The Final Summons - Chapter One - First Chapter Challenge contest entry

This is my entry for @thewritersblock's First Chapter Challenge contest. The challenge is to write a first chapter for a novel.

CHAPTER ONE

The Boy slipped into the world on a carpet of blood and amniotic fluid, and the warm, steady hands of the Midwife Cynãsu received him. Those same hands squeezed the life into him, and in the days that followed they cradled and cared for him.

His mother, a Stusi prostitute named Timora, didn’t survive the birth. He never knew her hands, nor saw her face, nor heard the lullabies she’d composed for him borne to him on the air. His only lingering impressions of her were those softly hummed melodies – filtered through the womb – and then her death cry. Emitted as she forced the final, rupturing, spasm that expelled him, the shriek seared his awareness like a brand. And though it faded at once from conscious perception, it persisted in his dreams–a muffled phantom cry issuing through a featureless and impenetrable wall.

* * *

Cynãsu’s apartment was on the northern end of the cloister. On the morning of Inductions, she kept a chair drawn up to the window overlooking the courtyard. A basket of mending rested at her side, and her clever, careworn hands turned a small, gray shirt over and over, her calloused fingers finding the rents then sealing them with needle and patchgum. Though she glanced down now and again to check her work, her gaze always returned to the window. She was watching for the Priestess Drina.

The celebrated lady was several hours overdue. Since becoming Priestess, Drina had made a habit of running late to emphasize how important and busy she was. Another time, Cynãsu wouldn’t have let it trouble her. But this was a different sort of day. A momentous day! A day of reckoning! Today was the day they decided the Boy’s vocation.

His name was Wick. That was the name Timora chose for him before the birth (somehow she’d known it would be a he), and the name he went by. Still, Cynãsu thought of him as the Boy. Not just Boy, but the Boy, as if that were his vocation, for he embodied all her notions of what a boy ought to be. He had a shy but friendly disposition, offset by occasional bouts of sullenness when he would withdraw from everyone and only glower back when spoken to. He was endlessly curious, and entreated (many said pestered) adults with questions on every topic. He loved animals, and couldn’t bear to see them suffer, yet he devoured his dinners with gusto and never seemed to draw the connection between the creatures he wept for in the Plaza and the steaming bowls and carcasses heaped on the table. The Boy had a mischievous streak, which expressed itself in the form of little pranks, more irreverent than malicious: hanging waxed fruit from the trees in the Garden of Delights for revelers to pluck down and sink their teeth into; teaching impious phrases to the magpies in the lower end orchards; carefully arranging cow flops beneath the statues of saints in the Plaza, as though the venerable figures had sullied their pedestals. Several times he’d been beaten for these antics. But never too severely, since he was a ward of the Temple, and never by Cynãsu herself. She couldn’t bring herself to raise a hand to him, even when she knew he deserved it, for he reminded her too much of his mother.

He’d inherited Timora’s looks, her angelic features made cherubic in his young face, her feminine beauty lent a faint tinge of masculinity. His eyes were the same limpid gray, his hair the same lustrous black with ruddy highlights. His lips were the same peculiar shape, almost pointed at their apex. He’d even inherited her affinity for music, and his voice, on those rare occasions he chose to sing, had the same sweet ring to it.

The resemblance was especially striking when he was having one of his nightmares. They’d tormented him since infancy, often several times a week. And she was always there to see it. Even when she was fast asleep, his feeble noises roused her and brought her running. Countless times she’d rushed into his chamber to find him in the throes of some awful vision; his features twisted in an agonized grimace, his fists gnarled around the linen, his breath coming in panicked gasps.

It hurt to see him that way. But she didn’t try to wake him. She knew from experience it wouldn’t help, that calling to him, shaking him, even making him sit upright wouldn’t rouse him. He would wake only when the nightmare reached its climax. Then he would jolt up in his cot and unleash a curdling shriek, and Cynãsu would rush to him and draw him close.

Once awake, he claimed to have no memory of those dreams or even of waking from them with a shriek. Rousing in her arms, he assumed she’d woken him, and became cross with her, and pushed her away with an endearing growl. Then she could return to bed.

But rarely to sleep. On such nights, she lay down again to brood. . . not on the Boy, since he always slept soundly after these episodes, but on Timora. Poor, poor, Timora, whose screams, instead of releasing her from the darkness, had consigned her to it.

* * *

Timora at rest; Timora at play; Timora at work; Timora in a fury, for the failproof nostrum had failed. Timora in a fright; Timora in study; Timora in song; Timora in tears, for the baby was on its way. Timora at the window; Timora in the Garden; Timora in bed; Timora at rest again.

* * *

Cynãsu still found it difficult to qualify her feelings for her. The most she’d ever felt for any of the other Kasi or Stusi, before or since, was a disdainful pity. Poor silly creatures. The simplest thing, she sometimes thought, was to say she’d adored her. But that didn’t do it justice, especially within the perfumed halls of the Temple, where the spiritual and the sensual blurred together, and the redolence of flora mingled with the musky odors of sex. They’d never been paramours. While she’d been captivated by Timora’s beauty, that same admiration had forbidden any carnal notions. Hers was a reverential passion, as one might feel for a sunrise or a deity. .

Timora radiated the same blessed aura whether she was gilt and bejeweled and rouged in her Stusi finery, or disheveled and unkempt in her private quarters; recumbent and unclad on a satin couch with her dark hair spread around her, or hunched over a stool trimming her nails; singing, her sweet voice sanctifying the perfume-sodden air, or in a snit, insulting everyone around her. Even in her final moments, with her death cry still ringing in the rafters, and her mouth frozen open, and her lifeblood erupting out of her along with the baby, even then, especially then, she was holy.

Cynãsu been struck by this the moment she met her. Even after she’d gotten to know her, and recognized what a spoiled, selfish creature she was, the impression hadn’t tarnished. Timora’s glory was such that none of her failings could diminish it.

Yet the midwife was the only one who perceived it. That wasn’t to say Timora went unnoticed. She attracted multitudes of admirers and patrons. But no more than any other Stusi. And there was nothing special about any of those “devotees.” Their eyes all reflected the same sallow gleam. The poems they placed at her feet spoke only of her pulchritude. Their worship was cheap, a shabby and generic spirituality singed by lust. None of them perceived the aura that surrounded her. None were content just to bask in her presence. They wanted to ogle her, pinch her, fuck her. Those who could afford it knew her body, while the rest amused themselves with flattery and innuendo and rhyme. But in the end, they all moved on, their devotion eulogized by the detritus they left in their wake; so many disheveled and oozing condoms; so many carnal votives, scorched to the nub; so many tawdry verses, not worth the paper they were scribbled on. Not one of them saw Timora’s real beauty. This made her all the more precious to Cynãsu. The Midwife felt responsible for her well-being, as keenly as if the Gods had charged her with it.

And she’d failed.

But not for want of trying! She reminded herself of this when the guilt got its teeth in her. She’d always believed Timora would come to a tragic end. The ones who shone too bright, whose beauty or goodness or talent brushed against divinity always died before their time. Cynãsu had feared, from the moment she met her, that Timora was doomed. And somehow she'd had known that fate would find her in the Temple.

She’d pled with her to leave the cloister. She’d promised to accompany her and provide for her, had explained how she could set up as a Midwife in one of the pastoral provinces and earn enough to support them both. But whenever she broached the topic, no matter how she urged or cajoled, bullied or begged, Timora just laughed and waved her off, always with the same facile quip: “Why should I run away when I’ve found everything I want right here?”

Since Timora wouldn’t leave the cloister, Cynãsu had done all she could to shelter her within it. She’d used her influence to try and keep her from the most ghoulish patrons. She’d manipulated delivery schedules and even forged invoices to ensure Timora got the best furnishings, the best meals, the best of everything in the Temple stores. She’d taken especial care in the nostrums she mixed for her, and waived the fees she charged the other Kasi and Stusi, even for her prized “Summerset Brew”. She’d done everything in her power to keep her safe and comfortable.

But she’d failed. On nearly every count, she’d failed. Most of the patrons she tried to shield her from had lain with her anyway. The little amenities she won for her hadn’t made her any happier. And the Summerset Brew she mixed for her was instrumental in her destruction.

Just history, she murmured to herself, holding back her shame by that phrase, which she’d made a mantra of. How many times had she uttered it since Timora’s death? How many times had she uttered it today? She couldn’t change the past. She could only hope to atone for it. Her tribute to Timora and Creation, her penance for her mistakes, was the rearing of the Boy. Just history, she whispered, and kept the demons at bay, but only just. They lurked out of sight but within snapping distance, waiting with ruttish snarls for her to fail the Boy as well.

She loved him even more fiercely than she loved his mother. She saw the same holiness in him, only brightened by her own expectations. She invested all she had and all she was in him, weaving her heart and her hopes to his by a lattice of raw nerves, as if defying fate to be so cruel as to clip them. And when he loved her back, when she felt how he trusted her, when something wounded him and he turned as imploringly toward her as a penitent toward Calcydeon, she knew her reward. What sweet pain, this taste of motherhood, what terrible joy to understand the sacredness of her charge, the incredible power she wielded!

And today was a day of reckoning.

History, she murmured as she gazed out the window. History, as she lay the mended shirt aside, and rummaged a torn shift from her basket. She felt a stab of fright each time someone entered the courtyard, then a sickly whisper of disappointment when it wasn’t Drina. She called the likeness of the Priestess to mind, then attacked the shift, as if planting stitches in the celebrated lady’s face.

Many times since Timora’s death, she’d considered fleeing the Temple with the Boy. But she’d known such a flight would fail. Being of independent age, Timora could have left the cloister any time she wished. The Boy, however–born on Temple grounds to a Stusi, and still too young to plot his own course–belonged to the Faith. If Cynãsu took him away, she would be branded a kidnapper. They would draw bounty hunters in their wake. Almost certainly, they would be apprehended. Then the Boy would be returned to the cloister, only without Cynãsu to care and advocate for him. Even if they somehow evaded the dragnet, Cynãsu would have to find work to support them. Since setting up as a Midwife would give them away, it would have to be some menial job that would bring in barely enough to house them, much less feed them. And while she was away, the Boy would be left to his own devices; left to wander the streets, and fall in with bad friends, or come to some even worse end. Cynãsu had resolved: it was better to remain within the microcosm of the Temple, where their livelihoods were assured, and where she wielded some influence.

At last, as the bright morning gave place to a sultry midday, Drina made her appearance. She darted into the courtyard through the southern arch, then hesitated, glancing about as if to get her bearings. She was still made up and dressed in her ornamentals, though there would have been time for her to change into something more sensible after Inductions. The Midwife frowned, uncertain what to make of this. Perhaps the Priestess brought bad news, and wore her finery like a suit of armor, to shield her from Cynãsu’s wrath. Or she brought good news, and had remained in garb to lend herself a certain dignity as she delivered it. Or perhaps she was just tickling her own vanity. Drina hesitated another moment, then beelined for Cynãsu's aparment, nodding and smiling stiffly at those revelers she passed. When she disappeared from view, the Midwife laid her mending aside and moved down to the antechamber to await her knock.

It sounded more than a minute later. Cynãsu didn’t know how to interpret this either. Did the Priestess loiter outside because she was afraid to enter? Or was this just another affectation, one final delay to punctuate the insult of her tardiness? She was nearly four hours overdue.

The Midwife hesitated a moment herself, then drew open the door.

Thanks for reading! :D And thanks to @thewritersblock for the great contest and opportunity!