While the water had grown familiar, the chair-flights, Minnie felt sure, never would. She clung to her seat so fiercely she felt she would crack the board. Her skirts fluttered in the wind below her, and her broad hat pulled perilously at her hair. It was past dusk now, if not quite to the pitch of the desert night, and already the stars spread over her like scattered sand. The Kunstlerlampen flickered already in the city below her in scattered bundles.
She liked the lamps just as she liked the red lanterns of the Leibsänger. The Akvatari lit them when a work was newly ready to be seen. Some buildings seemed to have the lights lit every night - the Poesyhall, for instance. Other lamps she had seen by day, but had never seen lit.
“The lady would that we wait, perhaps?” one of the two lift operators spoke above Minnie's head, as the chair began a descent
Minnie started, hearing the two carriers of the chairlift over her head, “Oh! I did not realize we were so close! Erm… I will be some time.”
The taller of the two, a figure with a shock of white hair around the face of an adolescent whose gender Minnie had been unable to place with certainty, shrugged, “The Kunsterlampen is lit. Dairolot, hast thou otherwise to be done this evening?”
The second carrier, a woman with cropped hair and a terrible burn traveling up her left arm, shook her head, “If Quseib has his lamp lit, it will be worth seeing, I am sure.” Minnie had taken an immediate liking to Dairolot, built broad and strong-limbed like Trilly from the asylum, but with beautiful, delicate ears, as pale and pink as an oyster’s heart.
“It is very kind of you, both,” Minnie offered.
The chair came to a slightly clumsy stop. Dairolot landed quickly to take Minnie’s arm, and help her to her stick, “I beg thy forgiveness, we have ne’er lifted one so small. Humans are generally so… solid for their size.”
Minnie half-bowed, “Think nae of it, Goody. I’m fine.”
Minnie turned then and climbed the stoop of the platform - it was more climb than step, for it had not been built with small legs in mind, or perhaps with legs at all. The lamp glittered in the light, the amplifying mirrors waving their beams gently in the sea-wind of the evening.
Entering within, she came into a wide octagonal room with a high peak of ceiling, lit by an open brazier in the center. On every wall there were tiny shelves, and on each shelf there sat a crafted doll, set so densely together that their legs hung over even the curved line of the lintel itself. Minnie could not stop looking at them. Most were in the form of Akvatari, with lushly furred tails and skin of fired porcelain or silk or pale broadcloth, painted so cunningly that Minnie felt that she could see their chests rise and fall. The faces were what fascinated Minnie, however. In Zeltiva, many dolls had no face at all, simple sewn rags with perhaps a bit of paint for eyes. Those that did bear faces had a kind of emptiness to them - not an unpleasing emptiness, but a kind of receptiveness. Their gazes invited simple play: if one played the doll was giggling happily at being dandled, or if one played at comforting a fussy child, it was all the same in those eyes.
The dolls that Dairolot constructed were different, for their faces asserted the singularity of an identity, almost of a soul. One doll, a boy-child whose hands held a brandy flask for reasons Minnie could not divine, looked like a sweet-tempered child, where nearby, a miniature of an Eypharian woman looked delightfully wicked, the sort of woman one would wish to plan significant mischiefs with. The faces seemed, almost, to converse with each other, as if just out of the corner of one’s eye, the dolls whispered little secrets to each other. Minnie, with wondering fingers, took one up, a porcelain figure of an Akvatari man holding a rose with a romantic pensivity. The back felt strange in texture beneath her hand, and she turned the doll over, then startled in horror - the back of the doll’s skull was hollow, and inside was painted a face in monstrous shades of yellow and red. It peered out at the viewer with a lascivious smug cruelty that made Minnie feel sick to her stomach. She turned the doll over again, then, and set it quickly back on the shelf. A pale glimmer of that flesh-thirsty bestiality flickered, now, just inside the pensive eyes.
A very old man sat behind the brazier, on a pile of dusty cushions. His face carried a kind of exhaustion to it, a pain in the tired wrinkles around his eyes and dry lips. He spoke, and his voice was sweet, and queerly high pitched, almost a child’s voice.
“The Lady is my first guest this evening. I am humbled that the Lady could find power in my work.”
Minnie nodded, but still unsettled did not meet the man’s eye, “They are all… like… like this?”
He only smiled, “It is not a work to be experienced through the lips of the artist, you will forgive me.”
Minnie watched as her two companions each took another doll up, and in the fire-flicker, saw that these skulls, too, were hollowed - she could not see the faces. Minnie took another doll up, nervously, this one a beautiful dark-complexioned woman. The fur felt warm and needy, and her face was kind, very kind. It gave Minnie the urge to hug it, as she had held her prayer-doll in the days of her mourning. She turned it tentatively, and caught just a glance of a face without eyes and with deep anguish in it’s mouth, before she quickly replaced it.
Minnie said softly, “Do you… make… other dolls? I need.. I’m sorry, I do not mean to sound… they are… are beautiful, these but…”
“The lady,” the wizened artist said quietly, “Would make a commission? This is one of my works, but I have made many others, to speak different messages. What seeks the Lady?”
Minnie blushed, and sat on the floor by the brazier, her legs crossed beneath her skirt. She pulled her bag before her, now, and from it she withdrew a bundle, which she unwrapped. Inside, she had the old, battered prayer doll, which she presented with the man. The old man did not touch the doll , but his eyes sharpened, and he carefully slid his hands beneath the cloth, palpating the limbs of the doll like a healer probing the swollen under-chin of a child with the ague. He lifted the bundle from Minnie’s lap, then, and from his binding cloth he drew a lens that he held before his eyes. Minnie heard the roughness of his old lungs deflating, let the snuffle of the air tickle at the hair on her arms. He turned the doll back and forth, then spoke quietly, “The lady here hath not the work of a great artist.”
Minnie smiled a little at the man’s candor, “Nae, sir.”
“If the lady brings me this to repair it… I would not do so. The new art would rend the elder in such a thing.”
Minnie looked horrified, “Oh! Nae that, sir, it is not… it is only a little bit mine, sir, and not to be mussed.”
He nodded, “That is well. Then what is it the lady would ask?”
“It is… a… a prayer doll.”
He nodded again, “I have heard of such things. When I was young I made visit to the Lady’s home port, and even saw such things.”
“Have you ever.. I have a student, now, who studies with me, and I wish to give her one.”
“Which goddess is this that the lady bringest me?”
She was startled by this, for the doll bore the clear markings of her symbology, but she nodded, “It is Qalaya, sir.”
He smiled, at this, a very old smile that warmed his tired eyes, “That is well enough. I told a story of her once, of a sense.”
“Really?”
HE nodded, and smiled wryly, “I was very young then. The gods, I have little enough use for them , now, but I can give a soft thought to the Old Lady Qalaya, if the Lady wishes.”
Minnie frowned thoughtfully at this, “You have had things hard?”
The old man smiled, and politely changed the subject, “The Lady is the human woman who is made a Geldscrier, yes? And who goes to see Krindre Leibsänger?”
Minnie started and went very deep red, “Yes, sir.”
“The Lady finds enlightenment in the city of Abura, then?”
“Oh, yes, yes, I have learned a great deal. But I am always finding more to learn.”
The man nodded quietly, and mused, “Would the Lady wish to see other of my work than this?”
“There is other exhibits?”
“The work of which I spake, it is in the Temple of the Ten Thousand. The Rector could direct the Lady to my work, I am sure.”
“The Temple of Ten Thousand?”
“The Lady has not heard of the Temple of the Ten Thousand?”
“No, will you tell me of it?”
He smiled, a wry smile, “It is, for a human particularly, perhaps something better seen than explained.”
x
She liked the lamps just as she liked the red lanterns of the Leibsänger. The Akvatari lit them when a work was newly ready to be seen. Some buildings seemed to have the lights lit every night - the Poesyhall, for instance. Other lamps she had seen by day, but had never seen lit.
“The lady would that we wait, perhaps?” one of the two lift operators spoke above Minnie's head, as the chair began a descent
Minnie started, hearing the two carriers of the chairlift over her head, “Oh! I did not realize we were so close! Erm… I will be some time.”
The taller of the two, a figure with a shock of white hair around the face of an adolescent whose gender Minnie had been unable to place with certainty, shrugged, “The Kunsterlampen is lit. Dairolot, hast thou otherwise to be done this evening?”
The second carrier, a woman with cropped hair and a terrible burn traveling up her left arm, shook her head, “If Quseib has his lamp lit, it will be worth seeing, I am sure.” Minnie had taken an immediate liking to Dairolot, built broad and strong-limbed like Trilly from the asylum, but with beautiful, delicate ears, as pale and pink as an oyster’s heart.
“It is very kind of you, both,” Minnie offered.
The chair came to a slightly clumsy stop. Dairolot landed quickly to take Minnie’s arm, and help her to her stick, “I beg thy forgiveness, we have ne’er lifted one so small. Humans are generally so… solid for their size.”
Minnie half-bowed, “Think nae of it, Goody. I’m fine.”
Minnie turned then and climbed the stoop of the platform - it was more climb than step, for it had not been built with small legs in mind, or perhaps with legs at all. The lamp glittered in the light, the amplifying mirrors waving their beams gently in the sea-wind of the evening.
Entering within, she came into a wide octagonal room with a high peak of ceiling, lit by an open brazier in the center. On every wall there were tiny shelves, and on each shelf there sat a crafted doll, set so densely together that their legs hung over even the curved line of the lintel itself. Minnie could not stop looking at them. Most were in the form of Akvatari, with lushly furred tails and skin of fired porcelain or silk or pale broadcloth, painted so cunningly that Minnie felt that she could see their chests rise and fall. The faces were what fascinated Minnie, however. In Zeltiva, many dolls had no face at all, simple sewn rags with perhaps a bit of paint for eyes. Those that did bear faces had a kind of emptiness to them - not an unpleasing emptiness, but a kind of receptiveness. Their gazes invited simple play: if one played the doll was giggling happily at being dandled, or if one played at comforting a fussy child, it was all the same in those eyes.
The dolls that Dairolot constructed were different, for their faces asserted the singularity of an identity, almost of a soul. One doll, a boy-child whose hands held a brandy flask for reasons Minnie could not divine, looked like a sweet-tempered child, where nearby, a miniature of an Eypharian woman looked delightfully wicked, the sort of woman one would wish to plan significant mischiefs with. The faces seemed, almost, to converse with each other, as if just out of the corner of one’s eye, the dolls whispered little secrets to each other. Minnie, with wondering fingers, took one up, a porcelain figure of an Akvatari man holding a rose with a romantic pensivity. The back felt strange in texture beneath her hand, and she turned the doll over, then startled in horror - the back of the doll’s skull was hollow, and inside was painted a face in monstrous shades of yellow and red. It peered out at the viewer with a lascivious smug cruelty that made Minnie feel sick to her stomach. She turned the doll over again, then, and set it quickly back on the shelf. A pale glimmer of that flesh-thirsty bestiality flickered, now, just inside the pensive eyes.
A very old man sat behind the brazier, on a pile of dusty cushions. His face carried a kind of exhaustion to it, a pain in the tired wrinkles around his eyes and dry lips. He spoke, and his voice was sweet, and queerly high pitched, almost a child’s voice.
“The Lady is my first guest this evening. I am humbled that the Lady could find power in my work.”
Minnie nodded, but still unsettled did not meet the man’s eye, “They are all… like… like this?”
He only smiled, “It is not a work to be experienced through the lips of the artist, you will forgive me.”
Minnie watched as her two companions each took another doll up, and in the fire-flicker, saw that these skulls, too, were hollowed - she could not see the faces. Minnie took another doll up, nervously, this one a beautiful dark-complexioned woman. The fur felt warm and needy, and her face was kind, very kind. It gave Minnie the urge to hug it, as she had held her prayer-doll in the days of her mourning. She turned it tentatively, and caught just a glance of a face without eyes and with deep anguish in it’s mouth, before she quickly replaced it.
Minnie said softly, “Do you… make… other dolls? I need.. I’m sorry, I do not mean to sound… they are… are beautiful, these but…”
“The lady,” the wizened artist said quietly, “Would make a commission? This is one of my works, but I have made many others, to speak different messages. What seeks the Lady?”
Minnie blushed, and sat on the floor by the brazier, her legs crossed beneath her skirt. She pulled her bag before her, now, and from it she withdrew a bundle, which she unwrapped. Inside, she had the old, battered prayer doll, which she presented with the man. The old man did not touch the doll , but his eyes sharpened, and he carefully slid his hands beneath the cloth, palpating the limbs of the doll like a healer probing the swollen under-chin of a child with the ague. He lifted the bundle from Minnie’s lap, then, and from his binding cloth he drew a lens that he held before his eyes. Minnie heard the roughness of his old lungs deflating, let the snuffle of the air tickle at the hair on her arms. He turned the doll back and forth, then spoke quietly, “The lady here hath not the work of a great artist.”
Minnie smiled a little at the man’s candor, “Nae, sir.”
“If the lady brings me this to repair it… I would not do so. The new art would rend the elder in such a thing.”
Minnie looked horrified, “Oh! Nae that, sir, it is not… it is only a little bit mine, sir, and not to be mussed.”
He nodded, “That is well. Then what is it the lady would ask?”
“It is… a… a prayer doll.”
He nodded again, “I have heard of such things. When I was young I made visit to the Lady’s home port, and even saw such things.”
“Have you ever.. I have a student, now, who studies with me, and I wish to give her one.”
“Which goddess is this that the lady bringest me?”
She was startled by this, for the doll bore the clear markings of her symbology, but she nodded, “It is Qalaya, sir.”
He smiled, at this, a very old smile that warmed his tired eyes, “That is well enough. I told a story of her once, of a sense.”
“Really?”
HE nodded, and smiled wryly, “I was very young then. The gods, I have little enough use for them , now, but I can give a soft thought to the Old Lady Qalaya, if the Lady wishes.”
Minnie frowned thoughtfully at this, “You have had things hard?”
The old man smiled, and politely changed the subject, “The Lady is the human woman who is made a Geldscrier, yes? And who goes to see Krindre Leibsänger?”
Minnie started and went very deep red, “Yes, sir.”
“The Lady finds enlightenment in the city of Abura, then?”
“Oh, yes, yes, I have learned a great deal. But I am always finding more to learn.”
The man nodded quietly, and mused, “Would the Lady wish to see other of my work than this?”
“There is other exhibits?”
“The work of which I spake, it is in the Temple of the Ten Thousand. The Rector could direct the Lady to my work, I am sure.”
“The Temple of Ten Thousand?”
“The Lady has not heard of the Temple of the Ten Thousand?”
“No, will you tell me of it?”
He smiled, a wry smile, “It is, for a human particularly, perhaps something better seen than explained.”
x
