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By Root 682 0

rose and fell like the tides as the giant, mysterious beings rose from the dark waters for a breath of air. Occasionally he paused, and looked, with a poet's longing for the muse, at the cityscape sprawling before him on the other side of the river. Smoke rose from chimneys, low-lying and dense like industrial clouds, merging with the fog that wrapped itself about the buildings. In the distance, too, were the lights of the Babbage Tower, its arcane mechanisms pointed at the skies, its light a beacon and a warning to the mail airships that flew at night, like busy bumblebees delivering dew from flower to flower. Almost, he was tempted to stop, to scribble a hasty poem: but the cold of the air rising from the river compelled him onwards, and at his back Big Ben began to strike ten, hurrying him on. Already he was late for the performance.

Lucy wasn't there and must therefore have been inside; and so he bought a ticket outside the theatre and entered the courtyard, where people still milled about. So there was still time, he thought. He bought himself a mug of mulled wine and sipped at the hot, spicy drink gratefully before making his way inside the building, into the groundlings' floor.

In the spirit of authenticity, the Rose was lit not with gas but burning torches, and their jumping light made the shadows dance and turned the faces of people into fantastical beings, so that Orphan imagined he was sharing this space with a race of lizards and porcupines, ravens and frogs. The thought amused him, for it occurred to him to wonder how he himself appeared: was he a raven, or a frog?

He settled himself against the balustrade separating the groundlings from the lower seats and waited. There was a slim, dark-haired girl standing beside him, whose face kept coming in and out of shadow. In her hands she held a pen and a notebook, in which she was scribbling notes. She had a pale, delicately drawn face – seen in profile it was quite remarkable, or so Orphan always thought – and her ears were small and pointed at their tip, and drawn back against her head so that she appeared to him in the light of the moon coming from above like some creature of legend and myth, an elf, perhaps, or a Muse.

He leaned towards her. "One day I will write a play for you they would show here at the Rose," he said.

Her smile was like moonlight. She grinned and said, "Do you say that to all the girls?"

"I don't need to," Orphan said, and he swept her to him and kissed her, the notebook pressed between their bodies. "Not when I have you."

"Let go!" she laughed. "You have to stop reading those romance novels, Orphan."

"I don't–"

"Sure." She grinned up at him again, and kissed him. Two old ladies close by tutted. "Now shush. It's about to start."

Orphan relented. They leaned together against the balustrade, fingers entwined. Presently, a hush fell over the crowd, and a moment later the empty stage was no longer empty, and Henry Irving had come on.

At the sight of the great actor the crowd burst into spontaneous applause. Orphan took another sip from his drink. The torchlight shuddered, and a cold wind blew from the open roof of the theatre, sending a shiver down Orphan's spine. On stage, Irving was saying, "…The bridegroom's doors are opened wide, and I am next of kin. The guests are met, the feast is set: may'st hear the merry din–" and the celebrated performance of the stage adaptation of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner began.

Orphan, though he had seen the performance before, was nevertheless spellbound anew. As Irving's booming voice filled the theatre the strange and grotesque story took life, and the stage filled with masked dancers, enacting the wedding ball into which the Ancient Mariner had come like an ill-begotten creature rising from the Thames. The story took shape around Orphan: how the young mariner, Amerigo Vespucci, took sail on his voyage of exploration under the auspices of the British court; how, on Caliban's Island, he discovered and shot the lizard-like inhabitant of that island, by that callous act bringing