What Isolde Was Not Meant to See

There was no sound inside the cage.

That was the first thing he noticed, and for a moment it was a mercy. The roar of the birds had stopped as if a hand had closed over it. The white column of wings had folded, and settled, and gone away somewhere beyond the edge of the world, and he stood on a bare floor of cold polished china in a round room with no door.

He stood because he had been taught to stand. The knees had gone out of him on the walkway. He did not know how he had risen. He knew only that he was upright, in the middle of a white circle perhaps twelve feet across, with a dome of glazed blue above him and a smooth glossy wall curving round, and that the pane through which Isolde had been beating at him with her fists was no longer there.

Isolde.

He said her name carefully, in his head, as one steps on a stair that may not hold. It held. He drew breath.

It is a trick of the birds. They keep what is said. They give it back. It will want a fear.

He had known that. He had known it from the first, from the moment he set foot on the walkway; it was an old room, an old cruelty, he had stood in it a hundred times and watched strangers weep. He had known that the birds took the dread out of a man and set it before him on a plate. He had known, too, with the cold clear dishonesty of long practice, what he would see. A slaughter. A battlefield. A heap of bodies in a courtyard. It was always the same. It was the thing he could not remember and could not stop imagining.

He braced himself for the dead.

The room stayed empty.

…

Well, said a voice. That's disappointing.

He turned his head.

It was not behind him. It was not in front. It was a voice in the curve of the wall, in the glaze, in the pale reflecting skin of the china, and it came from everywhere at once. It was dry and tired and a little amused. It was a man's voice, a baritone, slightly hoarse. He knew it as he knew the sound of his own boots.

I did think you'd manage something more original.

"Be silent," said Valerian.

Why? It's a very nice room. I've always liked porcelain. A soft laugh. You can't stop me, you know. You never could. You only think you're good at it.

The wall was a mirror.

He had not seen it become one. The china had gone dark and bright, like a pool at night, and in it, small and perfect, a figure stood: a tall man in a black coat, with a scar through his left eyebrow and a white face and a shock of black hair. It was himself. It was exactly himself. It looked back at him with his own gray eyes.

But it was smiling.

He had never smiled. He had never learned. And so the sight of those features rearranged, easily, lazily, into a warm and friendly expression of genial malice was like the sight of a dead man getting up from a bed.

Hello, said the reflection. Good to see you. It's been such a long time.

"I do not know you."

Don't you?

"I have never—"

Oh, you have. The smile widened. Think. You know my voice. You know my face. You know that when you reach out to a locked door in the dark, there's a hand on the other side, and it's mine.

He did not move. He was very careful not to. There was a tightness in his chest, and a roaring at the back of his skull, and he had the clear and terrible conviction that if he took a single step the floor would open.

Don't be frightened, said the thing in the wall. I'm not here to hurt you. I'd never hurt you. I'm the only one who's ever been on your side.

"You are the Aviary."

Am I?

"You are a bird. You are a glaze. You are what the Door has made of what I fear."

That's very neat. That's very tidy. You always did like a neat answer. The reflection leaned toward him, and the glass bulged. Why don't you ask yourself what you're afraid of? Go on. Say it out loud. You know the rule. The birds will sing it back.

"I will not."

Coward.

He flinched.

It was an ordinary word. It was only a word. But it landed in him like a spike in soft wood, because he had heard it once before, in a green-gray voice, in a gallery of lamps, from a girl who stood in front of him with her fists clenched and said it quietly, as a thing that must be said. She had said it, he thought, with love.

I did not think that was how that one went, he thought, confusedly. Where did she say that? When?

Oh, you're so slow, said the thing in the glass.

…

The courtyard came up out of the floor.

It was not what he expected. It was not red. It was gray: gray flags, gray sky, a high gray wall with a gate. It was cold, and very quiet. A dusting of snow lay on the stones. In the middle of the yard a man was kneeling, with his arms outstretched and his head bowed, in a robe the color of ash, and round him in a wide ring stood a hundred people in white.

He knew the robe.

He knew the ring. He knew the weight of the gate, and the number of the flags, and the exact pitch of the wind in the eaves. His heart gave one dull heavy knock, and every muscle in him went to water, and he had the sickening sense of having walked into his own house and found it burning.

Look, said the voice, kindly. Look at him.

The kneeling man lifted his head.

It was not Valerian's face. It was too young. It was too soft. It had black hair that fell untidily over a high forehead, and a long mouth made for laughing, and a pair of warm gray eyes, and in the left eyebrow a small white scar. It was the face of the wax figure in the cathedral. It was the face of a man of twenty-five who has not yet learned to be afraid.

He was weeping.

Do it, the man was saying. Do it now. Before I lose my nerve. Please. Close it. Close it on me.

What is he doing? thought Valerian.

What is he asking?

A woman stepped from the ring. She wore white and silver and the lantern at her throat, and she held a great curved key in both her hands, and she was crying too. She had a long, plain, kindly face. He did not know her. He knew that he knew her. His mouth had begun to form her name, and the name was not there, only a hole where it ought to be, a smooth round blank like a pebble worn by water.

I'm sorry, said the woman. I'm so sorry. We have no other way.

"No," said Valerian aloud.

The courtyard shuddered. The snow stopped falling.

No what? said the voice, in his ear, sweetly. No, you won't look? Or no, you don't remember?

"I do not—"

Of course you don't. They made sure. They tipped you down a well and shut the lid, and left you to forget what you'd done. A sigh. But I remember. I remember all of it. I was there.

"What did he do?"

Who?

"The man." He could hardly speak. "The kneeling man."

Oh, said the voice. He gave himself away. A pause. He gave me away, rather. It was a bargain. They said it would be quick.

The hundred figures in white had begun to sing. It was low, and grave, and sweet, a single rising note, and it twisted into his chest and pulled. He knew the note. He had heard it in a hundred nights, in the dark behind his own eyes, with a locked door at the end of the passage.

Don't, said another voice.

It was quiet. It was close. It was a whisper from the very back of his head, at the base of the skull, faint and rough and cracked with hurry. It spoke in the Old Tongue.

Don't listen. Don't. It wants you to open the door.

Who is that? thought Valerian.

Don't open it. She'll see. She'll see what's behind it, and she'll—

Quiet, said the voice in the glass, without heat. Quiet, you. You've had your turn.

The whisper stopped.

…

He did not know how long he stood.

The courtyard faded. The wall grew bright again, and the smiling figure in it leaned its elbow on an invisible sill, and watched him with a grin of the purest, gentlest satisfaction. It was his own face. It was the best face he had ever seen on himself. The creases round the eyes were deep and good-humored, and the mouth was kind, and he understood with a horror that was almost admiration that this was what it would look like if he were happy.

Do you know what's behind the door? it said.

"No."

Do you want to?

"No."

Liar. It said it tenderly. You want to so badly you can taste it. You've wanted to for three hundred years. You lie awake in the dark and you press your ear to the wood. You think: if I could only open it. If I could only see her face.

"Whose face?"

Why, hers. The reflection tilted its head. Your little reader. The ninth.

"The—"

The ninth to come. The ninth to read. The ninth to be so clever, and so kind, and so brave. It spread its hands. Do you really not remember the others? Eight. Eight of them. I'd have thought you'd at least remember the second. She had red hair.

His mouth was dry. "I do not know what you are saying."

No. I know. A long soft sigh. It's a mercy, I suppose. I shall tell you something, for nothing. A parting gift. She'll get to the end, you know. She always gets to the end. They all do. And at the end she'll find the door, and she'll put her hand on the latch, and then—

"Stop."

—she'll pick up the knife—

"Stop!"

—and she'll cry, because she's a good girl, and she'll put it through your heart.

He had struck the wall.

He had not meant to. His fist had gone out of its own accord, in its black glove, with all the weight of his body behind it, and it landed on the glossy surface with a flat hard crack. The glaze starred. A web of white lines ran out from the point of impact, quick as lightning. The grinning face in the center of it shattered into pieces, and every piece went on smiling.

You can't keep me caged, said ten thousand tiny mouths, in unison, in his own voice. You can't, you can't, you can't keep me caged forever.

He was shouting. He did not know what. It was only noise. He struck again, and again, and the glaze flew, and the dome above him cracked from rim to crown with a sound like a lake breaking up in spring. Behind it, through the splits, there came a light. It was cold and green and ordinary. It was daylight.

She is waiting, he thought. She is on the other side. She will see.

He stopped.

He stood with his hand against the broken wall and his chest heaving. He was shaking in every limb. The smiling pieces lay at his feet, each in its own small hollow, still chanting; and he looked at them, and at his own bruised knuckles, and at the black thread that curled round his wrist, which was glowing faintly in the dim.

She will see what I am.

It was the fear. It was the whole of it. It had been the whole of it from the first. Not the dead. He could bear the dead. He had borne them for three hundred years, as a man bears the sky. It was only that she would turn her head, with that clear level gaze, and look at him in the daylight, and know.

If I say it, it will come true, he thought.

He did not say it.

He drew himself up, slowly, and wiped his hand on his coat, and walked into the light.

…

She was on the other side of the glass.

She was kneeling on the walkway with her palms flat against the pane, and her braid had come loose, and her face was streaming. She had been there, he thought, for a very long time. Behind her, Brannoc held the girl by the shoulders; and Odile was sobbing, and the old man's face was gray; and the thousand china birds sat in their trees as still as on the first day, with their black bead eyes fixed on nothing.

The pane went up like a curtain.

"Valerian!"

She had thrown herself at him. It was so sudden, and so fierce, that he nearly fell. He felt her arms go round his neck, small and strong, and her face press into his collar, and the whole length of her shaking against him. She was saying something. It was his name, over and over, in a voice that cracked and broke. She smelled of tallow and tears and the dust of a dozen Doors. He stood for a moment quite rigid, with his arms hanging, and then, slowly, as though they belonged to someone else, they came up and closed round her back.

"I am here," he said. It came out hoarse.

"I thought—"

"I know."

"The birds took you and I couldn't— I couldn't even see you—"

"I know." He rested his chin on her hair. "I am sorry. I am here."

She drew back. She took his face in her hands, quite roughly, and looked at it, searching it from brow to chin with those wet green-gray eyes. He saw her take in the shaking, the bruised hand, the pallor. He saw the intelligence in her face begin to work, quick and merciless, as it did over a difficult text.

"What did you see?" said Isolde.

He had known she would ask.

He had known it in the cage, with the pieces at his feet. He had a dozen answers. He had all the answers of a long career in not being known. He could say: A courtyard. A man. A battle. He could say: Birds. He could say that it was a thing of the Door, and that it had meant nothing. But she had her hands on his face, and her eyes were bright and steady, and the thread round his wrist had begun, very softly, to burn.

Fourth clause, he thought. Neither shall lie in any matter that touches her life.

It does not touch her life, he told himself. It is my own affair. It is only a dream.

Tell her. It was the faint voice, at the back of his skull. Tell her. Please.

I cannot.

She will find out.

Not yet. Not yet. Not today.

"Nothing," said Valerian.

The thread flared.

It went through his glove like a hot wire. He felt it bite the bone of his wrist, and clamped his teeth, and made no sound. A thin wisp of smoke rose between his sleeve and her hand. It smelled of scorched leather and something worse. The pain was white and quick and exact, a clean unarguable punishment, and he stood perfectly still and let it go through him, and looked into her face, and saw her see.

She said nothing. She only looked down.

At the smoke curling between them from the place where the covenant lay round his wrist like a collar of fire.