Sidrus was faced again with the impossibility of his task – he could not go into the forest, and there was nobody else who could prevent catastrophe. It had been easier dispatching the Erstwhile than trying to protect the straying man from afar. The twins had been easy enough, but he knew there would be others sniffing out the bounty attached to Williams’ desertion, and the murders he had committed that had sparked the tinder of the Possession Wars.
His only hope now was that Tsungali would be lost in the tangled depth, or that one of the creatures of the core would permanently interrupt his travels. But Sidrus had little faith in these hopes, and he prayed again for a darker shadow to cross the hunter’s path, something that would give the Englishman a chance to fulfil his evolution.
The mirror session was less alarming than the bell sitting. Her body remained calm throughout, though her face went through a colourful dictionary of rictus. It spasmed into unbelievable contortions, each time returning to its natural beauty. Muybridge was fascinated; he had never seen anything like it before. His daily demonstrations and meetings began to bore him, and he felt himself yearning for more time with the exotic creature in front of his camera. He revelled in the seclusion, where nobody knew him or what he was doing; it was so utterly different from the hoards of ill-informed on whom he had spent so much precious time. Squirreled away with Josephine and his inventions, he was becoming happy again.
The zoopraxiscope had changed beyond recognition. He soon realised that the earlier models had been little more than clumsy toys to entertain a gawping crowd. True, they had demonstrated the possibility of movement being projected into the unsuspecting eye, the mechanical delusions of leaping horses and running figures, paintings becoming alive. But the new machines sought a very different quarry, one that entered the brain directly, through the spinning mirrors and measured, shuttered light, which bent and warped via the array of lenses. Peripheral sight was the causeway around picture, flicking the optic nerve to erection.
He had tried it on himself repeatedly, and felt the shadows infiltrate and pulse. They sought absorption in some part of the brain, and while they danced so, the uncanny was released. Every time he tilted the sunlight or lit the lamps or changed the lenses, he came a little closer; every time he put his head in the machine and cranked the brass gears, he felt the movement try to coalesce; every time his eyes were licked by crooked light, he felt the ghosts arrive.
After his first seizure, alone in the back of their small studio, he was more cautious. He had come out of the machine with a jolt, his legs going in and out of spasm. He remembered nothing, but when he awoke he was on the floor, with a split lip, a bleeding nose and a torn shirt. He must have looked the way those villains had described him in courtrooms, all those years ago: dislocated, unwell and raving. He had always felt sure that it was not the morbus comitialis that had ravaged him, but some other, sensitive, higher function of the brain that portrayed a similar effect. And now he had proved it, by finding a way to manufacture it from light.
When he had found his way out of the studio and into the kitchen, he must have been quite a sight; Josephine made a silent scream upon seeing him. His long, greying beard and white shirt were covered in blood, spread everywhere by his excessive perspiration. He tried to reassure her that he was all right, just a small accident. He poured water into the sink to wash, and she went back to her room and locked the door. Locked doors were good things, he thought, as he rinsed his chest. When not in the wilderness, he preferred to live and work behind them, constructing his instruments and carrying out his experiments behind their infallible security.
He resolved to be more careful in the future; he did not want Josephine to be alarmed again. He could not risk her inquisitiveness drawing her fingers to the workings of his delicate optics. The process of logging each variation of light, each arrangement of lens and shutter, and all the effects they subsequently produced in him, was a protracted and systematic one. The large, heavy ledger sat in the desk in the corner of the room, a sturdy clasp keeping it shut. Soon, he would visit Gull with his findings, and he was looking forward to seeing the doctor’s expression when confronted with such significant research.
But he was not ready yet. America and Stanford were calling. His two years in England had flown by, and he still needed more time, but that was not an option – he had to return to his adopted homeland as soon as possible. He was musing on this when Josephine knocked on the door. He unlocked it and invited her in. She walked to the chair in front of the camera, touched it and looked at him. He checked his watch.
‘Yes. I do have time for a short sitting this afternoon.’
She actually seemed to enjoy these displays of malady. Even the cruellest of contortions only ever left her tired, and she was always ready for more. He admired this in her. She showed no fear or remorse, never complained or even tried to find a way to; she was so different to the scheming, selfish oaf he had married. He enjoyed her silent company, and felt dismal at having to leave so soon with no return date set. He sighed and began to prepare for the exposure, clearing a few things from his workbench and putting them on shelves. He moved his version of the peripherscope from the back of the shelf to make room for a box of negatives. He felt her start behind him and turned to see her reaction.
‘What’s wrong, Josephine?’
She pointed to his hand.
‘What, this?’ he said, holding the clockwork halo of glass and metal towards her.
Her eyes widened and she produced an expression she had not yet demonstrated, a cross between sexual hunger and shortsightedness, as if she was drawing the object towards her; he felt a little awkward. She approached, holding out her hands. He gave her the halo, and she placed it on her head, imitating the sound of its small clockwork motors while placing her flat right hand over her head and making a series of circles with it. Her actions reminded him of one half of a children’s game, one hand circling in front of the solar plexus, the other above the head, to demonstrate the pull of unity between separate coordination of the left and right brain. But this was not a game: she wanted him to operate it for her.
He saw no obvious difficulty in her request. Gull had evidently used it in her previous treatment, and its desirable consequences seemed to have given her pleasure. He took the peripherscope from her and wound the motors. Checking that the mirrors were not loose, he arranged it securely on her head. She returned to the chair with sauntering pleasure. The brass and glass shone in the sun from the bright window, against the darkness of her uplifted head. She was a crowned princess, awaiting her cloak of gold on some distant shore; he, her intrepid provider, the carrier of her inner riches.
They were both smiling when he pressed the tiny levers and set the machine in motion. The effect was instantaneous. Her body tightened and rippled into a firm contour of readiness, as if the nondescript clothing that she wore had somehow become magically tailored to cling to every line of her body. Her posture was cat-like, with a salacious stealth that screamed her sexuality. Muybridge was frozen. She closed her heavy lids over smouldering eyes as wave upon wave of orgasm rushed through her body. Every guard, defence and restraint was swept away from him. His erection was beyond his wildest memories, and it bayed in the constraint of his Scottish woollen trousers. Her sighs turned into mews, then roars. The chair broke, split apart by the energy being driven down through it and into the cringing floor. She stood, fists clenched and head thrown back, panting as the clockwork ran out and the photographer exploded with unbelievable pleasure inside the embarrassed dignity of his thick darkroom underwear.