Gameplay

Eli focuses on little else but improving his performance, and potentially winning the game, though his instructions on how to accomplish such a thing remain vague. His performances become more fluid. He develops an instinct for adding flourishes and for meeting the eyes of the audience. He practices in private until he is able to resurrect multiple birds, mice, snakes, at once in public. Eli fortifies his technique, becoming more familiar with his symbols and safeguards, concentrating on becoming indomitable.

Eli emerges form his notes long enough to perform and to play the market game. He is no longer disorientated when he shifts between the layers of the market. He has even come to enjoy the game, in its chaos, though he never puts much effort into winning it.

After the game he returns to his scheduled number of shows, and following those retires immediately to his rented flat, in whatever city the market has taken up residence within.

There are frequent invitations to tea from the Fairchild siblings, including small messages from Alice reminding him not to overextend himself in his work and performances. Telling him how her projects are going, remarking on the weather, saying she misses him when he is not around.

Visits from his former instructor occur few and far between, and as the market travels to more distant locations and Eli has an increasing number of shows scheduled each night, these visits become even more infrequent, to the point where it is not odd to go for months without hearing a word from his instructor. The visits are filled only with lectures and reminders about the game and its short list of rules. His former instructor always reminds him to study and remain reasonable in his practice. They are purely educational interactions, yet Eli always hesitates letting his instructor leave so quickly.

It is months before Eli feels secure enough in his position in the market and in the game to take a night off to wander in the time between his performances. He has not seen, yet, any moves being made. He wonders how exactly moves are made. They have no squares to play on, and if they – and their work – are being monitored separately, there is little opportunity for him to evaluate his opponent and outshine him.

One night, after last performance for the hour, he stows his materials and animals in the narrow tent between stalls and begins to wander through the pathways, looping back several times until he finds himself n the market square.

He briefly admires the centrepiece, burning like molten gold, before purchasing a cup of cider – for half price, when the vendor recognizes him – and moving on.

Eli continues to the very opposite edge of the market, where a small assembly is watching a girl in a deep green gown and a black bowler hat perform.

She has only a raised platform on which rests a boxed shape with a square of silk over it, and a plaque that leans against the platform with the words

Fantastical Creatures

Natural Mysteries

Inscribed in swirling golden letters that shimmer as they catch the light.

If it were not for her performance, Eli would spend the entirety of it staring at her. At her dark hair against her pale skin, and her black eyes with such long lashes she appears younger than she may be.

The crowd is full of ooh’s and ah’s as she opens the cage and reveals her first creature for the performance. It appears like a kitten, but with the luteous eyes of a crocodile, moonlike, and on it’s back are two large wings, like those of an eagle. In the fur and small down of feathers, it is impossible to tell where it changes from cat to bird.

The girl’s upheld hand, flat and with an open palm, dips slightly with the creature’s weight as it leaps upon her, curling its tail around itself like a rope. She gives a perfunctory wave of her hand and the creature jumps up once more, drawing the crowds eyes to it.

The creature executes a perfect somersault at the zenith/apex/pinnacle of its leap, then, rather than falling, it spreads it wings in a soft white canopy. It catches the wind and soars several feet before landing on the ground quite close to his feet.

The girl performs a low curtsey, smiling at the audience as she turns in a circle. She catches Eli’s eye once in her rotation, but shows no sign of recognition, though her very glance makes him feel as though they are in a more intimate space.

Though Eli watches her closely, she does little out of the ordinary, apart from performing with an unusual and impossibly creature. She is a confident performer, but there are no symbols on her hands or in a notebook perched on her platform, no ink-stained fingers, no murmurs under her breath.

Eli moves on. It cannot be her. She is too obvious to be his competitor, and lacking of the tell tale signs by which Eli expects to recognize his opponent.

He stays long enough to watch her produce a bird with the scaled amber tail of a fish before departing. Eli does not notice the eyes following him from beneath a dark hat brim.

Much of Bethany’s time is monopolized by creating and training the chimaera, but what other time she has to herself belongs solely to Mr.Marchand and Mako, who are her companions between performances and in the daytime, on excursions to bookstores and charming cafes concealed in alleyways of foreign cities.

This late morning she stands in the marketplace, abandoned and empty, and seemingly ordinary in the daylight, beside the doll-maker’s stall, meeting hundreds of glassy stares with her own.

It is only the ripple of their dresses that tells her that her former instructor has appeared.

“What are you doing?” her instructor asks from behind her.

She does not turn or look up as she sorts through a box of discarded doll parts. “Looking for something.”

“What for? I would have thought you were too old for dolls,” her instructor says, drily.

Bethany ignores him, lifting a small china doll from the bin. It is missing an arm and both legs, but the hair is a silky ebony waterfall. She sets it aside and continues rummaging. “I want to know if I can resurrect an animal with human parts,” she says, finally. “I would have thought you would approve of my experimenting.”

Her instructor makes a soft derisive sound, but does not comment when she holds up a second doll, this one with two full eyes.

“Mako won’t miss this one, much, she says, holding the doll up before her.

“What have you divulged to this friend of yours?” Her instructor asks.

“Hardly anything she did not already suspect.”

Her instructor narrows his eyes. “Meaning?”

Bethany sighs and pauses, eyes fixed on the box, though she seems to look through it rather than at it. “I told her I was playing a separate game within the market place. I did not tell her anything else. Though that was not for lack of trying; there is nothing to tell. I do not know how to play, or how you expect either of us to win.”

“Do not bother yourself with that,” her instructor says, waving a hand. “You will know who has won when the time comes.”

Bethany raises her brows, and several dolls turn to regard her instructor with shining eyes.

“That is not a valuable use of your energy,” he snaps, and the doll heads settle back into place.

Bethany withdraws a collection of limbs, in porcelain and china. They click as she slides them into the pocket of her coat. “Do no bother yourself with that,” she says. “I already have an upper hand. Losing does not seem likely.”

“Good. I have always thought you were a winner. Prove me right.”

When Bethany turns to answer, her instructor is gone, and she stands alone in the colourful market place.

When she returns to her own small tent, full of cutting implements that she cleans daily, she stops immediately within the tent. The animals are agitated, warily eyeing the cage in the corner that housed, only several minutes ago, one of her newly made chimaera.

The latch of the cage is warped like some piece of molten metal cascading in a mess of half solid gears and latches.

“Oh dear,” Bethany says, to the empty tent.

Eli stands beside the centerpiece, hours before the market opens. Some vendors are already at their stalls, preparing to open, and there is the faint scent of cinnamon permeating the market square. He is not alone. Alice, who prompted him to leave his studies for a cup of tea in the late afternoon, insisted on escorting him to the market, and now stands beside him.

“I don’t understand,” she says, squinting up at the burning bronze book, searching for something she cannot see.

“Something of my opponent’s is loose in the market,” Eli says. “Something… I can’t explain it.” He sigh sin frustration, trying to articulate what he feels, though he is not even sure what it is he feels so strongly “I can feel it,” Eli says. “The things he does leaves an imprint on the market. I can tell, it’s like a signature. It means something is his.”

“So something is in another layer of the market? Something of your opponent’s?” Alice says, blinking.

“Yes, but I cannot figure out how he brought it in,” Eli murmurs, distractedly.

“That isn’t too hard,” Alice says. “Many people bring their own work into – over, the market. You’ve seen it. It’s how they win the game.”

“You can bring outside objects in?” Eli says.

“Of course. If it’s yours, it can follow you. You are connected to your work. It can follow you between layers,” Alice says.

Eli says nothing more, and he continues to stare at the bronze book even as the market comes to life around him. Alice tries to coerce him into taking another walk with her before the market opens, but he insists he has to make a note of this, drawing her attention to other matters until she is distracted enough that he may slip away.

Alone in her rented flat, Bethany slices the throat of a chimaera, waiting while it jerks and its blood runs in river lines over her wrists. When it is still and silent, she closes her eyes and searches for the threads.

She deftly brings them toward the chimaera, but instead of wrapping them together, she plucks one from the bunch and gently pulls at it. It separated, like a rope made of twined thread.

The chimaera stirs, then is silent once more as the threads slip her grasp and slide back together.

Before they fade, she repeats the process. Over and over, working until the chimaera staggers to life, its threads pulled apart and only some of them are tied to its body. The remaining threads are suspended over it, waving like tall grass, burning gold behind her eyelids.

Eli’s cup of tea, which Alice placed beside him on the desk of his flat an hour ago, is ice cold. It ripples as she picks it up and replaces it with a freshly made cup, steaming and sweet-smelling.

Alice hesitates, watching Eli as he scribbles, noticing his pale face, the hollows in his eyes. How starkly green they are. “Are you alright?” she asks.

“I’m fine,” Eli says, without looking up. When Alice does not leave he glances up to meet her anxious eyes. “I’m fine,” he repeats emphatically.

“If you’re sure,” she says, moving toward the exit, but he is already reabsorbed in his notes.

Art by Maja Wronska

Text by Lucie MacAulay