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Artemy thought it a funny story, when he first heard it. Of all the flowers in the garden, the prince — who had a heart and veins of ice — loved not the roses and their lush, soft petals, loved not the climbing jasmine and its heady-scented blooms. He loved a crystal flower, something hard-edged and unnatural, sterile and perfect. He would do anything for his flower, even as its crystal roots pierced and drained the soil. Its crystal leaves pulled the light from the air, and the garden grew dark and cold. No other flower could survive, and so the kingdom summoned a gardener with shears sharp enough to cut crystal.
But it had a sad ending. How did it go?
A. The cold-hearted prince schemed and tricked the gardener, so that the common flowers were cut down instead.
B. The prince killed the gardener, and nothing changed, and both flowers crystal and common were lost to darkness
C. As the gardener approached, the prince threw himself before the shears, and shielded the flower his own body. His heart, exposed, began to thaw, and the ice in his veins became meltwater, which nourished the earth. But the prince died. Foolish prince.
And so, the scene. Daniil Dankovsky, still stuck on the idea that Simon is the Udurgh is the Polyhedron, is a new form of being, a new way of living and living on — still stuck on the notion of 'proportionate sacrifice,' still trying to understand it in his own, plain-seeing way —
If Aglaya were the sacrifice, already condemned by the Powers That Be, it would be such an elegant solution! Artemy needn't even bloody his hands, just let her fail — but who else did the Powers That Be send to fail?
BACHELOR: Wait. What was it that Katerina said? She said you needed to destroy someone who loves you.
HARUSPEX: She said I would destroy someone who loves me. Nothing about need.
BACHELOR: Would, need — forget that for now. According to your tradition, the Warden must sacrifice something for the Udurgh to live. And the Warden may appoint a sacrifice, so long as the sacrifice is proportionate, so long as the sacrifice is linked to the Warden in a significant way.
HARUSPEX: I don't see what you're driving at, oynon …
BACHELOR: And how do you even know Aglaya loves you? Because she's impressed by the way you think, the way you draw unseen connections, the way you make your own decisions by your own will and conscience? So what. After all you've done, only a blind idiot would be unimpressed.
HARUSPEX: That’s ... a strange sort of flattery.
BACHELOR: Call me blind, if you must, but I’m no idiot. I’ve worked beside you, and I’ve come to love you. Save the Udurgh. Make me your sacrifice.
The Bachelor (the Haruspex would write in his journal) has lost his mind. He’s under the spell of the Polyhedron, and he’ll do anything to save it, even give his life for it. Would that even work?
He claims he loves me, no less than Aglaya. The same Line that links her to me links him. That’s his logic.
What sort of man says ‘I love you’ in one breath and ‘kill me’ in the next?
HARUSPEX: No.
BACHELOR: Hear me out.
HARUSPEX: No. Aren’t you supposed to be rational?
BACHELOR: It’s entirely rational. I’m not asking you to blindly believe in some miracle. Nor do I suspect that spilling my blood will open some fantastical, unforeseen doorway. I’m proposing that if you, by the customs of the Kin, appoint an appropriate sacrifice and perform the appropriate ritual, then the Kin will acknowledge you and allow you to collect the materials needed for your Panacea. Use that to save the town, spare Aglaya. Isn’t that what you want?
HARUSPEX: You don’t care about the town or Aglaya! All you care about is that damn tower!
A silence.
BACHELOR: I told you. If fail here, I won’t be returning to the Capital. I’m no different than the Inquisitor. Her task was to save the town, but I — I came for proof of immortality, and the immortal man was dead. If you do this, at least, it would give some meaning to my life's work —
HARUSPEX: Living would give meaning to your life's work.
BACHELOR: Living. What for.
HARUSPEX: There’s a whole world outside the Capital. Stay here. Alive, if you please.
BACHELOR: They hate me here.
HARUSPEX: Not everyone. Not me.
BACHELOR: What are you going to do, then? Force everyone to like me? You’d be no different from the parents you and the children are trying to replace.
HARUSPEX: You could make them like you if you weren't so —
BACHELOR: Arrogant? Obstinate? Insufferable? Offensive to common morals and sense?
HARUSPEX: If you weren't living like you're about to die, so it doesn't matter who you piss off.
BACHELOR: In the grand scheme of things, Burakh, we're all about to die. That’s the human condition the Thanatica was meant to cure. But all we could do was study death, surround ourselves with it. If one death — one sacrifice — can break new ground in the study of life ...
Damn him. He’s convinced himself there’s only immortality or death. He’s made himself believe in steppe legends and Udurghs to get this far.
So what if he’s right? Maybe the way to escape death is to become an Udurgh. Become a body of many bodies, a place for people to build their lives upon. Maybe that’s the way to live forever.
Would I even be thinking about this, if it weren’t for him?
HARUSPEX: Do you really love me, or are you trying to prove a point?
BACHELOR: If you have to ask that, I doubt you'll understand. And I don't plan to bare my heart to you unless you're going to cut it out on an altar.
HARUSPEX: That’s what butchers do with herb brides. Are you proposing, Bachelor?
BACHELOR: You — and your backwards customs!
HARUSPEX: Fine, we'll do things the city way. I’ll ask your father for your hand. Is that what you want?
BACHELOR: Are you trying to prove a point?
HARUSPEX: You’re a piece of work, you know. You tell me you love me, never ask if I love you. Who cares what the simple Ripper thinks.
BACHELOR: Allow me to ask, then. Do you?
HARUSPEX: I meant what I said. Stay with me.
This is one way for the story to end.
*** I refuse to make a sacrifice. Not the Inquisitor or the Bachelor. The Polyhedron is empty without children’s dreams, and Simon had his chance to live forever. The Udurgh will live on if the rest of us do.
And I’ve had enough of ready sacrifices offering me their hearts. What if I don’t want to marry an herb bride in blood to make twyre bloom? What if I want to spend my days on the Gorkhon with one fool-headed, self-destructive Bachelor?
But there’s another ending. The Haruspex leads the man who loves him down into the earth, down to the pit where the ancients poured aurochs’ blood, down on an altar too large for such a small body. He traces the Lines the way only a Menkhu can, to coax open a body without killing it — he traces the lines, and parts them. The body breathes a hissing, painful breath, and the Haruspex holds it still with a gentling hand. He starts to whisper folk tales. He parts flesh from flesh, until he finds the heart.
*** The Earth accepts the sacrifice.The icy prince will melt with the spring, and his death will bring common and uncommon flowers to life.
I won’t waste it, oynon.
