A Million Bodies by Erica Pensini
I instinctively touch my body, my hands trembling, and I am about to about to ask questions the answers to which I need and yet fear, when a shattering clamour invades the room. Voices, clattering metal, horses neighing and stomping their hoofs in frenzy, flood the air with anxious vibes.
"My child-" Father starts, when the door opens abruptly.
"My king, the enemy has reached the castle," a man announces, his ruddy face flushed and his hand gripping the hilt of a sword hanging from his thick leather belt.
Chapter 25
"This way," Father urges me, opening a trap-door I had not noticed till this moment.
I let myself slip inside. When my Father closes the door darkness is almost complete and yet, somewhere at a distance, I perceive a presence and a flickering flame.
For an instant I hold my breath, stiffening against the rough walls of the tunnel. Should I trust this presence?
"Iris?" I hear.
I attempt to find a link between the sound of this voice and a familiar face.
"Iris?" the voice calls out again, and I realize that who is calling out my name is Matt, one of the two volunteers.
"Matt, what are you doing here?" I ask surprised.
I wonder how we all ended up in the same point in time and space. Isn't the machine supposed to move people along different domains of time and space?
Matt seems to sense my unspoken question, because he tells me, "Our stories are intertwined, that's why we're meeting here."
"Are you alone?" I want to know.
"Wilhelm is with me," he replies.
The flame flickers with increased intensity as Matt and Wilhelm approach me.
"But?but did you know this?" I mumble.
"This? You mean the fact that our spatial and temporal domains have common regions?" Wilhelm asks, speaking for the first time.
"Yes," I reply.
"I didn't know for sure, but I suspected it," he tells me.
"Why?" I inquire.
"Because you picked us to do this journey. Deep down you were the one who knew," he observes.
I try to ponder his words, but too much has been happening for me to think straight.
"So where do we go from here?" I wonder out loud, not really expecting an answer.
"Follow us, the journey is about to begin," they tell me.
Chapter 26
We walk in silence for a while. There are burning questions I need to ask, and yet can't. What holds me back is perhaps the fear to know, perhaps the fact that I don't fully trust my guides, or yet again pride. I want to be able to count on my intelligence alone to find the key to the mystery that concerns my family.
Matt seems to sense my thoughts, and slowing down he turns my way.
"Arthur, not us, is the one you should beware of," he tells me.
"Arthur?" I ask, incredulous.
"Yes, Arthur," Matt iterates.
"Why do you say so?" I inquire.
"You think your uncle, Sir Ludwig the Second, in the enemy, and so does your father our king. Your uncle is not on your father's side, or on yours, and yet he can be a good source of information. Nobody but him knows about Arthur's machinations," Matt tells me.
"How can you possibly believe what my uncle told you?!" I exclaim, enraged and relieved at once.
"Iris, the queen is sterile," Matt starts and pauses.
I start. They too know my secret. I feel exposed, suddenly trapped in this black tunnel where the only source of light is the torch Matt is carrying.
"You needn't fear, Iris. Your father would have not put you in our hands unless our loyalty had been proven beyond all doubt", he reassures me.
"What does Arthur have to do with the queen's condition?" I want to know.
"Arthur has been the royal family doctor for a long time," Matt starts.
"Right, so he couldn't cure the queen. This makes him at most incompetent, not guilty," I reply defensively.
"Maybe he did more than not curing her. Maybe he caused her infertility," Matt says, insinuating a doubt.
"Maybe, or maybe not. What is the rationale for your accusations?" I challenge him.
Matt does not reply though, and turning his back to me he marches forward, hastening his steps. I follow, stomping angrily, head down. I am about to repeat my question, when the air stirs, the darkness turns into dim light, and the heavy silence transitions into a suffused sound.
Matt and Wilhelm stop, and look at me for a long moment.
"Come on over, Iris," Wilhelm tells me at last, "This is what you need to see."
Chapter 27
A mirror of water lies in front of me. It is crystal clear, and its surface mirrors a sky, endless and pristine, populated by foamy clouds floating in its immensity. I look up, my eyes searching the sky reflected in the water, but all I find is whiteness, vast and beyond definition.
The scenery is beautiful, and yet I sense there's a dark mystery behind it. My mystery, the mystery of my family.
I turn to Wilhelm and Matt, my gaze questioning and pleading at once. Wilhelm smiles at me, and takes my hand.
"Be brave Iris, you have nothing to fear. We are here with you, but we cannot be you. You alone can read the secret words," he tells me.
I approach the water, cautiously, observing its surface with anxious eyes. I expect something to happen, but the water lays immobile and silent before me. I squat in front of the water, and I begin talking to it. I cannot say if my words are resounding in my head or if I am speaking them out loud.
Please tell me, tell me?whatever it is, please tell me?
I close my eyes. Head hidden between my knees and hands tight on the base of my neck, I feel nothing but a small bunch of fragile bones. I start to sob, letting the tears dribble down my pale skinny legs.
I am still crying when I detect a whooshing whisper. I raise my head and through the tears still fogging my vision I see the water turn deep red and sizzle, letting out black filaments of smoke.
I gape at its evolution, mesmerized.
Then the bubbling subsides, and the surface turns into a smooth plane of darkness.
I see Arthur, standing in front of a woman's bed and handing her a flask filled with a green fluid.
Drink, my queen
My queen
Queen
Een
The words echo around me, Arthur's voice distorted and unfamiliar.
"Stop Arthur, stop!" I scream, covering my ears.
My eyes are wide open though, and I see, clearly and unmistakably, the queen take the flask and bring it to her lips.
I wish I didn't have to see, and yet I am unable to divert my eyes from the scene.
The queen raises her eyes towards Arthur, as if to ask a question her lips cannot articulate. Then the tension in her body melts down, slowly and almost voluptuously, and seconds later she is fast asleep, lips parted.
With swift movements Arthur produces a small bag I hadn't noticed till this moment. Holding a bottle under the queen's nightgown he moves his fingers along her body, tracing patterns I do not comprehend. In her sleep the queen gasps, the lids of her closed eyes cringe, her face turns into a mask of despair.
I stare at her, holding my breath.
Arthur continues tracing obscure figures on the queen's skin, till her body arches, her legs stiffen and her nails carve into the palm of her hands so hard that rivulets of blood drip on the white bedsheets.
Arthur lifts the bottle he had been holding under the queen's nightgown. It is filled with the same green liquid the queen drank, but in it floats a small black entity.
Arthur observes it, as if amazed by its presence in the bottle, and I observe it with him.
I notice something in it is pulsing. It has a heart, yes, a heart, and it is then that I realize that I am looking at an embryo, albeit a distorted, sinister, unfamiliar embryo.
"And now, Ludwig, we'll bring you to a place where you can no longer hurt us," I hear Arthur say, smiling in calm satisfaction.
Arthur seems to hear my voice from whichever reality he is into, because he stops short, and looks first at the queen and then at the room, with an expression suddenly filled with apprehension.
"Iris?" he calls.
"Yes," I have the time to say, before being drawn in a primordial world of blackness.
Chapter 28
In the darkness I perceive a rhythmic pulse, steady and reassuring, to which the beat of my own heart conforms. I have not felt so whole and protected as I do now since I can remember.
I hear mother's voice. I recognize it, although it resounds in a peculiar way, as if I were listening to it from inside a soft shell.
"Will she be able to carry this burden?" she asks.
"She is strong, she can do it," a second voice says.
It's Arthur's voice. It too sounds muffled, distant.
"She cannot protect her brother alone, you will have to help her, Arthur. Promise," mother commands.
"I promise," Arthur says.
"There will come a day when she will have to discover the secret she carries, and that day you will have to be by her side," mother continues.
"I will," Arthur vows.
I sense something stir beside me, and I realize that I am not alone.
"When Iris will be outside my womb she will be exposed to a world where I will be able to offer only limited guidance," mother says, her voice sad.
Outside my womb: the words reverberate within me. I am in my mother's womb.
"Don't worry," Arthur says, and from the vibrations I receive I sense that he must have touched her. Perhaps he is holding her hand now.
I perceive the edge in mother's tension dissolve.
"Lie down now," he tells her.
The presence beside me stirs again, and this time it touches me. I feel love for this presence, it is part of me. I move, and as we come in contact for the third time I realize that I am beside my brother.
Mother lies down, and I sense the shift in her body, the change of direction in my own posture.
"Hand me the potion," she tells Arthur.
There is a long silence.
"Hold my hand now," she asks him.
I hear a gurgle, a flow of fluids, the potion seeping inside mother's body.
Then a sudden wave of heat gushes around me, and it is so intense it almost burns me. Mother screams, but it is not pain she is feeling, rather heartbreaking sadness for what will come next.
The heat burns hotter and hotter, and then, at once, I sense myself swell, almost to the point of bursting, and my cry resonates within me with shattering force.
Then the heat subsides, and my swollen self adjusts, with painful slowness, to its new self. I hear three heartbeats beat in unison, one inside the other, like those of a human matryoshka: my brother's heartbeat inside me, my own heartbeat inside mother, and the strongest heartbeat - mother's.
In the darkness of this womb, for this one moment in time, I feel immense clarity. I know who I am: I am sister, daughter and mother.
Then something breaks, and mother begins to scream. The softness around me turns into painful spasms, it twists and contracts as if it suddenly refused my presence within it.
Why? I need to know. Why is it rejecting me?
"Push, Kathrine, push!," Arthur encourages mother.
Mother's labour has started.
Chapter 29
A flood of light burns my eyes. The outside air suffocates me and the world suddenly turns into a hostile place where I am no longer safe. I feel weighed down by an old burden I can no longer remember.
Mother, mother, mother?I cry in the inarticulate language of new borns.
"Iris, calm down?Iris," I hear Arthur's voice try to sooth me.
"Why? Why did you do this to me? Why did you get me out?" I scream, ignoring his attempts, gripping his arms and shaking them with anger.
"Iris, what is happening? Where have you been? When Matt and Wilhelm came back you were not in the time machine. And now I'm finding you here, right beside me. Thanks God. I tortured myself all night, I couldn't fall asleep for the longest time and at last I collapsed, not knowing what to expect when I'd wake up. And no, you are not going in that machine without me ever again. Understood? Never," Arthur speaks in frenzy. Now he is the one who's gripping my arms.
Arthur's grip and voice shake me out of the trance in which I awoke, and I realize where I am.
"Sorry?are you ok?" I ask.
"I am not," Arthur retorts, "I am most definitely not".
"Because I went missing?" I ask, my voice soft now.
"Yes, because you went missing. But that's not all," he replies, his tone snappy.
"What else, Arthur?" I want to know.
"What else?how can I phrase this?perhaps I am not at all who I think I am," he replies, his tone angry and disheartened at once.
"Tell me what happened," I insist.
"Bloody time machine. This would have never happened had we not come up with our most brilliant invention," Arthur curses.
"Arthur, tell me what happened," I repeat.
"Wilhelm and Matt must have learned something about me, something I have forgotten. Whatever it is I've done, it is not a good thing. I think I've betrayed you. There you go. Now you know too," Arthur says.
"Why do you say so? What have you done?" I ask.
"Wilhelm and Matt did not want to get close to me after getting out of the time machine. They said I was not to be trusted. They pointed their fingers at me and said, 'Most of all, stay away from Iris'. God, that hurt. I always thought that if I'd let you down I would never be the same person again, and now I found that I actually did it. When you didn't come back I thought?I thought-" Arthur starts, and does not finish.
I struggle to believe in people's love for me, perhaps even in Arthur's love for me. I doubt him even if I love him fully, or perhaps precisely because of that. I suppose it's a mechanism of self defense. And yet, seeing him coiled in a corner of the bed and tortured by the thought of having betrayed me, I am touched. Tears pool in my eyes and I hug him tight. I wouldn't ever want to let go off this embrace, and I wonder for how long Arthur will let me hold him.
The answer is: not for long.
"I must go see someone now," he suddenly says, getting up.
"Who do you have to see?" I ask.
"Her name is Kathrine, and she's a psychic," Arthur replies, and leaves before I can utter a single word.
Chapter 30
I feel like a caged animal sitting here at home while Arthur is out there to meet Kathrine alone. I feel excluded. I wish he could trust me enough to share his fears with me, even if I realize that he needs to be alone to face them because I am the object of those fears.
Who is Kathrine, by the way? Is the psychic's name a pure coincidence or is my mother playing the chameleon again?
I am restlessly pacing back and forth when, out of the blue, I start to think about an abandoned mine 100 miles or so south of here. One day Arthur and I had driven past it, and I had felt the urge to stop.
Arthur had asked me why it was so important for me to enter the mine, and I had shrugged, unsure about the answer.
"But how do we get there by car?" he had objected.
"Slow down, there must be a way," I replied stubbornly, and sure enough a moment later I spotted a side road with a ragged sign marking its destination.
Mine 503, it read.
"There!" I exclaimed exultantly, but too fast.
A couple of miles later we found a barricade closing the road.
Arthur slowed down, stopped the car, and sighed.
"Sorry Iris. It's not meant to be," he told me.
"But can't we just leave the car here and walk it?" I insisted.
"Iris. No. There are times when it is ok to give up, you know?" Arthur told me, his tone patient, as if he were lecturing a kid.
"No, I don't know," I replied.
"Of course you don't, but now I'll turn the car and we'll head home," Arthur said, his tone conclusive.
I dropped silent, frowning.
"Come on, don't be upset," Arthur added, patting my leg.
Why wasn't it meant to be? Why was the road closed? There are hundreds of closed roads, but there was something eerie about that specific road being closed. Or maybe I am just imagining.
I sit on the bed, eyes closed, trying to reconstruct the details of the place.
Mine 503: I wonder why the mine is named this way. Then flashbacks dart through my mind. 5:03 a.m., read the clock in the car when we left for Monasteriumburg. 5:03 a.m., read the clock in the car when we reached it. 503 read the keys of the bed&breakfast where we had stopped there.
I shower hastily, grab the car keys and head out to find the mine.
Chapter 31
This time the road to Mine 503 is open, the barricades have been moved to the side, and I drive past them.
I stop, and when I open the window to landscape the place a wave of heat invades the car.
The mine is a reversed crater, a black cone streaked in red, filled with silence. The air, liquefied on the cracked soil, stands immobile.
Old machines are lying around, scattered as solitary dormant beasts, waiting to be revived.
There's a building not too far from the mine. The conveyor belts are still loaded, as if someone had turned off the switch in the middle of the operations, or if time had frozen at once.
I pull up the window and start driving to the building, moving slowly on the rugged ground. As I approach it I realize there's a paper sign on the door, modern and mint clean, strangely avulsed from the style of the surroundings.
I get out of the car and motion towards the door.
"Open art day, come on in!" says the sign.
I am about to push the door, when I see it open before me. I leap backwards, caught by surprise.
"Hello there!" says the girl who opened the door with a reassuring smile, as if she had somehow been expecting me.
"Hello?" I reply hesitantly.
"I'm glad you decided to drop by," she continues.
I study her good natured features, her orange hair, her green eyes, her apron.
"May I offer you a homemade rhubarb lemonade?" she asks.
I remain silent, adjusting to the disquieting and yet captivating vibes of the place.
"If you want to make a donation the money will go to a charity, and if you don't the drink is on the house," she continues, earnest and constantly smiling.
"Of course I'll be glad to give a donation," I reply promptly.