Fata Morgana
Honoré Beck sucked in fragrant, artificially heated air fanned through fine grates beneath his coal-black leather soles, bating his breath while he glanced over the sable-wrapped frame suddenly halting before him.
Flawless. He marveled incredulously: the slicked-back auburn curls; the freshly shaven cheeks and bony chin chiseled by ravenous osteoclasts to twenty-five year old perfection; the tightly fitted overcoat binding musculature that stood out among Zealian men, yet not so bulky as to make him seem fit only for manual labor; and finally the hazel eyes now halting their flight to stare back at him. The rebirth had been painful, but so worth it. Perhaps.
Beck’s lungs relaxed and a string of foreign syllables whispered out with his breath.
“
Tour’hmena…”
Noticing black-draped figures swishing ghostily past shaped gold walls framing his own dark silhouette, he pressed his lips, grinding away a chapped edge noticeable only to the most discerning of roaming eyes.
“
Tour’hmena e’h sufal.”
Now we ascend unto the heavens. Such ugly hard fricatives to express so beautiful a notion, but nevertheless he prided himself on the memory of flinging an Earthbound language textbook onto the plain glass tea table in his quarters and poring over it until the order to prepare for the Midnight Waltz had circulated through his Enhasian tenement. He knew he should have spent that time sleeping. In a few minutes the entire kingdom would become locked in midnight, his sense of night and day nauseously wrecked that a quirky annual tradition might march on over the next fourteen days, even in this most despairing of years.
Adjust tomorrow, Beck had reasoned.
Prepare today. Tonight’s celebratory waltz furnished his one, best chance and his sudden ability to shape syllables derived from nightmarish cuneiform into poetry would impress her. Perhaps.
Perhaps. Or maybe she would respond with that same glacial stare she shot at him once he stepped into her language arts class late that morning, finding her propped against her desk after early dismissal. First impressions were awful things, but he couldn’t help that uninterruptible laboratory experiments often spilled over deadlines; he had come so close, but he could only work toward his life’s great goal during scant spare moments after all. Beck mulled over the shock he had felt once those oceanic sapphires – filled with sweet, earnest sympathy while he still remained locked in old age – now turned to frost as she handed him the text and bid him curt enjoyment of the Nocturne Festival. All the scrupulous late night research, all the searing pain of neuron reconnection, just so she could sail past him without so much as a second glance.
By the way, shut off the lights when you leave. He hated her for that. His subconscious had been searching for any other word to describe the feeling he experienced that morning, but this most correctly expressed it. Hate.
Shivery insight slithered down Beck’s spine and he felt something pinching into his palms. Abandoning his possibly fruitless alien recitation, he let his gaze drop from the mirror to a silver mask gripped in clenched leathery vices level with his waist, its cavernous eyes and bending lips pleading for him to loosen his hands. He glanced up at frustration-flushed cheeks and subdued his breath, wondering if others watched him and would somehow divine who and what he was. Silver, gold, and jewel-encrusted façades peeked over his shoulders, studding the royal palace’s Great Hall with just about its only color save the bare gilt walls, and even those towered in somber globelight. It was to be a solemn affair; a vibrantly tinged quill or two rose above the masks of only the most daring ladies.
Still, it was also meant to be a night of forgetfulness and Beck drew comfort from the fact that every mask remained diverted from him, huddled together in echoing murmurs or enjoying a quiet smoke; long-stemmed incense pipes occasionally withdrew from silver lips, misty plumes following in their wake.
A foyer leading to the royal promenade directly behind Beck swelled, reveler-mourners venturing indoors and swarming into the Hall’s barren expanse. Voices hushed. The crowd pressed into itself, masks swiveling birdlike atop high-collared necks in vague expectation; smokers dropped their kicked-up heels and withdrew into the chasm. When even his churning thoughts ceased, Beck could hear only soft ticking from a giant old-fashioned clock peering over the mirror. Twelve bells rung in succession. Midnight.
Somewhere behind, a voice rose in echoing hisses. Sensing eyes on him, Beck caught the faint trace of faraway emeralds glittering from behind one of the masks, thin felt-tipped fingers waving for his attention.
“Hey! Don’t stand too close to the wall…”
Beck steeled himself to spin on his heel and finally face the world again after that morning’s humiliation, but instead he fell flat on his side as the floor lurched beneath his feet. Windows boomed against high altitude jetstreams. Beck wondered at the terror an outsider might have felt while the crowd behind caught one another with excited gasps, giggling against sickening plunges and sudden shifts that lasted an entire minute. When the sky island’s orbital adjustment finally ended and Zeal’s natives could stand fully upright again, the Great Hall’s mood brightened to a semblance of former times, even dimmed wall globes intensifying while a few celebrants helped Beck to his feet.
Directing a brief nod and a tight smile at his anonymous well wishers by way of thanks, he returned to the mirror and scoffed at his reflection. How embarrassing. But the fall had done him some good. It jarred not only his body but his also his mind, knocking him out of maudlin reverie and clearing the way for memory of the news spinning like a firestorm through awakened Enhasa that afternoon. Rumor had it the assailant was armed.
Is she alright? He recalled the nebulous fear that wracked his gut with violent spasms then as he gripped a gossipy coworker, boring into the other’s eyes for a truth that threatened to smite Beck outright. Then a single reassuring word, then waves of relief washing narcotically over him. Beck shut his eyes, basking in that feeling even now. He needed her after all – needed her to be in the world, whatever she thought of him, or might think of him if she knew. His entire existence hinged on this one evening, and even though he doubted success, he had to try.
“Why,
Beck!”
Sensing thick fingers pressing through leather and spun wool layers padding his right shoulder, Beck snapped to attention and reeled from the mirror. A husky gentleman draped in silky royal blue and a sash trimmed with garish gold embroidery removed a still-smouldering incense stem from between the lips of his jade mask, then the mask itself. Even before the gentleman revealed his identity Beck instinctively clicked his heels and thumped a fist over his heart with the exclamation “Ahqz,” an acronym declaring a Zealian citizen’s allegiance to the Queen. Only a Creojeanne could possibly get away with that getup at a time like this.
The gentleman towering across from him thumped his gaudy jade mask softly over his own chest with an approving nod. Beck swallowed hard, his breath choking at the sight of the face staring him down. The Creojeanne clicked the incense stem back into his teeth, trading the jade mask into his freed paw; Beck rather clumsily tucked his own mask under an arm and accepted the offered glove with both his own.
“I’m not sure you recall me.” The gentleman’s bristly whiskers gave way to a set of sparkling incisors. “Seith Dragus Creojeanne. We spoke briefly at one of your creation fibre conventions.”
Apprehension, then a sharp grinning nod.
Seith stood back and glanced over Beck’s evening attire. “My, my, from everything I’d heard I thought you’d still be in the laboratory, but here you are dressed to go dreaming, you sly devil.”
A feigned embarrassed chuckle. “Your highness, I doubt I could have secured my equipment well enough to last the orbital adjustment whilst in use. And…” Beck feared breaking a sweat under the Creojeanne’s stifling sapphire glare and diverted his eyes to revelers flooding out onto the royal promenade beyond. “And there are times when even the hardest workers have to – live.”
The Creojeanne’s brows knitted, eyes taking sudden boyish interest in Beck’s double-breasted overcoat and the polished brass buttons running down either side. “Is that windspun leather?” Beck froze while Seith excitedly twisted a sleeve between his thumb and index finger. “By God!”
Beck’s eyes continued wandering until his heartbeat slowed. He judged his sudden pang of fear irrational; things were different now. “One could say I’ve – moved up in the world, very recently.” His eyes returned to the man addressing him, matching the confident smile he finally mustered. “How may I help you, your highness?”
Seith removed his incense stem again and Beck flinched slightly, but the Creojeanne had the courtesy to turn his face before blowing a perfect smoke ring that grazed Beck’s ear. Seith glanced over his shoulder at another flamboyantly outfitted figure. “Move along, sweetpea, I’ll be out in a second. Need to have a word with this gentleman first.”
Three bright quills bobbed above the tame matron’s porcelain mask, then disappeared into a roiling sea of black drapes surging out the Hall.
Seith wrapped a paternal arm around Beck, pressing him to make a round around the palace alongside him. “The work you’ve been doing with those –” he gestured with his hand-enclasped mask while taking a drag on his incense stem, then curled his lips into a faint cringe as his mind landed on the word, “–
creatures…has proven absolutely remarkable. Her Royal Majesty’s Seneschal shall like to tour your lab tomorrow…”
While Beck gave him an appreciative nod, his mind couldn’t help but settle on a time when Seith Dragus Creojeanne had stared him down from the opposite end of an oaken table within a royal courtroom. Glistening quartzite walls, reverberating shouts. While this evening’s Seith spoke soothing words of enhanced position, rising pay, and lecture circuits, Beck’s mind slipped into vehement accusations.
What this man proposes is outrageous! In fact, I daresay it is seditious,
sir! Sieth had violently shaken his incense stem in the scientist’s direction then while he addressed a consul perched upon a stone dais.
Narrow eyes and raised brows maintained utter neutrality on the consul’s face, which turned to the scientist.
Have you a response, Doctor Bekkler?The scientist had nervously hunched forward in his seat, trying to shift his gaze gradually and unnoticed to a man slouching easily in rich robes to the consul’s left; though youngest in the room, Alphard Simaelsus held the most power, if only because the arm draped over the back of his double-seat bench cradled emptiness that day. Simaelsus lifted his eyes away as if to deny him the promised signal, but then shook his head and sighed, a gesture easily disguised as some unrelated fancy happening to float through the king’s mind.
Seith had used Bekkler’s silence as an opportunity for a parting jab.
I ask that the Royal Consulate strip this man of his title and delete
these trumped-up results utterly! They are an affront to our people.The consul’s eyes flitted toward the Creojeanne briefly.
Duly noted, your highness. Waiting a moment more, he added:
Very well then. What is the monarch’s judgment?Simaelsus had leaned forward with casually folded hands.
The records of Doctor Bekkler’s creation fibre research will remain within the scientific community for further debate and analysis, and the doctor shall keep his title.So be it. The suit is dropped, and the Royal Consulate’s judgment final. Baleful eyes had drawn the consul’s attention.
Laws are laws, your highness. Her Royal Majesty having retired the week, His Royal Majesty’s judgment alone suffices as the monarch’s. Crimson robes shrugged upon his shoulders for good measure.
The scientist had drawn a relieved sigh but his aging nostrils caught a heavy whiff of incense instead; Seith had instantly been in his face once the bar adjourned. It must have been the sickeningly sweet pewter smell wafting through Beck’s keen olfactory system that triggered powerful memory from a previous existence. He twisted his head, feigning interest while the Creojeanne went on about a mundane something-or-other, but frightening reverberations echoed through his brain and drowned out Seith’s comradely banter.
You may think you’ve gotten away with this travesty, but Simaelsus is no more than a consort in the end. Two things are certain. No Creojeanne is related to those sniveling subterranean rats. And no Creojeanne will ever, ever
refer to you as “Doctor” again! Seith had twisted the doctor’s coat, wrenching him close enough for a venomous whisper.
Continue down this path if you must, be we have ways of making your life miserable.
Seith had stormed away, denying their king so much as a glance while he brushed past. The scientist felt compelled to stand to attention on creaking joints when Simaelsus sauntered over wearing a hearty smile, waving away incense hanging in midair before grabbing Bekkler’s shoulders. The scientist wondered how the grip of a man over thirty years his junior could feel so fatherly, but maybe that was the mark of a good king.
You performed brilliantly, old boy.Beck’s previous incarnation scoffed.
But I didn’t utter a word…Simaelsus had attempted to stifle a laugh but it erupted in genial chortles.
Exactly! He drew the scientist to him and gave his porous spine a few bear hug slaps. How jubilant the king had been that afternoon, and how furious the Creojeanne; Bekkler was amazed at how a simple search for scientific truth could produce such vibrant emotion in others. To the doctor, the experiments had been merely a game with whatever unseen creative force had designed his ancestors, but these political men inserted justice and sin into the mix. When Simaelsus withdrew, he eyed him mischievously.
How about spending an evening at the palace? Her Royal Majesty is out, so guests are no problem. Shikari champagne to celebrate our victory, what do you say? The scientist had croaked something about needing to catch up on his research after having been diverted by this legal spectacle.
Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you never live. There was no refusing, and it was, perhaps – no, definitely – the most critical night in the scientist’s seventy-six year lifespan. He would see her there for the first time, singing to Shikari drumbeats, and the intervening six years were a whirlwind tinged with perfect blue. He never would find absolute incontrovertible proof of the relation between Enlightened and Earthbound, but the Creojeanne had been right about one thing: by the end of the week he met her, they would refer to Bekkler as ‘Guru.’
A squeeze on Beck’s shoulder drug him into the present. Seith’s trim beard leaned close to his ear. “I understand this new Guru, this…” he paused for a drag of incense, “
Melchior, doesn’t much care for your methods. He’s even submitted a detailed request for your demotion. But you don’t have to worry about that.” Seith spun around Beck and lay his paws on either side of the younger scientist’s ears, the incense stem hanging in one and the jade mask in another. He leaned close but his attempt at a fatherly aura felt so false. “We’re going to protect you, Beck, if you just make this happen for us.”
Beck glanced away and into the mirror. They had made an entire circuit around the palace and now the Great Hall yawned empty save two smokers who preferred conspiratorial whispers to the promenade’s relative bustle. “I thank you, your highness.” His dark eyes drifted back into the Creojeanne’s. “I’ll await the arrival of Her Royal Majesty’s Seneschal at 0900 hours.”
Seith grinned widely, thumping his mask on his chest before lifting it to his face. “Ahqz!”
“Ahqz.” Beck relaxed his heels only after the Creojeanne turned for the promenade. He sensed he had agreed to something potentially vile, but after tonight, however it turned out, what would it matter? For now Beck was more interested in straining his ears to catch the quiet conversation of the smokers while feigning attention to his appearance. The black-robed figures surmised that neither the Queen nor the Gurus would leave the palace’s inner confines, and Beck’s stomach sank until he caught a hint of gold-buckled shoes tapping lightly from the promenade gateway and toward the mirror, bearing a swishing royal blue robe and trailed by a luxuriously-coated lavender feline. The brother.
Beck looked over himself in the mirror for real this time, eyes flitting between a stray strand hanging over his right brow and the purple form heaving itself into a huddle just inside the Great Hall. For seventy-six years and three months the scientist never left a lock out of place, but he thought better of it and pulled at his mask’s elastic strap. The auburn bang sliced needle-thin through his mask’s silvery forehead, lending him a wild mystique, something Simaelsus might have considered stylish were he still with him.
Gold and porcelain masks spewing incense watched Beck approach the royal promenade. As he neared the boy encircled by a continuously prancing lavender blur, he caught dreamy whispers blowing through unkempt azure locks.
“That’s right. I’m gonna study up and be the best Seneschal ever…” The brother giggled over his gleeful secret while he snatched in vain at the feline parading past his bent knees. He paid no heed to Beck towering over him.
“I see –” Beck flinched at the surprise echo grinding through his mask, then looked down again at crystal eyes blinking up at him from an effeminate face still lacking the sturdiness of manhood. “I see you have a new friend.” He knelt, sharing in the youth’s admiration of that sleek creature darting playfully to and fro. “Did the Princess gift him to you?”
“Yea. Fast, isn’t he?” The brother snatched empty air and the cat pirouetted behind him. “I think he learned some dance moves out there. His name’s Alfador.”
Hm. Behind the silver mask a pang of sad familiarity washed over Beck’s face in a wry smile. Hearing its name, the feline froze mid-stride between its observers, one paw raised, head turned, ears perking up. They both wondered at the creature’s deep violet stripes: it was an extremely rare color and Beck surmised it had come from a lineage bred to genetic perfection. If he really wanted, he could probably make a living selling duplicates if he collected a sample. “Do you call him ‘Alfy’ for short? I bet he’d like that.”
“You think?”
Stupid, Honoré, he mentally scolded himself. But the brother didn’t cringe tearfully as he’d feared, keen eyes still studying that trim plum coat. Maybe it was something only a select few knew. He reached toward the statuesque animal’s ears but the head suddenly swiveled in his direction with bared fangs, its back arching horribly. His hand recoiled and he felt a sudden terror – had the creature identified the mind that lay behind his mask through some sixth animal sense, and judged him horrible? A true aberration of natural order…
The brother seized on Alfador’s distraction and scooped the cat into his arms. “Alfador only seems to like me. He does that to everyone. I wonder why.” Alfador’s body rumbled like a soft engine while the boy scratched between its furry ears.
“…Oh.” Beck eased back on a heel, eager to extricate himself from that animal’s presence without appearing rude now that he’d had the audacity to approach the brother. “What’s this I hear about you becoming a great Seneschal?”
Detached crystals suddenly beamed at him with serious concern. “You didn’t hear that from
her, did you?”
“Oh, no, you were saying it just now.”
The brother’s eyes returned to Alfador, which he cradled with a contented smile. “I never really cared about magic class. Until today. Royals have to be tough as nails or else they might get snuffed out in an instant.”
Beck swallowed, eyes carefully locked on the purring creature so that his perked interest wouldn’t appear morbid as it really was. “You were down there with the entourage today?”
“Yea. It was so scary.” Then the brother must have felt a need to compensate for his anxious whisper because he leaned forward for a proud declaration. “But I’m going to be her
Seneschal.” He announced it with all the fervor of a child planning on becoming an operatic superstar, and when he realized he had sent the word softly bouncing off every wall in the palace, he lowered his voice to a demure murmur. “From now on I’m gonna study so hard, I’ll beat whats-his-name, and then
I’ll be the star pupil.” Alfador yawned wide and flicked a strawberry tongue. The brother looked up with a mischievous gleam. “And you know how a new Seneschal has to fight the previous one, right? So you know what that means?” He leaned forward dramatically again and Beck angled an ear toward him. “Someday I’m gonna spar with Dalton on the Showground, and I’m going to
kick-his-ass!”
The brother eased into snickering convulsions and Beck chortled too, if only because he realized a youth his age couldn’t giggle like that under normal circumstances – the boy had grown tipsy. Only so many people could possibly have slipped him a glass of brandy without Nanashi assassins popping from dark corners out there, and with the Gurus and the Queen confirmed to be locked deep within the palace, that meant –
Beck lifted his eyes toward the promenade with a soaring chest, squinting at dark shapes slinking to soft synthetic beats and shifting past charged dreamstone lights that outlined a wide disc jutting away from the palace and into twilit sky beneath a full moon.
“Pa never really liked him anyway.”
Beck’s eyes flicked back to the boy before him.
“Pa…” The brother’s voice cracked, trailed off. He sniffed and turned his face away.
Great. Beck ventured a glance over his shoulder at the smokers, still watching him further down the Hall near the mirror. He wondered if they were actually secret palace guards.
What a piece of work you are, Honoré. Caught in front of a royal who’s not only crying, but drunk. And the brother of all people. He imagined the smokers rising and demanding his identification with metallic voices, and how it might lead to a verification of his birth token, and oh! That would be a mess, even if it was superbly forged. He turned forward again. The brother had diverted his gaze to the floor and Alfador twisted to peer up at him, imploring that the still fingers resting on its white belly would start scratching again. In Beck’s experience only inspiration could cure a dolorous mood, so his mind vomited out the only thing it truly knew.
“It’s your dream, isn’t it?”
The brother blinked moistened eyes at him. “Huh?”
Beck lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Becoming Seneschal. It’s your – dream.” He dared to reach out to the animal again and this time Alfador accepted his gloved hand running along its ears. “The capstone of your life. The thought of it gives you the power to carry on and burst through every obstacle, no matter how bleak things seem at present.”
The brother cleared his throat. “Yea. You’re right, I guess it is. I’m gonna be a really great Seneschal someday. Nothing will stop me.”
Beck hung his wrist over his raised knee. “One’s dream can be a strange thing. Sometimes it seems like a mirage that escapes you no matter how hard you work for it. But you have to stick with it, because there’s no alternative. Maybe some day…” He tossed a scoff into his mask, suddenly realizing how boyish he himself had become in the years since he first visited this palace. His eyes wandered a while before his mask cocked to one side and regarded the boy with renewed curiosity. “You’re not Seneschal class, you know. Far above it. How will you deal with that?
Cobalt brows furrowed, smooth youthish lips pursed. The boy had probably never considered it before; so many bothers to confront along the way. “Well,” he said after a long pause scratching Alfador, “I’ll just have to change the rules then.”
Laughter rung inside Beck’s mask.
“What? What’s wrong with that?”
Leather shrugged tight around the silver mask as Beck shook his head. “Nothing.” He scanned the brother with sudden admiration. “Maybe changing the rules is the easiest part.” Feeling inspired himself, he rose. “Well Janus, as one dreamer to another…I salute you. Ahqz!”
His boots thudded confidently over glossy marble toward the promenade but stopped when the brother called after him. He swiveled; Janus’ face turned toward him over purple wrap. Alfador’s head poked up and peered at Beck above the opposite shoulder.
“Who are you, anyway?”
Beck’s dark eyes flitted between Janus and the masks floating in incense clouds beyond. “We are all anonymous tonight. I assure what you’ve shared with me shall remain behind this mask.”
Janus nodded in thanks for the courtesy. He had gained the brother’s trust. But could he gain hers?
