Leap of Faith
Title: Leap of Faith
Author: st_aurafina
Recipient: atdrake
Request: "Signs and Wonders" - a religious movement among the common people, arising from the witnessing of increased manifestations of the Holy Spirit, by which the faithful shall know God. Bonus points if they preach a mid-millennial apocalypse and visit the ungodly with explanatory pamphlets. And dinosaurs.
Rating: G
Characters: Kurt Wagner, Sean Cassidy, assorted X-Men, Morlocks and villains
Notes: Thank you to lilacsigil and silver_apples, both kind and thoughtful beta readers.
1. The Cage
The cage is narrow, balanced on a sagging timber platform. Kurt has been confined for hours in the chilly darkness, in a cage too small for his body, and now every muscle aches with the strain of remaining perfectly still. He welcomes this fatigue as an unlikely ally: it distracts him from the sounds of the busy stonemasons. From under the blindfold, which holds him immobile far better than any cage, he cannot see how high the wall has risen. Soon they will have closed the room off completely.
The bells hanging from the cloth door of the tent rang softly and Kurt awoke with the feeling of falling, nearly sliding from his chair. Underneath the dark linen veil he wore, sweat had plastered hair against skin all over his body. On sweltering days such as this, he would prefer to forgo the head-to-toe veil: when telling fortunes, he concealed himself behind a velvet curtain, and wore a glove, the two extra fingers stuffed with sawdust, to read palms. Margali, however, insisted he cover himself; it would only take one over-eager customer or one angry husband to push past the curtain and see his true appearance, and then it was trouble for everyone, and it would be time to harness a horse to each vardo and move on. It was stiflingly close in the fortune-teller's tent; capricious weather had the whole camp sweltering in October. The oppressive heat had forced one of Margali's bad heads: she was confined to her brightly painted vardo with a poultice, and would be so until the dazzling lights and pain receded. Kurt was the next best fortune-teller, though he did not have the Sight. Margali had taught him the tricks of weaving magic from nothing. Let them tell you all. Feed them a little truth wrapped in fantasy. Tell them only what they want to hear. It was easy enough, and it brought in good coin, especially when exceptional weather stirred the imagination of the local folk. So he had spent the better part of the afternoon cradling in his own the hands of farmer's wives as they were presented through the parting of the velvet curtain, assuring them that their husbands were faithful, their daughters chaste.
2. The Accomplice
"You may open the cage and remove his blindfold." The voice is high and reedy, the accent of a well-bred man. "He will not disembody to any place he cannot see, and we are far enough underground that I am certain he will not dare try."
The cage door swings open and the velvet cloth slides from his face, removed by the hand of a snake-thin man clad in black leathers: it is the Frenchman and he stands closer than any of the other henchmen have dared. He meets Kurt's eyes for a moment, and Kurt stares: the man's eyes are black where Kurt's are yellow, and the irises are red. The Frenchman bows to Kurt with a wry smile before backing away from the cage, to reveal Hunter, the chief of the guards. Hunter stands relaxed, as though he had forgotten that he holds the point of his narrow sword at Kurt's throat. Kurt’s eyes blink and water in the unaccustomed light, and the stonemasons continue to stack the stones higher.
The visitor cleared his throat delicately, and that was enough to rouse Kurt from his drowsy meanderings - few visitors to the fortune-telling tent were male.
“I will need your hand, sir, to tell your fortune.” When telling fortunes, Kurt pitched his voice in a pleasant tone of ambiguous gender, and let his accent show a little more. People expected a fortune teller to be exotic. “Pray, approach, take your seat, ask your question.”
A hand appeared through the parting of the faded velvet curtain, palm facing down. The skin was pale but freckled with long exposure to the sun, the knuckles scarred with pale white lines. On the back of the hand, a little blurred by the passing years, the shape of a diamond was marked out with red ink. Kurt pressed his own hand against his thigh: hidden under the soft blue hair was the same mark. He shivered, despite the cloying heat of the tent; he could almost feel the needles working the ink under his skin. His stomach clenched, as it did before he made the jump.
“Forgive me, my friend, but I had hoped that we would never see each other again.” Kurt cried, pulling the curtain aside, and dragging the ridiculous veil from his head. Seán Ó Caiside had changed little in the last five years, although the fine lacing of scars on his arms and face attested to a life of some excitement. He was clad in serviceable garb, and a well-worn vest of leather. His face was solemn.
"I know what we promised, Kurt, and I would never think to impose upon you, were it not trouble of a particular kind that I am hunting. I'm sorry to say that I believe we are both uniquely qualified in this instance." From his pocket, Seán withdrew a folded paper, and this he held out for Kurt. The text was small and roughly printed, but the image was clear enough: a woman knelt as though in supplication, while all around her danced glowing spheres of light. The paper was titled in large letters: "A Most Wondrous Gift - The Holy Spirit Made Manifest in Mankind”.
3. The Hypothesis
The speaker is a man in a high-collared black cloak, his skin powdered fashionably white, a silver circlet with a large ruby stone centered on his forehead. He is framed in the small opening that is left between the two rooms. He speaks to Kurt from the other side of the wall.
"I have postulated to my peers that you have no soul," the man pronounces. "I believe this to be true because you are unable to make a leap into the unknown. To do so would constitute a leap of faith - you cannot, therefore you are without faith. Essentially, in the eyes of God, you are no more than an animal. And yet you seem to speak and to reason like a man. This interests me."
The man's companions are departing through the wall, then the stonemasons heft the final blocks into position. They pause a moment, as a small bundle, wrapped in a blanket, is passed back through the aperture to the Frenchman, who takes it cautiously and lays it on the stone floor. He looks back only once, before he has wriggled out through the rapidly dwindling window. The white face with the red jewel peers again through the hole.
"It is my intention to study the unique manner of transportation that you are able to employ. We shall wait for you here, on the other side of the wall." The face vanishes, and the wall is sealed with a grating noise. Kurt can hear the tapping of the stonemasons on the other side, as they scrape the remaining mortar from the bricks. The reedy voice of the man in the cloak filters faintly back through the completed wall.
"Bring the baby, when you come. If you wish it to live, of course."
Once the sun had set and it was safe for Kurt to walk about uncovered, he and Seán sat on the steps of Margali's vardo and read through the pamphlet by lantern-light.
"It may not be him." Kurt scanned through the text, "It speaks in riddles, of battles and riders and the Holy Spirit. Essex was no mystic: he spoke often of the superiority of reason and science." Kurt's voice was bitter; he had been the silent subject of many such discussions
Seán snatched the paper from Kurt's hands. "Look at this, here: 'God has made clear through certain oracles that He shall visit His Holy Spirit upon those judged most worthy.' I think this 'visitation' is a way of describing the onset of remarkable abilities, such as ours. You know well enough that he has a keen interest in such matters."
Kurt looked again at the etching of the woman. "I met a young girl in a marketplace once. Her father was a Chinaman. She could make balls of coloured light appear from her hands." He looked at Seán. "You think this image is more than just ornamentation, that this is some work of his?"
Seán's face was grim. "I fear that our old friend may be collecting unwilling house guests once again. This was given to me by a woman in the North who told me her daughter was lured away by a Frenchman. The description matched a certain man of our acquaintance." He read on, "Here: 'A means exists wherein a man can be tested for this divine quality - and for such potential to be brought into bloom.' If this is Essex's interest, it cannot mean anything good for people like ourselves."
Kurt sighed, and leaned back against the peeling paint of Margali's door. "Between Essex and the Inquisition, sometimes I am surprised that there are any Witchbreed left in the whole world."
Margali read for them before they departed - in the cards Kurt saw the Chariot, wands and knights, cards of action and momentum. When he looked up from the table, Margali was watching him, but her eyes were far away.
"Forth you go, my son." She pointed to the cards, resting her finger on the Wheel, lying sideways across his own card. "Go tread the way again, and this time, you will find the path you have been unable to see." Her eyes refocused, and she smiled. "You had best take my good cloak, the one with the wide hood."
4. The Transition
With a grating sound, the last stone slides into place. Kurt is alone. Two quick leaps and he has braced his legs against the wall at the highest part of the room, head pressed against the stone ceiling. He sees the purpose to the stonemason's work now. Since the day he discovered his Witchbreed ability to shift through an ethereal state, he has been careful to make the jump only to places with which he holds some familiarity, else he materialise half in and half out of a solid substance. Now, not knowing how deep underground he is, he has been left only one place to which he can leap: the other side of the wall. His head aches with cold and panic. With eyes closed, and a few deep breaths to calm his racing heart, he pushes away from the wall and bounds lightly to the floor where the child sleeps peacefully in her blanket, an unnatural flush upon her cheeks. Kurt gathers the little one in his arms and huddles the bundle to his own chest to keep her warm, then sits beside his cage and thinks: there is nowhere else to go. He cannot abandon the child, and he cannot risk her life even if he were willing to risk his own in an unsighted jump to the surface where they could both escape. It is all very well thought out, for a madman's game. Eventually his toes start to tingle with cold, and the baby, still sleeping, has begun to shiver. He must act soon. He slides his body into that place of fire that allows him to move through stone and mortar, exiting on the other side of the wall, to the dubious safety of his awaiting audience.
It was surely a sin to admit it, but Kurt found something wondrously theatrical about dressing as a woman, and it afforded the two of them a chance to travel during daylight hours, Kurt's face concealed behind a veil and his body under Margali's good cloak. They had borrowed two fair-tempered horses from the camp, and the riding was pleasant enough early in the morning, though riding sidesaddle had its own complications. The pamphlet spoke of gatherings held on Milbury Heath, a little more than ten miles from Hawkesbury, where Kurt's people had set up camp.
"Seán, my friend, if I may ask, how did you know where to find me?" Kurt's voice was muffled underneath the veil.
Seán's smile was wistful. "I like to know where my old friends are, as best I can, Kurt. I knew that you had family among the gypsies, and last year, Logan told me he caught sight of you in London. He gave me a fair description of your camp."
"You've met with Logan? Logan saw me?" Kurt's voice rose up a little at the second question.
Seán laughed at the note of panic in Kurt's voice. "Oh, my friend, do not fear. He told me he caught your scent, and that you were veiled like a Saracen bride."
Kurt laughed too, but he was relieved. He always took great pains to hide himself away: his appearance was beyond remarkable, and he loathed to bring panic to the camp. Hard enough work to be a gypsy, let alone to be accused of harbouring demons.
"Logan and I meet occasionally, when our paths cross. To be honest, it is he who seeks me out most often, but then, I haven't his tracking skill. I would have liked to have him beside us today, but I haven't seen him since the start of June. He heads to the mountains when summer reaches the cities." Seán turned his horse from the narrow wagon path they had been following. "I can hear the river again, we should water the horses, and you must be expiring under that cloak."
They worked in silence, unsaddling and tethering the horses, sharing out the bread. Seán threw small pieces of bread into the brook, watched the quick moving water carry them away. Kurt stuck his legs out from under his robe and watched the sun throw dappled patterns of light against the blue fur. It was some time before he spoke, rubbing his thumb across the back of his hand where the red diamond had been forced under his skin five years ago.
"Why do you and Logan meet? Why not let things heal, forget about what was done to us?"
Seán chewed slowly on a mouthful of bread before answering. "Do you enjoy the sun on your skin, Kurt?"
Kurt was puzzled, but he answered politely. "I do, though I rarely get the chance to feel it. Only when the camp is away from villages, and Margali does not like to travel too far from the markets."
"Why is it that you rarely feel the sun, then? Why hide yourself away?"
Kurt looked at Seán incredulously, "Because I must not be seen, Seán, you know that. My appearance terrifies people."
"I talk to Logan because I want to know more about people like us. So that one day, you may not have to hide yourself away. So that girl in the market place can feel safe. So that we all may feel safe." He bit into the bread, tearing it with his teeth, chewing and swallowing with vigour. "No man should have the right to call another a soulless animal. It is as simple as that."
Kurt leaned his head against the tree trunk. He had always thought that there was but one possibility for someone who looked as he did: to hide away, to protect his loved ones from the danger that is inevitably drawn towards the remarkable looking. He had never once thought that it would be possible for people who had not always known him, and thus had never thought to demand such a thing. Now, seeing how Seán had spent the last five years, Kurt felt stupid, even cowardly for having hidden himself away.
"The others that fought with us that day - the Mooress, the Oriental, the Russian - do you meet with them too? Have any of them asked to travel with you in this way?"
Seán shook his head. "Logan I have met with several times, and he has brought me news of the others when he can. Shiro returned home to the East, he says, and Piotr works on the docks at Southwark. Of Ororo, we can find no trace. "
Kurt leaned across and clasped Seán's forearm. "I am sorry to have left this task to you alone. You should have called upon me earlier."
Seán laid his hand over both their arms. "I have called upon you now. Together, we may do some good."
5. The Reckoning
As soon as Kurt materialises, he faces a bristling of sword tips; and the Frenchman with the devil's eyes leans in to scoop the baby out of his arms. Kurt tries to hold on to her, though what he intends to do with a baby in a dungeon, he cannot fathom.
"Merci." The man holds the baby gently, then places her into a steel basin and Kurt braces himself for a fight he cannot win, but determined to try if they intend to harm her. The basin, though, hangs from a scale, and it is the cloaked man who is adjusting the balance, adding discs to the other side. He tuts to himself, and scratches a figure down with a quill.
"Allowing for the dose of laudanum, I do not believe the child has lost any mass. Disappointing. I was certain that the disembodiment would cause some damage to body or spirit." He turns to look at Kurt with a sour expression, as though it were somehow his fault. "The soul, it is believed, has a mass of three fourths of an ounce. I had thought that transporting the child through the ether may have stripped some of God's gift away, or made it in part visible. It seems, however, that a soul is made of stronger stuff."
The man tucks his cloak around himself, and turns for the door, calling back over his shoulder, "I shall be in my study. Blindfold him, put him in the cell."
Kurt laughed softly to himself when he first saw the encampment at Milbury Heath, for it was a carnival, a gypsy camp of coloured tents, wagons, cooking fires and animals. And such people milling everywhere! On their bellies under a thick copse of yew, Seán and Kurt watched as more Witchbreed than they could count moved about the camp in ways both mundane and extraordinary, some even flying above the ground. Kurt saw hair and skin and eyes of all colours, wings and tails and feathers and fur, and not one of them ashamed or afraid of their remarkable appearances. He rolled onto his back to look at Seán.
"So many of them, Seán, what is going on? How can this be?"
Seán looked grim. "I don't know, my friend, but I'm damned if I'll let that bastard Essex prowl among these folk. T'would be like a fox in a hen-house."
They moved towards the crowd easily enough, Kurt covered in his veil and cloak, and Seán with his hand resting on Kurt's shoulder in a protective fashion. A large shadow loomed across their path, and Kurt squinted through the veil; all he could see was an expanse of purple-tinted skin. Seán's hand tensed.
"Does your wife wear a veil to protect her from the sun?" The voice was young, but merry. Kurt tugged his veil a little, shifting it so that he could peer through a small tear in the cloth. The purple mountain was a man? A large dog? He flinched as the creature pressed his nose against the veil and snuffled him wetly. The speaker, however, was a young lad with skin the colour of Margali's pea soup, riding on the shoulders of the purple man. "Cadfan here used to burn something awful in the sun, but now he's strong and big. Aren't you?" The creature nodded its head and nosed curiously at Seán's belt. Seán shifted uncomfortably, but otherwise held his position. "You'd best go to the tent, if you've only just arrived. They'll be starting the sermon again soon." The boy gestured towards the largest of the tents, a red and white striped affair, then clapped his heels to the sides of the purple man as though he were a cart horse. "Come on, Cadfan, gee up!"
Seán leaned in close to Kurt's face. "What the devil is going in this place?" Kurt shook his head in confusion. He had no idea either.
The tent provided few answers: it was a large construction of expensive heavy canvas, hung about with red and white bunting, and long pennants snapping in the breeze. Inside were rows of well-constructed benches, much like the pews in church, and on these were seated people of all station: farmers crowding next to well-dressed gentlewomen, children sitting on the knees of the elderly, Witchbreed and mortals crammed together in one pavilion with no consideration for wealth or position.
Seán and Kurt seated themselves close to the exit of the pavilion, beside a woman in a heavily embroidered gown. Her skin was covered in soft russet hair. Unseen beneath his veil, Kurt stared at her bare arms, where the folds of fabric pressed against the hair. This was how it felt to gape at the strangeness of another's appearance. Seán nudged him gently and he gave a guilty start, but his friend pointed with a flick of one finger towards the raised dais at the centre of the tent. There, two men worked to lift an elaborate bejewelled box the size and shape of a large man onto the platform, moving it to and fro, adjusting its position minutely. Despite the veil and the oppressive atmosphere inside the pavilion, Kurt felt a chill creep over him. They were Essex's men on the stage: the Frenchman, lean as a hare, and the other was the man called Hunter, his skin tanned a deep mahogany and his hair swinging like a curtain of black silk. Kurt breathed in sharply, and the woman beside him turned to look at him.
"It is beautiful, yes? The sarcophagus? They say it was a gift from the Mameluks, brought over from Africa. A heathen king was buried in it." Her speech was accented - maybe Spanish? She sighed, and swung her hair over her shoulder, the better to gossip with her neighbour. Kurt saw, under the chestnut fur that covered her right hand, a red diamond marked out in ink. She followed the angle of his head and held her hand out, the better for him to see: the mark was raised and angry, as his had been when freshly made. "I have been chosen, you see. I have been in the dead king's case." She was proud, admiring the mark. Kurt felt sick. "It is wonderful, a dream. I remember I felt I was falling, and then nothing else. When I returned, I was like this, changed. Better. And now I travel with them, part of His great army of the Holy Spirit."
The chatter and bustle in the pavilion dimmed once the sarcophagus was brought out, though all around him, Kurt could see the initiated explaining to the newcomers, pointing to the jewelled face of the dead king; wide lips inlayed with lapis and skin the colour of oyster shell. They were all telling the same story, of how they fell into a trance, and awoke renewed. When Hunter settled a bowl into the brazier that stood in front of the sarcophagus, the atmosphere became still and charged. He stepped off the platform, and moved a little way into the audience. People seated nearby looked up at him in awe. The Frenchman moved to the edge of the stage, and flung out his arm in a dramatic sweep, his hand open, fingers splayed. Already silent with anticipation, the audience became very still. The Frenchman snapped his fingers, and suddenly his hand was holding a card, the ace of coins. Kurt restrained from snorting: had all these people gathered for a show of cheap conjuring tricks? The card, however, was glowing rosy pink, as if it were a lit coal, and with a flamboyant twist of his arm, the Frenchman flung it over the brazier. The card vanished with a flash of pink light, and below it, the brazier caught fire, burning with eerie green flames. Seán was leaning forward on the bench, his eyes wide, and Kurt put his hand over the Irishman's arm.
"Seán, it is nothing but a piece of flim-flam. I can do as much with a pinch of sulfur and some good aim."
Seán did not answer, and as Kurt watched, he was forced to revise his assessment: the brazier was boiling over with heavy green smoke that dripped from the brass bowl and crept up the aisles between the benches, seemingly intelligent, reaching out with long tendrils that brushed against the legs of the watching crowd. One child, perhaps thirteen years old, was soon completely enveloped in the lurid vapour, and she stumbled to her feet, her body aglow. Hunter moved swiftly to her side, and helped her up to the platform, his head bent low as he whispered to her. The smoke moved over her face, blurring her features, and she spoke to the whole crowd, in a high-pitched, dreamy voice.
"I am Tomasina, and in me, the Holy Spirit is to be made manifest. I go to join God's warriors to prepare for the battle that is to come."
The Frenchman, his face grim, steered the child by the shoulders, and swinging the door of the sarcophagus open, seated her on the bench within. The smoke unfolded from her body, swirled languorously around the Frenchman's ankles and pulled back into the brazier which now glowed dully, the flames gone. The Frenchman closed the cabinet, paused for a moment, then opened the door again. Tomasina was gone. The crowd, including Seán, gave a great gasp. Kurt, relieved that he could explain at least one thing that he had just seen, tugged his arm. The crowd was cheering and applauding, embracing each other with joy.
"Come now, Seán, it's a parlour trick, a vanishing cabinet, though a fancy one, I must admit. There will be a secret trap-door through which they took the child away underground." His accent became more crisp, as it did when he was troubled or angry. "Always it is underground with that worm."
6. The Castaway
A soft click and Kurt is suddenly awake - someone has snapped the lock on his cage and pulled the blindfold from his eyes. It is Proudstar, who had been chained close enough to Kurt that they had managed, on occasion to exchange a few whispered words. Without the blindfold, Kurt finally sees him, a tall man, with broad shoulders and coppery skin. He pulls Kurt from the constricting cage. All around Kurt, cage doors are opening, people are stretching limbs and blinking in the dim torchlight. Kurt, Proudstar and an Irishman shoulder a slab of marble that holds a man of metal immobile on the ground. A short, stocky man scythes through a wine cask with long claws extended from his knuckles,, and an Oriental falls to the ground, gasping for air, steam pouring from his skin though it is dank and cold in the cell. There are six men, and one woman, a Mooress with strange pale hair whom they found insensate in a wooden chest. There is a moment of silence, then introductions.
"We're underground," says Logan, the short man, "Maybe twenty feet." He points them in the direction of fresh air, and it is not long before they come to a stairway curving around the end of a corridor. At the top, Kurt can see into a large room, open space and windows. They are about twenty steps away from freedom, when Hunter attacks with a roar and a slither of steel. It is Proudstar, protecting the rear of the group, who meets Hunter first.
"Go, go!" Proudstar runs down the stairs and launches himself towards Hunter. For a moment, nothing moves, then the sword tip tents the back of Proudstar's vest, and slices through it with a fountain of blood. Hunter cannot avoid the momentum of the other man's body though, and the two of them tumble back down the stairs. Kurt grabs hold of as many people as he can and jumps away from the fight to the room above, and from there to a garden alcove he can see from the window, and from there to the edge of a wood, and from there to a place of stillness, where there is only the sound of the wind in the trees. Kurt's eyes slide shut to the sound of Seán retching.
The crowd dispersed after Tomasina vanished; she was apparently not expected to reappear for some time. Away from the main pavilion, an enormous meal was being prepared, with juicy beasts turning on a spit. He and Seán walked around the outside of the tent: there was no sign of Hunter or the Frenchman anywhere. Kurt stamped his feet on the hard packed earth - the ground seemed solid.
"You'll like this," said Seán. "This is a trick I learned from a bat." He took a breath, then opened his mouth. Kurt listened, but heard nothing. A yellow-eyed dog nosing about the edge of the tent for scraps whimpered and slunk away. Seán closed his mouth again with a snap.
"You're right, lad, there's an open space directly beneath the platform. Runs north-south, about a hundred feet or so. Can't tell where it goes."
They waited in the shadow of the pavilion until most of the camp were feasting, then pulled out a peg and slipped under the loosened canvas. The pavilion was empty, the doorway laced shut from the outside. The sarcophagus lay on its side next to the platform. In the fading light the jewelled face looked rather shabby, and the glassy red eyes were most discomforting. The trapdoor was easily located and levered open with Seán's knife. It was a short drop down to the space below, more of a tunnel than a corridor, quickly and crudely constructed, smelling of damp earth and fresh timber. There was little light, but in this environment Kurt's Witchbreed eyes served him well.
He walked before Seán as the tunnel opened into a natural cavern, with newly planed timber laid down on the floor. This room was lit, though poorly, by tallow candles pressed onto any flat surface. On a table in the corner was a heap of cloth, the simple chemise that Tomasina had worn before she vanished. Kurt reached out and picked it up from the floor, then jumped backwards as he realised there was a body inside the garment, as flat as the fabric itself, but bearing the face of the child. It floated to the ground, as insubstantial as paper. For some panicked moments, Kurt thought perhaps that someone had played a joke, and put an inked drawing of the girl inside the dress, but her hair had slipped like silk through his fingers, and her arms and legs fluttered to the ground like ribbons. Her face held a peaceful expression and her eyes were closed. Seán turned away to heave against the wall as Kurt gently folded Tomasina's hands across her chest.
"Sometimes, the change, it takes them badly, 'specially the little ones." A voice spoke out of the darkness. Kurt saw the gleam of red eyes, like a wild animal, and the Frenchman stepped out of the shadows. Wiping his mouth, Seán moved around behind the man with his knife drawn, but the Frenchman raised his arms to show that his hands were empty.
"I come to parley with you," he said. "I knew you would find your way here once I saw you at the sermon."
"Why should we listen to anything you say," Kurt gestured towards Tomasina's sad and folded corpse, "When you allow such horrors to be visited upon a child?"
The Frenchman held out his hand. "Sarah! Viens ici! " A child crept out from the mouth of the tunnel towards him, dressed in a gown that was finely made, but had since been roughly trimmed with a knife, the edges frayed and ragged. Her head was strangely shaped, judging from the bulges under the wide brimmed bonnet that hid her face. The Frenchman took her hand. "Don't be afraid, petite. This is the man I told you about. Once, when you were very small, he saved your life. I hope he is going to save it again."
Kurt crouched down to look at Sarah, and she stared back at him with wide eyes. Her face was misshapen; two large bony growths projecting from under the skin above her eyebrows. She scowled at his close examination, and stuck out her tongue. The Frenchman gave her a tap on the head, and she wrapped her arm around his leg, hiding her face against his thigh. The Frenchman stroked her head through the bonnet.
"I would like you to take Sarah away, so that such horrors, as you say, may not be visited on her. Essex has not called for her yet, but she is Witchbreed, was born that way. He cannot find enough Witchbreed lately, so he seeks to make his own, but best of all are the ones that are born." The Frenchman shrugged. "They are more hardy, he says, more unpredictable."
"More accurately," said Essex, as armed men appeared at either end of the tunnel, "Witchbreed are animals, born without souls, and to study them is as much within my right as it would be to catalogue moths or flowers." Hunter hovered just behind the pale man's shoulder, a spreading bruise half-closing one eye. "LeBeau, I have tolerated your forays into the contents of my medicine case for some time, but that much laudanum was suspicious, even for a man of your appetite. And as usual, you have miscalculated; Hunter was easily reawakened."
The men moved out of the tunnel, forcing Seán, LeBeau and Kurt to back further into the cavern until the rocky wall pressed against Kurt's shoulders. LeBeau pushed Sarah against Kurt's leg.
"Enough of this foolishness, LeBeau." Essex threw a familiar piece of velvet at the Frenchman. "Blindfold the blue one, and put him in a cage. Hunter, gag the Irishman. The fool could bring the whole cave down on us."
The Frenchman leaned one hand against the rock, and slipped the velvet bag over Kurt's head with the other. He leaned in as he did, and whispered in Kurt's ear. "Up, when it is time." Kurt felt him nudge Sarah a little closer to his body. The rock behind him was growing incongruously warm. He reached out, and caught the edge of Seán's shirt.
"You idiot, LeBeau!" Hunter shouted, his voice slurred from the drugs or the wound to his head. Kurt could see nothing, but heard the sounds of fighting, and Essex shouting at them to stop. He wondered how high the cavern roof was: would he recall the distance correctly? What if the Frenchman had misunderstood the risks and told Kurt wrongly that it were safe? The rock behind him was now almost painfully hot against his skin, and loud retorts were issuing from the roof and the walls. Sarah was still clinging firmly to Kurt's leg. With one hand, Kurt grabbed Seán's sleeve, and reached out for LeBeau with the other, but could find nothing. Kurt took a breath, sending a prayer before him into nothingness, then as the rock began to crumble, he let go of that place and jumped.
7. Resolution
They argue at first, about going back, about what order they should have taken up the stairway, about whether they should tell some authority what has happened. Shiro is the first to wish Essex dead for what he has done, Seán the first to suggest that they travel together to find him, Logan the first to agree.
Kurt is aghast. "Do none of you wish to see your families? To reassure them that you are well and whole? If you wish to remain in a damp forest and plot murder, you do it alone. I will not take a life."
There is some shouting, at Kurt, at each other, at God. When Kurt finds that he is the only one to be blessed with a family that is likely searching the countryside for him, he is shaken and humbled, ashamed of all the times he dared pity himself for his appearance, when he was loved and needed by his family. Family is everything, he decides, and his heart aches for them.
"Do what you will, go back to fight the devil if you wish, but I must go to my people."
There was stillness and moonlight when Kurt reappeared in an open field not far from the main camp. He had overestimated the height, and they fell about five feet to soft earth. Kurt landed like a cat, swinging Sarah into his arms. Seán, still gagging from the effects of the jump, rolled inelegantly on the ground, then scrambled to his feet.
Kurt thought that it was his knees trembling before he noticed a rapidly forming indentation in the earth. The field was caving in, and the cavity filling with muddy water - the walls of the river had been breached far underground. He hauled Seán to his feet, and ran towards the camp to warn the people there.
It took several hours for the river to turn the campsite into a marshy, uninhabitable swamp filled with sinkholes. Kurt and Seán, together with a mannish, one-eyed woman, had herded the people along to higher ground. From a hill, the three of them watched the main pavilion crumple and sink into the mud.
"I hope those bastards drown in mud, I've heard that it is slower than water." Callisto, the one-eyed woman, had been incensed to hear of Tomasina's death, and of the harm planned to the people who had gathered here in good faith. She cradled Sarah, asleep, on her knee. "I know some places where we can regroup, be safe, find out what was done to the children."
Seán was tipping muddy water out of his boots. "Where to now, my friend? Back to telling fortunes and swindling farmers' wives?"
Kurt folded the velvet cloth that had been his blindfold, and tucked it away in his pocket. He hoped, though he did not say, that the Frenchman had found a way to survive. "If you would agree to be my kind chaperone, I had thought that we could find Logan, see if Piotr wishes to see some of the countryside besides the docks. We could seek out Ororo, see that she is well." He smiled at Seán's surprised expression. "Well, we have done so much good here tonight, Seán. I think perhaps I may have a talent for such things."
Author: st_aurafina
Recipient: atdrake
Request: "Signs and Wonders" - a religious movement among the common people, arising from the witnessing of increased manifestations of the Holy Spirit, by which the faithful shall know God. Bonus points if they preach a mid-millennial apocalypse and visit the ungodly with explanatory pamphlets. And dinosaurs.
Rating: G
Characters: Kurt Wagner, Sean Cassidy, assorted X-Men, Morlocks and villains
Notes: Thank you to lilacsigil and silver_apples, both kind and thoughtful beta readers.
1. The Cage
The cage is narrow, balanced on a sagging timber platform. Kurt has been confined for hours in the chilly darkness, in a cage too small for his body, and now every muscle aches with the strain of remaining perfectly still. He welcomes this fatigue as an unlikely ally: it distracts him from the sounds of the busy stonemasons. From under the blindfold, which holds him immobile far better than any cage, he cannot see how high the wall has risen. Soon they will have closed the room off completely.
The bells hanging from the cloth door of the tent rang softly and Kurt awoke with the feeling of falling, nearly sliding from his chair. Underneath the dark linen veil he wore, sweat had plastered hair against skin all over his body. On sweltering days such as this, he would prefer to forgo the head-to-toe veil: when telling fortunes, he concealed himself behind a velvet curtain, and wore a glove, the two extra fingers stuffed with sawdust, to read palms. Margali, however, insisted he cover himself; it would only take one over-eager customer or one angry husband to push past the curtain and see his true appearance, and then it was trouble for everyone, and it would be time to harness a horse to each vardo and move on. It was stiflingly close in the fortune-teller's tent; capricious weather had the whole camp sweltering in October. The oppressive heat had forced one of Margali's bad heads: she was confined to her brightly painted vardo with a poultice, and would be so until the dazzling lights and pain receded. Kurt was the next best fortune-teller, though he did not have the Sight. Margali had taught him the tricks of weaving magic from nothing. Let them tell you all. Feed them a little truth wrapped in fantasy. Tell them only what they want to hear. It was easy enough, and it brought in good coin, especially when exceptional weather stirred the imagination of the local folk. So he had spent the better part of the afternoon cradling in his own the hands of farmer's wives as they were presented through the parting of the velvet curtain, assuring them that their husbands were faithful, their daughters chaste.
2. The Accomplice
"You may open the cage and remove his blindfold." The voice is high and reedy, the accent of a well-bred man. "He will not disembody to any place he cannot see, and we are far enough underground that I am certain he will not dare try."
The cage door swings open and the velvet cloth slides from his face, removed by the hand of a snake-thin man clad in black leathers: it is the Frenchman and he stands closer than any of the other henchmen have dared. He meets Kurt's eyes for a moment, and Kurt stares: the man's eyes are black where Kurt's are yellow, and the irises are red. The Frenchman bows to Kurt with a wry smile before backing away from the cage, to reveal Hunter, the chief of the guards. Hunter stands relaxed, as though he had forgotten that he holds the point of his narrow sword at Kurt's throat. Kurt’s eyes blink and water in the unaccustomed light, and the stonemasons continue to stack the stones higher.
The visitor cleared his throat delicately, and that was enough to rouse Kurt from his drowsy meanderings - few visitors to the fortune-telling tent were male.
“I will need your hand, sir, to tell your fortune.” When telling fortunes, Kurt pitched his voice in a pleasant tone of ambiguous gender, and let his accent show a little more. People expected a fortune teller to be exotic. “Pray, approach, take your seat, ask your question.”
A hand appeared through the parting of the faded velvet curtain, palm facing down. The skin was pale but freckled with long exposure to the sun, the knuckles scarred with pale white lines. On the back of the hand, a little blurred by the passing years, the shape of a diamond was marked out with red ink. Kurt pressed his own hand against his thigh: hidden under the soft blue hair was the same mark. He shivered, despite the cloying heat of the tent; he could almost feel the needles working the ink under his skin. His stomach clenched, as it did before he made the jump.
“Forgive me, my friend, but I had hoped that we would never see each other again.” Kurt cried, pulling the curtain aside, and dragging the ridiculous veil from his head. Seán Ó Caiside had changed little in the last five years, although the fine lacing of scars on his arms and face attested to a life of some excitement. He was clad in serviceable garb, and a well-worn vest of leather. His face was solemn.
"I know what we promised, Kurt, and I would never think to impose upon you, were it not trouble of a particular kind that I am hunting. I'm sorry to say that I believe we are both uniquely qualified in this instance." From his pocket, Seán withdrew a folded paper, and this he held out for Kurt. The text was small and roughly printed, but the image was clear enough: a woman knelt as though in supplication, while all around her danced glowing spheres of light. The paper was titled in large letters: "A Most Wondrous Gift - The Holy Spirit Made Manifest in Mankind”.
3. The Hypothesis
The speaker is a man in a high-collared black cloak, his skin powdered fashionably white, a silver circlet with a large ruby stone centered on his forehead. He is framed in the small opening that is left between the two rooms. He speaks to Kurt from the other side of the wall.
"I have postulated to my peers that you have no soul," the man pronounces. "I believe this to be true because you are unable to make a leap into the unknown. To do so would constitute a leap of faith - you cannot, therefore you are without faith. Essentially, in the eyes of God, you are no more than an animal. And yet you seem to speak and to reason like a man. This interests me."
The man's companions are departing through the wall, then the stonemasons heft the final blocks into position. They pause a moment, as a small bundle, wrapped in a blanket, is passed back through the aperture to the Frenchman, who takes it cautiously and lays it on the stone floor. He looks back only once, before he has wriggled out through the rapidly dwindling window. The white face with the red jewel peers again through the hole.
"It is my intention to study the unique manner of transportation that you are able to employ. We shall wait for you here, on the other side of the wall." The face vanishes, and the wall is sealed with a grating noise. Kurt can hear the tapping of the stonemasons on the other side, as they scrape the remaining mortar from the bricks. The reedy voice of the man in the cloak filters faintly back through the completed wall.
"Bring the baby, when you come. If you wish it to live, of course."
Once the sun had set and it was safe for Kurt to walk about uncovered, he and Seán sat on the steps of Margali's vardo and read through the pamphlet by lantern-light.
"It may not be him." Kurt scanned through the text, "It speaks in riddles, of battles and riders and the Holy Spirit. Essex was no mystic: he spoke often of the superiority of reason and science." Kurt's voice was bitter; he had been the silent subject of many such discussions
Seán snatched the paper from Kurt's hands. "Look at this, here: 'God has made clear through certain oracles that He shall visit His Holy Spirit upon those judged most worthy.' I think this 'visitation' is a way of describing the onset of remarkable abilities, such as ours. You know well enough that he has a keen interest in such matters."
Kurt looked again at the etching of the woman. "I met a young girl in a marketplace once. Her father was a Chinaman. She could make balls of coloured light appear from her hands." He looked at Seán. "You think this image is more than just ornamentation, that this is some work of his?"
Seán's face was grim. "I fear that our old friend may be collecting unwilling house guests once again. This was given to me by a woman in the North who told me her daughter was lured away by a Frenchman. The description matched a certain man of our acquaintance." He read on, "Here: 'A means exists wherein a man can be tested for this divine quality - and for such potential to be brought into bloom.' If this is Essex's interest, it cannot mean anything good for people like ourselves."
Kurt sighed, and leaned back against the peeling paint of Margali's door. "Between Essex and the Inquisition, sometimes I am surprised that there are any Witchbreed left in the whole world."
Margali read for them before they departed - in the cards Kurt saw the Chariot, wands and knights, cards of action and momentum. When he looked up from the table, Margali was watching him, but her eyes were far away.
"Forth you go, my son." She pointed to the cards, resting her finger on the Wheel, lying sideways across his own card. "Go tread the way again, and this time, you will find the path you have been unable to see." Her eyes refocused, and she smiled. "You had best take my good cloak, the one with the wide hood."
4. The Transition
With a grating sound, the last stone slides into place. Kurt is alone. Two quick leaps and he has braced his legs against the wall at the highest part of the room, head pressed against the stone ceiling. He sees the purpose to the stonemason's work now. Since the day he discovered his Witchbreed ability to shift through an ethereal state, he has been careful to make the jump only to places with which he holds some familiarity, else he materialise half in and half out of a solid substance. Now, not knowing how deep underground he is, he has been left only one place to which he can leap: the other side of the wall. His head aches with cold and panic. With eyes closed, and a few deep breaths to calm his racing heart, he pushes away from the wall and bounds lightly to the floor where the child sleeps peacefully in her blanket, an unnatural flush upon her cheeks. Kurt gathers the little one in his arms and huddles the bundle to his own chest to keep her warm, then sits beside his cage and thinks: there is nowhere else to go. He cannot abandon the child, and he cannot risk her life even if he were willing to risk his own in an unsighted jump to the surface where they could both escape. It is all very well thought out, for a madman's game. Eventually his toes start to tingle with cold, and the baby, still sleeping, has begun to shiver. He must act soon. He slides his body into that place of fire that allows him to move through stone and mortar, exiting on the other side of the wall, to the dubious safety of his awaiting audience.
It was surely a sin to admit it, but Kurt found something wondrously theatrical about dressing as a woman, and it afforded the two of them a chance to travel during daylight hours, Kurt's face concealed behind a veil and his body under Margali's good cloak. They had borrowed two fair-tempered horses from the camp, and the riding was pleasant enough early in the morning, though riding sidesaddle had its own complications. The pamphlet spoke of gatherings held on Milbury Heath, a little more than ten miles from Hawkesbury, where Kurt's people had set up camp.
"Seán, my friend, if I may ask, how did you know where to find me?" Kurt's voice was muffled underneath the veil.
Seán's smile was wistful. "I like to know where my old friends are, as best I can, Kurt. I knew that you had family among the gypsies, and last year, Logan told me he caught sight of you in London. He gave me a fair description of your camp."
"You've met with Logan? Logan saw me?" Kurt's voice rose up a little at the second question.
Seán laughed at the note of panic in Kurt's voice. "Oh, my friend, do not fear. He told me he caught your scent, and that you were veiled like a Saracen bride."
Kurt laughed too, but he was relieved. He always took great pains to hide himself away: his appearance was beyond remarkable, and he loathed to bring panic to the camp. Hard enough work to be a gypsy, let alone to be accused of harbouring demons.
"Logan and I meet occasionally, when our paths cross. To be honest, it is he who seeks me out most often, but then, I haven't his tracking skill. I would have liked to have him beside us today, but I haven't seen him since the start of June. He heads to the mountains when summer reaches the cities." Seán turned his horse from the narrow wagon path they had been following. "I can hear the river again, we should water the horses, and you must be expiring under that cloak."
They worked in silence, unsaddling and tethering the horses, sharing out the bread. Seán threw small pieces of bread into the brook, watched the quick moving water carry them away. Kurt stuck his legs out from under his robe and watched the sun throw dappled patterns of light against the blue fur. It was some time before he spoke, rubbing his thumb across the back of his hand where the red diamond had been forced under his skin five years ago.
"Why do you and Logan meet? Why not let things heal, forget about what was done to us?"
Seán chewed slowly on a mouthful of bread before answering. "Do you enjoy the sun on your skin, Kurt?"
Kurt was puzzled, but he answered politely. "I do, though I rarely get the chance to feel it. Only when the camp is away from villages, and Margali does not like to travel too far from the markets."
"Why is it that you rarely feel the sun, then? Why hide yourself away?"
Kurt looked at Seán incredulously, "Because I must not be seen, Seán, you know that. My appearance terrifies people."
"I talk to Logan because I want to know more about people like us. So that one day, you may not have to hide yourself away. So that girl in the market place can feel safe. So that we all may feel safe." He bit into the bread, tearing it with his teeth, chewing and swallowing with vigour. "No man should have the right to call another a soulless animal. It is as simple as that."
Kurt leaned his head against the tree trunk. He had always thought that there was but one possibility for someone who looked as he did: to hide away, to protect his loved ones from the danger that is inevitably drawn towards the remarkable looking. He had never once thought that it would be possible for people who had not always known him, and thus had never thought to demand such a thing. Now, seeing how Seán had spent the last five years, Kurt felt stupid, even cowardly for having hidden himself away.
"The others that fought with us that day - the Mooress, the Oriental, the Russian - do you meet with them too? Have any of them asked to travel with you in this way?"
Seán shook his head. "Logan I have met with several times, and he has brought me news of the others when he can. Shiro returned home to the East, he says, and Piotr works on the docks at Southwark. Of Ororo, we can find no trace. "
Kurt leaned across and clasped Seán's forearm. "I am sorry to have left this task to you alone. You should have called upon me earlier."
Seán laid his hand over both their arms. "I have called upon you now. Together, we may do some good."
5. The Reckoning
As soon as Kurt materialises, he faces a bristling of sword tips; and the Frenchman with the devil's eyes leans in to scoop the baby out of his arms. Kurt tries to hold on to her, though what he intends to do with a baby in a dungeon, he cannot fathom.
"Merci." The man holds the baby gently, then places her into a steel basin and Kurt braces himself for a fight he cannot win, but determined to try if they intend to harm her. The basin, though, hangs from a scale, and it is the cloaked man who is adjusting the balance, adding discs to the other side. He tuts to himself, and scratches a figure down with a quill.
"Allowing for the dose of laudanum, I do not believe the child has lost any mass. Disappointing. I was certain that the disembodiment would cause some damage to body or spirit." He turns to look at Kurt with a sour expression, as though it were somehow his fault. "The soul, it is believed, has a mass of three fourths of an ounce. I had thought that transporting the child through the ether may have stripped some of God's gift away, or made it in part visible. It seems, however, that a soul is made of stronger stuff."
The man tucks his cloak around himself, and turns for the door, calling back over his shoulder, "I shall be in my study. Blindfold him, put him in the cell."
Kurt laughed softly to himself when he first saw the encampment at Milbury Heath, for it was a carnival, a gypsy camp of coloured tents, wagons, cooking fires and animals. And such people milling everywhere! On their bellies under a thick copse of yew, Seán and Kurt watched as more Witchbreed than they could count moved about the camp in ways both mundane and extraordinary, some even flying above the ground. Kurt saw hair and skin and eyes of all colours, wings and tails and feathers and fur, and not one of them ashamed or afraid of their remarkable appearances. He rolled onto his back to look at Seán.
"So many of them, Seán, what is going on? How can this be?"
Seán looked grim. "I don't know, my friend, but I'm damned if I'll let that bastard Essex prowl among these folk. T'would be like a fox in a hen-house."
They moved towards the crowd easily enough, Kurt covered in his veil and cloak, and Seán with his hand resting on Kurt's shoulder in a protective fashion. A large shadow loomed across their path, and Kurt squinted through the veil; all he could see was an expanse of purple-tinted skin. Seán's hand tensed.
"Does your wife wear a veil to protect her from the sun?" The voice was young, but merry. Kurt tugged his veil a little, shifting it so that he could peer through a small tear in the cloth. The purple mountain was a man? A large dog? He flinched as the creature pressed his nose against the veil and snuffled him wetly. The speaker, however, was a young lad with skin the colour of Margali's pea soup, riding on the shoulders of the purple man. "Cadfan here used to burn something awful in the sun, but now he's strong and big. Aren't you?" The creature nodded its head and nosed curiously at Seán's belt. Seán shifted uncomfortably, but otherwise held his position. "You'd best go to the tent, if you've only just arrived. They'll be starting the sermon again soon." The boy gestured towards the largest of the tents, a red and white striped affair, then clapped his heels to the sides of the purple man as though he were a cart horse. "Come on, Cadfan, gee up!"
Seán leaned in close to Kurt's face. "What the devil is going in this place?" Kurt shook his head in confusion. He had no idea either.
The tent provided few answers: it was a large construction of expensive heavy canvas, hung about with red and white bunting, and long pennants snapping in the breeze. Inside were rows of well-constructed benches, much like the pews in church, and on these were seated people of all station: farmers crowding next to well-dressed gentlewomen, children sitting on the knees of the elderly, Witchbreed and mortals crammed together in one pavilion with no consideration for wealth or position.
Seán and Kurt seated themselves close to the exit of the pavilion, beside a woman in a heavily embroidered gown. Her skin was covered in soft russet hair. Unseen beneath his veil, Kurt stared at her bare arms, where the folds of fabric pressed against the hair. This was how it felt to gape at the strangeness of another's appearance. Seán nudged him gently and he gave a guilty start, but his friend pointed with a flick of one finger towards the raised dais at the centre of the tent. There, two men worked to lift an elaborate bejewelled box the size and shape of a large man onto the platform, moving it to and fro, adjusting its position minutely. Despite the veil and the oppressive atmosphere inside the pavilion, Kurt felt a chill creep over him. They were Essex's men on the stage: the Frenchman, lean as a hare, and the other was the man called Hunter, his skin tanned a deep mahogany and his hair swinging like a curtain of black silk. Kurt breathed in sharply, and the woman beside him turned to look at him.
"It is beautiful, yes? The sarcophagus? They say it was a gift from the Mameluks, brought over from Africa. A heathen king was buried in it." Her speech was accented - maybe Spanish? She sighed, and swung her hair over her shoulder, the better to gossip with her neighbour. Kurt saw, under the chestnut fur that covered her right hand, a red diamond marked out in ink. She followed the angle of his head and held her hand out, the better for him to see: the mark was raised and angry, as his had been when freshly made. "I have been chosen, you see. I have been in the dead king's case." She was proud, admiring the mark. Kurt felt sick. "It is wonderful, a dream. I remember I felt I was falling, and then nothing else. When I returned, I was like this, changed. Better. And now I travel with them, part of His great army of the Holy Spirit."
The chatter and bustle in the pavilion dimmed once the sarcophagus was brought out, though all around him, Kurt could see the initiated explaining to the newcomers, pointing to the jewelled face of the dead king; wide lips inlayed with lapis and skin the colour of oyster shell. They were all telling the same story, of how they fell into a trance, and awoke renewed. When Hunter settled a bowl into the brazier that stood in front of the sarcophagus, the atmosphere became still and charged. He stepped off the platform, and moved a little way into the audience. People seated nearby looked up at him in awe. The Frenchman moved to the edge of the stage, and flung out his arm in a dramatic sweep, his hand open, fingers splayed. Already silent with anticipation, the audience became very still. The Frenchman snapped his fingers, and suddenly his hand was holding a card, the ace of coins. Kurt restrained from snorting: had all these people gathered for a show of cheap conjuring tricks? The card, however, was glowing rosy pink, as if it were a lit coal, and with a flamboyant twist of his arm, the Frenchman flung it over the brazier. The card vanished with a flash of pink light, and below it, the brazier caught fire, burning with eerie green flames. Seán was leaning forward on the bench, his eyes wide, and Kurt put his hand over the Irishman's arm.
"Seán, it is nothing but a piece of flim-flam. I can do as much with a pinch of sulfur and some good aim."
Seán did not answer, and as Kurt watched, he was forced to revise his assessment: the brazier was boiling over with heavy green smoke that dripped from the brass bowl and crept up the aisles between the benches, seemingly intelligent, reaching out with long tendrils that brushed against the legs of the watching crowd. One child, perhaps thirteen years old, was soon completely enveloped in the lurid vapour, and she stumbled to her feet, her body aglow. Hunter moved swiftly to her side, and helped her up to the platform, his head bent low as he whispered to her. The smoke moved over her face, blurring her features, and she spoke to the whole crowd, in a high-pitched, dreamy voice.
"I am Tomasina, and in me, the Holy Spirit is to be made manifest. I go to join God's warriors to prepare for the battle that is to come."
The Frenchman, his face grim, steered the child by the shoulders, and swinging the door of the sarcophagus open, seated her on the bench within. The smoke unfolded from her body, swirled languorously around the Frenchman's ankles and pulled back into the brazier which now glowed dully, the flames gone. The Frenchman closed the cabinet, paused for a moment, then opened the door again. Tomasina was gone. The crowd, including Seán, gave a great gasp. Kurt, relieved that he could explain at least one thing that he had just seen, tugged his arm. The crowd was cheering and applauding, embracing each other with joy.
"Come now, Seán, it's a parlour trick, a vanishing cabinet, though a fancy one, I must admit. There will be a secret trap-door through which they took the child away underground." His accent became more crisp, as it did when he was troubled or angry. "Always it is underground with that worm."
6. The Castaway
A soft click and Kurt is suddenly awake - someone has snapped the lock on his cage and pulled the blindfold from his eyes. It is Proudstar, who had been chained close enough to Kurt that they had managed, on occasion to exchange a few whispered words. Without the blindfold, Kurt finally sees him, a tall man, with broad shoulders and coppery skin. He pulls Kurt from the constricting cage. All around Kurt, cage doors are opening, people are stretching limbs and blinking in the dim torchlight. Kurt, Proudstar and an Irishman shoulder a slab of marble that holds a man of metal immobile on the ground. A short, stocky man scythes through a wine cask with long claws extended from his knuckles,, and an Oriental falls to the ground, gasping for air, steam pouring from his skin though it is dank and cold in the cell. There are six men, and one woman, a Mooress with strange pale hair whom they found insensate in a wooden chest. There is a moment of silence, then introductions.
"We're underground," says Logan, the short man, "Maybe twenty feet." He points them in the direction of fresh air, and it is not long before they come to a stairway curving around the end of a corridor. At the top, Kurt can see into a large room, open space and windows. They are about twenty steps away from freedom, when Hunter attacks with a roar and a slither of steel. It is Proudstar, protecting the rear of the group, who meets Hunter first.
"Go, go!" Proudstar runs down the stairs and launches himself towards Hunter. For a moment, nothing moves, then the sword tip tents the back of Proudstar's vest, and slices through it with a fountain of blood. Hunter cannot avoid the momentum of the other man's body though, and the two of them tumble back down the stairs. Kurt grabs hold of as many people as he can and jumps away from the fight to the room above, and from there to a garden alcove he can see from the window, and from there to the edge of a wood, and from there to a place of stillness, where there is only the sound of the wind in the trees. Kurt's eyes slide shut to the sound of Seán retching.
The crowd dispersed after Tomasina vanished; she was apparently not expected to reappear for some time. Away from the main pavilion, an enormous meal was being prepared, with juicy beasts turning on a spit. He and Seán walked around the outside of the tent: there was no sign of Hunter or the Frenchman anywhere. Kurt stamped his feet on the hard packed earth - the ground seemed solid.
"You'll like this," said Seán. "This is a trick I learned from a bat." He took a breath, then opened his mouth. Kurt listened, but heard nothing. A yellow-eyed dog nosing about the edge of the tent for scraps whimpered and slunk away. Seán closed his mouth again with a snap.
"You're right, lad, there's an open space directly beneath the platform. Runs north-south, about a hundred feet or so. Can't tell where it goes."
They waited in the shadow of the pavilion until most of the camp were feasting, then pulled out a peg and slipped under the loosened canvas. The pavilion was empty, the doorway laced shut from the outside. The sarcophagus lay on its side next to the platform. In the fading light the jewelled face looked rather shabby, and the glassy red eyes were most discomforting. The trapdoor was easily located and levered open with Seán's knife. It was a short drop down to the space below, more of a tunnel than a corridor, quickly and crudely constructed, smelling of damp earth and fresh timber. There was little light, but in this environment Kurt's Witchbreed eyes served him well.
He walked before Seán as the tunnel opened into a natural cavern, with newly planed timber laid down on the floor. This room was lit, though poorly, by tallow candles pressed onto any flat surface. On a table in the corner was a heap of cloth, the simple chemise that Tomasina had worn before she vanished. Kurt reached out and picked it up from the floor, then jumped backwards as he realised there was a body inside the garment, as flat as the fabric itself, but bearing the face of the child. It floated to the ground, as insubstantial as paper. For some panicked moments, Kurt thought perhaps that someone had played a joke, and put an inked drawing of the girl inside the dress, but her hair had slipped like silk through his fingers, and her arms and legs fluttered to the ground like ribbons. Her face held a peaceful expression and her eyes were closed. Seán turned away to heave against the wall as Kurt gently folded Tomasina's hands across her chest.
"Sometimes, the change, it takes them badly, 'specially the little ones." A voice spoke out of the darkness. Kurt saw the gleam of red eyes, like a wild animal, and the Frenchman stepped out of the shadows. Wiping his mouth, Seán moved around behind the man with his knife drawn, but the Frenchman raised his arms to show that his hands were empty.
"I come to parley with you," he said. "I knew you would find your way here once I saw you at the sermon."
"Why should we listen to anything you say," Kurt gestured towards Tomasina's sad and folded corpse, "When you allow such horrors to be visited upon a child?"
The Frenchman held out his hand. "Sarah! Viens ici! " A child crept out from the mouth of the tunnel towards him, dressed in a gown that was finely made, but had since been roughly trimmed with a knife, the edges frayed and ragged. Her head was strangely shaped, judging from the bulges under the wide brimmed bonnet that hid her face. The Frenchman took her hand. "Don't be afraid, petite. This is the man I told you about. Once, when you were very small, he saved your life. I hope he is going to save it again."
Kurt crouched down to look at Sarah, and she stared back at him with wide eyes. Her face was misshapen; two large bony growths projecting from under the skin above her eyebrows. She scowled at his close examination, and stuck out her tongue. The Frenchman gave her a tap on the head, and she wrapped her arm around his leg, hiding her face against his thigh. The Frenchman stroked her head through the bonnet.
"I would like you to take Sarah away, so that such horrors, as you say, may not be visited on her. Essex has not called for her yet, but she is Witchbreed, was born that way. He cannot find enough Witchbreed lately, so he seeks to make his own, but best of all are the ones that are born." The Frenchman shrugged. "They are more hardy, he says, more unpredictable."
"More accurately," said Essex, as armed men appeared at either end of the tunnel, "Witchbreed are animals, born without souls, and to study them is as much within my right as it would be to catalogue moths or flowers." Hunter hovered just behind the pale man's shoulder, a spreading bruise half-closing one eye. "LeBeau, I have tolerated your forays into the contents of my medicine case for some time, but that much laudanum was suspicious, even for a man of your appetite. And as usual, you have miscalculated; Hunter was easily reawakened."
The men moved out of the tunnel, forcing Seán, LeBeau and Kurt to back further into the cavern until the rocky wall pressed against Kurt's shoulders. LeBeau pushed Sarah against Kurt's leg.
"Enough of this foolishness, LeBeau." Essex threw a familiar piece of velvet at the Frenchman. "Blindfold the blue one, and put him in a cage. Hunter, gag the Irishman. The fool could bring the whole cave down on us."
The Frenchman leaned one hand against the rock, and slipped the velvet bag over Kurt's head with the other. He leaned in as he did, and whispered in Kurt's ear. "Up, when it is time." Kurt felt him nudge Sarah a little closer to his body. The rock behind him was growing incongruously warm. He reached out, and caught the edge of Seán's shirt.
"You idiot, LeBeau!" Hunter shouted, his voice slurred from the drugs or the wound to his head. Kurt could see nothing, but heard the sounds of fighting, and Essex shouting at them to stop. He wondered how high the cavern roof was: would he recall the distance correctly? What if the Frenchman had misunderstood the risks and told Kurt wrongly that it were safe? The rock behind him was now almost painfully hot against his skin, and loud retorts were issuing from the roof and the walls. Sarah was still clinging firmly to Kurt's leg. With one hand, Kurt grabbed Seán's sleeve, and reached out for LeBeau with the other, but could find nothing. Kurt took a breath, sending a prayer before him into nothingness, then as the rock began to crumble, he let go of that place and jumped.
7. Resolution
They argue at first, about going back, about what order they should have taken up the stairway, about whether they should tell some authority what has happened. Shiro is the first to wish Essex dead for what he has done, Seán the first to suggest that they travel together to find him, Logan the first to agree.
Kurt is aghast. "Do none of you wish to see your families? To reassure them that you are well and whole? If you wish to remain in a damp forest and plot murder, you do it alone. I will not take a life."
There is some shouting, at Kurt, at each other, at God. When Kurt finds that he is the only one to be blessed with a family that is likely searching the countryside for him, he is shaken and humbled, ashamed of all the times he dared pity himself for his appearance, when he was loved and needed by his family. Family is everything, he decides, and his heart aches for them.
"Do what you will, go back to fight the devil if you wish, but I must go to my people."
There was stillness and moonlight when Kurt reappeared in an open field not far from the main camp. He had overestimated the height, and they fell about five feet to soft earth. Kurt landed like a cat, swinging Sarah into his arms. Seán, still gagging from the effects of the jump, rolled inelegantly on the ground, then scrambled to his feet.
Kurt thought that it was his knees trembling before he noticed a rapidly forming indentation in the earth. The field was caving in, and the cavity filling with muddy water - the walls of the river had been breached far underground. He hauled Seán to his feet, and ran towards the camp to warn the people there.
It took several hours for the river to turn the campsite into a marshy, uninhabitable swamp filled with sinkholes. Kurt and Seán, together with a mannish, one-eyed woman, had herded the people along to higher ground. From a hill, the three of them watched the main pavilion crumple and sink into the mud.
"I hope those bastards drown in mud, I've heard that it is slower than water." Callisto, the one-eyed woman, had been incensed to hear of Tomasina's death, and of the harm planned to the people who had gathered here in good faith. She cradled Sarah, asleep, on her knee. "I know some places where we can regroup, be safe, find out what was done to the children."
Seán was tipping muddy water out of his boots. "Where to now, my friend? Back to telling fortunes and swindling farmers' wives?"
Kurt folded the velvet cloth that had been his blindfold, and tucked it away in his pocket. He hoped, though he did not say, that the Frenchman had found a way to survive. "If you would agree to be my kind chaperone, I had thought that we could find Logan, see if Piotr wishes to see some of the countryside besides the docks. We could seek out Ororo, see that she is well." He smiled at Seán's surprised expression. "Well, we have done so much good here tonight, Seán. I think perhaps I may have a talent for such things."