Radiance

“And what about me?” Horace St. John draws himself up, with great difficulty, on a jewelled cane. His broken, bow-tied legs wobble. “I couldn’t sleep. I committed the great sin of insomnia. The unforgivable transgression of taking a walk instead of having a piss inside my own tent.”

Erasmo St. John puts his broad hand on his cousin’s back. It is cold; Erasmo doesn’t mind.

Calliope hangs her head. “You were an accident. We offer an apology—only the seventh we have ever made.”

“Oh, apologize to Horace but hang the rest of us, is that it?” cries Mariana Alfric, mould flaking off of her skin and floating into the air.

“But what happened to me?” Horace begs. His voice drops to a whisper. “I don’t remember dying.”

“What do you remember?” Anchises asks.

“Leaving my tent. I walked through the village; I smelled the sea air. I thought about my equipment for the next day. I kept walking—I figured Raz would show up at some point, so I went slowly. I walked past the memorial and saw something out there beyond the houses. Beyond the old carousel. A patch of green. Not that much is green on Venus, you know. A green patch, and yellow sunlight as bright as noon, and blue water. It was a pond surrounded by long grass and bluebells and squishy mushrooms. I dipped my hand in and tasted it—the water was fresh. I thought a swim in anything other than saltwater would feel wonderful. I popped in, just for a moment.”

Mr Bergamot does a sad little soft-shoe. “Remember the pin,” he says mournfully.

Calliope speaks up. “We hold countless worlds together. When one of us dies, edges begin to fray and come apart. Worlds shear off, bleed into each other, fly away into nothing, burn out. We leave a hole when we go. Through such holes, other places seep and stain. Shards of those places stick in the wreckage of us. Songs you have never heard, movies you’ve never seen, words as unfamiliar as new planets. Other voices may cry through, orphan voices, unstuck from the mouths that made them. Voices that began in other versions of yourselves and became lost inside us, now seeking a way home. You saw another of our places. If you want to know, it’s a tiny lake outside Tonganoxie, Kansas. It’s not an important place. In your world, it does not even exist—not Tonganoxie, not Kansas, not the lake. You walked toward it. But your body didn’t walk into the bluebells; it broke in ten places on the walls of a well on Venus. You did land in the sun, though, for by the time you landed, the frayed edge had stitched itself up again with you inside it. You were not on Venus anymore. You drowned in Kansas. We do not exist everywhere at once. We are always moving. Pieces of us linger when we leave like a trail of breadcrumbs. Like a staircase. Some parts of us stayed in Adonis after we tore it apart looking for our young. Arlo walked into one. You fell through the edge of another.”

“If I may,” interrupts Madame Maxine Mortimer, removing her sleek black blazer and folding it over the arm of an apricot-coloured fainting couch. “These little get-togethers go much more smoothly when we allow logic to lead the way. We simply cannot have the recriminations before the crime—and the criminal—has been fully examined. We must lay the events out upon our operating table, pour ourselves another schnapps, and dissect them properly.”

Anchises St. John runs his gloved hand through his hair. “I quite agree, Madame. I did say there were two possible solutions, if you recall. Another round, everyone?”

“Mind if I run the bar, Anchises?” Percy Unck asks. “I made my first pennies as a barman in Truro before I managed to stow away on the Jumping Cow and get my arse to the Moon.”

“Anything for my granddad.” Anchises yields magnanimously. Cythera Brass hops up on the bar and perches there, swinging her legs like a kid. Amid much grumbling, the company gathers at the bar.

Severin laughs and holds out her glass to be filled. “You never told me we were Cornish! Or stowaways.”

“Isn’t that the point of leaving Earth?” Percy purrs in his own hidden Cornish accent. He spent so long hiding it away—it feels good to let the old boy run. “Leaving yourself, if you didn’t like yourself—and I didn’t. Making a new person when the old one’s gotten worn at the knees. I met Freddy on that boat. He was running away, too. I suppose I got further than he did.” Percy can’t help but give the bottle of gin a jazzy little flip, catching it behind his back.

“Do it again!” cries Marvin the Mongoose.