The Luck of Madonna 13

THE LUCK OF MADONNA 13 by E. T. Ellison | Chapter 1

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Hair the color of dusty emeralds sprayed from under the silver-blue sheen of the prayer helmet. A supplicant wore the helmet. Fear swung in this supplicant’s heart like a freshly hung corpse on a gallows; her thoughts danced to the burning rubber smell of looming fate. And Lucky Madonna remained mute as ever. Still, the supplicant sought some mystical signal of encouragement. And wondered: is there such a thing as being too lucky? Duh, rattled an answer from her surly repository of rhetorical answers to rhetorical questions.

The chapel was one of sixty-five identical prayer chambers to be found within the confines of St. Coriander’s Holy Quincunx. An inquiring, sensitive nose might detect a quality of disuse, but this supplicant was preoccupied and a little unsure of herself. She had entreated the Lucky Madonna only rarely: once or twice before a particularly important bangerball game; once or twice before a particularly important date. If nothing else, the muted tinklings from the waterwall behind the statue calmed her roiling mind.

A vibration of the prayer helmet signaled that the supplicant's audience with the reflective Lucky Madonna was concluded. The supplicant raised herself up to a cross-legged sitting position, removed the prayer cap with two strong hands tipped by lustrous, close-cropped green fingernails, and set it carefully -- almost reverently -- into a depression in the soft green feltstone that formed the base of the larger-than-life figure of the idol.

In the watery, undulating light of the chapel, reflections played fast and loose with the shapely contours of the nude statue. Glendyl Fenderwell looked up, her eyes moving quickly away from the raised sword in the right arm and glancing hopefully toward the left hand which held out its customary offering: a handful of huge emeralds, cut and polished to the traditional emerald shape and glittering with a dangerous taunt. Her eyes moved up to the familiar face, clearly modeled after Madonna 13. Was there a sign for her in the weirdly distorted reflections of her own figure? Once again she posed the simple question that had constituted, in essence, her prayer mantra: would Glendyl Fenderwell succeed where her 249 sixteener predecessors had failed? Would the luck of Madonna 13 ride with her on her Quest, unlike all the others?

Was that a conspiratorial wink? A supportive flicker of smile? An upper lip curled slightly in derision? Glendyl’s more grounded self gave a rueful shake of head. Phantoms. Figments. Tricks of light. She rose to her feet, made the ritual "dice roll" gesture, turned and walked toward the door. Dirge-like strains of the traditional pipe organ rendition of "Only the Lucky" rose up from the floor like a slowly filling bathtub.

As the chapel door slid aside, a tiny clinking sound penetrated the monochrome undulations of the organ. The sound had seemed to come from behind her. Glendyl turned slowly, a cautious turn but laced with athletic grace. A ripple of unidentifiable strangeness coursed up her spine, her muscles tensing to readiness. Her eyes detected no movement, her ears detected nothing but the ponderous organ tones which overpowered the pale tinklings of the shimmering waterwall. Still, some other sense told her that something was not quite the same as a moment before. Seconds passed. Her eyes finally came to the rescue: an out-of-place glint. Something small and green glittered on the dull feltstone base of Lucky Madonna's altar, just to the right of the icon’s shimmering left foot. One of the emeralds had incomprehensibly fallen from Lucky Madonna’s immovable palm.

Glendyl hesitated, her face atwitch with conflicting emotions. Her wideset gray-green eyes flickered from side to side in counterrhythm to her nervous, darting tongue: a pointy red-pink instrument which was busily wetting the suddenly dry lips of a pleasantly wide mouth. She walked on guilty tiptoes back to the altar and, hesitating only a moment, picked up the fallen jewel and transferred it to her own open palm, a flesh mirror image of the Lucky Madonna's palm. The emerald felt warm, almost hot. She frowned and decided to put it back where it belonged: was this some kind of worthiness test? Before she could act on her decision, the emerald split open like a faceted green clamshell. Something else was revealed: a tiny green capsule.

Green-tipped fingers, seemingly acting on their own volition, grasped the capsule and popped it into her mouth, whereupon the emerald halves snapped back together and the jewel was once again whole. Glendyl's throat, evidently a co-conspirator with her fingers, swallowed the green capsule. Then the emerald was back amongst its green fellows in Lucky Madonna's palm. Glendyl palmed the chargeplate set into the frame and was quickly out the chapel door, winding her way up the stairway from Sublevel One and ultimately emerging into the Grand Arcade, still alight with late night questioners seeking the assistance of the hundred one-armed Oracles which dotted the area. Glendyl threaded her way past glassy-eyed patrons, nodding here and there to a familiar face and trying to ignore the rows of symbols coming to rest in the Oracles’ answerpanels; then through the southeast tube under the Moat to ultimately emerge into a crisp late spring evening.
Strangely, she later remembered nothing of the capsule incident in the chapel.

The walk through St. Coriander's Central Park was without incident and ten minutes later Glendyl was opening the front door of her family's well-kept ranch-style home on Turtledove Way in East Village. She tiptoed through the foyer, down the hall and into her room, just barely noticing the banner that hung across the hall saying "We're with you, Glenny! All the way!" Within the safety and comfort of her own bedroom, she considered whether or not to consult Septriq for a reading of the portents; she was Luckiest, after all, and the portals might show a hopeful sign. But sheer exhaustion tinged with the fear of an unlucky interpretation won out and her slate remained dark that night. And though she was, in effect, about to be banished into the unknown and would doubtless never earn a proper Elevation, she was asleep as soon as her head hit the puffwad, thinking sweet-sour thoughts about tomorrow’s setting-off party.

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