Serpents and Stairways

Chapter I - Part 3

They set off. The wagon tugged them towards the town walls through the mountain vistas, and even if Dinah's eyes couldn't see at all, even if she covered them—she would've known the moment they entered Gebal. It smelled of sewers and coal, of bakeries and soot, of animal musk, of incense—pine and juniper burnt to ward off evil spirits—of ammonia... But the closer they were to the centre, the stronger got another smell, one you don't expect in the cradle of alpine valleys.

It smelled of gunpowder.

Flags on golden flagpoles and confetti, all mixed into one vibrant mess, flooded the central streets, and their wagon had to circumvent, from time to time stumbling its wheels on tram tracks. Dinah listened to the brass (and iron) sounds of a distant march, until they drowned in the heavy thunder of tanks under the bridge that their horse was dragging along.

She didn't have to be dissolved in the celebrating crowd to be a part of the procession: in her childhood, back when her eyes were still decent at seeing, her father used to take her to military parades. Flowers, banners, waving handkerchiefs, sharp spindles of rifles, polished boots. Marching reminded her of the rocking cluck of trains; and trains (at that particular age) were what she loved the most in the whole world. At least, she kept trying for her love to seem this way.

"I wonder how the tank's rumble sounds from the inside?" she asked herself and clenched her hand slightly, letting the sparse straw under her fingers rustle on the wooden floorboard of the wagon, "Could it sound similar to what a child hears before birth?"

Almost every man they met wore red-and-white uniform. Heavy banners hung from lampposts and house corners.

"I'm sorry, sir but what's the occasion for the parade?" She asked the old man. He twitched, as if he was surprised she knew how to talk at all.

"I don't know, milady. I'm not that interested in politics," he grumbled without turning his head, "Could have been. It's not that tricky, that old thing, you know. But ever since my nephew perished under Al-Maghrib, there's no one left to read me a paper, and how'd you figure it all out without one?"

Dinah looked at Georg, sitting in front of her, but he didn't know either.

They rolled into a small town square, wrapped in mirrors of shop windows, and the reasons for the celebration suddenly felt irrelevant—Dinah got burnt with anxiety and shame.

She placed a hat on Servantes to help a curious bystander's consciousness spend less time inventing a plausible explanation for the missing head. The hat, so to say, filled in the blank, allowing one to continue not paying attention. Of course, nobody would remember a headless man for long, but for just one second the image would distress them, and they'd be gazing, staring, side-eying the travellers, questioning what felt wrong about them... Yes, the hat was a good idea. Dinah herself, however, had nowhere to hide.

Well-dressed ladies, resembling pale poisonous mushrooms, clicked their steel-studded heels on the pavement, as though driving nails into her weary senses. Were they staring at her? Back in school she used to possess an uncharacteristic for a girl of her age disdain for the neatness of her tights, cuffs, and other lace nonsense. But the worse she saw the gray under her fingernails, the more she worried that somebody else would.

They drove past someone's melodic laughter. Were they laughing at her? Maybe. She did look ridiculous after all—with her uncovered head, torn skirt, and split lips. Dinah took off her glasses, trying to wipe them with a dirty sleeve, and asked herself not to pay attention to the laughter, already knowing it to be a request she couldn't fulfil. She felt ashamed both of how she looked (as if she could look graceful after an airship crash, being captured and robbed), and of caring about her looks at all, and even of letting herself feel ashamed of her own shame, driving herself into a spiral (yet another spiral) with no easy way out.

"Do you already have a master puppeteer for Servantes in mind?" Georg suddenly asked. Up to this moment he was somewhat dissolved in tonalities.

"I don't. I was thinking of asking upon arrival... acquaintances."

"I know of a clockwork master in the Lower Town." Georg didn't pay attention to her stumbling. "We'll be passing by."

"Lower Town? I suppose that's what locals call Gebal?" Dinah thought, but corrected herself, "No, not the locals. That's what someone from Silen could call it. For the people of Gebal there was only one town."

What did he look like, she wondered. Georg, not the town or that clockwork master he mentioned. His hair seemed brown, but no other distinguishable details. Taller than her (alright, doing better), probably similar age to her... Maybe a bit younger but only because he always smiles when he talks. Sometimes as if out of place: like people with a habit of making excuses.

The steady clopping of low-carbon-steel horseshoes on the cobbled street counted off the swell of biplanes, blunt-nosed like hunting bullets, dragging a banner of the Decafold Empire over the rooftops. With this accompaniment, the wagon had left the town square and then the parade-overwhelmed streets altogether. The sound of celebration was replaced with the usual noise of a town: cars and carriages, conversations under moiré umbrellas, snoring of a drunkard who had lost his time, and other varieties of rounded sounds.

Suddenly something sharp protruded from the roundness. A green glare flickered across Dinah's retina, followed by a red one, and then by many others; it felt like entering the rainbow's end.

"What is this?"

"Oh, can you see it? Nothing out of the ordinary, a stained-glass window gleaming in the sun."

"Is a cathedral ahead?"

They had already passed the part of the town where houses boast stucco and frescoes, and even Dinah, who wasn't a frequent in the outskirts, knew that this far outside the centre buildings were much more often decorated with freshly laundered linen and faded posters inviting to join the army than with stained glass.

"No. But that's the place I mentioned. The clockwork's. Do you wish to stop here?"

She did.

The old man reminded that he was not a coachman—but rather inertly, knowing that his passengers had already decided. Servantes carefully helped Dinah to get down, and when the tips of her boots touched her own shadow, she realised that Georg had remained where he was. She didn't necessarily find it strange, but she expected that since her new acquaintance had offered the place, he was going to join her there as well. Most of the people she met acted this way — maximising their care for her even when she never asked. Well then...

"I guess, I wish I could say 'It was pleasure to meet you' or something along those lines," she smiled "but telling such a frank and open lie isn't polite, is it?"

The young man chuckled. His face was under a mask of orange, green, and pink shapes that no ordinary stained-glass, the purpose of which was to let the light inside, could reflect—and so it felt as if there was its own artificial sun inside that tower.

 "I hope the reason is the circumstances, and not my dashing skills in trickery." He responded and added, a bit softer, "It was a pleasure to meet you too, Miss Gremin. Perhaps we'll meet again."

They said their goodbyes, and Dinah walked towards the door.

- - ⌀ - -

Thank you for reading another part of the first chapter! If you enjoyed it, please don't forget to star it and subscribe for more updates! I'll keep publishing each Thursday!

Welcome to Gebal, one of the many towns and cities of the Decafold Empire, inspired by the 19th century Austro-Hungarian Empire—the old opulence on the intersection of trade routes that cross the continent, the beauty of nature, and the militarist bravado of a new-found national identity.

Did you find the descriptions of the place and the parade appealing or uneasy?

Is the character of Dinah's father and his influence on her, encoded in the details she pays attention to, starting to become clearer?

Let me know what you thought in the comments!

P.S. This chapter's header is cropped from Jan van Eyck's 15th century painting "Annunciation", where archangel Gabriel, the holy messenger, announces the God's will, bringing the divine plan into motion.