“It won’t take but a second. If we thought we could trust you to stay put under the glass, we’d do that. We don’t want you wandering off.”
“I’ll get the needle,” the old woman says. “Mind you don’t muss up his waistcoat. We can make use of it later. Such a fine fellow. A fine, fine fellow.”
His eyes roll back.
The ceiling, he realizes, has a curious sheen. It flutters and shines like wings.
There is salt in his mouth.
There is salt in his eyes.
The old woman screams and the old man shouts, “I’m armed!” and the Insect says armed, armas, armat, armamus. Armaments. Arm-and-a-leg. Men-at-arms. Armies. Amis. Amigo. Amante.
The Pycanum bellus gigantis says amo. Amat. Amamus.
There are arms and legs and arms and legs. There is metal and flesh—muscle and exoskeleton and snapping bones. There is the shine of a needle in the hand of the woman on the top of a tower on a lonely, windswept hill with the Astronomer balanced atop it like a flag.
Amo. Amas. Amamus. Amant.
I love. You love. We love. They love.
I am coming for you, the Astronomer says. I am coming for you. I am already here.
In his dream, the Insect lifts into the air on a cloud of metal and dust. In his dream he arcs around a burning star again and again and again. What is time to a planet? What is time to a star? Does the light from the star love the darkness? Does the darkness love the light?
Darkness and light thunder and thunder and thunder inside the head of Pycanum bellus gigantis. And he is gone.
10.
When the Insect awakens, he is on the roof of the tower. His eyes are open. He feels the glint of each star like a needle. He is pinned in place.
He is terribly cognizant of his wings. This has been a growing problem. He has kept his wings bound by his vest and morning coat for so long that he can hardly remember the sensation of the sun warming the membranous shimmer of his forewings and mesothorax. There was a time, before his education, that he went without clothing—a round-hulled marvel of color and light. How strange it seems to him now! How foreign! His wings itch. They ache. They long to be free.
The Astronomer lies next to him, his hand as close as possible to the Insect’s arm to almost-touch without touching. There is no heat from the Astronomer’s hand. His chest does not rise and fall.
“Are you alive?” the Insect says.
“Are you?” the Astronomer counters.
“I eat and I breathe and I rest. I yearn and I ache and I wonder. I rage and lust and feast. I imagine and fear and mourn and journey. I am very much alive, thank you.” His voice is a trifle sniffier than he had intended. Embarrassed, he clears his throat.
The Astronomer turns his face to the sky. “Pulvis et umbra sumus,”13 he says.
“Quaecumque sunt vera,”14 the Insect counters.
The Astronomer laughs. “May I take your hand?” he asks.
“You may,” the Pycanum bellus gigantis says primly. As he had assumed, the Astronomer’s hand gives off no heat. But it is not cold. It feels like a stone that has been warmed by the sun all day and is only just starting to cool—pleasant to touch, pleasant to hold. Cooler than the body, but guilty of no chill. The Astronomer’s skin has an elasticity similar to the Insect’s own wings. He rarely displays his wings—he is, after all, terribly modest. And shy. And when he undresses at night in the privacy of his room and lets his delicate fingers run down the length of his glittering wings, he shivers with pleasure.
As he shivers now.
You called to me, the Insect thinks. And I came.
I loved you, the Astronomer thinks in reply. And you loved me in return. Rare bird yearns for rare bird. Things that have no opposite. Each to each.
“The question still stands: are you alive?” the Insect asks.
“Whoever made the stars,” the Astronomer says, “imbued them with the life of a machine. They follow their courses. They implement their programs. They operate as they were designed to do. They are made of dust and return to dust and remake themselves from dust again. They recuperate, reincarnate, regenerate. Their gears do not rust. Their steps do not stumble. Their workings intersect and dialogue with the workings of their billions of brothers and sisters burning their way through courses of their own. To watch the sky is to watch the most intricate of clockworks, the most perfect of machines. They are unalive. And yet. They are terribly alive.”
“So?”
“That’s all there is.”
“You did not answer my question.”
“You want to know too much.”
“I want to know everything.”
“Qui totem vult totem perdit.”15
“You don’t mean that.”
The Astronomer laughs ruefully. “You’re right. I don’t.”
“Did you call me here?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“I needed your eyes so that I may see the reflection of the stars that I love in the eyes that I love. I needed your hands to steady my hands and your mind to temper my mind.” The Astronomer closes his eyes. He does not breathe. He does not swallow. The Pycanum bellus gigantis can hear the whirl of his gears. He can hear the pulse of the bellows and the tine of the spring and the click of each finely jeweled tooth into each delicate groove. “A heart burns like a star—perfectly, patiently, selflessly. It lights the sky and it invigorates the land and it asks nothing in return. I have no heart. But I love yours. Is that enough?”
The Insect does not blink. He does not move. He is shadow. He is dust. He is bound by stars. He is particle hooking to particle hooking to particle. He is accretion and convection and radiation. He is heat and light and heat and light. He is sky and wind and deep, deep sea. There is salt in his mouth. There is an ocean in his eyes. There is an abyss
