Radiance

I’ve learned it’s important to have a name. Fairy #3 is a losing game. At least let me be Mustardseed in the credits, Mister! It won’t cost you anything. I do so long to graduate from being a number to being a name. Dead Girl #2. Handmaid #6. I celebrated with one of my four flatmates (Regina Farago—you’ll see her in that big splashy Napoleonic flick next year: built like a giraffe, tall and brown and possessing that clumsiness that looks like grace when you’ve got legs like hers) and a bucketful of gin when I was cast as Faun #1 in The Thrice-Haunted Forests of Triton. Moving up in the world! Yesterday #6, today #1!

But now I’ve a character with a proper name! Signed the contract Mary Pellam with a big flourish. Maybe something will come of it. Probably not. But I’ve got years to make my go.

Today I’m Clementine Salt.

More important, Miss Clem is my ticket to a studio contract. Oh, the Grail, the chalice, the font of prosperity! Locked away in the castle perilous and just sloshing with fine print! I do so dream of selling myself to a studio. For a tidy sum, of course—Dr Pellam didn’t raise a fool. I positively wriggle with the thought of some big meaty boss closing his clobbering hand over mine and guiding a gold pen across glossy pages. Sign here and we’ll make you immortal, little missy. And they’ll own you for just as long. A pretty unicorn in a pretty zoo. What to eat; who to breed with; shows at seven, nine, and eleven.

Look at me, I’m growing a proper lunar coat of cynicism.

The fact is, a unicorn cage is the safest place to be. And I want to be safe. I have to be safe. And to be safe I need protection. These studios prowl the Moon like little emperors bouncing on great stupid beasts. They’ve carved up the place between them like England and France and Austria-Hungary and Russia.

They’ve put on actual wars!

You won’t hear a breath of it back home, no sir. But it’s happened. They’ve all the costumes and props and explosives for any battle in history, after all. Why let it go to waste just because no one is making a war flick this week? Tithonus is divided into territories: the north belongs to Capricorn, the south to Tranquillity, the east to Plantagenet Pictures, the west to Oxblood Films. The rest of Luna is carved up the same way, minus a few independent strongholds here and there. Virago, Wainscot, Artemisia. Woe betide the soul who crosses lines! Little wee emperors with ivory crowns jousting on rhinoceroses. Only, what actually happens is that Oxblood swipes Maud Locksley from Plantagenet and Simon Laszlo storms their backlot—which is more or less the whole west end up to Coriander Street—with a hundred actors who think they are re-enacting the betrayals of the Duke of Burgundy until their bullets actually blow the heads off the “loyal French peasants” and Miss Locksley gets a shell-shocked escort home and a month locked up in Laszlo’s house with her head stuck in a bushel of af-yun before she can pull herself together enough to stand on her mark.

Oh, the money on the Moon is English—you can see Vickie’s sour old kisser on the bills. But no one is under one single illusion as to who runs this joint. You take sides if you’re smart. Offer up your loyalty, ’cause it’s all you’ve got to trade.

Trouble is, most times, when you go looking to sell your soul, nobody’s buying.

I picked up this little notebook at the shop round the corner from the Huntress, which is a whorehouse, but quite a good one. If I’m ever in a bad way, I’ll hope to get hired on there. You get breakfast brought on a tray and don’t have to start work ’til four. I mean to record in it Things I Know. There is such an awful lot to know up here. I suppose I thought the Moon would be like London, only bigger and less expensive. I’m quite certain that was the idea. But just like everywhere else, it only took about five seconds for folk to notice that Earth is very, very far away.

The first supper rush is coming on. My tea’s gone cold. There is already a foxtrot tinkling away in Imperatrix Square: garlands of pale green callowlanterns swinging in the sea wind, heels clapping on the cobblestones like an audience, girls with short hair laughing at boys with feathers in their lapels. Perhaps I shall join them later. I am a fair dancer. Not superb, but fair. I am always honest about my capabilities. I am very pretty, though my prettiness lacks depth and therefore misses beauty by a hair. I have an extremely expressive face that I can contort at will. I am short, but I have a serviceable chest and practically perfect calves. For stage work I have a rich voice which carries well, though it is somewhat deeper than the fashion. I can alter it somewhat. I can pass for an American or a Frenchwoman, and I am working on a Muscovite lilt. Perhaps at twenty I shall be a superb dancer. Perhaps at thirty I shall be beautiful. Anything is possible.