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whenwerewe
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warning for child death in moderate detail and enormous quantity of body-horror
The second time I was born, I clutched my daughter in my arms. I held the whole world away from her with my hands and my ribs and my skull. Three spears were thrust into my back, and a fourth into the neck had killed me.
While I was dead, the fifth had taken her, too.
As I blearily cracked open my eyes, already stiffening with rigor mortis, she trembled beside me. Her last breath was drowned out by bickering.
Behind, the men who had killed us argued loudly in a foreign tongue about what to do next. The tallest of them, disfigured by a twisted arm and muscles like an ox, gestured violently towards the hills we’d descended from. Perhaps some of my band had escaped. It was bitter comfort to me now.
I rose slowly to my feet. I held her by the wrist as I had so many times before, and she fell limply by the arm beside me. She was too light.
What? Oh. I’ve never had one of you try to comfort me before. That was a long time ago, anyway.
The mud-brick village we had tried to raid was not yet called Uruk, and the men were not yet the Sumerians. Even the pale and weedy grass they gnawed at was not yet really wheat. They were a stunted lot, and might have been pitiable if they hadn’t taken my daughter.
Don’t look at me like that. We were starving. They had been pushing us out of the plains and into the high valleys all my life.
Not that any of this matters. I’m beyond trying to claw at the moral high ground.
My fellows were scattered around me, dead to the last. We didn’t know how to fight their numbers, their corded slings and taut bows, their weapons of strange and shining stone. They’d died so easily.
So I woke them up.
One by one the dead rose. Seized joints cracked with unexpected flexion, tendon and sinew hesitantly peeled apart. Their blood pooled thickly at their feet.
The men turned around to look at me, and them. Their faces were portraits of dread. When I have trouble sleeping I think of them and drift off. Then — there was all the tedious struggle, and all the tedious begging. But I had them in the end. One made it two hours down the packed dirt path that was not yet the world’s first road, throwing his brothers behind him, in cowardice or appeasement.
And there was my daughter. I carried her all the way. She was slight, and stiff, and as the sun set she began to cool until by touch I could not distinguish her from the earth in which I lay her.
There is nothing pretty about the dead, no matter what the fanatics say. They’ll rant at you as long as you care to listen, about beauty, certainty, symmetry. They’re just insane; anyone who would do this is, really. I was ready to leave the meat of my daughter in the earth. But just before I did, something rose out of her, that was not breath, and clung to me. I thought I might as well keep it around. At the time I didn’t let myself think something so stupid, but it would be nice to have her back.
Yes, that’s why I’m doing this, obviously. It’s always nice to have perceptive material. But try not to yell too much, it strains the diaphragm; you’ll want that nice and fresh for later.
I had lost other children, of course. You think of it as the ultimate tragedy. None of you can guess how lucky you are. Even just three centuries ago… it was something mothers expected. Which is not to say that it was ever easy. I would have called all of them back to life, if I could. But only her soul remained to me, and I am less sentimental about these things than most.
Mhm. Still sentimental enough to cut you up.
Oh? Well, this is the last time you’ll be able to speak for a while, so I might as well.
Once, when I was the same age my daughter was when she died, I ran into a leprous hundred-headed snake. Not that any of us knew what leprosy was in those days. But its skin was peeling and ulcerating; great blisters and cancers riddled every inch of exposed muscle; its eyes were spasming as it begged me for a drop of blood.
And because I was young and stupid, I cut open my palm with a flint and let it drink, and it skittered off, begging me not to speak of its appearance to anyone. When three days later I ran into two beautiful men, fire-skinned and stinking of what I now realise must have been incense, I told them everything they asked me. They laughed in a voice like cracking ice and promised me their Queen’s blessing.
That probably had something to do with it.
It now occurs to me they were definitely Mab’s. I think I took a side in their civil war by doing that. I had a lot of headaches over the topic, later.
Anyway, that’s where it began. Now, nod if you’d rather be blind for this next bit.
We have both been reshaped by men. This sweet little thing is nothing like the huge beasts I knew in my youth. It became domestic; I went the other way. My dead razed village and town for generations, made me the enemy of all the settled peoples. But I returned to the ruins to find five more sprouting. I simply could not keep up. So when they offered me copper and iron, which I barely understood, I accepted. When they showed me the strange shapes they’d carved into their clay, I learned. And I found that I had a new name.
There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?
Just a little joke! I don’t get to talk to a lot of people. If you try to be funny near a Karcist they look at you like you’re an alien.
Really, though, you’ll be fine. The vertebra fused back into place; you’re practically good as new.
Look, just don’t pay attention to the lathe. No, no, if you keep panicking yourself like that I’ll have to paralyse you again. Just think about something else. This really shouldn’t be hurting that much.
Do you want to hear more about me?
I’ll take that as a yes.
It was during the Hussite Wars—
Stop looking confused, they weren’t occult. You people just don’t know anything about your ancestors these days. I’d be angry if I hadn’t known how worthless they were personally. This was around the fourteen-hundreds. Is that good enough for you?
Don’t wail or I’ll block your trachea. Thank you.
Now, as I was saying, I was searching for a fleshsmith. This is skipping millennia of my life, but they weren’t very dense millennia. Fill in about six hours of me narrating executions of uncouth men on the road, if you want. I had come to Esterberg, the hidden city. In those days there were far less humans, and many more faeries, and those odd ape-things. It stank like dead fish and liceridden fur. The city, like all cities in those days, was an open sore in the world. But it was the only place I could find someone who could stitch my daughter’s soul back into a body.
Yes, despite ten thousand years of wandering, I did not exactly have my finger on the pulse of the occult world (what a hilarious expression!). I had brushed up against the edges of Fae activity — and immediately fled — and I had run into fleshcarves and cogkindred on the road or in the hovels the peasants gave me in return for their lives. But I was only vaguely aware of, for example, the existence of the Daevites.
It does not help that I did not hold, and indeed still do not hold, with cities. I can tolerate a thousand people living together, but once you start to lose count that’s a bad sign.
Sorry, this is besides the point. The tendonwork is distracting me. There, you should be able to speak again. Now, where was I?
I had found after endless searching a suitable fleshcrafter, brought him my daughter’s soul and a spare girl-child, and after deploying enough threats I was sure he wouldn’t simply dispose of her errant spirit I set out into the city.
I wanted to see if I could find some useful contacts, perhaps some tips on the location of other nexuses. To my later dismay, it turned out the city was quite firmly antiroyalist territory. And you know how Fae get; they just have this way about them. They learn things they have no right knowing.
So I walked into the square with my retinue—
I kept about two dozen of the dead with me at all times. Had them in low-brimmed hats, big cloaks, stuffed them with herbs and so on. Mostly I got away with claiming to be a wandering priestess, though it didn’t work in Esterberg, of course.
In the square there was an eyeless beggar. And by eyeless I mean great divots had been sunk all over his bared skin, so you could see the half a hundred weeping sockets that must have once seen unimaginable sights. When I walked past him, he pointed straight at me. Every single face in the square turned to stare right at me within three seconds.
Now, you understand, I was in what is today Poland. I had been born near Iraq. I was used to standing out. It wasn’t anything like today, obviously, but I got little stares, kids either knew I was the funniest thing around or squealed when they saw me, you get the idea. They thought I was a Turk, which got a laugh the first time they said it to my face.
What it felt like when that entire square, probably five thousand people, turned to bore into my head? I cannot describe it. I barely heard what the beggar said next. Something about crimes revealed and reconciled, a trial before the House of the Inventor, pardon-by-years. I couldn’t really pay attention to the words while everyone looked at me. Blank and confident, like men who hold shining stars in their hands, and know that not only can you not save yourself, you cannot save anyone.
So, yes, I admit it, I panicked. I ordered my dead to lash out and fled in the terror. Anyone who died I raised too, to buy me my hour. It turns out that for all their staring most of the people in the square were basically civilians. And two dozen doesn’t sound like many, but if they don’t die when you kill them they can do a lot. So today I think they have a little plaque where the beggar used to sit, for the thanatotic riot of 1433. Killed about eight hundred, supposedly.
While the citizens ran about like headless chickens I collected my project and dispatched the uncooperative Karcist with my favourite trick.
That was the fifty-seventh time I died.
I fled the city with her in my arms, all my dead lost to its militia, the happiest I’d been in centuries. To call back a soul, well-formed, from millenia of sleep? Every two-bit reanimator called it impossible.
Oh, come on, you know me better than that. I wouldn’t do this to you for fun; I’m not such a sadist I’d risk the Coalition’s wrath. Obviously something didn’t work out.
My daughter woke up. Her flesh was as cold as mine, but that was no burden. She would never be hungry again, and if she ever left me I knew I could bring her back. I would try to teach her, somehow, and let her do the same to me. We would pass through the ages of man together. That was the first time I really thought about my power, in detail.
Yes, try and pull what remains of your face into a smirk, very classy. I was raised when the cutting edge of technology was writing. It took me fully three thousand years to realise the priests of Ashur and Marduk could not literally talk to the gods. I had to essentially invent the entire notion of necromancy from scratch.
Well, thank you! But of course I don’t seem that old. If I did, I would have gone insane a very long time ago. Can you imagine what it feels like for me to see a warhorse, an automobile, a spacecraft?
Wait, wait, sorry. I’m letting you rile me up. Back to the story.
My daughter was the child I’d loved, in every detail. Exactly every detail. She did not gain new traits, or lose old ones. It was as if her soul was frozen in amber. Something about the way it connected to her newly-conquered flesh was defective. She could puppeteer the body, but the body could not embed memories in her being. So she remembered only the last month, at best. She is an eternal youth, and can never grow.
For a while, I thought her perfect as she was. Though I had not known it, this had been what I was missing all those empty years. The two of us lived out the Thirty Years’ War in an obscure hut, mother and child (much later did we learn this was also the Fifth Occult War). I taught her a hundred times, to weave, to write, to feel safe. She did not feel an empty belly even once, and occasionally I entertained her by dismembering lost landsknechte.
But I couldn’t stay satisfied forever. Every mother wants to see her daughter grow into herself. She should have been my equal, and risen a queen of the dead alongside me. We would resurrect each other cyclically, until the last city fell.
You people never fail to irritate me. No, don’t flinch, just — if you want to ask something, ask it! What’s the point of this ridiculous “May I ask” nonsense? It’s not as if tiptoeing around will make me any more merciful.
Oh.
You want to know that, do you. Why do I tell these stories in such varying tones. Why am I so cavalier about everything except my daughter. How insightful.
You know, I don’t think you’re being totally sincere in your questioning. I think you’re trying to make some sort of point. Perhaps to imply a false and saccharine equivalence between her and other people.
So let me answer your question with a question of my own: what do you think happens if you supercharge a person’s amygdala for five minutes? Do they just have a heart attack? Let’s find out, shall we?
I have had no small number of encounters with the abode of quiet. However, I dare only the shallows, for fear of what might wait for me where the sun does not reach. They say the survivors of the Queen’s wrath fled there, and perhaps some wait for me still, growing old and hungry.
It’s alright, words can be hard after going through that. I mean, empirically. I haven’t experienced it myself.
Now, good news. This next part will actually be totally painless! I’m going to anaesthetise you. It might also scramble your internal body-model, though. It’ll give you, what’s the word? Dysphoria? A shot of that, real concentrated, but over quick.
That expression there is… Let me tell you another story. This one might even give you context on what’s happening to you. Concentrate on the words, please.
So I was in Chernobyl—
Oh, alright, fine. I’d spent the past three hundred years looking for someone who knew how to help my daughter’s situation.
Well, I say that, but it’s not strictly true. I spent fifty years searching, and then I realised I’d have to do it myself. I learnt at the feet of the great soul-sages; I did favours for children of the Scarlet Fool; I even managed to win a lesson off one of the Wild Hunt on a bet. I began to put together something like a theory of necromancy. I was inspired by what was in the air in those days. All those philosophers, those men of science! There was something romantic about the idea the world could be understood.
I knew firsthand it was false, of course.
So I set out on a course of experimentation. That’s when I began collecting material in earnest, and yes, that’s why you’re in here, you poor thing.
Anyway, as I said, I was in Chernobyl. After the Russians cursed the land, they evacuated the whole town. The margins of error for that kind of thing are large enough to lose a lot of people. Ripe pickings for little old me.
What do you mean “talk like that”? I talk like myself. If I wasn’t able to change with the times I would have lost my mind a long time ago. Even last century, there was barely such a thing as a Foundation, and now they’ve fallen apart. If I adapted any slower the pace of events would overtake me, you understand?
Right, so, outskirts of Chernobyl, going shopping for new material. I couldn’t bring my dead everywhere, the way I used to. The stink was too obvious, the scarves and hats too blatant. There were cameras metastasising on every street corner. I had to struggle just to carry one or two along with me those days.
So there I was, walking around in a ridiculous coat and sunglasses, dragging this briefcase by my side. My daughter was never the type to cling to my skirts. She was away somewhere in the city. It wouldn’t do to spend all my time worrying about her survival, so in the past hundred years I’d fit her with a few extra features.
If you are about to call me a bad parent, then be warned that I might start trying to be a good one, starting with my research efforts.
No? Excellent.
I’d had my fair share of encounters with what are now hilariously called “normalcy preservation organisations”. Bloodless and wretched things. They’d tried to chain my daughter more times than I can count. I could accept that they’d come after me, but she was just a slip of a girl. Their cruelty knew no bounds.
One moment I was walking down an emptying street, and the next three agents leapt out from a decrepit old house and blew a neat triplet of holes in my torso.
Of course by this point I was really quite hard to kill, but the three of them were backed up by two brutes in hazmat armour. They caught me about the neck with a loop of rope like some kind of animal and emptied their magazines. I was still conscious, but there’s not really a lot you can do with gaping holes in every major muscle group.
They dragged me into the base they’d set up in their shack, which inside was done up like some kind of watchpost. I recognised vaguely the equipment and the general style: they were with Her Majesty's Foundation for the Secure Containment of the Paranormal, or one of its descendants.
This—
It was the worst I’ve ever felt. Even the day I lost my daughter, there was a kind of lingering apathy. I let the waves wash over me until my head only rarely broke the surface, and I almost forgot what loss was at all.
This wasn’t like that. They were right there, in the room with me, and I couldn’t move. She was out there, waiting for me, and when she came to find me, and she found them, and I would have to watch, if she found them would they even capture her or just pulp her fucking brain again—
Oops!
Sorry. It’ll reattach, don’t worry. And anyway, you’re not going to miss it for long.
Hmph.
Suffice to say I wasn’t feeling great. They put me in cuffs, and were preparing some kind of sedative, which might even have worked. But…
One of them had taken my briefcase. And you know how they are. Their type just cannot stand an unanswered question. I don’t know who they thought I was. If they’d known exactly who they’d found they would have burned it. But instead poor idiot mister Foundation popped the locks.
The layers of the dermis aren’t actually connected very strongly, you know? Once you puncture the membrane somewhere, you can work your way through the subcutaneous tissue pretty easy. Especially if you’re using, say, human jaws.
He reeled back and half his face was missing, torn off by the thing in the case. He screamed — I think he was trying to cry for help, but it had gotten into his muscles, too — and the rest of the agents opened up on my poor valiant servant.
Then she arrived. Must have tracked her mother by scent, or perhaps she was playing stalk-and-catch. I was so proud of her.
Just walked in through the front door, quiet as could be. I think the field team were a little off kilter for some reason, so they didn’t shoot her. One of them screamed at her to get back while the other three tried to wrangle my homunculus. He actually ran over and tried to grab her and get out of the house!
Well, my daughter popped his head off, of course. Then they turned their attention to her properly, but now there were only three of them against two of my dead and my dear girl. It was quick, and then it was slow.
Two of them surrendered. I was worried they’d hurt her, but she was only superficially perforated. At worst it was inconvenient. I’d have to reattach her spinal cord where a stray round had pierced it to get her lower body functional again, that was all.
As soon as I broke my restraints I embraced her and praised her for that display of bravery. We left at once, with the two captives restrained and lugged with us. One of them begged us the whole way to release his subordinate. I told him I’d do his job for him and reprimand her and he made such a noise. It was a great pick-me-up after everything.
When we got back I scrapped him for parts — in fact, look back there, you can still see his spine wriggling in the pneumatitrator! Isn’t it kind of cute? No?
Oh, be sullen, then. When my daughter gets like this I give her a chocolate and some leftovers, but I suspect that wouldn’t work on you.
I would have found somewhere for his inferior to make herself useful, too, but it turned out the paralytic had made its way to her lungs.
Ho hum. He did get his wish; that was my good deed for the decade. Afterwards I took the kid out for a treat. Blue steak in Lyon.
And, oh dear, speaking of hypoxia I do think your airway is blocked. Why didn’t you say any—
Right, you don’t have an isolation chamber for your larynx. My bad. Can you hear me right now? Were you even conscious for the back half of my story? It’s awfully rude of you to choke on your blood while I was doing all this helpful work on your intestines, and I shall have my recompense, I say.
Ha. Oh, what a mess.
I can’t get another one of you, it’d be such a headache. I hope you can tolerate a little brain damage.
The cities played at worship, but the only thing they truly cared for was counting. They loved measure and tabulation more than their own children. So when I saw them leave an an entire city behind with no hesitation, I knew things were serious. It was a rich age for me and mine.
Are you back? Hm?
Oh, the slurring isn’t too bad. I was worried I’d rendered you incogent. Monologuing is only fun with a lucid audience.
Well, that episode wasn’t all that interesting, regardless. I was just explaining how much I love my daughter, indulging in my motherly urges and so on. I know you types aren’t a fan.
What? Strike a nerve?
Hm. You’ve gone soft in your old age, regardless. No, not — don’t look at me like that. Yes, you’re very young, and I’m sure that hair is attractive to… somebody. But you, the Foundation, whatever you call yourselves nowadays. What you’ve been getting up to is positively pathetic. The other day I heard a “Vanguard” pharmacy put out a call for vampires to come in for conditioning treatment! Did you get so lazy you decided you’d try and get all your enemies to just go willingly to their dissection and death? If even one of the daughters of the great Impaler appeared I’d eat my shoes.
I can’t hear you; the nerve damage has really got to your tongue. Try harder.
Listen, I like to joke with the material, but that’s ridiculous. If you want to tell me a lie, make it believable. You’re so awful at subterfuge I’m probably doing good by increasing the competence of your agency.
No, come on, this persistence is pathetic. Even if you did somehow hoodwink ten bloodsuckers into showing up, you don’t need to keep up this pretense about, what do you call it, “harm reduction”, around me. Look at me! I’m not going to judge you if you admit you scattered their ashes in the river.
I have to respect your commitment. Maybe you even believe it. The Foundation were always masters of self-deception. I thought Vanguard had turned a new leaf. This has been an educational exchange for the both of us.
Ah, but their new era has not been without its upsides. I am a great appreciator of your people’s newfound openmindedness. If they’d adopted this attitude from the start, we’d all be deathless by now. To think of how much easier things would have been if they hadn’t clung to their idiot notions… I could strangle those pitiful Overseers.
Still, I didn’t say no to the amnesty when they offered it.
Oh, you look like a kicked puppy. Yes, one of their liaisons offered me a pardon if I’d agree to test on their mimicflesh and swear off the good stuff. I did try it for a few months, but it’s just not the same. There are all these obscure occult properties, and the mimics don’t even scream properly.
Yes, and that’s you caught up to the modern day, more or less. I skipped over a variety of encounters with dullards who thought they’d be the one to kill me, but nothing worth telling.
I absolutely do have to do this. My daughter’s memory is up to a nice round two years, which is about ten thousand short of what I’ll accept.
Oh, good job on the smile! I thought your zygomaticus was halfway to necrosis, congratulations. Can I ask what brought it on? Would it have anything to do with the dozen Coalition jackboots fumbling out of their base toward my pretty little abode?
You remain an awful liar, dear. Of course you know what I’m talking about. You called them here with that goetic beacon in your pericardial cavity. Or maybe not; the world is full of coincidences.
And there goes the grin. It’s a shame, it looks good on you. Really shows off your incisors. I think those will be your main input into my next project.
Every single sneering warden thinks they have me pegged. Here’s a doddering old lady from before we invented writing, who’s escaped capture by slinking away from everything dangerous, burdened by an imbecile daughter barely capable of feeding herself. I’ve seen what you write about me. You have such interesting opinions about my work. And even though I have slipped through the nets of a hundred generations, every two-bit Director is just so sure he’ll be the one to bring this antique into the reliquary that is her rightful place. Chernobyl was the closest you ever came, and you were still pretty damn far.
I told you: if I could not adapt to the world as it is, I would have gone mad eons ago. And yet every time one of your technicians invent some new gimmick you try to catch me with it. The Scythians tried riding me down with their precious cavalry, old Rameses had a go with chariots, Metternich cornered me with grenadiers, De Gaulle’s goons poisoned me with some fancy paralytic. All of them are decorating the east wall of the lab, now. Don’t look! I just said I want your teeth, and the vomit does terrible things to the enamel.
And your precious Coalition, with their newest hack. These unbinding mechanists have made a right mess. You know a month ago, the thrall they were interviewing on TV, where they had to keep redacting segments of her life story because her master was a wanted criminal? That was me! I mean, the embarrassment I felt, I just wanted a hole to open up and swallow her. Having my reputation tarnished in front of half the country by a spare worker! I’ve been wanting to get my hands on an unbinder and see what makes them tick for just so long.
So: thank you for putting together this whole operation. I was worried they might not bother, but it seems Vanguard has rubbed off on them. They were just so filled with humanitarian concern that they brought one! So sweet. I should have the countermeasure up by next week.
Why on Earth did you step up as bait? Did you think they’d pull you out while you were still recognisable? Because I can promise you that even if they did cage me, you are not in a fixable state.
Hm. I do not think the word for what you have done here is bravery, exactly; even we Levantine hunter-gatherers had words for “suicidal”. It should make your cerebrum an interesting reagent, if nothing else.
Ah, and here they come. They’re just going through the chaff upstairs. I do wish you’d never invented gunpowder. Those things are just far too loud.
Eve! Come on upstairs, dear. There are some very rude men upstairs.
Yes, isn’t she just adorable? It took me a while to work out the telescoping ribcage. Put that away, darling, you’re getting lymph everywhere. And those fingernails! I’ll have you know they can hit a sparrow at half a kilometre.
Just go on up, sweet.
Dinner’s served.
When I was a child, I dreamt of the paradise I was promised my spirit would one day rise to. There would be plentiful beasts, fruit on every tree, and night would never fall. Perhaps your cities do have some worth, after all.