Excerpt: 'autonomy' (2019)

Read the first chapter of my 2019 historical fantasy novella 'autonomy', inspired by a school study of George Benard Shaw's Pygmalion and a lifelong love of what lies beneath the surface of artistic expression.

'autonomy' (2019)

excerpt from a novella by a.f. fitts

[ all rights reserved A.F. Fitts 2019 ]

I

     I lie on the shore, among the rocks and the ruins of a ship, watching the waves wash around me. Months of the dark water has left a tinge of green algae on my pale grey skin and attached barnacles to my limbs, the wind and sea wearing away at my form. Every day, I see the beach change with the tides, and every night I stare up at the stars. If there are clouds, I look at them and imagine the glittering sky beyond. I do not feel the water or the wind that swirl around me, I do not feel the sharp stones I lie on. When it rains, I fail to catch the scent. I remember once on the ship, I heard a sailor say to another that it smelled like rain was on the horizon. That was a long time ago.

     From the first sunrise on the lonely shore, I think I knew my fate. A little part of me still hoped, though, that something would change. Nothing ever did. After many weeks had passed, I stopped counting the days. It seemed futile, when I knew I would remain there on those rough stones until the cliffs finally collapsed one day in the far-off future, and I would be crushed beneath the rock. As the morbid thought floated about my mind, I wondered often whether my consciousness would be destroyed with the lifeless stone that masquerades as my body, or if some part of me would remain forever on this cursed shore. Would it hurt, the end? I had no reason to believe it would, for I had never felt pain before. A part of me wished to know what it would feel like to be in pain – to feel anything, but I was also afraid. Despite everything, I did not want to die, if dying it could be called – perhaps more of a sudden, ineffable end to existence.

     My first memory is the workshop. It was a simple room of tools and benches, decorated only with other unfinished statues. Whether they could think and see and hear as I could, I do not know. Their faces were blank, as mine must have been. Some were hardly anything at all, the beginnings of limbs and random parts protruding crudely from blocks of stone. It disturbed me to see them, like they were mangled monsters yet to be fully birthed. I tried not to look.

     Then, I remember him. I remember every little thing about him. My memory never fails me where he is concerned. I remember his words, endless praises of me – his own work – and my perfect, beautiful form. He would never stop, not even when there was not another soul in the workshop who might’ve been there to hear and agree with him. It was bizarre, and I was confused. I remember he touched me, running his hands down my body as I stood above him on a pedestal. Although I could never feel his fingers, the knowledge of his movements terrified me. Each time he did it, I prayed for liberation. Stop, leave me be, I thought. Yet it only a thought, and he could not hear me. Assistants and students milled around in the daytime, helping him to make the final touches to my form. They smoothed out every inch of my skin, touched up the little details of my face. Each new man who saw me declared me beautiful, more so than any woman he had seen before. I could not bring myself to be grateful for their words.

      More and more men would come. They would touch me, run their hands along my arms, my legs, my torso. They would take me by my waist as if I were a human girl they were trying to woo, laughing to their friends like they deserved applause for their behaviour. My creator swatted their fingers away, instructed them not to come too close. For some time, I thought he meant to protect me in some way, and I was thankful. It took too long for me to realise he only did so believing he was the sole being with the right to touch. I saw it in his eyes as he looked upon me – something between obsession and possession. I catalogued it carefully, initially out of confusion and curiosity. As time went on, I came to fear it and wished more than ever that I could close my eyes. He hardly ever left my side during the day. It was only in the night-time that I found respite from his preoccupation.

     After a few days, a few weeks, he declared me truly without fault and I was taken away. It shocked me. Would he not keep me? Would I not remain by his side? Greed, I realised, was my creator’s deadly sin. Where Lust would’ve refused to let go, Greed forgot love quickly. The last time I saw him, he no longer wore his work clothes. Instead, he was dressed finely in a coat stitched with gold and a three-pointed black hat. They were hardly the clothes of an artist. He despaired at our parting in a self-serving sense, speaking of me as his best, most magnificent work. Perhaps there was something like sadness in his eyes, but it was nothing compared to the joy when he was handed a piece of paper – a promise of riches, more than he had ever been paid before. He said never mind, for I shall sculpt another, even finer than she is. Maybe two, and then I will keep one for myself. It occurred to me then that I belonged to another, someone I did not know. Although my creator scared me, he did not do so as much as my own imagination. I did not want to stay, but I did not want to go either. Such feelings were irrelevant, however, for I had no say in the matter.

     Other men came and put their hands on me and my half-dressed form, laughing at my nakedness. Their humour was lost on me. I could only wait, posed with a raised arm and twisted torso, as they carried me to the ship. Eventually, they set me down against a wall beneath the decks, surrounded by boxes and barrels. It was a dark and soulless place. I could just see out of a small gap in the wood to my right. Through it, there was only ocean. Deep, empty blue that seemed to go on forever and ever. As strange and unknowable as life itself.

     Despite being unable to remember a time when the world was any different for me, I was aware of how wrong I felt. There were no sensations in my body. I felt nothing. Even emotion seemed to exist on a distinctly metaphysical plane,

tethered to reality by the thinnest of threads. My limbs were frozen in place, as was my face. My eyes were eternally open; I was always seeing. I suppose it did not matter, for I never tired in the way humans seemed to do. Though I felt I should do it, there was no way for me to sleep. Days and days of staring out to the sea blended into one another. My thoughts soon bored me, so I stopped thinking.

     It was strangely easy to do that – not think, like snuffing out the flickering light of a lantern. Or perhaps more like letting the fire burn so low in the hearth that it is only coals, lying dormant until the effort is made to set the fire again. Over long days of dark walls and the only view of the outside a tiny glimpse of unchanging blue, I let the wood turn to ash, leaving only a faint notion of consciousness in those barely-warm coals. The state left me with no words and no articulate, coherent thoughts. All I had was a weak awareness that I was still there, somewhere in that room, in my body. The knowledge wasn’t even truly conscious – it was more like the ceaseless beating of a heart I did not have. Little could wake me from the darkness. I suppose it was – it is – as close to sleeping as something such as me can come. Occasionally, though, I would resurface, prompted by the raucous cries and singing of the sailors, or the crashing of waves against the side of the ship, but it took time. The world would fade back in slowly, piece by piece. It left me feeling empty.

     Only when I saw some of the men down in the storage room for the first time did it strike me I did not know where I was being taken. Would it be another workshop? Another man? Would I be on display for these people, to view my form as I stood there without the ability to move or speak? I was art, that was my purpose, I had tried to reason. It would only be natural. Still, the possibility scared me. I felt trapped. Please, I said in my mind. I thought of the gods I heard my creator praise for my beauty and wondered if they could hear me beg to be free, even though the words were never spoken aloud. Would they even know me? Surely not, when I did not know myself. I didn’t even have a name for them to call me, let alone a reason for them to answer my prayers. And yet I prayed, for I had nothing else to do.

     It was night when the storm struck. We were close to some lonely grey shore – I’d seen it from my little window on the horizon since sunrise that day. The winds picked up and thunder rumbled violently. Waves crashed into the side of the ship. I was only halfway to reality, so everything seemed to be very far away. The frantic cries of the men above were drowned out by the raging storm. I wanted to close my eyes, to lose myself completely, at that moment. I tried my very hardest to imagine I was somewhere else, but the only places I could think of were the workshop and the faint glimpse of the docks I got as they carried me aboard. Neither would do. I wanted to cry, phantom tears welling up in phantom eyes. Once again, my frozen form left me trapped within my own inhumanity. The sense of despair that overtook me was like none I had not known before or have known since. Why am I like this? I thought, to whom I was uncertain. Why let me think, and watch and listen to the world, if you did not mean for me to live in it?

     As the ship creaked and groaned beneath the strain, I chose to imagine myself. The tiny glimpses of my own reflection I had managed to steal gave me no real picture. I knew I was beautiful, I had been told it many times by my creator. Was that not the reason he made me this way, after all? So that I might be beautiful? I thought of it with bitterness, wishing I could move out of the position I am eternally held in. I stand endlessly, one leg crooked behind the other, my upper body twisted away from my hips. My left arm curled upwards above my head, baring my chest further, the other clutching at the robes that only cover half my body. I would not be ashamed if I did not know my creator made me like this, so he could look at me and call me beautiful. Maybe, if some part of me did not know that men would’ve looked at me and disdained me for my vanity when it was they who designed me this way for their own enjoyment, I would’ve been glad he made me beautiful rather than ugly. But I was no fool. I felt rage then, stronger than any emotion I had experienced that day. Let me sink beneath the sea, then, I thought, and deprive them of their desires.

     There was a horrible crashing sound and the wood of the ship split, water pouring in. Everywhere about me, there was only darkness. Determined that I would not be afraid, I stopped myself from thinking once again. I let the fire burn low. Goodbye, I whispered in my mind. I said it to myself, because there was no one else.

     When I became aware of my surroundings again, I was on the rocks. The sun was rising over the edge of the ocean far in the distance, the golden light shining on me and filling my mind. For a moment, I truly thought – I felt – that I was free. It was fleeting – a flash of joy quickly extinguished by reality as water swirled around me, and I couldn’t feel it. I remembered what I was. A statue, carved in smooth stone. Unable to move, doomed to serve men for all my existence. So I waited, I waited for one of them to find me as the storm faded and the waves washed more of the ruins of the ship in. But no one ever came.

     That was many months ago. As time passed, the days became longer and I became lonelier. I almost managed to miss the company of men, though memories of their wicked smiles would immediately surface and remind me how glad I was to be away from them. Very occasionally, I saw ships out on the ocean. They never came close to the bay, though – I suppose it was a dangerous place for boats to go. That was why I was there on the shore in the first place. I never, ever saw people on the beach. A small mercy, perhaps. Sometimes I noticed seabirds fly across the waters to land upon the cliffs, the sun catching on their white wings. When storms came, I watched as lightning cut across the skies and wondered whether another ship would wash up on the rocks one day, as mine had.

     It’s a clear morning. The sunrise is as beautiful as ever, shining on the surface of the water. The tide is out, and my lifeless stone skin is dry like the rocks around me. The air is icy cold, and the rocks are sharp and cutting, I think, although I feel neither of those things. Summer has come and gone, I know. The weather worsens a little with each day, night falling faster than it did before. In a few moons, it will be winter once again.

     Aside from the sun, there is nothing to see this morning. No birds, no ships. Nothing. Nothing, but for the sudden noise that draws my attention to my right, my vision snapping into focus. The faint sound of quiet singing, angelic and gentle, carries on the wind. For a moment, I’m spellbound. The voice is beautiful, like siren song. Then I realise the voice is a man’s. I cannot help but panic that it may be one of the men from the ship or worse, my creator. I do not want their touches or their laughs. After a few painful moments, the man comes into view. He looks… quite different to men I have seen before. His hair is dark and messy, and his features are delicate, free from the sun-damaged skin that the sailors wore. His clothes are distinctly different – simple, plain and warm – not a hint of the finery of my creator showed when I last saw him nor the careless rags of the men on the ship. He skips lightly across the rocks, seemingly lost in his own song. A satchel bag rests on his hip. I witness the exact moment he notices me.

     His expression changes to one of surprise and curiosity. A wave of pure fear hits me as he steps closer and kneels down, his hand reaching out. Stop! I think desperately. Don’t touch me! He halts suddenly and draws back. He didn’t hear me, surely? My thoughts have never been listened to before. Can… can you hear me? I ask tentatively.

     “You can speak,” he says flatly, a look of pure disbelief on his face. His accent is nothing like that of men I met before. It is clipped and light, not deep like that of my creator, nor harsh like the way the sailors spoke.

     “No,” I reply. “I cannot.”

     “But I can hear you!” He sits back on the rocks, running a hand through his hair.

     I regard him carefully. I have never had a man hear me before. His reaction only confirms what I had long suspected, that statues are not in the habit of thinking or speaking. “I do not know how this is possible,” I say. “It has never happened before. I have heard men speak, but they have not heard me.”

     “You’re a statue.”

     “That is true.”

     “And you have… a mind?”

     “I suppose I must do. I can see the world around me and think of it, but I cannot feel as there is no life in my body, only stone. I would ask, however, that you do not touch me.” I do not expect him to listen, but it seems worth trying.

     “Of course I won’t,” he says, “if you don’t want me to.” After a moment of silence, he speaks again. “Do you… do you have a name?”

     “No,” I reply. “I do not. Do you?”

     He nods. “Yes, my name is William. Will to my friends.”

     It is the first name I’ve ever learned. I realise that now – I never knew my creator’s name. I’m sure it must have been spoken in my presence, but I did not care to listen. “Why are you here, William?” I find myself asking, curious as to the contents of his bag. “I have not seen anyone on this beach before.”

     “Oh, well. I came here to paint, if that doesn’t sound too silly.”

     “Are you an artist?”

     “Not really. I paint occasionally, but it’s only watercolours. I can’t afford anything better.” He reaches into his bag and removes a piece of card, holding it out to show me. On it, there is an illustration of a sky, complete with a blue background and grey clouds. Although it is simple, there seems to be great depth to the artwork. The shadowing on the clouds makes them look almost real, and I can imagine the birds flying across and the rain beginning to fall.

    “It’s beautiful,” I say.

     He smiles, ducking his head in what I would guess is embarrassment. “Thank you.”

     “You are welcome.” It feels like an oddly human interaction, only adding to the overwhelming sense of dysphoria that accompanies my current form.

     “How is it that you can, well, think?” he asks me. “How do you have a mind? Are you a ghost?”

     I ponder the question for a moment. I have meditated on my apparent sentience before, but it seemed useless then when I could never actually communicate with the beings around me. “I do not know,” I answer honestly. “I do not believe I am a ghost, for I have no memories of a past life before this one. I may be a spirit of some sort, though. My mind, as you call it, first awoke in the workshop where I was made, around the time I was finished.” A variety of negative emotions rise to the surface at the memory of that place. I push them aside.

     “I have so many questions,” he breathes, something like wonder in his eyes.

     “And I will answer them, on two conditions,” I say with more bravery than I feel. “One, I will have one question of my own first. Two, I will see you paint.”

     He laughs softly, and the sound of it is magical. “Ask me, and I’ll try to answer while I set up my things.” He opens his bag again and begins to take out what I assume to be paints and brushes.

     “Where am I?”

     He opens a small case containing vials of water and spirits. “I suppose you’re in the hidden side of Wrecker’s Cove. If you mean which county, then Cornwall. If you mean country, then we’d be sitting here on the land of the great King George III of England.”

     I sigh inwardly. I had been hoping for even a hint of recognition, but none of those names are familiar to me. Still, I take the scraps of information and neatly stow them away within the well-organised confides of my memory. They may be of use later. “So, what did you wish to know about me?” I ask him.

     “Where did you come from?”

      Given the way he described where we are now, I fear any of my descriptions may be unhelpful. “I am unsure. There was the workshop where I was made, and then there was the ship I was carried here on. That was months ago, though. I have lain on these shores for some time.”

     William’s brush moves effortlessly across the paper in the artist’s book in his lap, painting a patch of dark, murky blue. He is a real artist – I am certain of it – despite his denial.

     “I suppose the wreckers got your ship, then,” he remarks as he washes his brush and dips it into a different colour.

     “I have never heard of ‘wreckers’ before,” I say. “Tell me, who are they? You said this was their cove, did you not?”

     A slightly dark expression creeps onto William’s face, and he nods. “Yes, this is Wreckers Cove. They’re criminals – they wait for ships to founder and hit the rocks before robbing the wreck for all the goods they can scavenge. There are even stories of them shining lights from the shore to confuse ships and cast them into the wreckers’ path. They go further along the coast during these warmer months.”

     “I believe that may have happened to the ship I was on. I never saw any men, though.”

     “Parts of the wreck don’t usually wash up this way,” he says. “The rest would’ve been around the other side of that cliff.” He gestures to the wall of rock to my right, in the direction he first came from. “The wreckers wouldn’t have found you when they plundered the ruin of your ship because you weren’t there.”

     I feel an overwhelming sense of relief at that. Worse than men who wished to put me out for all the world to see in display of their own fortune would be men who appreciated me only as a means to find money, to sell me off without a second thought. It was what my creator came to do, in the end. Greed wins often over Pride. “And these wreckers, they are allowed to behave in this way?” I ask. These shores are not the high society of my creator’s home, I had guessed, but it seemed odd anyone could accept this shameless thievery.

     “If a ship is wrecked its contents become public property in a sense, so long as all of the crew have perished,” William explains. “By the time another lays claim, it’s usually too late.”

     “But what if some of them lived?”

     Williams grimaces. “They’ll die anyway. It’s a cruel twist of fate, but they would meet far worse ends at the hands of the wreckers than they would have if they drowned with the rest of their crew.”

     I let the statement sink in. I understand the implication of his words – in order to claim the ship’s goods, the wreckers end the lives of any survivors. A cruel twist of fate, indeed. To miraculously make it through such an ordeal, only to be slaughtered on the shore. Cruel, but not at the hands of fate. It is men who do this. I simply cannot comprehend them. That they would value money or material goods above the lives of their own people? Would kill each other, take away that precious life that I myself crave so badly, for such a pathetic reason? I did not like the men on the ship, but I would never wish such a death upon anyone. Greed, I think bitterly, always Greed.

      “I do not understand your people,” I say eventually.

     “No,” he sighs, “I don’t, either.”

     We sit in silence for a few minutes more as I watch him paint, adding rocks and sky and white-tipped waves to the artwork. It’s simple, I realise that. But still, there’s something I find quite enthralling about it. I notice the way William’s brow creases as he works. I cannot yet dislike this man, although a hint of worry still sits at the back of my mind. Although, I feel that I should be able to trust him – he has done me no harm – the sense of surety is not there.

     “You mentioned your family,” I say after a while. “Would you tell me about them?” That makes William smile, rewarding me with a flicker of satisfaction.

     “Of course,” he says brightly. “I live with my mother and my two sisters – one older, one younger. My mother owns a bakery in town. I work there with her most days, as does the little one, Lydia. My father died a long time ago.”

    “I’m sorry.”

     “Oh, it’s alright, the hurt has faded. My mother mostly raised me and my sisters by herself. People say that’s why I’m soft, but I’m grateful to my mother for the way she brought me up.” There is a warmth in his voice as he speaks of his mother that I like.

     “Why do they call you soft?”

     He shrugs his shoulders. “They think I’m not a proper man because I grew up with only women. And I don’t shove my way through life like a ruffian, so I must be weak.”

     “Hm.” The more I learn, the more flawed men seem to be. “Their judgement of you is ill-founded,” I reassure him. “Your defiance of their baseless standards is what makes you strong.”

     He laughs. “Goodness, you’re something of a philosopher, you know?”

     I’m not sure if it’s a compliment, but I thank him anyway. After a little further prompting, he begins to tell me more of his family and his life. I listen eagerly, stowing away the little pieces of information in the corners and neat nooks of my mind. After so many months of nothing but sea, sky and birds, I feel almost overwhelmed by every new thing I learn. I’m more glad than I can put in the words of the chance to hear something other than the wind and my own thoughts.

      “You were quick to believe in my existence,” I remark at one point. “You do not my ability to see the world or speak into your mind. I am not sure many men would have reacted in the same way.”

      “I suppose so,” he says. “It doesn’t seem any less likely than many of the things they tell us are true. I’ve always imagined there was magic in the world.”

     Is that what I am? I wonder. Magic? But I say, “well, I appreciate it.”

     When William finishes his painting, he offers to leave it with me. Although a part of me would love nothing more than to have his art within sight, I politely refuse, knowing it will be ruined if it stays out here, at the mercy of the cruel coastal weather.

     “Do you have to go soon?” I ask him.

     He glances up at the sun. Since he came, it has climbed high into the sky. I have watched the sun rise and set enough days to guess it is about mid-morning. I cannot keep William from his life and family for too long. It’s not as if I don’t have endless time to see him another time, should he choose to return.

     “I suppose I ought to be leaving,” he says, and I cannot help but feel pleased by the regret in his tone. “I begin work at my mother’s bakery at noon, and it’s a long enough walk back to the town. But… I’ll come back,” he adds, “if you’d like me to?”

     If I had the ability to smile, I certainly would. “I would be gratified,” I reply.

     “Come again?”

     I hear myself laugh. I did not realise I could do that. “I would be most pleased if you returned.”

     “Then I’ll see you tomorrow, maybe? In the afternoon.”

    So soon? Is this the world of men? To be rushing about, doing this and that so much, so often that soon is tomorrow, not in weeks or months? They must grow tired. I swear I am tired enough in the vague way I can be even though I never move. “Very well. Until tomorrow afternoon, then. I will not be going anywhere anytime soon.”

      He fixes me with a look that I cannot read and stands slowly. It’s impossible not to notice the way he stays well back, and I appreciate the distance. He offers me a small wave of parting. I wish I could respond likewise, but my body still refuses to move, so I whisper a quiet, goodbye, into his mind. He smiles slightly before he walks away.

     I think about William for a long time after he leaves. If I was capable of sleeping, I would guess I was dreaming. After all those men who never listened to me, suddenly here he is – not just able to hear me, but willing to speak back too. I thought I could not trust men at all. Perhaps that is still true. I find myself more grateful than I ever thought possible that the storm came when it did, and the sea washed me this way. Maybe I cannot move, maybe I am not human, but I can no longer deny the fact that I am free. Almost.

     My thoughts soon become occupied with William’s painting. My memory, ever eidetic, recalls it with perfect detail. Although the sun has risen further, I can still easily see the scene exactly as he painted it. The grey rocks, the surface of the navy-blue sea lit up golden by rays of light, the completely clear sky. I wish I could create art as William does. Instead, I am the art, designed to be viewed by others. I have had too many wishes of late. At least one of them, never spoken aloud, has come true, though. I am no longer alone.

[...]