SMOKE & MIRRORS #11: The Old Road

Welcome to Ashford Row

PARLOR TRICKS # 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

SMOKE & MIRRORS # 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

The center of Ashford Row had begun to choke.

People still filled the streets. Carriages rolled past storefronts and bells chimed above shop doors. Vendors called out beneath striped awnings while patrons crossed from one side of the avenue to the other with packages tucked beneath their arms. From a distance, everything appeared ordinary.

Then Susan noticed the woman at the corner. She stood with one foot in the street and one foot on the curb, clutching a small paper parcel against her chest. Her head turned left, then right, then left again, as if the decision to cross required immense concentration. The woman did not flinch as a carriage passed inches from her skirt. She only looked right again, uncertain.

“Arthur,” said Susan.

“I see her.” He crossed to the woman and took her gently by the elbow. “Madam.” She blinked at him. “Are you quite alright? You were about to cross.”

“I was?” The woman looked down at her parcel as though surprised to find it in her hands. “Was I going somewhere?” Her expression folded into distress. “I cannot remember.”

“Stay here and rest a moment,” said Arthur. “And keep clear of the traffic.”

Susan looked at Arthur. He said nothing as they continued down the avenue. Susan now began seeing them everywhere, the disjointed souls. A gentleman entered a bakery, turned immediately around, and stepped back onto the pavement to stare at the sign above the door. A boy stood beside a lamppost calling for his mother while a woman only six feet away called for her son, each facing opposite directions. Near a fountain, a man in work clothes knelt beside the water and washed his hands over and over again, though there was nothing on them.

The living threaded uneasily between them. Some did not notice. Some pretended not to. Others stared with the frightened politeness of people who had no wish to be involved in another person’s collapse.

“Are these all from the backlog?” said Susan.

“I can only assume so.”

Ahead, the crowd thickened. It was no longer merely a busy street. Souls clustered at intersections, beneath awnings, around shop windows, in doorways, against walls. Some whispered to themselves while others wept. Some laughed with helpless relief at nothing visible. Demons moved among them in agitation, thin and monstrous shapes slipping between coats and skirts, pausing at one soul, then another, then recoiling as if uncertain which grief belonged to whom.

Susan watched one demon bend over an old man seated on the curb. Its fingers hovered inches from his face. Then it lifted its head sharply, looked toward a young woman nearby, and crawled after her instead.

“Even they are confused,” said Susan. “I didn’t think that was possible.”

Arthur’s silence at this was more unnerving than any answer could have been. A city full of demons was terrible. A city full of confused demons was worse.

“You knew it would get this bad,” she said.

“I knew it would get bad. I didn’t know how bad.” Arthur looked at her. “It will probably get worse.”

A woman emerged then from the crowd. She was young, perhaps twenty-five, with dark hair pinned loosely at the back of her head. Her dress was old-fashioned even by Ashford Row’s generous standards, and there was mud along the hem. She stared at Susan with such sudden recognition that Susan looked over her shoulder. There was no one behind her.

The woman covered her mouth and drew closer. “Anna?”

Susan stiffened. Arthur turned.

“Anna!” said the woman. She moved faster.

“I’m sorry,” Susan said. “You’ve mistaken me.”

But the woman had already closed the distance, her hands now gripped Susan’s sleeves. Her eyes shone with relief so raw it was nearly painful to witness. “I thought you were gone,” the woman whispered. “I looked everywhere. I told them you weren’t dead. I told them.”

Susan tried to ease backward. “I’m not Anna.”

The woman’s expression trembled. Then another voice spoke. “Clara?” An elderly man pushed through the crowd, reaching for Susan. “Clara, where have you been?”

The first woman turned on him. “No. She’s Anna.”

“She is my Clara.”

A boy appeared at Susan’s other side and seized her hand. “Nurse, please. It hurts.”

Susan looked down at him. “What hurts?”

He began to cry. More faces turned. Recognition spread like fire.

“Margaret?”

“Miss Vale?”

“Mother?”

“No, she was with me.”

“She promised.”

“She took my ring.”

“She knows where they buried him.”

Hands reached for Susan from every direction. Arthur moved to her side at once, but the crowd had already begun to fold inward. There was no malice in it. Only need. Each soul saw someone different, and each believed Susan possessed the answer that would make them whole.

“Arthur,” said Susan. “I can’t move.”

The crowd tightened. A demon shrieked somewhere nearby, shoved aside by the press of unresolved dead. The sound rippled through the avenue. Panic answered panic. More souls turned. More hands reached.

Arthur’s expression sharpened. “Close your eyes,” he said.

“What?”

“Close your eyes.”

She did. Arthur reached inside his coat. Susan could hear the rustling of paper, somehow loud despite the jostling crowd, with the delicate unfolding of something old and dry. The nearest souls continued to reach for her, tugging and crying out.

Then Arthur tore the paper in half. The sound was crisp, a piercing shred of fibers, and Susan’s eyes snapped open as the two halves slipped from Arthur’s fingers. The pieces became a fluttering storm of paper, multiplying as they fell, spinning through the air and catching light from somewhere Susan could not see. Each scrap opened midair into a tiny white square, and upon each square appeared a face.

The woman who had called her Anna gasped and turned away, following one drifting scrap down the avenue.

The elderly man sobbed. “Clara,” he called, chasing another.

The boy released Susan’s hand and ran toward an alley, chasing a paper face that bobbed gently ahead of him.

All around them, the crowd broke apart. Souls scattered after impossible reunions. Some hurried. Some limped. Some reached upward like children chasing snowfall. Within moments, the pressure around Susan loosened enough for Arthur to pull her free. They moved quickly into the side street.

Only when they had turned two corners did Susan stop and look back. “They were all so… lost.”

Arthur’s gaze remained on the alley behind them. “Hope can be a dangerous thing. It does not require logic to be potent.”

They left the congested center by degrees. The grand avenues narrowed into familiar streets which thinned into quieter lanes. Shops appeared less frequently. Windows grew dark. The demons became fewer. The lost souls thinned as well, though whether because they could not follow or because they had no reason to, Susan could not tell. At last they reached a district she did not know.

Ashford Row had always seemed endless to her. It rearranged itself when necessary. It hid rooms, lengthened alleys, produced buildings that had not stood there the day before. Yet this part of the city felt different. Neglected.

The pavement became uneven. Gas lamps stood unlit. The houses were older than the houses behind them, though she could not have said why. Their roofs sagged. Their windows watched the street with dull, black patience. Weeds grew through cracks in the stones.

“Where are we going?” said Susan.

Arthur did not answer. Past the last house, they found a narrow road of old stone. No sign marked it. No fence enclosed it. It simply continued away from Ashford Row into a stretch of gray countryside Susan had never seen from any window in the city.

Susan looked back to the Row that stood behind them, dense and crooked and troubled, its rooftops rising like a dark argument against the sky. She looked ahead. The road waited.

“This is as far as the city goes,” said Arthur.

Susan studied him. “Arthur. What are you not telling me?”

For once, he did not pretend to misunderstand. “I am telling you as much as I know.” The faintest smile touched his face, but it carried no amusement. “There are places here Ashford Row did not create,” he said. “Places that existed long before. This is one of them.”

Susan looked down the road. “And you think whatever’s down there can help us?”

“I hope so.”

She exhaled. “You hope so.”

Arthur stepped onto the road. The air changed at once. Susan felt it in her teeth. Behind them, Ashford Row continued to murmur with its crowds and wheels and voices. Ahead, the road held a silence so complete it seemed to carry weight. Their footsteps sounded wrong against the stones as they walked.

The road did not curve but frequently forgot to remain straight. It slipped between low fields where no crop grew and wound past trees with pale bark and leaves too dark for the season. The sky overhead lost its color gradually, as if aging. The clouds seemed stretched thin by centuries.

Susan looked around. There were no birds. No insects. No wind. The road stretched ahead and behind them with equal indifference. “How far does it go?”

“All the way to the end,” said Arthur.

They walked on. The stones beneath their feet grew larger and more irregular. Moss filled the seams. Then the moss gave way to something silver and soft that Susan eyed curiously but refused to touch. At the edge of the road, trees began to gather. Their trunks leaned inward as though listening. Some bore spring blossoms. Others held dead autumn leaves. One was dusted with snow despite the mild air.

“This place feels wrong,” said Susan.

“It’s an earlier place,” Arthur replied. “It’s not wrong, just different.”

The road narrowed. At last they came to two trees whose trunks had grown together above the road, forming an arch. There was no wall on either side. No fence, either. Susan could have walked around the trees easily, yet she knew she should not.

“What is this?” she asked.

“An entrance.”

Susan looked through the arch. Beyond it, the world did not look different in any dramatic way. The road continued. The trees continued. A small clearing lay ahead. Yet Susan felt certain that if she stepped through, something would change.

Arthur tapped his cane. Then he passed beneath the arch. Susan followed. On the other side, a feeling swept through her, a subtle and complete sense that every rule in the universe had already been long ago settled. She tried to ignore the sensation and walked onward.

The road ended a few yards ahead. Beyond it stood a cottage. It was small and weathered, almost plain, with a roof sagging beneath layers of moss. Its chimney leaned slightly. A low stone wall surrounded a garden where nothing particularly sensible grew. There were mushrooms, a few wildflowers, and tall grass that swayed though there was no wind. Smoke curled from the chimney.

“This is it?” said Susan. She looked at the cottage, then to Arthur. “I expected something…”

“Stranger?”

“Grander.”

Arthur’s mouth tightened. “Grand things are usually newer.”

The cottage door opened. The person who stepped out might have been a woman. Or an old man. Or a child who had grown tired of being young. Susan stared but could not hold any single impression for long. The figure wore a plain coat the color of weathered bark. Its hair was white in some moments and black in others, and its face had wrinkles, then none, then too many to count. It stood barefoot on the path, watching them with mild interest.

Arthur bowed.

“Mr. Mercer,” the figure said.

Arthur straightened. “You know me.”

“I know those who find the road.”

The figure turned its attention to Susan. She felt no menace in that gaze, but no warmth either. She felt only the awful, gentle pressure of duration. Susan swallowed. “What are you?”

Arthur looked at her sharply, but the figure merely smiled. “I have been called many things,” it said. “Most of them wrong.”

“What should we call you?”

The figure considered this. “Witness will do.” It stepped aside from the doorway. “You have come because the city is full. And because the angels are sharpening their knives.”

Susan felt cold settle between her ribs. Arthur’s expression did not change. Witness looked toward the vanished direction of Ashford Row. “They always do, eventually.” It entered the cottage and left the two to contemplate their existence at its doorstep.

Susan glanced at Arthur. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Arthur said quietly, “we are not the first system to fail.”

Arthur followed Witness inside. Susan stood for one breath longer, looking back toward the road, uncertain now if it truly existed. Then she went in.

The inside of the cottage was larger than the outside, but not in some impossible, theatrical way. Shelves lined the room from floor to ceiling, crowded with objects: a child’s shoe, a cracked bell, a strip of red ribbon, a stone bowl, a feather, and a rusted key. Hundreds of things lined the shelves. Perhaps thousands. Each rested in its place with the solemnity of a grave marker. Across the room, farther away than the cottage should have allowed, a fire burned in the hearth.

Witness moved to a wooden table and sat. Arthur remained standing. Susan stayed near the door.

“You want to know what existed before the Ledger,” said Witness. “You want to know whether the backlog can be placed, and what Seraphiel will do.”

At that name, the fire guttered. Arthur remained still. Susan stepped closer. “Can you answer?”

Witness folded its hands on the table. “The Ledger was not the beginning. Certainly not. It was merely an attempt at correction.”

Arthur absorbed this without visible reaction. Susan did not. “A correction to what?”

“To the appearance of perfection.”

Susan balked. She looked to Arthur, then back to Witness. “I don’t understand. What perfection?”

“Every order of the dead believes itself eternal. Every system declares itself flawless. Then come the souls that expose the lie. The Ledger was built to reconcile them.”

Understanding locked in. Susan took a breath. “The backlog is inevitable.”

Witness tilted its head. “The backlog is honest.”

Arthur spoke then, his voice low. “And what about the Warden?”

Witness looked to him. “At first, she recorded the exceptions. She stored them, processed them. Corrected imperfections so they could exist within the angels’ divine construct. The backlog grew. She couldn’t process them all. The angels would have purged them. So she tucked them away, deep.”

Susan thought of the flood of lost souls. The woman who called her Anna. The boy searching for a nurse. The demons unable to recognize their owners. “She was keeping them safe.”

“Yes.”

Arthur closed his eyes. He had called it an assignment. Freeing a prison. He had never considered that it might also have been a shelter. “What will Seraphiel do?”

Witness looked into the fire. For a long while, the only sound was the shifting and popping of the logs.

“The Grand Auditor is not cruel,” said Witness at last. “Cruelty requires intimacy. Seraphiel has only purpose. Purpose is far more dangerous.”

“What will he do?” Arthur asked again.

“He will restore order.”

Arthur’s face hardened.

Witness looked at him. “He will repair his purgatory.”

Susan felt the phrase settle over the room like dust. Arthur understood clearly. She saw it in him. Everything in his posture became still, then cold. “What happens,” Susan asked slowly, “to the souls that do not fit?”

Witness did not answer this time. Arthur did. “They will be purged.”

Susan’s mouth went dry. Arthur stepped away from the table. “How long do we have?”

Witness smiled sadly. “Time is one of the newer habits. I cannot say for certain.”

“Then guess.”

“Soon enough that you should hurry.”

Arthur’s face had gone unreadable. For the first time, the ancient thing seemed amused. “The angels will make the world clean,” said Witness. “That is what they do.” The fire bent low. “And when they are finished, there will be no backlog.”

Susan whispered, “They’ll eliminate the backlog.”

Arthur put on his hat. The conversation was over. Susan remained uncertain. What had they learned? Yet Arthur was headed for the door.

Witness rose. “You will fail.”

Arthur paused at the threshold. “I am confident in that.”

“You will lose more than you have already lost.”

Arthur’s hand rested on the latch. “I do not doubt it.”

“You may not find her.”

The words struck with the precision of a blade. Susan looked at Arthur. His face did not move. Only his hand tightened slightly against the door’s latch. “I know.”

Arthur opened the door. Outside, the strange garden waited. Beyond it, the road. Susan lingered one moment longer. Witness looked at her. “What about him?” she asked.

Witness’s expression softened in a way that made it look suddenly very old. “He is using guilt as a tool. Magicians can turn many things into tools.”

Susan looked toward the open door, where Arthur waited without looking back. Then she asked, quieter, “Should I be afraid of what he is becoming?”

Witness studied her. “You should be afraid when he stops being afraid.”

Susan carried that answer out of the cottage and wondered if, in fact, this was the only true knowledge she gained there.

Beyond the garden, the old road waited to return them to Ashford Row. Somewhere beyond the gray fields, a bell began to ring.