And Who Will You Be?

Ксения Воробей

And Who Will You Be?

Now You Can. But What Do You Want?

The Valmont Herald

It is becoming difficult to walk through our city without being offered something else to buy or invest in. Yesterday there was a button shop here; today they are offering you a new face. A monster floats above the entrance to the cinematograph. The man who was asking you to lend him something until payday only the other day now explains that you are simply afraid of anything new, and invites you to invest in his enterprise.

I should still ask for my money back first.

But on the whole, I understand them. For the first time in their lives, people can try their hand at magic without first spending years studying runes and seals. Buy an Interpreter, and set about something that used to mean finding a magician, explaining your idea, and hoping that afterwards he would at least name a price rather than show you to the door.

Now you can try it yourself. This is usually where things become interesting.

Suppose you want to show your friends a sea. Not one you have visited, but a sea of your own: pink water, dark rocks, fish glowing beneath the waves. The image need take up no more than half the table. You can already imagine your guests leaning closer, and somebody calling the others in from the next room.

Telling an Interpreter “I want a sea” is easy. But as you touch the wand and direct what it is to do, you have to hold in your mind exactly what you want to see: how the light falls on the water, where the shore ends, how a wave moves. And then you discover that you remember the sea perfectly well, but not the wave nearly so well. It is moving all the time, after all. You never meant to make it. You were looking at it.

You do not like your first attempt. The pink is too bright; the water looks like jelly. On the second, the colour is right, but you want to get rid of the rocks. On the third, you finally understand why you needed them.

By now you are hungry and feel as though you have spent the evening unloading a cart, although you have done nothing but sit at the table. Your own strength runs out after the Interpreter’s energy. You could eat, rest and come back tomorrow. That would be sensible. But you have just worked out what is wrong with the wave.

An accumulator will come in handy. Then, perhaps, another. Best put the receipt away for now: it looks particularly out of place beside the pink sea.

And suddenly it works.

Light passes through the wave; the water darkens beside the rock. One of the fish turns, and for an instant you can see the whole of its slender, luminous back. You call the family. They do not come at once, and you are already shouting for them to hurry, growing cross: can they really not put their own business aside for a minute?

Someone is bound to say that fish do not come in those colours.

But someone else will sit down beside you. And you will both watch the water moving slowly above the familiar tabletop.

The evening may cost more than you intended. And afterwards the sea will vanish: temporary spells need energy, and you cannot keep them going for ever. The accumulators and that same receipt will be left on the table. And you had wanted to invite the woman next door.

I should be upset. Particularly if that were the moment someone chose to ask how much it had all cost. And yet, if I were one of the guests, I should want to see the sea before it vanished.

A beginner with an Interpreter can now manage a miracle for an evening. Creating spells that will serve reliably for years is another kind of work, and it still has to be learnt. Only the audience is already applauding the first miracle, while the person who spent half a lifetime studying stands beside it, listening to questions about why he bothered to study so much.

I dislike how easily “there is an easier way now” turns into “all your earlier efforts were a waste of time”.

Still, some of the masters have already taken up Interpreters themselves. A master would probably get the wave right sooner. And would probably spot another dozen mistakes in someone else’s work that you and I would never notice.

Behind all these changes lies the joint work of Quentin Doromio and his wife Eliana: he created the first wand, she the runic workings of the device. Now their invention is being used to open workshops, stage performances and try on other people’s appearances. The ventures grow ever bolder. Not all of them succeed. Some you very much want to catch before the accumulators run out.

If you decide to try the pink sea, invite me while the fish are still swimming. I shall sit beside you. I will not argue about their colour.

And what would you like to try yourselves?

Madeleine Renard

Chapter 1. The Golden Crabapple

Quentin Doromio was drinking wine on the roof of his house and had absolutely no intention of coming down while there were still people below.

It was a warm evening. The sunset was fading over the river, and lamps were being lit along the embankment. A queue was gathering outside the new cinematograph; above the entrance, a sea monster kept leaping from a painted wave, to the unfailing delight of passers-by.

The wand lay beside him on his folded coat. Quentin had arranged it so that the handle did not touch the roof tiles, and now kept adjusting the coat, although there was nothing there to slip out of place.

“That creature’s tail doesn’t work,” he said. “Look. The water parts, but the tail sticks straight out. How do they think it moves?”

“That’s the third time you’ve watched.”

The voice was hers: a little languid, with that breath before a laugh which he had once heard through the clatter of the workshop.

“Because it’s the third time they’ve made the same mistake.”

Below, the monster dived, dousing a painted ship with painted water. The people in the queue clapped. Quentin turned away. A good show used to need so many people: actors, artists, mechanics, at least someone who understood movement. Now they dreamed up some absurdity, showed it through an Interpreter and took people’s money.

“They’re enjoying themselves,” said the wand. “It was quieter at your lecture on bearings.”

“Forty-two people came to my lecture.”

“Thirty-nine were ordered to attend as part of their duties. I counted.”

Quentin was about to object that she should have counted those who stayed after the interval, and faltered. He had already made that qualification. To her. Many years ago.

He had built her voice into the Interpreter himself. He knew which conversations, habits and arguments remained in its accumulated context; he knew his wife was not in there. Yet whenever he was about to answer, he turned his head.

“We filmed horses to understand how they fly,” he said after a pause. “Real ones. Here you can invent anything at all, even a ship with legs.”

“I wanted to show our recording to people too. And you explained that they wouldn’t understand the movement of the wing.”

Quentin remembered. He also remembered how she would stand by the window, trying to demonstrate that wingbeat with her arms while he searched for the right page of calculations. She would laugh when he finally turned round.

“At least the horse flew,” he muttered.

“It did.”

He reached out as though he could touch her fingers, found the cool handle and drew it closer. The wine had grown warm. Quentin drank some anyway.

A damp breeze came off the river.

“Aren’t you cold?”

He did not wait for an answer. He tucked the edge of the coat around the wand and looked back at the lights by the water.

Leaves rustled in the garden below the roof. The paths had long since grown over with grass, the lilac was edging towards the windows, and the fountain belonged to the frogs. Only the apple tree in the middle looked as though someone tended it: silvery bark, spreading branches, small golden fruit glowing in the dusk.

His wife had brought home the sapling many years ago. Then she had wanted the tree to blossom twice a year, its flowers to smell of snow, and its apples to bring wonderfully vivid, pleasant dreams. Next she had decided to protect the harvest from thieves. Ever since, the apple tree had devised a fresh mischief for everyone: it had made one boy sneeze green sparks and given another a magnificent moustache.

He started to turn towards the tree, then looked back at the river. He could still remember his wife searching the branches for new buds in the mornings, lifting her skirt clear of the wet grass. He did not want to remember now.

“Quentin, there’s someone at the gate.”

He reluctantly looked down.

“She’s pretty,” the voice added. “At least hear what she’s come for.”

Quentin covered the wand with the flap of his coat. A woman in an elaborate hat stood at the gate. She read the PRIVATE PROPERTY sign carefully, opened the gate, knocked at the house and, receiving no answer, set off to inspect the garden.

The stranger stopped beneath the apple tree and picked a fruit. Quentin bellowed at her not to touch it. She did not respond; perhaps she thought someone was shouting in the next street. A second apple went into her basket. She had to stand on tiptoe for the third.

The third apple vanished into the basket. Green smoke began to creep out from under the roots.

* * *

Madeleine Renard had no intention of stealing. That morning she had completed the formalities of her third divorce and promised herself to spend the rest of the day sensibly: buy some pastries, go home and get on with her own life, without trying to work out why it had turned out so stupidly again.

Three boys outside the pastry shop had spoiled her plans. With the air of experts, they were assuring one another that a Golden Crabapple grew in the mad scientist’s garden: eat one and it was as though you had rested for a week, and afterwards you went about happy even if someone gave you a beating. One reported that his uncle had tried one and had not sworn for two days. Madeleine found this especially intriguing.

The boys themselves had not eaten any apples. According to them, the tree could not only give joy but punish thieves, and differently every time. Madeleine decided that two samples would be quite enough to test. But when she saw the small, translucent fruit, she could not resist picking a third.

Then smoke came billowing out of the ground.

Madeleine recoiled. The smoke was climbing the trunk, and there was a smell of hot resin. She had not the slightest desire to stand beneath a burning tree. She gripped her Interpreter, pictured herself putting out the fire, and shouted:

“Water! Quickly, lots of it!”

The crystal’s glow dimmed. A cloud the size of a dining table appeared above the apple tree and emptied its entire contents at once. The smoke vanished, the garden turned into a bog, and Madeleine was soaked down to her petticoat. The pastries in her basket ceased to be pastries. The flowers on her hat drooped disconsolately.

“Who the fuck makes wishes like that?!”

“I was putting out your tree,” Madeleine replied with as much dignity as she could muster.

“Putting out what?! It sent up smoke to make you return the apples! And you’ve flooded my garden. And yourself into the bargain. Dry your dress, now you’ve got your wand out!”

Madeleine wanted to say something exceptionally rude, but instead took her wand, touched the crystal and dried her clothes. Her hair remained wet, but she decided to deal with that particular nuisance later.

A woman’s muffled laughter came from above.

“Quentin, I think she was worried about the tree. That’s rather touching, if you forget she’d just robbed it.”

Madeleine looked up at the roof, but could see no second speaker. The scientist was speaking somewhere in the direction of his own feet, then adjusted a coat lying beside him. Deciding that his family affairs were no concern of hers, she turned towards the gate.

“The boys said these apples give you energy,” she threw back as she left. “And supposedly make life more cheerful.”

Quentin suddenly roared with laughter, so loudly that he nearly spilled his wine.

“Energy?! After those you’ll…”

Madeleine noticed the bottle beside him rock and roll across the tiles.

“The bottle!”

Quentin was still laughing, and only her expression told him she was not joking. He lunged backwards, missed, and nearly slid off the roof himself. The bottle fell from the eaves. Madeleine stepped back, then thrust out her basket. It jerked her arm downwards; a paper bag crunched inside. The glass survived. The pastries did not.

“Excellent,” said Quentin. “Now leave the wine by the door and clear off.”

Madeleine peered into her basket, where the bottle lay among the ruined pastries.

“You’ve crushed my dinner. I think I’ll keep the bottle as compensation.”

“That’s my wine! And you drowned the pastries yourself!”

“But they had at least kept their shape.”

He was left spluttering with indignation. It gave her enough time to reach the gate.

“Wait!” Quentin roared. “I haven’t finished telling you what the apples will do!”

“And I haven’t finished telling you what I think of your hospitality!” Madeleine called over her shoulder, and disappeared through the gate.

“She’s taken my wine,” he said at last.

“You still haven’t explained about the apples.”

“I tried!”

The smell of wet earth rose from the garden. Quentin looked at the empty place where the bottle had stood and, for the first time that evening, gave serious thought to putting a lock on the gate.

* * *

By the time Madeleine reached the bridge, the town festival was drawing to a close. The musicians were packing away their instruments, the workmen were taking down garlands, and beneath the bridge lay a barge piled with soft bundles of scenery. A broad awning hid it from the street.

A fair-haired woman could be seen on the outer side of the parapet. She was holding on to the railings with one hand and trying with the other to reach a rope caught on a wrought-iron curlicue.

“Brook, let go! Let me jump down!”

Madeleine saw the narrow stone ledge beneath her feet and the dark water below. She did not know about the barge. The basket of wine was left on the pavement, and Madeleine was already running towards the parapet.

“Don’t!” she cried, catching the woman round the waist and pulling her backwards.

The woman gave a cry, the rope slipped from her fingers, and a hook flew out of its loop with a metallic clang. An enormous paper sun, which the workmen were trying to take down, swung open to its full width and fell onto the bridge, covering both rescuers.

The woman emerged first. Her dyed blonde hair was dishevelled, a white streak of paint marked her cheek, and her blue eyes shone with indignation.

“Whatever are you doing!” Madeleine was still holding her sleeve. “So young, so beautiful… You’ve your whole life ahead of you. Live a little for yourself, at least, if you’ve had enough of everyone else!”

“I was going onto the barge,” said the woman. She stopped tugging at her sleeve and looked down, then at Madeleine. “There are bundles right below the ledge. I was going to jump down, untie the lower guy rope and pass it up. And they’ve pulled the wrong end three times now!”

Her indignation did not last long, however. Imagining how it must all have looked, she put a hand over her mouth and suddenly burst out laughing: loudly, infectiously, with entirely unfeigned pleasure. Madeleine tried to remain serious, but the head of a workman protruding from beneath the overturned sun defeated her. They both laughed.

“Miss Bonnie, what are we to do with the frame?” came a voice above them.

Bonnie wiped her eyes and turned to the workmen.

“Don’t fold the rays. The canvas separately, the frame edgeways towards the stairs. Brook, leave the winch for now.”

“It won’t go through edgeways, Miss Bonnie. It’s narrow by the railings.”

She looked at the stairs.

“You’re right. Take off the bottom two rays. Just mark which one goes where.”

She almost added that she would put everything away herself, then suddenly felt the ache in her shoulders. She still had to wash the paint off her hands; she had gone to bed with it yesterday because she had fallen asleep over a list, and in the morning her hands had stuck to the sheet. Bonnie opened her fingers, checking for splinters. The workmen were already removing the rays. This time she let them finish.

A workman crouched beside the fastenings. Bonnie began to bend down to help, then noticed Madeleine, still holding her hat by its broken brim.

“Are you hurt?” Bonnie asked. “I know a good doctor, and a milliner can mend your hat. You were trying to save me, after all, and it would be quite disgraceful to let you leave in this state.”

Madeleine opened her mouth to decline the doctor. Bonnie was already asking how far she had to go and whether she had dry shoes at home.

Someone moved the abandoned basket. A small golden apple rolled out and came to rest beside Bonnie’s shoe.

“Oh, look at that!” She picked up the fruit and turned it in the light. “Is it real? It looks like a little lantern.”

“It’s real. Magical, they say. The owner’s dreadful, but I don’t suppose the apples are to blame.”

Bonnie peered into the basket with interest. She saw two more apples, a bottle, and some cream which had once been pastries.

“I think,” she decided, “we ought to discuss this over tea. Surely you won’t pretend you don’t need tea after today? Oh, and your hair’s still wet! You definitely need tea!”

* * *

Bonnie’s flat smelled of flowers and glue. There was a bouquet by the window, and another lay on the sill in wet paper: its owner had not yet found a vase. Thank-you notes showed white between the stems. Gifts of little figurines crowded the shelves, and the table was covered with letters which had to be moved to make room for the cups.

One remained beneath a saucer. Bonnie pulled it out, read the first few lines and laid it aside.

“That’s for tomorrow. To help with the lists. I only promised to have a look; it won’t take long.”

She said this before Madeleine had had a chance to ask anything. The tray was weighing down two more envelopes. Bonnie moved it so that their corners would not be creased, and finally sat down.

Madeleine cupped her hands round her cup. After the cold water in the garden and the run across the bridge, the hot tea made her drowsy; she wanted to sit in silence, but Bonnie was already looking at the basket.

Madeleine told her about the boys, the tree and the bottle. When she came to the pastries, Bonnie cautiously peered into the basket.

“What were they before the garden?”

“Two almond. One cherry.”

“Now they’re one big one.”

Madeleine sighed and reached for a teaspoon.

“Are you really going to eat that?”

“I paid for them.”

Bonnie laughed, but did not try to take the basket away. She only moved the plate of biscuits a little closer.

When Madeleine bent down for her handkerchief, a chain with a ring on it slipped out from beneath her collar. Bonnie noticed, but did not immediately dare to ask. Her guest caught her looking.

“I got divorced today,” she said. “For the third time. The same husband every time; you may laugh.”

Bonnie did laugh, before she had had time to decide whether it was proper. Madeleine smiled, a little surprised herself at how easily the words had come. That morning, at the office, she had spoken them in quite a different voice.

“And what is it about him?” Bonnie asked.

“He’s handsome. Very intelligent. Sometimes he’s so good at what matters most that you forget everything else. Felix Renard, psychiatrist and psychotherapist. A splendid doctor. Just never ask him to choose you a present.”

Bonnie knew the surname. She had heard little about Renard himself, but was already picturing a dinner: a small table, music, nobody else. She began explaining how it could be arranged, took out a pencil and turned over the nearest envelope. “Musicians—ask Madeleine” appeared on the paper before Madeleine had a chance to object.

“Don’t arrange my fourth wedding for me.”

“I only meant dinner. We could leave out the musicians.”

Madeleine laid her hand over the envelope.

“Bonnie, I got divorced today. For the moment, pastries are quite enough.”

Bonnie still held the pencil. She looked at what she had just written, drew a line beneath the word “musicians” and stopped: it was not the musicians Madeleine had refused.

“Forgive me. The way you talk about him, I thought…”

“You can speak well of someone without wanting to have dinner with him today.” Madeleine lifted her hand. “Shall we open some wine?”

The neck of the rescued bottle protruded from the basket. The wine, she said, would now be awkward to return: the scientist would think she had not liked it. Bonnie managed to bring two wine glasses and some cheese, but was not allowed to change the tablecloth. Madeleine put her glass beside a little tea stain and asked her to sit down at last.

The tea grew cold. The lamps outside had long been lit, and only rinds remained of the cheese. Bonnie took off her shoes, tucked one leg under her and listened to the story of a brooch which an acquaintance of Madeleine’s had mistaken for a military campaign medal.

“I wore it,” said Madeleine, answering the unspoken question. “He chose it. Took his time over it. That was especially hurtful.”

They laughed again. Bonnie poured the last of the wine into their glasses; the empty bottle struck the table with a dull thud.

“And what happened this time?”

Madeleine was still smiling. The brooch was easy to talk about; what had happened was harder. She wanted neither to complain to a woman she barely knew nor to make the divorce sound like a bit of fun she would be sure to change her mind about tomorrow.

“We decided to spend an evening together,” she said. “We decided in advance. I even put something else aside.”

She had been sorting through old letters: for forty years, a woman had been receiving money from a man whom, by all indications, she had never known. There might have been no particular mystery to it, but Madeleine had already found two dates that did not agree, and had spent the whole day looking forward to telling Felix. He loved inconsistencies like that; sometimes he noticed things she missed.

“He came in with a parcel. An enormous one. I thought it was for me and was already frightened, but it turned out to be a painting. He’d bought it for both of us.”

Bonnie waited for a description. Madeleine paused, remembering.

“A stag. A woman with a harp on its antlers. At first I thought she was stuck, but it turned out she personified the music of the forest.”

Bonnie put down her glass. Madeleine waited for her to finish laughing.