The Circus Infinitus - Victoria 7 Read online

  “Dear Lord,” I rasped out loud. I looked around the library where I had fallen asleep, but it did not contain a mirror. Despite the fact the fire had gone out, and there was no light in the room, I could still see. It seemed all these forms possessed excellent night vision, but in this form everything appeared slightly hazy and unreal, as though if I concentrated, I could see right through walls. Shadows did not appear dark at all, but more like … portals to another world.

  I had to find out who I was. I hurried from the room, my bandage-wrapped feet ticking against the wooden floor. I was still cold, so cold.

  I found my way into my room and approached the mirror. Even in this light I could see myself clearly. I was tall and thin, so thin, more like a skeleton than a woman. I was wrapped in old grey bandages from head to toe. Some had come undone and trailed behind me. I wore a strange, tall headdress on my head, and it looked strangely familiar. Where had I seen something like it before? I lifted my hands to my face and slowly pulled the wrappings aside, dreading what I would find beneath.

  But unlike my dried out, leathery chest, my face had been far better preserved. It looked … almost normal. I recognized Violet’s features once more in its shape and position of the eyes, nose and mouth. But my skin was a dark brown in colour, my eyes as black as night. My eyebrows had been plucked out and replaced with exaggerated, drawn-on designs.

  I shivered again and hurried over to my bed. I pulled the quilt from it and wrapped it around my bony shoulders. It should have warmed my ancient bones, but I still felt cold beneath its folds, as though the unpleasant sensation wasn’t coming from without … but within.

  Perhaps a fire would help me to warm up.

  I turned from my bizarre reflection and hurried from the room into the hall outside. Who was awake this time of night? Had Crimpley stayed up to help me through another transition? Or had his exhaustion finally gotten the better of him? I peered into my mother’s room, just in case he was waiting for me there, but it was empty.

  I headed down to the guest quarters in the east wing. There was a flickering light coming from Crimpley’s room, and when I peered in through the open door, I saw him asleep in an armchair in front of a fire. A glass had fallen from his fingers onto the carpet, spilling a few drops fortified wine. He had drunk himself unconscious and not heard the clock chime.

  I crept into the room and over to the fire, which was starting to gutter and die. I rubbed my fingers in front of it, trying to ease some of the dreadful cold. I could feel the warmth on the outside of my body, but it failed to reach my icy depths. Perhaps I had to build up the fire a little. I heaped on a couple of spare logs, noting that even in this spindly form I was stronger than a normal human. Slowly the ebbing flames began to explore the new wood. I crouched as close as I dared. I figured the old rags I was clad in would burn easily … as easily as the dried up old flesh I appeared to 0be made from.

  The flames crept higher and higher, charring and eating up the wood. The room began to fill with warmth, wonderful, searing warmth. Slowly my shivers eased. But still, deep down inside, I felt cold, as though a part of me really had become ice; diamond-hard frost from the arctic that never thawed.

  I sat down and closed my eyes. Behind my lids I saw an image of white sand, stretching away to the horizon. A desert, a place I knew I had never been before. But it seemed so real! In my mind’s eye I could see a sky of brilliant, crystal blue; a bright colour I had never seen before in this country of watery, washed-out shades. The sand beneath, by contrast, was a stark, yellow-white. I could see the horizon as a clear line; no fog or haze in sight. The sun burned a blinding white, somehow closer.

  What was this place? I had never seen it before, and yet, deep down in the core of my mysterious new being, I knew it. Slowly, in my mind’s eye, I turned, scanning the horizon. Then I saw several pyramids, rising into the clear morning.

  Even though I had never seen them before, I knew them too.

  I must have fallen into a half-dream state, because the next thing I knew, someone was tentatively shaking my shoulder. Slowly I lifted my head from my pillowed arms, looking up into the flushed face of Crimpley. “My Lord,” he gasped, mopping his sweating brow. “I recognize this form too, but once again – you are different to her! Wrapped in that blanket you look almost … human. Your mother’s face was cadaverous, her lips and nose gone, her eyes staring like blind orbs…” He tailed off, obviously still very drunk. “The heat woke me.” He staggered back to his chair and flopped down. I saw that he’d stripped down to his shirt sleeves and kicked off his socks and shoes. Was it really that hot in here? Even though on the surface I felt warm, I was still frozen inside.

  “Who am I?” I rasped. “In this form I feel like I was someone else, someone long ago in a lost life.”’

  “You are … the Mummy,” Crimpley explained. “An Egyptian princess of some sort. Several thousand years ago, when you died, you were preserved and mummified. Somehow, the amulet’s curse has brought you back as one part of the Cycle of Seven Sins.”

  I lifted my hands to my face, exploring my dried out skin once more. Egypt! I knew very little about the country, only that in this day and age it was becoming increasingly popular for rich nobles to import mummies from this ancient land and hold ‘unwrapping parties’ where these poor dead creatures were stripped of their bandages and pawed by crowds of drunken aristocrats. So that was the hot land I was seeing. Perhaps, if I concentrated, I could find out more. “Did my mother know who she was?”

  “Eventually she did figure out her origins. She read many books while in the guise of the Mummy, and towards the end of her life she decided she was a dead pharaoh’s daughter called Nefrua.” Crimpley stared at me with exaggerated, drunken intensity. “But I don’t think you’re Nefrua. You’re different. Whichever priest preserved you did a much better job … or your body wasn’t discovered by grave-robbers and exposed to the ravages of time.” Crimpley burped and picked up his fallen glass, examining the droplets inside in case there was still something drinkable left. He lifted the glass to his lips and tapped the bottom to dislodge the last of the liquid.

  “Why am I so cold?” I asked. “You seem to be sweating buckets while I still feel … like the entire core of my body is frozen solid.”

  “Your mother complained of the cold too. Methinks only the heat of desert sand can thaw you out. Part of the curse, I’m afraid.” He started hunting around his chair for the port bottle.

  “So what sin am I now? What sin craves heat?”

  “You could be gluttony. Then again, so could the Vampiress. Or even the Spider Queen, with her rapacious appetite for dead bugs. Perhaps,” he drew out a nearly empty bottle from under the chair, “your forms contain elements of all seven sins inside them.” He poured the last dregs into his glass and held it high. Then he downed everything in one long gulp.

  It seemed I would have to go back to the library and paw through the dusty books that remained. But I was loath to leave Crimpley’s room with its enormous fire. I turned to ask him if he could fetch me some books, but he had fallen back into his drunken stupor once more. With great trepidation, I pulled my blanket closed around me, and crept out. In the doorway, the cold hit me like a physical force. Even though I didn’t need to, I gasped. Almost immediately, I started shivering. It seemed the meagre heat I had absorbed was already gone, as though it had never been.

  Outside, dawn had arrived, and in the hall I came face to face with the servant Penny. She started when she saw me, but didn’t falter. “Ah, Miss Violet!” she gasped.

  I had the quilt wrapped tightly around me, so only my face was visible. Since my visage looked relatively normal, I could move around the corridors. “M-morning, Penny,” I whispered. I willed her not to be worried by my appearance, and to immediately do my bidding. “I’m g-going to the library – could you arrange f-for the fire to be lit and kept g-going all day? I need to do some studying.”

  She curtsied to me with a bright smile. “Of co
urse, Ma’am. Right away.”

  Thanking the Lord, or whoever listened to me now I was cursed, I clutched my blanket close and headed for the library. However, I couldn’t even begin concentrating on anything until the fire was roaring in the grate, filling the room with its wonderful heat. Beneath the thick shroud of webs I’d spun as the Spider Queen, I roamed the dusty shelves, looking for all the books on Egypt I remembered reading as a child. Since I couldn’t recall much about them, I would have to re-familiarise myself, hoping my new past self would be able to help.

  Even though a lot of books were missing, most of the Egyptian tomes still remained, coated with dust. They probably hadn’t been removed since I had read them as a little girl. I selected the first in the row, blew the dust off it, and took it over to the fireplace to start reading.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t take me long to realize that the book, once one of my favourites, now contained little that was actual fact. Although it had been written by a Professor of Archaeology; a learned British explorer who had visited the country, he had coloured his experiences with his own opinion. I knew, deep down in the ice-cold core of my being, that the information I was absorbing was wrong.

  But what was the truth? Would I only discover it by meditating? Who was I?

  Later that day, as I continued to plough through the old, inaccurate British text, I did learn one thing. I came across the name Amun, and immediately something jolted in my body, as though within my dead depths I was finally coming alive. Was that my name? No. That was a man’s name. With sudden surge of knowledge, I realised I was Amuna.

  The thought pleased me and for a few brief moments I actually felt comfortably warm. I closed my eyes and Imagined Egypt; walking across hot sand in my bare feet, a hot summer sun beating down on my head and soaking into my dark brown skin…

  Mr Crimpley did not join me until sometime after sunset. His eyes were still bloodshot. “My apologies, Ma’am,” he declared as she stepped into the room. “I usually don’t drink that much, but the last few days have been … somewhat trying.”

  I gave a raspy laugh. “Would you like to trade places with me?”

  He bowed his head. “My apologies,” he said again. “I didn’t mean to make light of your own plight. You are so … unlike your mother. And you are coping in an entirely different way.”

  “Better or worse?”

  “Definitely better. But then again, I only knew your mother at the end of her life, when the constant changes had run her down. She could have been something else as a young woman.” He sighed. “But now that accursed diary is gone, we’ll never know. Damn that irresponsible servant of mine. He’ll certainly never receive a letter of recommendation!”

  “Being trapped in this old house obviously didn’t do my mother any good. As soon as I’m able, I’m going to leave.”

  “I’m sure your mother had that plan too … Violet.” Crimpley shuffled uncertainly at the name, which did not suit this body either.

  “When I’m like this, you can call me Amuna,” I told him. “I know that’s my name, just not my origins. I doubt I’ll find them in these biased, out-of-date tomes.” I gestured towards them. “Perhaps, one day, I can go to Egypt myself and learn the truth about Amuna … and Nefrua.”

  “Perhaps.” Crimpley didn’t look particularly confident. “Do you have any powers?”

  “No idea. Did my mother have any?”

  “Perhaps. She certainly seemed able to slip in and out of rooms like a shadow. And I think she could beguile people. The servants certainly did her Mummy form’s every bidding far more eagerly.”

  I remembered how Penny had jumped to obey, and realised that I had made her more amenable. “I see.” I put down my book and stood up. I wanted to try that movement-through-shadows thing, but I didn’t want to leave the fire. Perhaps, in summer I would feel more comfortable. After Crimpley left to get himself something to eat, I returned to my books, determined to continue reading until midnight.

  As the clock began to strike my final seconds as Amuna, I felt my eyelids droop and a sudden exhaustion overcome me. Oh no, who am I going to become now? I thought as I lifted my hand to my necklace.

  It was getting warm.

  But I experienced a strange flood of relief. Finally! I did not feel cold anymore…

  Chapter Six

  In fact, as I jerked awake to the cursed amulet’s sudden flare of fire, I felt hot and dry. My skin felt tight and sore, as though I was badly sunburned, like I had been one summer when relatives took me to Blackpool. What kind of form was this? As the amulet’s power died, I lurched to my feet and stroked my face, finding hard, scaly skin.

  I jerked back in horror and stumbled from the room. As well as feeling overheated from the fire, I was so damn thirsty I could drink an entire well dry.

  Fortunately for me, as I blundered out into the hall I ran right into Mr Crimpley, now finally sober and ready to deal with this latest transformation. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. “Violet!” he hissed. “Look at me! There’s no need to panic.”

  I gazed into his face. “Wh-what-?” I tried to speak, but found it difficult. My tongue felt wrong and my lips wouldn’t work properly. Was I once again some sort of animal, like the werewolf?

  “You need water. This form is aquatic. If you don’t submerge yourself soon, you will dry out and die. You must run down to the fens.”

  I looked down at my hands. They were shaped normally, but covered with scales and joined by webbing. My nails were long black claws. Looking down at my body I found a normal female shape, naked and covered with scales. My feet were also webbed and clawed. I dreaded to see what my face had become, but before I left I had to know. “I … need to see,” I managed in my thick voice.

  Crimpley swallowed noisily. “Alright.”

  I echoed his gulp. Was I really that hideous?

  Crimpley collected a candelabrum and escorted me back to my bedroom. The cool night air helped to clear my head and soothe my burning skin. Already I was wondering how I could have possibly stood the roaring heat from that fire.

  I stopped in front of my mirror – what a source of revelation this old looking glass had become! – and stared at my new reflection. I was taller than my normal self, and far more curvaceous and muscular. I also had large round breasts. My entire body was covered with scales of varying shapes and sizes, which glittered like jewels in the dancing light of the lawyer’s candles.

  But my face … it wasn’t human at all. I had large eyes positioned towards the sides of my head, completely black with no whites or irises at all. I had no nose, only a pair of nostrils, and large lips like a fish’s. Gills rippled at the base of my neck. Crimpley may have cringed at the sight of me, but I actually stepped closer to stare in fascination. I thought myself different, but certainly not hideous. I was tall, graceful and powerful. But oh, my skin was starting to ache! And itch! I started to scratch, and my long claws picked off a couple of scales.

  “No!” Crimpley slapped my hands away. “You will hurt yourself! Run down to the fens! Now! Dive into the water and stay there until tomorrow night!”

  “Are … are you sure?”

  “You must, Violet. This form was always your mother’s greatest weakness, too.” He grabbed me by an arm, guiding me from the room. “In the end that’s why she never left. She could never be sure that she would travel somewhere that was near water.”

  Oh dear Lord, I thought as I began to itch all over. I desperately wanted to scratch, but where I’d picked off the scales was already bleeding. I forced myself to be strong as the lawyer pulled me along the hall at a run. He hurried me down the stairs and across the main hall, with its twin staircases curving gracefully up to the second level. I hadn’t been down this way for days. But I saw none of the old house’s fading finery as Crimpley pushed me towards the front doors. “Out!” he cried. “But please – don’t go too far! You only have twenty four hours!”

  I ran through the doors and out into the cold, q
uiet night. Once again I could see in the dark. I knew where to go, and headed east across the grounds. The damp grass beneath my bare feet was cool and soothing to my aching skin. I wanted to drop and roll in the grass, but I knew greater relief was coming. I ran down to the edges of the great swamp that bordered my property, into the coolness of long reeds that caressed my legs and thighs with lovers’ fingers. As soon as I felt cool mud squelch up between my toes, I dropped onto my hands and knees, immersing my body in the semi-solid muck.

  It felt wonderful! Immediately I realised the pleasure that pigs experienced as they wallowed in their muddy sties. I rolled in the mud, covering myself, and the horrible itching finally eased. It felt wonderful, and I actually sighed with relief. For a few minutes I simply played in the reeds, smearing mud all over my body and giggling like a little child. But then Crimpley’s words began to creep into my mind, that I was an aquatic creature, not a swine. I was designed to swim. I began to crawl through the reads, reading for deeper water further out. I knew these fens went for miles, and within their mysterious realms lay deeper sections that were practically lakes. Some were rumoured to be bottomless. Only the most experienced local boatmen could find his way through. Of course I had no idea where I was going, but I had the tools for the job, and knew even I did get lost, I would be able to survive. Soon the water reached my chest. It was cool and soothing, like slipping into a comfortable bed. I felt waves lap against my gills and water rushed into my body. I had been about to take a breath, but suddenly my lungs closed up. I mouthed like a fish, then dropped my head beneath the surface.

  My gills continued to flutter, and I realised I was now breathing underwater. I could see as well, a dark, submarine world without colour where reeds shifted and tiny fish darted away. It was beautiful! How could Crimpley have called this body my mother’s greatest weakness? It was magnificent! In this weightless world I felt strong and in control. I was the hunter, and those little fish my prey. My stomach growled at the thought of snapping my powerful jaws around those minnows. I crouched down in amongst the mud and shifting weeds, and began to prowl for food.