The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter Read Free

mean, are we really in the same moment? Are we in the same place? Do we even speak the same language?
    “And these gods, building up your hopes, coming down from on high and then battling it out, to leave you stranded, back you where you started. Who were they to me? Why should I care about them? Or about you?” She hissed and spat and blew steam out her nose. “Because I don’t. I don’t care. So let’s not even talk about gods. And don’t tell me they’re returning, or that they’ve been seen, flying overhead. This story is one of the last in your sordid history. Nowy Solum crumbles.”
    At the waterline, where paler scales stretched to near translucency, ripples on the swamp made duckweed ride up and down. Setting her jaw, bands of muscle hardened the angled jowls, though it was difficult to tell if the monster was truly angry or not.
    “Now,” she said, “where were we?”

    The chatelaine reclined on her canopy bed, ensconced inside the palace of Jesthe, and decided, upon putting down her second cup of coffee—which was empty now, and clattering on her bedside table—that she would leave her chambers, go for a walk. Perambulate . Work the legs. She called to her women: fetch clothes suitable for outside, and fetch them quickly. Before she could change her mind. Lately there had been too many days of inactivity, laying about, drinking herself to sleep or staring listlessly out the window at the roofs of her city.
    Out on the crowded streets, the day was gloomy, as most were, but it was not raining, at least, like it had been for the past fortnight. With almost a spring in her step, the chatelaine walked ahead of her servants, who awkwardly carried the various items they supposed a woman such as the chatelaine might need on a brief journey outside Jesthe. Servants were unaccustomed to any mood other than a somber one in their mistress and, frankly, they preferred when she stayed abed, moping.
    Huffing and panting, arms laden, the women struggled to keep up.
    Near the secondary refuse pile, at Hot Gate—a vast heap of steaming garbage against the sagging wall of an empty seminary—the chatelaine, who had been waving blithely to citizens, greeting them as they begged or jostled or otherwise tried to acquire food to feed their families, suddenly froze. She knew why she’d been impelled to leave her bedchambers at that particular second and go out, into Nowy Solum. The chatelaine was a woman who believed in destinies, and in the purposes of mysterious motivations, giving reasons to every gesture and idle action as if everything were ordained. (She had not always believed this, nor would she believe it for much longer, but on this day, the day of the walk, she felt sure that the mysterious and powerful forces of fate moved her and the lives of those around her.)
    “I wish to speak to that girl,” she told her servants, pointing with an unsteady finger. Her heart raced.
    The women squinted, shifting their loads, making faces to indicate their confusion and distaste.
    “I don’t see any girls,” one finally answered, either the boldest or stupidest of the lot. Certainly the largest. “My Lady,” the woman added, as an afterthought, to try to make herself perfectly clear, “I see no girls.”
    The chatelaine, who had continued to point all this while, shook her finger. “There!”
    “I see two, well, there are two melancholics , in the garbage.”
    “Yes, that’s right. And one of them is a girl. I wish to speak to her. She’s beautiful and I wish to speak to her.”
    The servants did not know what to say. They were very uncomfortable and getting more uncomfortable with each passing second. (Though, working, as they did, for the chatelaine, this sensation was almost part of their job.)
    “In fact,” continued the chatelaine, “I want her on the staff at Jesthe. Make sure she gets employment in my palace.” This was an incredible statement, thought the chatelaine of Nowy Solum. This was bold, brave.