The Orchid Nursery. Louise Katz

enchantress had been banished: Hagovel. Once one of us, the Hag now lives in a muddy hovel that half-melts when the winter rain comes, so she is always caked in filth and thus suffers from a mortifying skin disease; her armpits and groin are paved in ulcerated sores, the skin of her face and arms is as warty as a toad’s, and like a toad she lays in stagnant streams her strings of tadpoles conceived in rut with any number of the semi-corporeal ghouls whose reeking gelatinous bodies she presses up against in the heat of her loathsome lust. Her broods of halflings grow there and when they are mature, populate the forest; their groaning cries are sometimes carried to us if the wind is right. I have heard them and pitied them, for they are vengeful and hate-filled and half-starved. But they are known to catch and dismember anyone unfortunate enough to lose their way beyond the city walls. They are particularly fond of sucking the soft organs from their cavities of flesh and gristle while their victims still breathe, so strong is their craving for fresh meat. The Hag lives alone with her demons and this punishment is adequate.

      Everyone knows she lives at the crossroad. One path goes from Perfect State through Stone Plain, all jaggy granite and tall thin grasses hiding scorpions, trapdoor spiders and the treacherous holes of small burrowing things with teeth white and sharp as ice-chips, then further into Yellow Swamp and on into the forest. The other path skirts its edges and forms the boundary between Civilisation and Unrule.

      The route is clear. By His Cock-and-Muscle, alive-alive-oh, even to think of the Hag, Satan’s emissary, stirs my gut to a stew, would make me tremble were I that kind of girlie. But though I do not quake I do admit that the idea of her chills me, oh yes it does.

      Two simple facts: here is a map; Pearl has not been seen for weeks.

      So she was not the rose vessel?

      This is her map and she has followed it, though it shows the way to the forest with its savages and monsters, beyond which is the blank space whose far side is Unrule where Agnostic Rogues live and breed like human tumours feeding on the world’s flesh.

      Who provided her with these directions, I could not know, nor why. But – and here is the heart of the strangeness that my experience in the Nursery has wrought in me – I now know what I will do. It is written: ‘The ways to ensoulment are various.’ I must follow this strange way.

      Nothing else is possible for me now, for when I had crouched fainting in the Orchid Nursery I had felt a deep spiritual tremor, portending perhaps a loss of faith. I cannot bear this. To have all that I believe in and live for, my entire life, sullied and spoiled? The nobility of the aspiration to Perfection all stained and smeared by traces of doubt, the narrow edge of the wedge of apostasy? I feel the bonds that hold me to the life I know unravelling around me, as if my life were nothing more than an old garment that has outlived its utility. No! I will rewind the threads and mend the garment if I can, and to do this I will set out on my own in search of Pearl. This will be the first step towards the redemption of my home, my faith, my reason to live. Then I will return with Pearl to Perfect State, our perfect state, the birthright hard won by Men so many years ago. Though the punishment for disobedience will be severe. But I put this from my mind.

      Pearl is my friend, and so it is my duty to do what I can to save her as well as myself, even if that means saving her from herself. And there is something else still, yet another reason, simple and definitive: I need her. My friend who has patently not taken the map with her – who has left it behind for no credible purpose unless it was for me to find. She would have known not to speak to me of such a plan, for she knows me well. It would have caused me a fatal torment of divided loyalties. I am glad she did not put me to such a test, for what would I have done? Betrayed my friend – or betrayed my home and all the people in it who have raised me and taught me and trusted me to be what I am meant to be?

      As I sit on her bed I am visited by a clear vision of her face lost in concentration as she commits to memory each turn of the path. I re-fold the map along its creases, and as I do, I am surprised to see that it forms a paper aeroplane, such as we used to make to play games with when we were little. This makes me smile. Pearl used to like this game.

      There is no reason to wait. There is nobody for me to speak to, for what would I say? Only this: I am abandoning you, Mother Oblation, Stone sisters, soldiers and Men, to seek my beloved traitor. I will take nothing with me but the map, this notebook in which, as well as my day-to-day doings, I have recorded so much sage advice carefully copied down in recent lessons, and my little knife that once belonged to my friend. Nothing more, for what am I owed? The worst punishment should be reserved for me. I could never explain the complexities of my rationale to the Properganders. They would see – and rightly too – disobed­ience and fatal feminine weakness. If not burned for heresy I will likely receive a flaying at least, or a starfish splaying atop the Orchid Nursery with my face exposed to all and my body open to any violation or insult. But better this than excommunication and no chance to Beseech on my next birthday or any of those to follow. Better any of these than enduring a long life without the comfort of True Belief. Yes, I must go, for this way lies redemption. I will kill what I can catch. I will drink from unhallowed streams.

      I close the door behind me. There is a careforcer sweeping the corridor, her form hunched as she forces the brush into the corner, scouring for dust. Very thorough. Her lips have been only recently grafted together, so I do not like to look on her. But I feel her concentrated gaze on me, willing me to meet her eyes. Why such impertinence? I see it is Xeniicut227. I dislike that way she has, a kind of discreet knowingness. So superior. Though not uncommon among some of the more recently inducted xeniicuts, it’s true. But what could a careforcer know? And neither she nor anyone else can have any idea of what I intend to do. Nevertheless, before approaching the outer door I wait until she has passed, breathily whistling through the feeding hole in her suture.

      9.

      The cunnydorms are now behind me. The corp-yard is quiet. I walk across it and do not pause at the gate whose inscription I know so well: submission is freedom. Beyond are the Scholars’ and Seed-Bearers’ Rooms, built of purple-brown brick and white mortar. I move with great stealth, for although they should now be in their dining room on the far side of their complex they are Men, so naturally they are free to go where they please at any time. Yet I manage to pass by without incident. Then I come to the workrooms of the Craftsmen who make lovely objects of utility from glass and bone, metal and wood, or from the strong yellow ivory of the great tusked hammerheads that swim up from the Far Greasy Sea against Big River’s current to feed on the waste from Spare Parts Manufactory where the dudbubs live for a short while.

      After a little longer I reach the outer rings of our Perfect State, comprised of gardeners’ and foot-soldiers’ quarters, and make my way through the vegetable gardens that we are slowly extending further and further. In the distance I see the starlit gleam of Big River Harbour, full of container terminals and traffic from the other States, as it loops below on its way from Snow Mountain to the Sea. I follow the river a little further and soon pass beneath the darkened windows of Spare Parts. I hear the hum of the systems that sustain them, the malformed failures of gravidity, and the cripsanretards. I hear an occasional small voice, not quite a cry … Very little sound penetrates, and none ever reaches beyond the nearer curve of Big River where stand the elegant Ecumenical Houses and Properganders’ Mansions within their bastions of stone and their great Pine Circle.

      And now Stone Plain stretches out before me, as much granite as grass. It is a rare dry night. I feel an easing of the heart as I walk through this open space along the chalky path with nothing between me and eternity but the wide sky with its masses of cloud and the high-riding moon emerging from time to time like a thin smile. That was Pearl’s fancy – giving the moon moods and humours. It had become a sort of game for us. ‘What is her mood today?’ she – or I – would ask the other. And I – or she – might reply, ‘She feigns shame tonight, see the tip of her cowl between her teeth, playing for time, a dangerous game …’ or ‘She needs you now, and her desire is urgent. See how round and ruddy is her blood-suffused plumpness this red dawn,’ or ‘She is a mean stone-faced witchy-moon tonight, just asking for trouble …’

      I walk