CH. 3

I had several pieces already created, finished, on display, such as it was, in the windswept rocky space behind my 

parents house.  These ranged from massive cast sculptures in bronze, to Grantium statuary, to individual pieces 

combined of metal and stained glass.  I never destroyed any of my experiments unless I needed to scavenge the 

pieces to make more.  Sadly, that happened a lot, with the result that my progress couldn't be viewed in person.  

The upside was that my statuary garden was filled with only the best representations of my work in metal and glass, 

my progression from suck to spectacular was in Grantium.  I had images of all my previous works, of course, but 

none of them had been taken carefully enough for this contest.



To walk out the back of my parents place was to enter a blasted, surreal, wasteland planetscape dotted with 

mythological misfits.  My subjects were usually drawn from ancient history, legend, or old Terran pop culture.  I 

had even sculpted Elvis being taken up by big eyed aliens once.



The first piece to assault your eyes upon leaving the shelter of the shanty was called Yearning.  She was my 

exquisite Aphrodite, done in the Imperial style, all legs and tits and sculpted entirely out of glass in shades of 

blue and red, golden with internal fire.  She was perfectly formed, dancing her beauty on the scarred hand of a 

crooked Cthonian many times her size.  He was more hacked than sculpted, a twisted Hephaestus gouged out of 

grantium and painted with streaks of ore dross.  She was reaching upward beyond him as she danced, and her face 

was a mask of unfulfilled desire, while her lord and master held her close, so tightly wrapped around her that you 

could only catch glimpses of her perfection through the shroud of his ugliness if you looked from just the right 

angle.



The second piece to confront you was based on an old Terran book I'd read once.  It was dedicated to another 

artist limited by unfair circumstance and I called it Mass is a Verb.  It was also about a dancer, and I wonder if 

I should have known then how important to me dance would become, given that two of the three pieces I submitted to 

the Imperial board depicted dancers of one kind or another.



The third piece I submitted was called Lillith, and she was formed just with a plane cutter and un-sanded.  I'm 

still not sure why I sent her.  Maybe because she was also my self portrait.  Maybe as contrast with Yearning.  I 

had sculpted Lillith's face with the cutter, too, and hadn't gone back to touch it up with smoothers or sanded her 

at all.  She was primitive, frightening, Cthonic.  She was solid, but not twisted.  The female man, fists clenched, 

hips canted forward like a fencer, knees slightly bent, prepared to move, move, move, but with a face undelineated, 

undefined, a phantom of power, an unrealized representation of force.



Maybe I was showing off a bit, hoping that the use of such blunt tools and uninspired materials would grasp 

attention.  I couldn't help wondering what the judges would think of the media list on the submission forms.  

Plane Cutter, Grantium.  It was like trying to sculpt David with a chain saw, really, but I had grown good at it.  

I could only pray that they would look past the primitive tools and materials and see the gods in me, the fire in 

me, the need, the art, the artist.



It wouldn't matter in the end, tomorrow or twenty years from now, I was getting off this rock, but I wanted it.  

Oh, in the deepest recess of my soul I hid away the infant dream of making it, of getting all the way to Dracis 

Prime, of the Emperor shedding a tear over my carvings and blood.  But I hid it well.  Hubris is not something any 

Cthonian can ever be comfortable with.  On Cthonia, hubris tends to leave you injured in the dark of an abandoned 

shaft with no fuel for your lightstick.



I commed Saint Ignacius as soon as the pictures were taken, so I wouldn't lose my nerve.  The screen filled with 

his now familiar white mask and black clothes, his red taffeta curtain just as over the top in it's claret 

indignance as it had ever been.  I had learned to be comforted by this sight, and it didn't fail me this time.  My 

troubled spirit calmed at once, though my fingers didn't stop moving.



“Have you heard about the art competition?”  I asked him, and my own voice sounded as craggy to me as Ziggy's, 

grating on my raw and naked soul.



“Indeed, oh goddess, I have.”  I could hear him smiling, and his voice was oiled silk on skin in the dark, 

soothing me, like cooling a fever.  “I've been waiting with bated breath to hear the dulcet tones of your call.  

The exit window for your precious prospectus is prepared.”



I shrugged.  Half of what he said I didn't understand, and the other half was usually disturbing.



“We'll be hearing your name from Dracis Prime someday.  Though I suspect Admin will be hearing it before we do!”  

He said and I heard his smile deepen.  I grinned at him.  



“Your mouth to god's ear, friend.”  My smile was real.  He had that effect on me.  He was my closest friend, and I 

didn't even know his name.



“But, oh, I shall miss you, little goddess.”  He whispered softly.  “You have made this dark place bearable, if 

only by making trouble.”  I stared at the screen for a long moment.



“So, uh, why don't you come, too?”  I asked at last.  “They allow space and transport for family.  You don't 

belong here any more than I do.  Come and get outta here.”



The silence that settled over us was loud, and though I strained to hear through it, it blanketed us in it's lack 

of possibility without relief.



“If you don't win this contest, I want to buy Yearning.”  He said at last, and I started.  I hadn't ever published 

any pictures of my work, let alone any with the names attached.  To know that a piece was called that you had to 

have been there, in the garden, and seen the little metal plaque, painstakingly bonded to the plinth on which the 

sculpture rested.  “For the priviledge of owning that particular original Grace, I will pay you the remainder of 

what you need to buy your passage off of this insignificant cage that binds you.”



“Saint,...”  I tried to interrupt, but he was already gone, leaving only the flashing prompt where I should upload 

my work to be wafted away to Imperial space.  Silently refusing to escape himself.  



What could I do?  I sent the images of my three disparate children off to Saint Ignacious to send to the Imperial 

Board of Judges and tried to put it as far out of my mind as I could manage.  To think about it was to wonder, to 

wonder was to dream, to dream was to try and sleep on hot coals and dance on sharp knives, and I just couldn't, so 

I just didn't.  I threw myself all the harder into the mines to work and tried to lose myself in effort.



I pulled triple shifts and covered more for other folks from my shaft who wanted to take a day off.  I worked my 

body until it was as much rock as my sculptures.  I buried myself in the mines and the rock and the ore and the 

routine, blessed routine.  I sculpted nothing, thought about nothing, felt nothing, but at night, when I'd worked 

so hard I couldn't move and my screaming muscles locked tight until I had to take relaxers just to lie flat, the 

flitting spectres of hope, sharp as knives, slipped into my soul like slivers of my own glass, festering there 

until I burned with the fever of not knowing.



Had the images even gotten to them?  Had Saint Ignacius let me down?  He never had before, but someday the Admin 

would catch even him.  Why wouldn't he leave Cthonia?  Would the judges like my work?  Would they laugh or cringe 

or wrinkle their noses and turn away?  Should miners be allowed to be artists?  How had Saint seen Yearning?  Had 

I been there when he did?  Did I know him?  Certainly no one in Shaft 4 wore Guy Fawkes masks and spoke like an 

ancient novelist.



Eventually, I managed to keep thoughts of Saint and the contest at least mostly forced back into my hindbrain.  I 

must have, because when Boo came to tell me I had a letter I had no idea how I might have gotten one.  Then I saw 

the seal.  His seal!  The Imperial Dragon seal winking at me from the honest to gods vellum envelope clutched in 

my mother's hands.  She was trembling, and it was that motion that made the dragon's eye seem to open and close.



I took the envelope from her with trembling fingers and started to open it while my father spat question after 

question at me suspiciously.



“Whas'sat?”  I was sure it was a polite refusal.  It had to be.



“Who'sit from?”  I couldn't have made it.  They don't allow mining bumkins into fairy tales.



“Whad'you do, girl?!”  He wrested the envelope from my nervless hands and opened it for me.  I might have been mad, 

but my heart had frozen, and the sustaining fire that had driven me for years was nowhere to be found, now when I 

needed it most, besides my hands were shaking too badly to open the damn thing.  “Dear Citizen Grace, we are most 

pleased to inform you that your art works have been chosen from among the many offferings placed before the 

Emperor in celebration of his 1000th year as sovreign, Long may He reign.”



“Wha'fuck?”  My father asked, and now his hands were trembling as well.  I think he wanted to hit me just to drag 

some hint of normality back into our little shanty.  “Whas'is mean?”



“It means I won.”  I gasped, sitting down abruptly on the floor.  “I made it.  I did it.  I'm in!  Hells, I'm OUT!!!”



“Whad'you win?”  Momma asked, taking the letter from Da.  “Whas'is mean?”



“You know those messes I make in the back? The ones I been making years now?”



They nodded, eyes wide as I rose from the floor and took the precious letter, my precious future, from my mother's 

hand.



“They gotta contest about 'em.”  I was bouncing on the balls of my feet, giddy, maddened, breathless.  “A contest 

for money and a trip out there for a chance for more.  I sent pictures to enter and this letter says I won!”



I watched my father understand at last.  He couldn't grasp art, but he knew that Imperial money spent better than 

Company Store cred any day.



“Lemme get this straight.”  He managed, grating rock on rock.  “You sent pictures of those things you cut, and 

these Impies want to give you money for 'em?”



“Yeah, mostly.”  I nodded, elation warring with exhaustion in my head.  “I been waitin' ta hear if I made the cut 

for it.  They give you free passage off your homeworld to go to the contest.”



I scanned the letter again feverishly.  There it was in black and white, fancifully embellished with crimson 

scrollwork around the capitals.  I had passage to the planet Echolalia.  It was a rim world, like Cthonia, but it 

was bigger, closer into Imperial space, they had thriving intergalactic commerce, and most importantly of all, 

they did art.



My father nodded at last, a decision made in his eyes.  After all these years, he knew better than to try and 

dissuade me once my mind was made up.  He knew I wouldn't listen and since I was taller than him by a good two 

feet and almost as broad in the shoulders, he wouldn't try to change my mind by beating on it.  He could make a 

fuss and try to stop me and I'd go anyway, but Mom would be mad at him, or he could just get behind the 

unstoppable object and help push.



“This ain't no place for you, anyhow, you know.”  He said at last.  “They like them messes out there?  Well, you 

go do good.  You show 'em your messes.  You're nuts, but your nuts is better than Impies normal anyway.”



Momwas crying and kissed him like they were gonna have another baby and little brother Boo let out a whoop and a 

half.



“'Temi's gonna fly, Momma!  'Temi's gonna FLY!!!”



And he was right.