice witch. This is an ensorcelment majeur, a chief work! Oh, these false worlds cluster about limbo thick as grapes upon a vine, great pendulous masses of them upon the dry stick of the place we came from.

Oh, I grow eloquent! Each world a grape, each grape with a juice and flavor of its own, individual, unique. Each world with its own laws, its own systems. Each a prison with its own gate. Each a door with its own lock. So, so, what do we do until we know where the gate is? Where the lock is? Ha? We sneak, we sly, we peer, we pry—think child, do! We appear as nothing, negligible, not worth the notice of the powers of this place. So, who comes to help you? Ha? The tiniest spy, the weakest servant, the least noticeable familiar. Me. Cani Grassi." He turned himself about for her inspection, making a pouting face and wiggling his hips. "I brought no baggage, carried no sacks full of spells of protection, no witch bags, not an
amulet
even! No, no, in this place we are stronger the weaker they think we are."

Mouth open, she stared at him, disbelieving these tumbled words, this babbling nonsense. "Who sent you?" she asked, thinking it was a question she should have asked hours ago.

"Macravail," he replied unhesitatingly. "The arch mage, Macravail."

"And who," she asked, "or what, is he?"

"A kinsman of yours, I think, pretty one. You do not remember him, but then, you do not remember much. One of the laws of this place."

"Then how do you remember him?"

"Because I am not suffering a malign enchantment and you are. So. Let us think together. You do not know who you are, and neither do I. If Macravail did not send that information with me, we must believe it is for your protection, or mine, or perhaps both. However, I do remember Macravail, and his words to me. 'Greendog,' he said, 'send me word where I may find you.'"

"Greendog? What kind of a name is that?"

"My name," he said doubtfully, "or perhaps what he called me at the time. Who knows?" More cheerfully, "Perhaps he made a joke. Whatever. We must figure out a way to send him word."

He fell silent for a long time, so long it became uncomfortable and Marianne fidgeted, saying, "What else?"

He shook his head. "I was thinking there is very little else."

"Didn't this Macravail give you instructions?"

"To find you, Marianne. 'Find Marianne,' he said. The rest he left to my native cunning and natural self-effacement."

She sighed. It was evident there was no quick, sweet-hot solution. There was only tedium and talk, fear and what courage one could bring to it. So. If that was the way it was, then that was the way it must be.

"Well, if you have nothing to tell me, I do have something to tell you," she said and she told him about the peerers-in, the stolen books, the burned book, the visit to the library of the woman in black. "I don't know what it all means," she confessed, "what it meant when I put the book out the coal chute. Do you have any idea?"

He nodded, nodded, chewing his pursed lips in concentration. "Oh, yes, pretty lady. For everyone in this city there is a book. There is a book in that place for you, and for me, and for Helen, your boss, and for everyone. We are bound to our books. And when you put the book outside and it was burned, then someone escaped from this city. That is why they cheered.

But there was only
one
book, only one. That is why they despaired. But listen, there is more.

"Here in the city, the Manticore. There in the library, books.

And as the Manticore chases our images onto the walls of the city, I think the books grow dim and faded and we grow dim and thin and shadowy as well, until they cannot be read any longer. What does one do with them then?"

"With the old, faded books? They are taken to the sub-basements and stacked there. Room after room of them. Huge, mountainous piles of them."

He nodded somberly. "And no chance then of escape. Only to fall into slow rot, to disappear into dust over an eternity of storage." Sadly shaking his head, sighing. "We will not consider that. No. Before that time is near, we will have found a way to send for Macravail, or he will have found a way to us.

That is why we have our books, of course, yours and mine."

"We have them?"

"Surely. You brought them. They are here. Was not your own story in the book?"

"But there were thousands of others, too, more stories than I could count...."

"Well. Yes. Most of our books have others' stories in them, though we are often unaware of that. It is no matter, pretty lady. You have your book and you must read in it again, to find what we must do next."

"My story again?"

"Is it not your story we seek to unravel? Your story, of course."

So she sat down away from the window in order not to be distracted by the recurrent return of the Manticore, by the continuing flight of the paper figures, the miragelike wavering of the street, to read her own story, beginning with "... She found herself walking through a neighborhood where narrow-fronted houses stared nearsightedly at her over high stoops and scraps of entryway relieved only by tattered yews..." and ending with "Is it not your story we seek to unravel? Your story, of course." It was all as familiar to her as ten minutes ago. Even the picture was of her in her bright scarf, cape around her shoulders, clutching the books to her chest as she fled past the corner taxidermy shop where the Manticore raged in the window. "I shall read it again," she said in a tired voice, "and again, and again."