O PIONEERS!

OR: IMPARTATIONS

A TALE OF WE THE IMMORTALS

“BUT IT KILLED them!” said Mrs. Wheeler, white-knuckling her napkin now. “I heard they dropped dead nary a breath thereafter and right in front of the founding families.”

     “Lies,” said Mr. Wheeler behind a mouthful of eggs. He washed it down with a gulp of coffee, wiped his mustache, drained the rest of the cup like it were a shot of whiskey, and wiped again. He refilled the cup and sipped its contents gingerly this time. After a pause, he said: “Nothing like that has ever happened here nor will it happen in the future, leastwise to us.”

     “How do you know?”

     “Because the squire told me everything they’re going to do. And the Bakers didn’t drop dead; they cut up and left town.”

     “That’s not what I heard.”

     “Are you calling the squire a liar?”

     “No... I didn’t mean it like that.”

     “Look, all they’ll do is lay hands on us and release a blessing. A small impartation and nothing more. You’ve naught to fear.”

     “But what if it’s too much for us?”

     “It won’t be.”

     “What makes you so sure?”

     “Because I won’t allow it.”

     “How? Tell me.”

     “I’ll hold onto you the entire time and draw you away after you’ve received but a sample. And you can do the same for me.”

     “But what if it’s still too much?”

     Mr. Wheeler said nothing to this and instead stuffed half of a buttered biscuit into his mouth and chewed and frowned and chewed some more. Mrs. Wheeler tossed her napkin aside and sat back with a huff, leaving her own plate of breakfast, which included a healthy portion of scrambled eggs, a slice of cooked ham, and a likewise half-slice of buttered biscuit, untouched.

    The morning was bright and clear, and wide sunbeams burst through the windows of their modest farmhouse kitchen—white, blazing chutes that bounced off the floral-papered walls and flashed across the stacks of shelved crockery. They filtered through the dried herbs dangling from the rafters and coalesced with the heat already issuing forth from the hearth. Mrs. Wheeler took the brunt of the star’s barrage, for the windows were located directly behind her, and so she arose and drew the sheers over them and returned to her place at the table and slid her chair out of the sunlight’s path. Mr. Wheeler’s eyes remained on her the entire time, yet she averted meeting them.

     “You sure you’re alright?”

     “I don’t know.”

     “Where’s all this coming from, and why now?”

     “I can’t explain it. I don’t feel like myself.”

     “Are you... You know...” He nodded towards her belly, but Mrs. Wheeler shook her head. Mr. Wheeler sighed. “Need I remind you what sort of opportunity this is? Do you understand what this will do for us? For those dreams of yours? Why, we’re being set up for all of that and more. The squire’s a visionary, and those visions are being realized as we speak. And what with the new train stop and all, this little blip is proving itself to be a bonified star on the map. I just wish we could have been here from the start. With the pioneers.”

     “I do understand, yes. Don’t think me ungrateful, it’s... Well... I don’t like the way of it. There, I’ve told you. I hate the whole thing—the secrecy, the liturgy, the godbeast—”

     “Greatbeast, you mean.”

     “Yes, that, the poor devil.”

     “You eat beef, don’t you? And pork and poultry.”

     “That’s different.”

      “What’s so different about it? They’re animals.”

      “Yes, but greatbeasts...”

     “Are what? Sacred? That’s your father, the Trembler, talking.”

     “It’s nothing to do with my father or the Tremblers. It simply feels wrong to me, Son.”

    “Wrong...” Mr. Wheeler repeated the sentiment, his mouth falling into a grimace—the sort one makes when they have bitten into something undercooked. Something bloody. “Okay, let’s say the old parson’s right; what’s the alternative? Go back to living with Clem in New Galticia? You remember what that was like for us. What we gave up for something greater. If all of this bothered you so much before, why didn’t you object? Go on, let’s hear it.”

     “I don’t know.”

     This was, in fact, a lie; Mrs. Wheeler knew well what the alternative was, but the opportunity remained far too big, and they far too invested in their plan here. Though typically a sympathetic man, Mr. Wheeler had, in this case, decidedly disagreed with her point of view, and there was no way to change his mind nor their present course of action. And besides, her husband was right: she remembered what living with Clement Wheeler was like. Going back was not an option even if it were possible.

    Mr. Wheeler sat twisting the ends of his mustache, a tic that betrayed vexation whenever vexation found him. At length, he drained the last of his coffee and tossed his napkin on the table and stood to his feet and put his hat on his head.

     “I better get out there and check on Prudent,” he said. “We need those joists set down before the meeting tonight.”

     “Must you? It’s still early.”

     “You do want to move into that big house sometime this decade, yes?”

     To this point she conceded.

     Mr. Wheeler gripped her shoulders and kissed her on the head and stole for the door. Before stepping outside he said: “I promise you, Garn; it’ll all work out. Everything we’ve hoped for. Have I ever led us astray?”

     Mrs. Wheeler gave a wan smile, conceding to this also.

     “There’s my girl. Now eat that breakfast.”

     Then he was gone and Mrs. Wheeler alone with her unease.

 

✦✦✦

​

THE WHEELERS ARRIVED at dusk, dressed in their best bib and tucker.

     The great house, as it was called, awaited them at the end of the lane, its huge and solemn facade building in view like the front matter of some primeval fane restored to past grandeurs. The house stood two and a half stories tall and possessed many windows, through which it feasted on the sun’s rays at all times of the daylight hours. Amidst the seven gabled roof, a feature for which the abode was becoming infamous, a trio of chimneys arose like enormous standing stones offering up burnt tributes to the gods of a bygone age. Tonight, these great flues dispensed with smells of roasting meat and all manners of baked delectables that set the senses ablaze with want.

     Beyond the house, vast farmscape proliferated as far back as the Surapi Mountains. The mountains, which sketched themselves across the horizon in a ghosty, unbroken chain, took on the aspect of a great wall raised against some gargantuan unspeakable of the World Before. Mrs. Wheeler thought she could almost make out the Lady Thyatra’s colossus there. One hundred years had been spent shaping that venerable icon, carved right out of those selfsame massifs. Mr. Wheeler had taken her to view the monument four years prior to their settling in Tadlock, during their inaugural voyage across the Pancontinental Railway. They were newlyweds then, leaving behind their natal state of New Pergland for Mr. Wheeler’s cattle ranch in New Galticia, a claim he shared with his eldest brother Clement. The Lady Thyatra, Matron of Destiny, stood nearly seven hundred and fifty feet tall and was configured in an eternal march westward. In one hand, she carried the Free Constitution of the Federal Republic; in the other, the blinding light of civilization. A totem of human progress and a testament to mortal achievement. The icon was the tallest structure Mrs. Wheeler had ever laid eyes on, twice as large as The Lady’s colossus in Anglicia, and three times the stupa of Fenimore at the capital.

    It seemed only appropriate that the squire’s plantation should be founded here, under the eye of Thyatra’s March, as the shrine was so named. The surveyors had said this land was uninhabitable, its turf too thick and stubborn. A country of failing vigor. But the squire knew better. The squire had changed all of that. The squire had uncovered the secret. Now, these acres million were open for the taking, and the one who claimed the lion’s share would surely monopolize the nation’s agricultural commerce in perpetuity. Tadlock was at the forefront of this conquest.

     So, too, were the Wheelers.

     All they had to do was make it through tonight’s proceedings.

     All they had to do was be stronger than the Bakers. 

    When Mr. Wheeler finally halted the team, there were no other coaches or wagons outside, and, for a moment, Mrs. Wheeler wondered if they had misdated the event. But that hasty notion was quickly dispelled when the squire’s Manling stepped out onto the portico and bowed, ostensibly in-waiting for them. The Manling was dressed in tails and wore a lavish white wig with powdered cheeks and buckle shoes that flashed when they caught the light. An emblem of the squire’s elaborate wealth. The squire was, in point of fact, the sole Tadlockian in possession of a Manling.

    “Good evening, Master and Mistress,” said the Manling. “If you will leave your team and follow me. Our hostlers will see to their care.”

    “We aren’t late, are we, Bibelot?” said Mrs. Wheeler, trying not to sound anxious.

    “Right on time, ma’am.”

     “Where is everyone?” said Mr. Wheeler.

     “At the meeting, Master Wheeler. You will be escorted there as soon as my master calls for it.”

     “Ah, very well. Thank you, Bibelot.”

    Mr. Wheeler dismounted the wagon and helped Mrs. Wheeler down, and they followed the tiny humanoid into the house.

     The Wheelers were no strangers to the squire’s estate, and yet Mrs. Wheeler always felt as if she were touring the residence for the first time. Again and again, she marveled at the high ceilings, the twirling staircase, the crystal chandelier...

    By and by, they entered the parlor which was likewise splendidly arrayed in damask seating and darkly varnished cabinetry—all imported from Fioren and Belmark proper. Oil lamps lit the space, their lambent glow purling off the faces of the squire’s late forebears: stately men and women watching over the callers from the ornamented walls whereupon their painterly likenesses hung. In the corner of the room, a square piano, preloaded with sheet music, remained poised for action, ready to render service at a moment’s notice.

     But the Manling drew their attention to the center of the room, to the table where the Wheelers had played many a-hand at Three Kings in prior stays. There, under the silver candelabra Mrs. Wheeler furtively desired for her own, lay a neatly folded stack of brown robes.

     “My master asks that you put on these vestments and wait here until called. Master Merit will escort you personally.”

     “Yes, of course,” said Mr. Wheeler.

    The Manling offered the Wheelers some refreshments then departed the parlor and closed the door behind him.

    Once alone, Mr. Wheeler drew up one of the robes and examined its make. “They really want us to put these on?”

     “They are ghastly,” said Mrs. Wheeler.

     Mr. Wheeler grinned. “Here, let me help you...”

   After they were both dressed, they sat and sipped at their drinks and waited for the summoning. Knots tightened in Mrs. Wheeler’s stomach with every breath, images of Vic and Lily Baker’s deaths swirling in her mind like a building dread.

    No, Vic and Lily were alive. Sonny had said it. The squire had proved it. Why did her mind betray her so?

She prayed silently for strength.

   Meanwhile, Mr. Wheeler stood and paced the floor. He looked over the room and all its decorum and commented on each piece in turn.

     “Where do you think he filched this peculiarity?” he said, pointing to this or that.

     Of one item in particular, he said, “This one’s new.”

   It wasn’t new, a fact Mrs. Wheeler kept to herself, for this was her husband’s way of dealing with his own anxieties.

    Mr. Wheeler walked to the window and looked out into the full dark. “Big moon out there. And they got those poor devils still at it. Squire drives his chattels hard.”

    Mrs. Wheeler maintained her silence; her Trembler upbringing had taught her to despise the institution of slavery, but this was not the time to engage in a debate with Mr. Wheeler on its moral reprehensibility. Mrs. Wheeler had been pleased by the rumors, of course—talk of outlawing human servitude altogether, though the gossip claimed manumission would be a gradual process and come with a new exclusion act sending all Dianese thralls out of the country post-liberation. But Mrs. Wheeler believed these efforts were far too little. No intelligent race, be it human or non-human, should suffer such cruelty, for it was a sin against nature and personal liberty, the latter being one of the core principles upon which the Eunician republic was built. She desperately hoped one day the Fouke and Manling races also came to know deliverance. Mr. Wheeler disagreed with her position on non-human slaves, a fact he had made known on more than one occasion by way of long discourses on the subject of natural vs. conventional slavery. According to Mr. Wheeler, slavery brought structure and meaning to those races otherwise prone to indolence. Suffice it to say, Mrs. Wheeler avoided the matter whenever possible, lest she find herself prey to another one of Sonny’s blustery orations.

     At last, the knock came.

     “Master? Mistress? It’s time.”

​

✦✦✦

 

A COACH IDLED out front. The squire’s youngest son, Merit, a sturdy youth of fourteen and mirror image of the founder’s third wife, stood sentry at the door, issuing a long, deep bow when the Wheelers exited the house.

     “Good evening, Merit,” said Mrs. Wheeler.

     “Good evening, Mrs. Wheeler. And Mr. Wheeler.”

     “Merit,” said Mr. Wheeler with a grin. “Good to see you again, lad.”

     The sky was bright indeed, the moon full and white like a scorching angel head cent among the great host of stars winding across an otherwise impenetrable darkness. Truthfully, everything was so luminous that Mrs. Wheeler questioned the need for a lantern.

     The boy opened the coach door and helped Mrs. Wheeler up and shook hands with Mr. Wheeler before he leaped aboard himself. Once the passengers were stowed, the boy closed the door and climbed into the driver’s box, leaving the Wheelers in a deep and unsettling blackness.

     When Mrs. Wheeler went to draw the curtains away, she found they had been nailed in place, and so strictly that not a hoary sliver breached the compartment.

     “Guess they don’t want us knowing the route,” said Mr. Wheeler, an edge of disquiet in his tone.

     Mrs. Wheeler wanted to say something but refrained. If Mr. Wheeler held his protests, so would she.

    The coach suddenly jolted, and Mrs. Wheeler felt the conveyance move, pulled through space by disembodied hooves timed to a slow gait.

     O great Seventy above...

     Clip-clop, clop-clip...

     Please heed my cry... Grant my petitions this night...

     Clip-clop, clop-clip...

     Preserve our lives and embolden our courage...

     Clip-clop, clop-clip...

     The sound of Fouke chattel at work in the fields. A whip cracked somewhere. Oaths and curses.

     Clip-clop, clop-clip...

     Grant us victory!

     Clip-clop, clop-clip...

    Mr. Wheeler took her hand in his. She squeezed with all her strength, and he jerked away. “Easy!”

    Clip-clop, clop-clip...

    She was trembling all over, visions of death reeling in her mind without governance. There she and Sonny lay before the feet of the founding families, two gray and mortis-bound figures withered like the desiccated husks of ancient insectoids unearthed.

    Clip-clop, clop-clip...

    No, twas all a lie... Hearsay... The Bakers live...

    Clip-clop, clop-clip...

    Safe in New Belmark... The squire does not lie...

    Clip-clop, clop-clip...

   When would it end? Why the slow, torturous march? Why the nailed curtains? The vestments? The darkness? Why couldn’t they—

    Clip-clop, clop-clip...

    Mrs. Wheeler gripped her face, bracing to scream.

    ...Clip.

    The coach stopped.

   When the door opened, the Wheelers nearly jumped out of their robes, for they were, with the utmost confidence, expecting to see Merit’s amiable face upon exiting. What loomed in its place was like something out of a dark dream: Before them stood a man, clad in the same brown vestments as themselves. A cloth sheet with two eyeholes obscured the man’s face, and upon his head there arose a tall, pointed cap some three feet high like a giant cone. In the man’s left hand, he carried a lantern, whilst the other, the right, was extended towards the passengers, palm upturned.

    “Sonny, Garnet, welcome,” said the man, though Mrs. Wheeler did not recognize the voice to whom it belonged. Perhaps one of the squire’s deputies? She failed to place it.

     Mrs. Wheeler took the man’s hand and stepped out into the night, immediately drinking in her surroundings once the earth was back under her feet again. To Mrs. Wheeler’s dismay, she found they had been brought before an immense granary, somewhere in the heart of the squire’s plantation, which rolled into the primordial black forever in all directions. Not a single light anywhere at any point on the horizon.

     What had happened to the moon? The stars? What sort of dark eye was this?

    The doors of the barn were cast open, revealing the spectral lineaments of a masked host in congress, their coned caps like teeth in the mouth of some huge, carnivorous land mollusk. Like the Wheelers, most of the attendees were outfitted in brown; others, though less in number, wore blue garments, masks and caps corresponding to their abovementioned colors. Two were garbed in gray, and they sat on either side of a small lectern, before which there loomed the sole member arrayed in white.

     Yes, Mrs. Wheeler knew who the white wizard was without a doubt in her mind. It was Tadlock’s inceptor, its inventor, its icon.

    Everyone was seated when the Wheelers were brought forth, and the man who ushered them in bid they remain standing until the white wizard directed further. The white wizard was in the middle of an oration, but his audience was now looking at the newcomers and whispering amongst themselves.

     “Well,” said the white wizard in the squire’s familiar, noble speech. “I can see I’ve lost your ear, though for reasons that are, in my mind, justifiable. I suppose we ought to dispense with the jubilant occasion to which we are called here. Sonny, Garnet, would you come forward, please.”

     The Wheelers obeyed and approached the podium, the eyes of the magician like twin oblivions drawing them hitherto against all power of will. Mrs. Wheeler kept her own eyes lowered, unable to look into that caliginous mien.

     “Fellow pioneers, neighbors, friends,” the white wizard began. “It is an honor, indeed my great pleasure, to initiate these two wonderful persons, who, like all of us, have forsaken ties to kith and kin for a greater glory. You have spent the last year observing their character, and, by unanimous vote, found them worthy to join our body of peers. Therefore, we hereby receive Sonny and Garnet Wheeler as members of the Tadlock chapter of wizards. Let us administer the impartation and ratify this induction in a manner befitting those of The Way.”

     The white wizard issued a nod to the grays, and they stood and walked into the darkness and vanished. Mrs. Wheeler’s heart banged. The time had come at last. The hour of their trial.

     All of our hopes... Everything we’ve dreamed...

   A moment later, the gray wizards returned, and they were not alone. The leader of them carried a silver chalice, of which he handed over to the white wizard before stepping aside for his associate in tow. The second gray emerged promptly thereafter, ushering in a sight that, at least at first, dread obscured Mrs. Wheeler’s mind from rightly comprehending. But when the mind cleared and the picture sharpened, when understanding eventually took hold, reality proved far more horrible than her deepest, darkest nightmares made manifest.

    When the second gray wizard stepped out of the darkness, he did so pushing a wheeled chair and occupant. The occupant, to Mrs. Wheeler’s mute astonishment, was not that of some magical animal, but, in truth, an angel—pale and unwashed and adorned in rags. The angel’s wings were sheared clean off, as were its arms and legs below the joints, resolving the poor devil to but a frame of stumps and a head. Upon the head, which was shorn down to the scalp, a cloth covered the angel’s eyes so that it sat in total darkness; whether the invalid possessed any eyeballs underneath the covering, Mrs. Wheeler could only guess (and did not want to know). The stink arising from the angel’s presence was as ghastly as its appearance, and though its debilitations were torturous, the immortal did not utter a sound, nor did it stir even an inch. No, the occupant simply sat there as if it were a thing both living yet not alive.

     But this was a small revulsion compared to what the Wheelers witnessed next: First, the white wizard reached into his robes and drew out a small spike with a long tube attached to the blunt end. He approached the angel and began caressing the top of its bristly scalp as if it were some kind of queer yet beloved pet. After a half-minute of this, he nodded to the gray wizards, who held the invalid down by its stumps, allowing for the spike to be inserted into what remained of the angel’s upper left arm. The angel let out a pneumatic gasp at point of contact with the spike, and Mrs. Wheeler’s knees buckled.

     “Easy,” Sonny whispered, bracing her upright. “Strength, wife! Strength! Be strong and courageous!”

     Taking the free end of the tube, the white wizard placed it into the chalice, which promptly began to fill the receptacle with a golden liquid radiating light. As the liquid increased in measure, the white wizard resumed his stroking of the angel’s scalp, speaking softly to it in a tongue Mrs. Wheeler determined to be the language of that otherworldly race. Where, when, or by what means the white wizard had learned the Angrew speech was a mystery all its own.

     Once the chalice was full, the white wizard removed the spike and left the angel to the care of the grays, and they wheeled their charge forthwith back into the elemental shadow from whence they came.

     The white wizard turned and thrust the chalice up before all, the golden liquid therein aglow like a spawning bed of fireflies caught mid-frenzy. “The Birthright of man!” he said with an impassioned cry.

     “That which was stolen!” the congregation returned. “That which was lost! That which shall be reclaimed!”

     Mrs. Wheeler was beside herself. Sonny had promised... A prayer, not this... Not like this.

     Mrs. Wheeler backed away.

     “What are you doing?” said Mr. Wheeler.

     “I can’t, Son. It’s all wrong.”

     Mr. Wheeler seized her by the shoulders again. She tried to pull away, but his grip tightened, and his strength was far greater than hers.

     “You will do it,” he said, seething through is teeth.

     “It’s not like you said!”

     “Sonny,” the white wizard cut in. He was beckoning them. It was time.

   Mr. Wheeler heaved Mrs. Wheeler towards the white wizard, keeping an ironfisted grip on her person the entire time.

     “No! I don’t want it! Please!”

    But Mr. Wheeler heeded none of it. He snatched Mrs. Wheeler by the hair, and the white wizard drew forward and pressed the cup to her lips, and the blood’s coppery pong curled into her nostrils hot and foul and arresting. Mrs. Wheeler clamped her eyes and mouth shut, twisting, turning, lurching until the chalice pulled away. But her resistance was short lived, for in the next moment, she was completely overwhelmed when the two gray wizards re-appeared from the depths. Mrs. Wheeler’s head flung back and someone pinched her nose, forcing her mouth open with a gasp. It was there, in that half-spell, subdued and helpless, she beheld the greatest horror of all her short life: Above, among the dusty crossbeams, a pair of human heads dangled in space. They peered over the congregation with clouded eyes, slitted and lazy, like blind apocalyptic prophets in wait for a sign. Liver-colored tongues protruded through their purpled lips, and what was left of the skin was shrunken and ashy and moldering.

     Despite death’s disfigurement, Mrs. Wheeler recognized them right away.

     It was Vic and Lily Baker.

    Mrs. Wheeler doubled to scream, but before so much as a peep was forthcoming, the white wizard poured into her mouth a liberal dose of the golden fluid. A hand gripped her chin and shoved her jaw upwise and held it thusly until she swallowed every particle of the solution to the last drop. The tart liquid went down sharp as moonshine, and when it was over the men released her and she stumbled as one drunk in a coughing fit.

    But Mrs. Wheeler was far from drunk. In fact, what she experienced in the moments succeeding was something more like sobriety of the highest form, and it struck her like a thunderbolt. Health, strength, clarity... They flowed through her complete being, setting every one of her faculties on fire and endowing her spirit with an authority unlike anything she had ever known before. Edges appeared sharper, colors more vivid, emotions enhanced. In that moment, Mrs. Wheeler believed she could command the mountains, and whatever it was she so desired the mountains to do so would it be done according to her word and will.

     The impartation... This wasn’t death, but life! Life and life abundant!

     “Our people say the cause is lost,” the white wizard continued, dispensing the drink to Mr. Wheeler. “And yet without the power of the Birthright, it is humanity who is lost. I have gathered you here because you, like the others, are the best in your trade. A vocation imperative to our grand vision: the building of a true city of tomorrow. With power we have bent the land to our will; with prowess we will erect the safest, wealthiest, healthiest community our civilization has ever seen. And then, perhaps, someday, indeed if not soon, as we have unlocked the secret of the land so shall we unlock the secret of the angels.”

    The gray wizards approached Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler again, this time tying cloth masks over their faces and placing the coned caps upon their heads. The masks were made of linen and fragranced with a crisp, brand-new smell.

     “Now that you have received but one of many future impartations,” said the white wizard in a tone of the utmost severity. “Heed these words always. Never partake more than a sample. Never fall prey to the lust. Remember this, write these instructions upon your heart, lest ye suffer the same fate as our friends who ignored wisdom and were carried off for their folly. Lean on their example when temptation arises.”

    As the white wizard said these things, he gestured to the Bakers above, and all present gazed upon the warning they embodied.

     Mrs. Wheeler also looked, and she was no longer afraid.

    At length, the Wheelers were directed to the two empty chairs among the other browns, and they took their places there without scruple. Mrs. Wheeler buzzed from soles to scalp. Every movement, every twitch of her fellows went observed, for she was, presently, living in a state of unadulterated alertness. A transcendence of human limitations.

    The brown wizard beside her reached out and pinched the back of her arm, and she turned and saw kind eyes squinting at her through the peep holes.

    Mrs. Wheeler smiled back.

   The wizard turned away, back to their high priest at the podium, who was already in the middle of a new discourse. Something about a bake sale, but Mrs. Wheeler caught nary a word of it. The impartation consumed her every thought. The power of the Birthright.

     And of how desperately she desired yet another sip.