Necronomicon Tarot

China Mieville writes the best dead. Thus, in homage: away, discoball-vampires, here come the Thanati. (Fanfic, China Mieville's [i]The Scar[/i])

1 -Fool
He had learnt to slow his heartbeat, languid and calm like that of a great lizard; he had learnt to breathe as shallow as the sleeping � but the stitches that silence the Dead do not bleed, and they do not scar. The hidden inhalation and exhalation could be attributed to the habitual nature of the actions, lingering in one newly Dead, but they do not bleed and vampir do not slaver when the bloodless Dead walk by. At first the Thanatos were amused by him and his pitiful imitation of their dreadful elegance, but their amusement soon ran cold. There are few live who may wear the silencing sewing of the Thanatos, and he was not one of those lucky sacred few who live alongside the Dead in frigid Thanati mansions, closed mouths making drinking difficult and eating more trouble than starving.

One might say that the tearing teeth, the jagged incisors of pet vampir mad with thirst, gave him what he wanted. Although he screamed so loudly with his mouth so wide his silver stitches tore his lips and gouts of crimson splattered his fine cut robes, when the leashes were reeled in and junkie vampir brought to heel, he was well and truly dead. No great feet of practice and calm kept his chest from heaving and his blood from pumping � what blood was left in him, after the vampir were done.

His only tragedy was that he will never be Dead.


2 � Magician
He works at a zombie factory. The primary workforce, the unskilled laborers, of High Cromlech are born here and die here and are recast as zombies here. He does the jobs the Thanatos are too proud to do: cleans the cages, unstops the heavy steam and metaclockwork machinery when it gets clogged, and of course � he holds the gun to the human cattle's heads and culls them for the lengthy recasting process. They stand bovine in pens and don't understand what is happening to them.

He never really thought of them as human anymore. Centuries of being breed to die, without being taught language, made them stupid and apathetic, and he has never had trouble killing them before. Once, a long time ago, there was a girl in the slaughter pen. She tried to speak to him, he thought at first, in a language he didn't know � but soon he realized it must've been gibberish and her desperate gestures fluke. She bled very little and when he saw her zombie later, it paid him no attention, shuffling away from the head embalmer's table with a shambling gait born of dead nerves.

Sometimes he thinks of her and wonders if it was another language she was speaking. He speaks only Ragamoll and Thanati, and he wonders: what if it weren't gibberish? What if he had killed a perfectly normal, functioning human?

He listens to his Thanati foreman, who treats him halfway between puppy and servant boy for all that he is thirty four years old, and he forgets her face, but her blue eyes never leave his dreams. In four days, they will find him on the other end of the zombie machines, shambling and forgetting.


3 - High Priestess
She is old as sin and more patient than glaciers; she smells of embalming oils, foreign spices and incense, and when she touches her hands to your face and pulls you down onto the freezing silk sheets you are powerless to resist her.


4 - Empress
The cold of the mansion is impenetrable and the lights glow dim and blue, a wash of ambient ice over the hallway, making the highlights silver and the shadows indigo. She moves with a sublime grace down the rich decadence of the hall, the hugeness of her pale skirts buoyed up by carmine petticoats. She is a ghostly moon, bleeding red ribbons that trail after her over the polished hardwood floor; she is surrounded by young children like bright stars orbiting their lunar parent. She moves with such impressive elegance that the more the children run and shout and tug her skirts to get her attention, the stiller she seems.

She turns at the end of the hall, looking back over her shoulder, brushing her obsidian hair back. Her eyes are like glass, corpselike, and her white skin is beautifully preserved leather. Her mouth is sewn shut with thin red ribbon, crushing her thin lips together; she has no expression. Only the Thanatos, only the Dead, have her stillness, uninhibited by the encumbrances of petty things like breathing or a heartbeat. She turns back only briefly before looking down at one of the children, a spark of life and blood clutching her frigid hands. These living children will grow up amongst the Dead aristocracy and when they come of age they'll die, and they'll live forever, welcomed into Thanatos society. The stitches of her mouth strain as she smiles.


5 - Emperor
OlD CroWLEY iS MaD. HE iS DResSeD iN MIDNIGHT aNd hIs MoUtH IS SEwN sHUt WiTh ugLY BlACk yARn aS ThOugH hE maY hAVE dOnE iT tO HIMselF. hE COMes OuT oF hiS hoUSe SoMeTiMeS aND TaLks tO tHE BiRdS tHaT gATher iN MURDERS oUtSiDe in tHe DeaD bOuGhs oF A HANGMAN'S OaK. hE tELLs tHe bIrDs hIS SeCRETS aNd To paSs oN HIs AppOloGizes tO SoMeBoDy CallED BELLE.


6 - Hierophant / Pope
-- In their silence they fail even to praise God! He shouts, cursing the dead society, on a corner in the Liveside. The freezing High Cromlech wind sweeps his priest robes into the air, forming avenging angel's wings behind his back.

-- They spit on you! He continues. -� Even though they are the abominations!

He would do to be more careful: in the crowd he has drawn there are not only the quick, but two stately Thanatos and a huddled, starving vampir. The undead he is so quick to curse gather around him, silent yes, and upraising of his god, yes, but their stitched shut mouths are twisted to bitter smiles, almost as though they are amused. � Stop their culling of your kind in the zombie factories! Reclaim your superiority! He shouts.

Now the quick are laughing at him too, and it is not a laugh affected for the Thanatos amongst them. They jeer but he is secure in his faith and talks over them, ignores the rocks that slap into his skin and leave dark bruises. This cold, dark city will take a long time to convert, but he knows he can do it. He tells them that God loves them and forgives them.

The Thanatos are clearly not Gods, because they don't have such mercy.


7 - Lovers
She has had to stitch herself back together so many times that her body looks something like that of a ragdoll sewn together of patchwork pieces. She was embalmed long ago, put down and revivified, but the job was not done well and her body refuses her sometimes. She has been walking the streets for years since he left her, and sometimes when she stands too close to the corners where Liveside ends and the city of the Dead begins, she sees him with whatever poor wench has his current interest. If he sees her, she flaunts her equipment at him and laughs at his disgust.

She does well enough. Some of the men who buy her � and there are those, even with her flesh cold and her eyes empty � pretend she is a haughty Deadwife and enjoy her affected moans through the rotting yarn that keeps her lips closed.

She does well enough. She has her little revenges, spooking the others who he has discarded, but none of them are ever embalmed as she was, screaming and helpless, if they are put down at all. She feels old beyond her years and sometimes, when she sits repairing some tear in her badly tanned skin, she cries.


8 - Chariot
Remade horses black as coal lead the procession through the streets of Liveside. The horses were borrowed from travelers and they march along like they themselves are the dirge, and the carriage they pull is the lament. The attention is all on these Remade creatures and the black steamwork in their legs and the springs in their necks and the weird shape and colour of their eyes. The ritual funeral means nothing to the quick of the Liveside anymore. The silent Thanati procession with their fanciful horses just means another still, dreadful lich will walk the streets.

But the horses are fascinating. Their noses breathe stream in bright plumes, and the feathers that adorn their foreheads are not part of some intricate dressage outfit but of the carapace of chitin that covers them like armour. The horses are fascinating. The coffin is empty. The lich leading the procession will live forever.


9 - Strength
Some people can see giant black dogs, fetches, which walk beside those who are near to death. She could see them, big as oxen with eyes that leave no room for debate on the subject of if hell exists. She stayed here for a single day, and you could see her milky eyes widen as she stood at the intersection and watched legions of black dogs with eyes like balefire pad, trapped forever, beside the Thantos. The aristocracy may be able to escape death, but their ebony fetches cannot escape them.

She thought hers slat-ribbed and blue-eyed, and after she had run away she realized it was not a fetch at all but a stray seeking human company. She shies away from dogs these days and would sooner walk beside lions.


10 - Hermit
Yes, I'll tell you a ghost story � an' trust me, I'm th' last person you want to hear stories of that variety from. Imagine a cold wind, bitin' an' rough with sleet an' snow, an' it made th' prayer flags, faded to ghosts of themselves, flutter weakly. There was a man standin' above me on the track, his cloak massive an' dark an' he had one hand holdin' his wide-brimmed hat on his head. I thought him to be a highway man, but that he weren't. His skin was pale as th' snow pilin' up 'round us, an' one of his eyes were blue, th' other yellow. Ah, you think this is cold, debutantes? This got nothin' on that bone-snappin' chill.

So th' man, he asked who I were an' what I wanted up here. I said I'm from th' south, got separated from me trade convoy an' jus' lookin' for some shelter. He looked me up an' down an' suddenly he's got a blade, blue steel I can't even see the tip of it's so sharp. Nobody comes here because they're lost, he said, an' he obviously don't talk much, 'cause his voice is hoarse. I told him th' truth: it weren't my convoy, s'much as it were a convoy that had decided I would sell well in some place called High Cromlech. Now then I weren't as well traveled as I be now, so I'd no idea what kind've a place they were takin' me to.

He laughed like cracklin' ice an' tells me turn back. I do as he says 'cause that blade made me faint, but there's nothin' for me further down so I got no choice but to go back up. An' I did, too, after the storm'd passed an' I see him standin' there an' I realized: he ain't moved from there since I left. He must be dead, frozen by th' storm, so I go up to him an' he moves. Frost gone stiffened his joints but I realize now I'm close, yeah this man's dead, but he ain't dead by the storm. He's lich, necromancer, undead, walkin' dead, dunno what you folks call 'em here. I ran I never been back to High Cromlech, but it's been back t' me. Nightmares like that never leave you.


11 - Wheel of Fortune
-- wheel will spinforever. This charnel ---


12 - Justice
I have never seen him either, but I believe like everybody does. In the Angel. His image is stylized in graffiti all over Liveside, repeated in bright blooms of colour until it seems there is an army of him marching across the walls. Nobody has ever seen him, but they say one day he'll be back, and the zombie factories will stop. The Dead will finally crumble to dust.

I have never seen him either.


13 - Hanged Man
Is it just me, or is the moon getting closer?


14 - Death
Is it just me, or does the sun seem further away?


15 - Temperance
Growing up alive in High Cromlech teaches you to be calm as an adult anywhere else. It isn't true that all the Dead are silent, but many of them are � speech is hard with rotted-away larynxes and collapsed lungs. But they have a language, for when they must speak, and it is one that can be spoken with the eyes or with the hands, for those whose voiceboxes perhaps no longer function.

Other cities, you will discover if you leave High Cromlech, move and scream and are full of noise. They stink of foul engines that bleach smoke, and the people who live there are much the same. To them you must seem so relaxed and calm, never raising your voice, you and your one companion from High Cromlech speaking sometimes in low, whispering Thanati. He was embalmed too young, a mistake or a punishment, and you are followed around by a dead child three hundred years old.

Other people don't understand how easily you find the weather too warm, or why graveyards don't frighten you. They presume your companion is your son until they see the age in his corpse eyes. Growing up, quick, in High Cromlech teaches you patience and resolve and a different sort of respect for the dead than other cultures. The cold rivers of your mountain home will never leave your blood, and your spouse will leave you after three years, crying that you might as well be dead yourself.


16 - Devil
She finds that every pack of tarot cards she buys is missing the Devil. After a while, she stops worrying about it. It's not like she believes what she reads, anyway.


17 - Tower
It stands, quite ruined, a craggy contrivance of granite blocks and marble slabs and tubes that allude to ancient engines of arcane magic and science that nobody recognizes. The snow makes it white, and it looks almost like maybe it's a woman in a wedding dress. When they pull it down, the entire city freezes at the sound of its scream.


18 - Star
You know her for an adventurer, a bounty hunter, a glorified tomb-raider only out for gold and experience, the moment she steps into the room. Then she points her gun at your head and pins you to the floor with her boot and tells you she will count to ten before she shoots you, if you don't tell here where Ashcliff can be found. When you feel a bullet ping past your head after only three counts, she laughs and says: "I was never so good at algebra," and her voice has a strange slur, a familiar accent that you can't place.

So you tell her where Ashcliff can be found, before she can count to four. She puts the gun away and crouches down beside you. She is washed in silver from the moon looming in the window, and there are odd scars around her mouth that you recognize before you can place her accent. Thanati stitches � she is Dead, but not Thanatos. Her accent comes from her fangs and serpentine tongue, which is probing your neck as you quake with fear. She is vampir.

She takes blood from you, but not much, just enough to leave you too weak to stand. She dumps the contents of her bag out onto your bed and amongst the weapons and the ornate golden artifacts there is a beautiful ball gown. She undresses, shameless, before you and her body is crisscrossed with a roadmap of scars. The dress is simple and elegant and when she takes a needle and a skein of black ribbon and reopens the wounds by her mouth, you see what her disguise is. Perhaps she has not the leathery complexion of the Thanatos but she is a close study. When she turns back to face you, her face is a Thanati mockery of a smile.

She leaves the way she came, silent and shadowlike through the open window, and you do not know what she wants with Lord Ashcliff. Nor do you particularly care. You're alive.


19 - Moon
You know two days later when the pain starts and the death begins that you have caught it. That rare, terrible disease.

You're vampir.


20 - Sun
When she lands on your doorstep a week later you have left a streetwalker in your room anemic and you're not sure if the w***e will ever wake up. But the vampir before you stands in a torn dress, and her black ribbon stitches are fraying, and some have torn her mouth. In your language, not the hiss of Thanati, she asks if she can come in. You want to say no, of course, she did something terrible to you, but you need her, too. The vampir in the slums, they suspect what you are, but you will not go to them for advice.

"Come in," you say, quiet, and she sits in your kitchen, unstitching her mouth. She does not bleed, of course, and when she asks you if you have spare clothes you get her a pair of pants far too wide and a shirt that almost fits but does not become her.

Then you tell her. She looks at you, sad, and says seriously that she's sorry. The wounds on her mouth have already returned to their scar state � she is old and powerful, to heal so quickly. You dare not be angry at her. The gun she threatened you with may be gone, but her hands are more deadly than any firearm.

She pauses, looks out at the night sky through your window and says nothing. You fidget, nervous, unsure what to do.

"Ashcliff is dead," she says eventually. "And it is vampir work. Our kind will be even less tolerated here." She smiles, a secretive smile of victory. "Come with me. It won't do for you to have to teach yourself this half life."

"There's a dead woman in my room," you whisper, because you know now that the streetwalker is dead. The vampir woman's face quirks into a smile and she says she knows; she could smell the blood. You follow her instructions, collect clothing but not food, and she begins your instruction by explaining that vampir do not walk as humans but glide as swiftly and softly as the night.


21 - Judgment
'Tis accepted we all shall die,
Fall to ashes, to ashes,
Crumble to dust, to dust,
Surely you, but never I.


22 - World
Silent.
Cold.
Eternal.
End.

Reviews

[Adele]

Can I be you when I grow up?

[Trekkie]

You have no idea how obsessed with tarot right now. It's a long story that involves theater.

Now I'm going to say something stupid and mention that this was on the Window.

Other than that:
""There's a dead woman in my room," you whisper, because you know now that the streetwalker is dead." ---I love this.. Why? Because I do.

Is it just me, or is the moon getting closer?
Is it just me, or does the sun seem further away?
--It's like a song.

I could elaborate, of course, but there's a Band-Aid on my finger and it's hindering my typing, gosh darn it.