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Authors: Michael Scott
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forgotten what it was like to be young, and it had been a long time since she’d been beautiful. The last time she looked like this was the day when Danu Talis had fallen ten thousand years ago.
And if the world was going to end today, she was determined not to spend her last few hours on earth as an old woman.
Tsagaglalal made her way down the hall to the tiny spare bedroom at the back of the house on Scott Street. She strode swiftly and easily, delighting in her new freedom of movement. She twirled in the center of the landing purely for the joy of being able to spin.
Almost from the moment she’d bought the house, the spare bedroom had been used for storage. It was stuffed with a hundred years of clutter: suitcases, books, magazines, bits of furniture, a cracked leather chair, an ornamental writing desk and a dozen black plastic sacks stuffed with old clothes that she’d once thought about dumping until she’d realized they’d become fashionable again. There was an antique American flag with a circle of stars on it alongside a framed original
King Kong
movie poster signed by Edgar Wallace. At the back of the room, tucked away in a corner, half buried behind a stack of yellow-spined National Geographic magazines, was a hideous eighteenth-century Louis XV cherrywood armoire.
Tsagaglalal pushed her way through the room and heaved stacks of magazines aside to get to the wardrobe. The armoire’s door was locked and there was no key in the scrolled metal keyhole. Standing on her toes, Tsagaglalal reached over the door behind an ornamental curl of wood and her questing fingers found the large brass key hung on a bent nail. Lifting the key off the nail, she experienced a sudden wash of memories: the last time she’d opened this armoire was when she’d returned from Berlin at the end of the Second World War. There was a sudden prickle of tears at the backs of her eyes, a burning in her throat. On the way back to New York, she had stopped in London and met with her brother, Gilgamesh. He’d had no idea who she was, didn’t even remember that he had a sister, though he had recognized that he should know her. She had sat with him in the ruins of a bombed-out house in the East End of London and gone through the tens of thousands of papers he was storing there. They had spent the afternoon working backward, going from paper to parchment, then vellum, and finally on to bark and wafer-thin sheets of almost transparent gold, until she was able to point out her name written in a script and language still undiscovered by the humans. They had wept together as she reminded him of all they had once been. “I will never forget you,” he said as she’d stood to leave. She watched him scribble her name on his scraps of paper but knew that he would not be able to recall her face or name within the hour. Tsagaglalal was cursed with a memory that forgot nothing; Gilgamesh was doomed never to remember.
Fitting the key in the lock, she opened the armoire door.
There was a wash of musty stale air, a hint of old leather, bitter spices, the whiff of long-withered mothballs and the merest suggestion of jasmine.
A nurse’s uniform was on a hanger facing Tsagaglalal and she reached out to touch it, running her fingers across the thin cloth. The memories it evoked left her shaking. She’d been a nurse in both of the great wars, and in just about every war for the previous hundred years. She was one of the thirty-eight volunteers who had nursed with Florence Nightingale in the Scutari barracks in the Crimea. Tsagaglalal had seen—and caused—so much death over the centuries; serving as a nurse had been her small way of trying to repair all the hurt she had done.
Behind the uniform were the clothes of half a dozen centuries: costumes in leather and linen, silk and synthetics, fur and wool. Here were the shoes given to her by Marie Antoinette, the pearl-strewn dress she’d sewn for Catherine the Great of Russia, the bodice Anne Boleyn
And if the world was going to end today, she was determined not to spend her last few hours on earth as an old woman.
Tsagaglalal made her way down the hall to the tiny spare bedroom at the back of the house on Scott Street. She strode swiftly and easily, delighting in her new freedom of movement. She twirled in the center of the landing purely for the joy of being able to spin.
Almost from the moment she’d bought the house, the spare bedroom had been used for storage. It was stuffed with a hundred years of clutter: suitcases, books, magazines, bits of furniture, a cracked leather chair, an ornamental writing desk and a dozen black plastic sacks stuffed with old clothes that she’d once thought about dumping until she’d realized they’d become fashionable again. There was an antique American flag with a circle of stars on it alongside a framed original
King Kong
movie poster signed by Edgar Wallace. At the back of the room, tucked away in a corner, half buried behind a stack of yellow-spined National Geographic magazines, was a hideous eighteenth-century Louis XV cherrywood armoire.
Tsagaglalal pushed her way through the room and heaved stacks of magazines aside to get to the wardrobe. The armoire’s door was locked and there was no key in the scrolled metal keyhole. Standing on her toes, Tsagaglalal reached over the door behind an ornamental curl of wood and her questing fingers found the large brass key hung on a bent nail. Lifting the key off the nail, she experienced a sudden wash of memories: the last time she’d opened this armoire was when she’d returned from Berlin at the end of the Second World War. There was a sudden prickle of tears at the backs of her eyes, a burning in her throat. On the way back to New York, she had stopped in London and met with her brother, Gilgamesh. He’d had no idea who she was, didn’t even remember that he had a sister, though he had recognized that he should know her. She had sat with him in the ruins of a bombed-out house in the East End of London and gone through the tens of thousands of papers he was storing there. They had spent the afternoon working backward, going from paper to parchment, then vellum, and finally on to bark and wafer-thin sheets of almost transparent gold, until she was able to point out her name written in a script and language still undiscovered by the humans. They had wept together as she reminded him of all they had once been. “I will never forget you,” he said as she’d stood to leave. She watched him scribble her name on his scraps of paper but knew that he would not be able to recall her face or name within the hour. Tsagaglalal was cursed with a memory that forgot nothing; Gilgamesh was doomed never to remember.
Fitting the key in the lock, she opened the armoire door.
There was a wash of musty stale air, a hint of old leather, bitter spices, the whiff of long-withered mothballs and the merest suggestion of jasmine.
A nurse’s uniform was on a hanger facing Tsagaglalal and she reached out to touch it, running her fingers across the thin cloth. The memories it evoked left her shaking. She’d been a nurse in both of the great wars, and in just about every war for the previous hundred years. She was one of the thirty-eight volunteers who had nursed with Florence Nightingale in the Scutari barracks in the Crimea. Tsagaglalal had seen—and caused—so much death over the centuries; serving as a nurse had been her small way of trying to repair all the hurt she had done.
Behind the uniform were the clothes of half a dozen centuries: costumes in leather and linen, silk and synthetics, fur and wool. Here were the shoes given to her by Marie Antoinette, the pearl-strewn dress she’d sewn for Catherine the Great of Russia, the bodice Anne Boleyn
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