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to-many-towered-camelot · 4 years ago

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for anyone who is interested in a nuanced take on fairy beliefs vs the Christian Church in the Middle Ages, this book by Richard Firth Green was actually so good, if your library has it:

[Image: Front cover of the book ‘Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church’ by Richard Firth Green]

like, obvs it’s just one person’s take on a very complex topic, but it’s well-written, well-researched, and it uses a bunch of Arthurian examples throughout to explore this dynamic (see under cut)

really interesting exploration of how the Church’s response evolved from the early-High Middle Ages (”dude, you believe in fairies? hhhmmm, do penance for 10 days”) to the Late Middle Ages/Early Modern Period (”kill them for heresy and witchcraft!”)

and how it enfolded vernacular/fairy beliefs into Christian doctrine as fairies being either a) demons or b) the illusions of demons (and how dangerous/bad these demons were depended on the time/location/cleric in question - some packaged fairies as “neutral” demons who fell when the rebel angels did, and who must be punished on Earth but will return to Heaven on Doomsday - potentially doing this to soften things for their parishioners, who often held these fairy beliefs and reconciled them with Christianity, uh, differently than the Church officially would prefer)

and enduring belief in fairies existed in both common and aristocratic circles (can see this in medieval romances, although they’re not the only source of evidence), rather than just being used as cultural “decoration” by a more sceptical upperclass

aaaaand because of this conflation of fairy = demon, you get a really interesting blend/overlap with medieval demonology and enduring “folk” beliefs (obvs not all of medieval demonology was just rebranded fairies, but some of it defs was - you see stories being retold with “devil” instead of “elf”, for example)

INCLUDING in Arthuriana - how you get Morgan the Fairy (”le Fay”) vs Morgan who was raised in a nunnery and learned dark magic there, the Lady of the Lake as a (largely) positive force, Merlin inexplicably as a (perceived to be...) Good Guy despite being the literal antichrist, the Green Knight and all the overlap with Christian symbolism in that story, etc, etc. and they all just either??? co-exist in the same stories or appear through either more fay or more ~Christian lenses depending on the version

and it creates a very interesting and very confusing soup of Stuff stemming from a very confusing - and sometimes dangerous - soup of official and unofficial beliefs evolving over hundreds of years

anyway, WRT Arthuriana it’s got (and ymmv on these, but they’re all interesting thoughts):

(i think in Gottfried’s Tristan???) apparently Tristan has a rainbow fairy dog called Petitcriu...name a knight less deserving of such a Good Boy smh

Chretien’s Yvain flooding out Laudine at the fountain (...jerk) as a continuation of the beliefs surrounding a magical Spring at Barenton

Gingalain moving from being the son of Gawain and the fairy Blanchemal (and having a fairy love interest, Pucelle) in the French OG version (~1200-ish) to being the son of Gawain and his human mistress (with Pucelle also being human) in a later 15th-C Middle English version)

AJDKN UJ IOE E Merlin’s conception, that one’s a wild ride - theologians REALLY didn’t like the idea of demons being fertile, and the work-arounds they came up with were...incredible. but skipping over that sheer comedy, the author draws links between Merlin’s conception and the general trend of claiming a fairy lover/whatever when a difficult-to-explain pregnancy arose. He also theorises that Geoffrey’s idea for Merlin’s father being a demon/fairy may have come from Nennius saying that Merlin/Ambrosius’ mother “never knew a man”. Later adaptations of this storyline made it even more fay-like (when they weren’t, like Robert de Boron, making it more fucked-up) by making Merlin’s father invisible (Wace) or a super attractive guy in swanky gold clothes (Layamon) - and Vortigern’s advisor explaining the creatures that lived between the earth and the moon until doomsday, etc, etc (walking that line between fairy and incubi, whichhhhhh was not clearly delineated in the Middle Ages the way it is now). also there’s one 13th-C Anglo-Norman poem where Merlin’s father is a bird that transforms into a dashing young squire, which isn’t terribly demon-y. So even though most versions of this story describe Merlin’s dad as an incubi-demon, what people understood this to mean may have been more fay-ish that we’d expect nowadays (depending on the reader, and also on authorial intention - some are pretty explicit that he’s a demon [many clerics keen to push this as the main narrative], while others refer to him as an elf or fairy). some contemporary scepticism during this time about Merlin having any sort of supernatural parentage as well

[none of the same Church anxieties about explaining away how the Plantagenets and other aristocratic families claim a female fairy ancestress - maybe bc there’s none of the stress about patrilineal bloodlines??? who knows! but yeah, much less thought given to those stories in ecclesiastical circles, and they were very popular in vernacular romances (male aristocratic wish fulfilment?). also, fairy enchantments =/= necromancy, so there are stories like the non-cyclic Lancelot where the Lady of the Lake is found out to be “a fairy by education, not by nature or heredity” (Elspeth Kennedy), with the spirits used in necromancy being demons, not fairies. also potential trend of female-associated magic becoming more passive and book-learned, gradually demonising it leading up to early-modern witch hunts.]

Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia and in the Vita Merlini being actually pretty circumspect about saying whether or not Arthur was alive/dead, returning/not returning, maybe due to his work/text being a (hypothesised) defence of the Welsh as being “civilised” (and having been so for centuries before the Normans came) - with the corollary that believing in Arthur’s return was somehow “uncivilised”. Author argues that this may be due to an association with fairy beliefs, and that Layamon is the one that makes Avalon explicitly fey. Also the author describes Arthur as living in a “feminised version of the Christian heaven” (iconic) and says that later writers and people could be very scornful of this belief held by the Britons/Welsh/etc, and that it was contrary to orthodox ways of thinking.

Links the “discovery” of Arthur and Guinevere’s bodies in Glastonbury in the late 12th-C as similar to when individuals found the bodies of their loved ones, thus making it much harder to believe (and hope) that they were still alive in fairyland. Makes a suggestion that the monks in Glastonbury who “found” these bodies may have been trying to curry favour with the English crown (i.e. champion/hope of the Welsh isn’t coming back) but also may have been trying to “help”/”save”/correct the thoughts/ideology of the Welsh (i.e. “set them on the correct path to salvation”). Lots of medieval writers describing Arthur as living in “fairyland”. Precedent of people visiting fairyland and returning, so Avalon/fairyland =/= a place only for the dead (i.e. Arthur isn’t dead). An Arthurian example, albeit a less explicitly fay one, is Lancelot getting in and out of Gorre (with Gorre as a “typically supressed and rationalised” version of fairyland) in Chretien’s Knight of the Cart.

Some stuff about the wild horde (distinct from the wild hunt) being presented by some writers as very penitential (i.e. they are departed souls that may look like they’re bearing arms/hunting/whatever as they did in life, but really they are in agony e.g. because their weapons burn them) and tbh demonic (black armour, carrying torches, ominous aesthetic). Other writers thought maybe it was - once again! - demonic impersonators rather than actual mortal souls. (Should note also that the wild horde/wild hunt motifs were not always associated with their being dead). Relevant in the Arthurian context because Arthur and his court were sometimes associated with the idea of the wild horde (as in, sometimes the wild horde is described as Arthur’s court living it up in a cool, undying sort of way - “in the likeness of knights hunting or jousting, commonly known as the household of Hellequin or of Arthur” [Etienne de Bourbon, a medieval writer] - with Hellequin’s household often being used to encompass either the wild hunt or the wild horde). Ultimate point made by the author (props to him, he’s always like “if i’m right” lol) that for many clerical writers, it was very uncomfortable to leave people with the impression that Arthur and his court were living it up in fairyland (and similar for other figures associated with the wild hunt/horde) and this idea needed to be corrected/shaped to suit more orthodox perspectives - e.g. tying in with notions of purgatory, etc.

Aaaand this one was exciting to me just bc i’ve vaguely heard about Arthur and his knights snoozing under a hill, but for some reason i could only remember this being in Victoria-era-and-onwards poetry. 3 versions of the same tale, where a servant looks for his master’s lost horse on a Sicilian mountain. Version 1) servant of a bishop finds his master’s horse in the beautiful palace of Arthur’s court beneath Mt Etna. Aside from the fact that the ancient wound Arthur received from Mordred opens once a year, it’s not very purgatory-like. Version 2) a dean’s servant is told by an old man that King Arthur has the horse on Mt Gyber (Mt Etna). he is told that his master must attend Arthur’s court in 14 days, but the dean laughs it off...then sickens and dies on the appointed day (whoops). Enough differences to this story compared to the first to suggest an oral circulation. Also a note in the version/text that such mountains are said to be the mouth of hell, and only the wicked are sent there, not the chosen. Version 3) Etienne again! Also likely changed with intervening oral circulation. The master is not an ecclesiastical figure, and Arthur’s palace is now a populous city - also Arthur is not referred to, just a nameless prince. There is a gatekeeper who warns the servant not to eat or drink while he’s there (that...is a very fairy-ish proscription). This mountain is apparently reputed to be the site of purgatory. The book author (Richard, i mean) ties these versions in with other stories/accounts of different entrances to purgatory (e.g. one on an island in an Irish lake) as being part of a gradual process of “rendering [...] fairyland purgatorial”.

Finally, Gawain in Roman van Walewein: To get to an ‘earthly paradise’ [i.e. King Assentijn’s garden with its fountain of youth - side note that ‘earthly paradises’ were often popularly described to be fairyland/where fairies live, in addition to their theological functions, e.g. Avalon was sometimes described as an earthly paradise...i should also say that purgatory was frequently thought to be located beside earthly paradise, so there’s the proximity element] and the castle containing it, Gawain must cross a river (guided by a magical talking fox) that a) has waters that burn like fire, and b) can only be crossed by using a bridge sharper than a razor. His reaction? “Is it the enchantment of elves or magic / that I see?”. He is then guided by the fox underneath the river through a tunnel, and is told that the river’s source is in the depths of hell, and “[the river] is the true purgatory / All souls, having departed from the body / Must come here to bathe.” So it’s a very strong intermingling of fairy and purgatorial imagery/ideas!

I dunno, I just found this very ??? satisfying to read

it leaned towards lit-crit at times (which, considering the subject matter, is honestly fair enough), but it was more respectful of vernacular beliefs than so many other academic takes i see (ofc ymmv re: anything to do with non-Christian major religions, but i think the author’s pretty solid on this!), and it had an explanation for the survival of these beliefs that imo made a lot of sense, especially from a pan-European perspective, not just a Celtic one

plus it explored the undeniable damage done by Christianity over history without making up some “ranged battle between paganism and the Church” that i see e v e r y w h e r e in casual Arthurian circles...which, like, i empathise with the vibe, but also! that’s just straight-up historical revisionism! (i blame MZB and the 80′s for that one)

(there was a fantastic post floating around a while ago about how the religious syncretism in Arthurian literature is much more interesting than peeling away all of the Catholicism in the medieval lit (...you ?? don’t end up with much left?) and saying that this is more “accurate” to some obscure original)

anyway yeah yeah ymmv but it’s v interesting 😊

#arthuriana #Arthurian legend #religion #religious history #christianity #folklore #*#richard firth green #AUDEI FEF HEF this is hilariously long #but really it was such an interesting book!#esp if you're a bit like me and you've been turned away from discussing vernacular/folkloric elements in Arthuriana bc of how badly/weirdly #it's been handled in the past #arthurian literature #medieval history #medieval literature #medieval romance #(also im so sorry to any medieval historian reading this im just throwing around 'The Church' willy-nilly i know it's not a monolith!!!#pinky swear

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lobsters-on-their-heads · 7 years ago

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A Galaxy of Women, Chap. 3

This is my chapter from the on-going series put together by @afrenchclone and @salixsericea. The whole series can be found here on AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11836590

“Delphine and Cosima travel the world in search of clones to cure, these are their adventures.”

Note:

I have not read the Classified Clone Reports that was recently published, so some of this may contradict what's presented there.

As always, feedback is appreciated.

When she reached the intersection where the paved road met the gravel one, Cosima stopped. She let the gallon jugs of water fall to the ground and rolled her arms around in their sockets a bit. Overhead, a capuchin monkey scampered along a power line, it's tail wrapped around the wire above it. And of course, the clouds were gathering again. It was a wonder that Costa Rica even had weather reporters, she thought; the weather here was like clockwork – after lunch it rained, non-stop, for the rest of the day, letting up some time around midnight.

“Shit,” she muttered.

Before moving on, she looked both ways down the gravel road. They'd been in Cahuita, a tiny tourist town on the Caribbean coast, for three days, and every time Cosima had left the hotel on her own, she had gotten lost on the way back. Out of habit, she checked her phone, but the GPS was useless out here. Sighing, she picked the jugs of water back up and struck left. It seemed the more familiar view, at least.

The sky opened up less than five minutes later, drenching Cosima to the bone and blinding her. “Lasik,” she muttered. “When we get back, I'm getting fucking Lasik.”

She wouldn't, she knew. She hated putting contacts in her eyes, and lasers were a thousand times worse, but when the rain coated her glasses, she'd left the umbrella in the hotel again, and her hands were full, Lasik sounded really, really appealing.

Eventually, Cosima set the jugs down again and took off her glasses with a huff. It was actually easier to see without them, for once. With them on, all she saw were sheets of water, but without them, she could make out shades of light and dark, and she could tell if a building was in front of her or not. She tucked them into her bag, careful to shield them from the cans of chicken broth and packs of tortillas.

As she walked on, she turned her thoughts to their job here. They had spent the past few weeks traveling Latin America, armed with the cure for the clone disease, a list of names, decent Spanish and terrible Portuguese, and an ATM card for a bank account with almost a million dollars in it. Every time she swiped that card at an ATM or an airport, Cosima said a silent “Thank you,” to Rachel for the funds. And every time she looked at the list of 274 names, she wondered how many names were missing, removed before Cosima even knew she was a clone herself. So far, she and Delphine had cured or vaccinated three Ledas outside of their little Clone Club in North America. Camila was the first, followed by two in Brazil. Eventually it should have been fourteen in Brazil, but one died just before their arrival in the country, and one, Erika Maria Santos, was said to be here, in or near Cahuita, visiting friends. Cosima and Delphine would have stayed in Brazil longer, and looked for Erika Maria later, but her family claimed she was coughing up blood and had suffered at least one seizure. Apparently, she was also in deep denial about her condition. They desperately needed to treat her, but after three days in Cahuita, there was still no sign of her.

Lost in thought, Cosima sloshed through ankle-deep water along the side of the road until her feet went down a foot too far, propelling her farther down until the water reached her chest. The jugs of water hit the ground, her hands still gripping the handles, and splashed brown water into her face. In the moment, her first thought was the piles of garbage and horse manure that sat in every ditch around the country, and now she was in a ditch soaking in all of that. At least her mouth was closed. She couldn't dwell long on that, though, as the water pushed her forward and it took all her effort to stay upright.

“Oh shit shit shit shit...” She dug her hands into the loose gravel of the roadway, but it fell away with every attempt to pull herself up. A small voice in her head told her that this was how people died in floods.

A truck drove by and splashed more water at her, then stopped a moment later. A man ran over to her and grabbed her by the wrists, pulling her out of the ditch. She fell gracelessly against his legs when she tried to right herself, and he said things in Spanish she didn't understand. Shaking, dizzy, and functionally blind, she let him lead her, with repeated requests of “Venga, venga...” to the pickup stopped close by. He opened the passenger door for her and handed her the jugs of water. Inside the extended cab, another passenger shifted aside to let her in. Once she was seated and the door was closed, Cosima realized she was dripping all over the place. “Oh, fuck, I'm so sorry,” she said. “This will ruin your upholstery.”

The woman beside her laughed and handed her a dry handkerchief. In a soft Scottish accent, she said, “I don't think that's our greatest concern right now, love.”

English! In different circumstances, Cosima would have hated herself for the joy that bloomed at hearing her own language. She took the handkerchief with a smile and dabbed her eyes with it, then fished her glasses from her bag and dried them off. While she did, the driver climbed back in and spoke softly with the passenger.

“Thank you so, so much for helping me out,” she said. Realizing the man might not speak English like his passenger did, she added, “Muchas gracias. Muchas, muchas gracias,” and hoped she had the gender agreement right. At the same time, she realized she was sitting in a strange vehicle with strange people who could take her anywhere. At least the door was unlocked.

“De nada. No worries,” the passenger said. Cosima got the distinct impression that they were both waiting for her, so she pushed her glasses on and turned to thank them again before stepping back out into the rain and getting back to the hotel. Once she could see again, though, she froze. Sitting in the pickup next to her, with green streaks in her hair and wire-rim glasses, was a Leda clone.

“Holy shit,” Cosima whispered.

The passenger held out her hand with a sigh. “I know. I'm Rebecca. Can we give you a lift somewhere? Maybe have a chat?”

Only once on their trip so far had Cosima come face-to-face with another clone, also completely by accident. That time, after a sleepless night on a bus from Brasilia to Belo Horizonte, Cosima stumbled into the clinic waiting room without checking first that their patient was gone. That clone, Adriana Grael, looked Cosima right in the eye, smiled politely, said something in Portuguese, and went on her way without a second glance while Cosima gaped at her and wondered what to say. This clone, this Scottish Rebecca in the pickup truck, was a different matter entirely.

“Sure,” Cosima said. “I'm Cosima. Nice to meet you.”

The driver nodded and tapped Rebecca on the shoulder as he adjusted his seat. “Co-si-ma,” he repeated, then leaned past Rebecca to shake Cosima's hand and introduce himself as Eduardo. “Te lo dije,” he told Rebecca. “No es Julia.”

“Sí, lo veo,” Rebecca said. “So, Cosima, where can we take you?”

Cosima gave her the name of the hotel, and Eduardo drove back in the direction Cosima had come from. Figures, Cosima thought. I was going the wrong way anyway. Again.

Rebecca watched her during the ten minute drive with the sort of calm, confident attention that Cosima recognized. She'd had the same look on her own face when she first met Alison and, later, Sarah. It was the look Beth had when she showed up at Cosima's favorite coffee shop in Berkeley, in the weirdest not-date Cosima'd ever had. Cosima turned to face Rebecca in the cab and returned the gaze. Rebecca was the only other clone Cosima'd seen with glasses, and it fascinated her that Rebecca chose such different frames for hers than Cosima did.

“Who's Julia?” Cosima asked. One of the Brazilian still on their list was named Julia, but she wasn't ready to give up that information just yet.

“Julia Luiz,” Rebecca said, and Cosima's eyebrows shot up. “She's from Brazil. She also looks just like you – like us. We thought you might be her. She, uh, doesn't have dreadlocks, though. Or glasses, but you weren't wearing those when we saw you back there.”

“Right. So you are aware, then.”

“Aware?”

Cosima held herself back from using the word clone. “You're aware that there's others who look just like us. You've met some?”

Rebecca took a deep breath. “Yeah. Haven't met you before, though.”

“Ditto. Obvs.”

Eduardo parked the truck in front of the hotel. Cosima needed to talk to Rebecca a lot more, but she also needed to get inside, and now was not a good time to invite a stranger into the room. Rebecca, fortunately, was on the same page. She pointed to the little restaurant attached to the hotel. “Do want to get breakfast together tomorrow? We can talk more then, I think.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds great. Perfect. Um, if you don't mind telling me, what's your last name?”

“Twell.” She reached out her hand for another shake. “Dr. Rebecca Twell. From Edinburgh, but I live in Glasgow. Here on vacation.” She gave a grin that showed slightly overlapping front teeth, an unusual feature for a Leda, but maybe she'd just never had braces.

“Vacation, yeah. When you're not pulling your identicals out of ditches, you mean?”

They both smiled, and Rebecca nodded. “Well, you're the first I've done that with, and hopefully you'll be the last. Breakfast tomorrow at 8?”

“Sounds good. Thanks again. Gracias, Eduardo.”

As Cosima squelched her way towards the room, she ran over the details she knew of Rebecca so far. A doctor of some kind, with glasses and nontraditional hair, who was at least somewhat self-aware and in contact with another Leda. Probably more than one other Leda, judging by how calm she was when Cosima showed up. There were enough similiarities to make Cosima very interested indeed, and she wondered how many other similarities she would uncover. Hopefully not too many; enough people flirted with Delphine as it was.

Inside the room, she put those little worries aside. Delphine was more or less the same as she'd been when Cosima left, sprawled out on her stomach on top of the bedsheets, wearing her little gray gym shorts and nothing else. The trashcan sitting next to the bed was empty, meaning she had probably slept the entire time Cosima was gone. She only moved when Cosima removed her sandals and dropped them by the door.

“You forgot your umbrella,” Delphine said, her voice muffled by the pillow.

“That was one thing that happened, yes.” She peeled off her clothes and dropped them into the garbage bag they were using as a laundry bag. They would need to be washed ASAP, but first, she needed to wash herself. “I'll tell you more after I shower.”

When she emerged twenty minutes later, after scrubbing every surface of her body and hair but avoiding the temptation to use bleach on her skin, Cosima put on her pajama pants and a T-shirt. Delphine was on her back now, and her ribs were more obvious and her skin more pale than Cosima would've liked them to be. Cosima got a jug of water and refilled the glass on the bedside table, then opened a can of chicken broth. Only then did she realize that their room lacked a microwave. Seeing Cosima look around and then drop her shoulders in disappointment, Delphine reached over and rubbed her knee.

“It's okay. It doesn't have to be hot.”

“Kind of nasty if it's room temp, though, isn't it?”

Delphine managed to shrug and pull herself into a sitting position. “It's okay. Really.”

Cosima poured some of the broth into a plastic bowl and got a spoon for her, then opened a pack of tortillas and settled onto the bed beside her girlfriend. She was tempted to check her temperature again, but she had checked a few hours ago, and Delphine was looking a little better, so she didn't. She knew exactly how annoying it was to be treated like an invalid. Instead, she rested her hand on Delphine's thigh and watched her take little sips of chicken broth. “You did have to wait until we were in, like, the smallest town ever to get food poisoining, didn't you?”

“It's not food poisoning.”

“Right.” Two days earlier, the nurse at the local clinic proclaimed Delphine to be suffering from food poisoning, overriding Delphine's own claims that she had gotten sick from the local water. The nurse told her to rest and gave her an antibiotic suppository that Delphine absolutely refused to let Cosima administer.

“You know it's not the first time I've put something in your ass,” Cosima had told her, only to get a dirty look and a closed bathroom door in her face.

“So,” Delphine said now, “tell me what else happened today.”

“Oh! Yeah, so, interesting development. I ran into Rebecca Twell, Leda clone from Scotland.”

“Scotland?”

“I know, right?” Cosima got the list of Ledas from the desk and skimmed it for Rebecca's name. “She, uh, gave me a ride back and said we should have breakfast tomorrow.”

Delphine lowered the spoon. “Really?”

“Yeah. She said she's been looking for Julia Luiz, one of the Brazlian Ledas, too.”

“Where did you meet her?”

“Oh, I uh... I might've needed some help getting out of a ditch. She and this guy Eduardo drove by and he pulled me out. She wears glasses, too. I'll have to see if she's a lesbian.” Cosima flipped to Rebecca's name on the Europe list, but did not see Eduardo listed as a monitor or known associate.

“And you're having breakfast with her tomorrow?” Delphine asked.

“Well, if you're feeling up to it, I was hoping that we could have breakfast with her.”

* * *

Delphine was still weak in the morning, but she felt well enough to shuffle down to the restaurant with Cosima, where she ordered green tea and plain toast. Five minutes after eight, Rebecca Twell strolled in, wearing a flowy tie-dyed skirt, sandals, and a snug T-shirt. Without the bulky rain jacket, Cosima saw that Rebecca was curvier than she was, with the rounded shoulders of a someone who sat at a desk for most of their life. Rebecca's hair was pulled into a low ponytail that reached her waist, and a lock of her hair was woven with colorful thread. Cosima had briefly wondered, yesterday, if Rebecca smoked pot, given all the other similarities she and Cosima shared. Seeing Rebecca now, she no longer wondered.

“Good morning!” Rebecca shook Cosima's hand when she stood to greet her, and nodded at Delphine, who stayed seated.

Cosima did the introductions. “Delphine, this is Dr. Rebecca Twell. Rebecca, this is my girlfriend, Dr. Delphine Cormier.”

Rebecca smiled at them both as she sat. “And are you a doctor as well, Cosima?”

“Ah, no. Not yet. Working on it...” In truth, although Cosima had great plans to work on her dissertation during their travels, she had done almost none of it since leaving Canada. “Evolutionary developmental biology. ABD.” she said, in answer to the question she saw on Rebecca's face.

“Oh ho!” Rebecca leaned back in her seat, eyes wide. “You might be able to lend us a hand, then, in this little mystery.”

Cosima and Delphine exchanged a small laughing glance. “Yeah, I think I probably can.”

They were interrupted as the waiter came and Rebecca ordered coffee, orange juice, plantains, and gallo pinto with two eggs. After he left, Rebecca propped her arms on the table. “And what kind of doctor are you, Dr. Cormier?”

“Please, just Delphine. Immunology, but I have experience in general and emergency medicine, as well. What about you?”

“History! I specialize in medieval europe, particularly women's experiences and stories, particularly in Scotland, as you might imagine.” The waiter brought her coffee, and she took a large drink. “Not as useful when you're looking at a biological mystery.”

Cosima shook her head and smiled. “Maybe not, but it's still a fascinating subject.” She was trying to think of how to broach the topic of clones when Delphine jumped in.

“So, Cosima tells me that you're looking for Julia Luiz? The woman from Brazil?”

“Well, it's a bit of a stretch to say that I'm looking for her,” Rebecca said, her smile slipping a bit. “I thought I saw her yesterday, but that was just your girlfriend here, stuck in a muddy ditch.”

“How do you know Julia, though?” Cosima asked. “We were looking for her in Rio, but we couldn't find her.”

“Oh? Well, I think she does a lot of traveling.” Rebecca began toying nervously with the sugar packets on the table.

“That doesn't answer my question. How do you know her?”

Rebecca set her coffee down and sighed, then looked up and stared at Cosima for a while. Cosima was used to it, or she had been. Beth had stared at her the same way when they'd met, and so had Sarah. Alison, of course, had avoided looking directly at her the first few times they met, except the time she was high as a kite. The stare didn't bother her coming from other clones. It was only when others, like Virginia Coady or Susan Duncan, stared at her that it made her squirm.

“No, it doesn't,” Rebecca acknowledged. “I met Julia in Puerto Rico a few months ago. I met her through another woman, my friend Gabriela, who's another one, looks just like us. Gabriela met Julia years before, at some international summer program for rich kids. They're both rich.” Rebecca gestured as though that was a critical fact, and Cosima nodded along.

Delphine got a notebook and a pen from her bag. “Gabriela?” She flipped a few pages. “Gabriela Báez? From San Juan, Puerto Rico?”

Rebecca was frowning now, and her posture was more rigid. “Maybe. How do you know that?”

Cosima recognized that face, too. That was the what the fuck is going on face both Alison and Sarah had in the early days of Clone Club, when they had known something was strange, but were starting to realize just how strange things really were. She reached across the table and lay her hand next to Rebecca's. “Listen. This is weird. I know. But you've already figured a lot of it out, by the looks of it. You know that there are people out there who look exactly like you.”

“Yeah. That doesn't explain how your girlfriend has my friend's name, and Julia's name, written in a little book. Is my name in there, too?”

Delphine looked from Cosima to Rebecca. “Uhm, no. It's, uh, it's in a separate book. This is Latin America only.”

“Latin America only?” Rebecca repeated. “So, what, I'm in the Europe book?”

“Yes.”

Cosima saw Delphine wanting to say that it was actually more of a “Europe and the Middle East” book, and she cut her off. “How many of us have you met, Rebecca? How many women who look just like you?”

“With you, three. You, Gabriela, and Julia.”

“Okay.” She tried to remember how their conversation with Sarah had gone, the first night they met, and how she had wanted it to go, before Alison blurted out, “We're clones!”

“Do you know why you all look exactly the same?” Delphine asked.

The waiter brought her food, and Rebecca picked at it for a moment before answering. “Well, my parents got IVF, and Gabi's did, too, so we figured it's something to do with that. Same donor, obviously, though we're a little surprised we got spread out so much. Especially since we're so close in age. We're only two weeks apart.”

“And Julia?” Cosima asked. “Her parents got IVF, too, right?”

Rebecca laughed at that. “She says they didn't. She says it's a divine coincidence, and IVF is against God's plan.”

Cosima smiled. She had never been religious, but she figured if anything was against God's plan, human cloning probably was. “Yeah, not every parent tells their kids the whole truth about where they come from.”

“Apparently.” Rebecca ate a few bites of her food, and Cosima followed suit before her own meal got cold. “I'm guessing your parents did IVF, too, Cosima?”

“Yeah. Yeah, they were pretty open about that. They didn't get a donor, though. Or, I should say, they didn't think they got a donor. They think I'm biologically theirs. Both of theirs.”

“And you're not?”

Cosima shook her head. She had emailed her parents from Brazil, telling them she was on a research trip in South America, but that she wanted to talk to them about something important, and inviting them to Toronto after she returned. So far, her parents hadn't replied, but it wasn't surprising. They didn't do email very much. “No,” she said. “Not biologically.”

“And I suppose, being a couple of biology people, you've actually run the genetic tests to find out.”

She nodded. “Yes. And, I've also run tests on the other, uh, the other women who look just like me. Like us.”

“How many others?”

Both Cosima and Delphine opened their mouths, but said nothing right away. “Well,” Cosima managed, “personally, I've run DNA tests, or seen the tests, anyway, on ten of us. Eleven, if I include myself.”

“Eleven?” Rebecca's eyes went wide again. “All women?”

“We were all born female. One of us is a trans man.”

“Okay. So, what, we all came from the same IVF donor, or what?”

“We all came from the same place, yes.”

Rebecca nodded, and they all ate in silence while she digested the new information. Cosima wondered how much to tell her. Dr. Rebecca Twell, historian, might be more intellectual on the surface than Krystal Goderich, for example, but Cosima knew from experience that advanced degrees did not mean more openness to reality.

“Let me ask you something else,” Rebecca said. “Of those eleven people, was one of them a German woman named Katja something-or-other?”

Cosima's head perked up. “Yeah. Yeah, she's kind of the one we credit for finding out about all of us in the first place.”

Rebecca pushed her gallo pinto around on her plate. “She contacted me, oh, must've been two years ago now. Give or take, you know. Said something about identicals, about other women all over Europe she'd found, and some in North America, but I didn't pay any attention back then. I thought she was full of it.”

“Did she send you a picture of herself?”

“Sure she did. Bright red hair, I think she had. I never replied, just binned the email she sent. And the one after that. Then I got my new job in Glasgow, and I didn't hear from her any more.” Rebecca gave a small laugh. “I guess she was right after all. I'll have to get back in touch, tell her I was wrong.”

Cosima bit her lower lip. “I'm afraid Katja passed away, actually. Not long after she contacted you, it sounds like.”

“Oh? She couldn't've been that old, could she? What happened, if you don't mind me asking?”

Now Cosima shifted in her seat. No harm in telling the truth, she thought, since the danger that killed Katja was no longer a danger, but a doting mother of twins. “She was murdered,” Cosima said.

“Holy hell.”

“I know. She helped us out a lot, though. She'd collected blood and hair samples from some of the other European, uh... women, like us. That's how I could do tests on them.”

“Did they know you were testing them?”

“She said they knew. Katja sent me four samples, including her own. If you'd been in contact with her, she probably would've tried getting samples from you, as well.”

“Still sounds weird.”

Cosima had to grin at that. “Yeah, you have no idea.”

“Tell me something else, though. My sister's kids, both girls, same mother and father, right? They don't look exactly the same, do they? You can tell them apart, no problem. Hell, Sophie's got blue eyes and Olivia's are brown! That's normal, though. Siblings don't usually look exactly the same unless they're identical twins. You're a biologist, you know about all that.” Cosima nodded, knowing where Rebecca was going with this. “But you and me, we look exactly the same. Okay, maybe I'm a little heavier than you, you look like you work out more than me, okay. Different hair, you're a bit more tan. But otherwise? We're the same on the outside. My friends Gabi and Julia look even more alike; they've got the same sort of body type, used to have the same hairstyle. They could switch outfits and pretend to be each other, and no one would notice until they opened their mouths because Julia's English isn't so great.”

“Yeah.” Cosima smiled at Delphine, remembering a few interesting clone swaps.

“And yet,” Rebecca went on, “we're just all from the same IVF donor, is what you're saying. So, that means, same father, different mothers. We're half sisters, yeah?”

Cosima put down her utensils and fiddled with the edge of her napkin, wondering if now was the time to drop the clone bomb. Delphine took her hand and sqeezed it, letting her know that whichever answer she gave, Delphine was fine with it. They'd find a way to innoculate Rebecca whether she knew the truth or not. Still, Rebecca was a smart woman. The truth wouldn't hurt her, probably.

“Okay, now that worries me.” Rebecca pointed to their joined hands on the table. “That tells me you've got something maybe a little upsetting that you haven't said yet.”

Cosima sighed and nodded again. “The thing is, I didn't say we all came from the same IVF donor. I said we all came from the same place.”

In the pause that followed, Rebecca said, “You're gonna need to tell me what that means, Cosima. The same place, when we're all from different countries, different continents. So, what, we're all from outer space, or what? Aliens?”

“Uh, no.” Cosima laughed in spite of herself. “We're clones, actually. We're genetic identicals, like you suspected. Not just siblings, or half-siblings, but totally identical.”

Rebecca leaned back in her chair and nodded. “Like the sheep.”

“Like the sheep.” The thought make Cosima think of MK, but before she could dwell long, Rebecca was shaking her head.

“That's a little bit illegal, isn't it?”

“The people, the organization that created you,” Delphine said, “did not care about the legality of it. They had the resources to do it outside of legal channels. Or, perhaps better said, they had the resources to make it not matter whether it was legal or not. No one stopped them.”

“Are they still doing it? Still cloning people?”

“No.”

Around them, the restaurant was full, and a line had formed at the host station. At the table beside them, the young couple drinking mimosas kept glancing over at the mention of clones.

“How much longer will you be in Costa Rica?” Cosima asked.

“I'm leaving Cahuita tomorrow morning,” Rebecca said. “Costa Rica the day after that.”

“Well, I'm really glad that we caught you here. Um, listen, there's something else you should know, something that's really important.”

“More important than being a clone? My goodness.”

Cosima couldn't tell from that statement if Rebecca believed she was a clone or not, but it didn't matter. “Yeah, actually, but it's related. So, since we're all identical, we all have the same genetic health risks. Some pretty serious ones, actually.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. That's actually why we have all these names written down, and why we're trying to find everyone. There's a disease that affects clones, and it's fatal if not treated, but we've got a treatment that works, and a vaccine for those who don't have symptoms yet.”

“Fatal, how? What kind of disease?”

“It's an autoimmune disease. It starts in the uterus and goes to the lungs, the kidneys... the first symptoms are usually bloody coughs, but it also means we're all sterile.”

Rebecca shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Bloody coughs, you says?”

“Yes. Do you have blood when you cough?”

“No, not usually. But Julia does. Gabi tried getting her to a doctor, but Julia, well... she doesn't care for medicine too much.”

“It's important that we see her, then,” Delphine said. “If she's already showing symptoms.” She flipped through her notebook some more until she got to Julia Luiz's page, and wrote down that what Rebecca said.

“Good luck getting her treated, though,” Rebecca said, eyeing the notebook.

“Well, we'd like to treat you, as well,” Cosima said. “Even if you're not showing symptoms, we can innoculate you so that you never do.”

Rebecca sighed. “I'll have to think about it. We've just met, after all, haven't we? I don't usually let strangers go sticking me with things unless I know who they work for. It makes me think, though. My friend Gabi, she's been trying to get pregnant for years. The clinic told her a few months ago that she's infertile. It broke her heart. Does that means she's sick? That she's dying?”

Cosima and Delphine shook their heads. “No,” Delphine said. “All of the clones are sterile, with very few exceptions. Even after the treatment, the infertility remains. I'm sorry. But, hopefully we can innoculate her against the disease, along with everyone else. To make sure she never gets sick. ”

“Well, better to be alive, I guess,” Rebecca said. She blew out a puff of air. “You know, you could've told me I was sterile a lot sooner. It would've saved me gobs of trouble with birth control. All the same... I always figured I'd get pregnant one day. Now I've got to tell my boyfriends.”

Cosima smiled at the plural boyfriends. “Obviously, you're welcome to check with your own doctor to verify.”

“How d'you know we're all sterile? You said there were very few exceptions, but everyone else is sterile? What, did you check that too, in your lab?”

The waiter came by then and dropped the check off, which Cosima paid. They gathered their things and went out into the sunny Caribbean morning. Steam rose from every surface, and they had to squint against the glare. Tourists were piling into the restaurant now, wearing variations on a beach or jungle theme, in board shorts or wrapped in towels with tree frogs proclaiming Pura Vida! The three of them walked away from the crowd, towards the edge of the road where the sign cast a wide shadow.

“How do I know we're all sterile?” Cosima repeated. “First, I knew because every clone I knew was sterile. Katja told me that all the European clones she'd met were sterile; that's one way she knew they were all related some how. And the first two clones I met in Canada both had infertility issues. I hadn't had issues myself because, well, it never really came up.” She gave a rueful smile. “We found out later, though, that it was planned. The people who designed us never wanted us to have children. Infertility is built into our genetic code.”

“But there are exceptions, you said. Exceptions to the infertility thing, or to the disease?”

Rebecca was handling the news of being a clone remarkably well, Cosima thought. She leaned against the restaurant sign, arms crossed, watching Cosima and Delphine, but mostly Cosima, with no more than a small furrow between her eyebrows.

“There are two exceptions we know of,” Delphine said. “Twins that were removed from the cloning process after conception but before the infertility sequence was introduced.”

The furrow between Rebecca's brows increased. “That doesn't make any sense. Your genes are set when you're conceived, not after.”

“Well, most of them are,” Cosima said. “Usually. It, um, gets a little more complicated when you're looking at clones, though, or any kind of genetic engineering. I mean, you can get gene therapies now, as an adult.”

Rebecca took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “This is getting over my head, I'm afraid.”

“It's a lot to take in,” Delphine agreed. Cosima saw her wrap her arms around her midsection, wincing.

“Give it some thought,” Cosima told Rebecca. “We'll be here all day, room 121. Drop by whenever. At least stop by before you leave, so we can give you our contact info.”

* * *

Back in the room, Cosima logged the encounter with Rebecca while Delphine curled up on the bed. “That was damn lucky,” Cosima said. “The sheet has Rebecca still living in Edinburgh with her parents.”

“It would have been easy to find her, though.”

“Sure, but now we don't have to.”

“She could vanish. Panic after learning she's a clone, and we never see her again.”

Cosima turned in the desk chair to look at her girlfriend. “Since when are you the cynical one? I thought that was my job.”

Delphine smiled at her, eyelids dropping. “Maybe you're rubbing off on me. I don't really think she will, though. She was surprisingly open to everything we told her. I think she'll come back.”

* * *

Sure enough, Rebecca returned close to seven that evening, a laptop bag slung over one shoulder. “You mind if I Skype from here? With Gabi. I told her most of it over the phone, but I think she should see you.”

“Yeah! Yeah, definitely.” Cosima cleared a space for her on the desk, making sure that all identifying information for the other clones was hidden. Delphine climbed out of the hammock on the porch, where the daily rain fell in sheets just beyond the awning.

A few minutes later, Gabriela Báez popped up on Rebecca's laptop screen. Gabriela was slender, approaching skinny, with a blonde-highlighted suburban bob that made Cosima think of Alison and Krystal at the same time. Rebecca made the introductions in English, and Gabriela leaned forward to inspect Cosima's face, rubbing her upper lip as she did. “Hmm....” she said. “You're a scientist?”

“Uh, yes. Working on my PhD right now.”

Gabriela nodded, then gestured to Delphine lingering in the background. “And that's your girlfriend?”

“Yes. She's an immunologist. She's been doing most of the innoculations and treatments so far.” Cosima wrapped her arm around Delphine's waist and pulled her closer.

“You're a lesbian, then?” Gabriela asked.

“Yes.”

Gabriela shook her head, and Cosima steeled herself for a homophobic comment or two, but instead Gabriela turned to Rebecca and said, “Do not tell Julia. She'll run away and never come back.”

On the chair beside Cosima, Rebecca laughed. “Oh, lordy, she would.” Turning to Cosima, she explained, “Julia's a little, eh, conservative in her world views. When you do meet her, don't be surprised when she tries to save your soul for Jesus.”

“If you really can treat that bloody cough of her, though,” Gabriela went on, “the best way to find her is through her church. I'm serious. Act like you want to convert, she'll do anything for you.” Gabriela's English was almost native-like, Cosima thought. Without knowing where she was from, she might have thought Gabriela was Canadian, or an English woman who spent a lot of time in the States.

“That's good to know,” Delphine said. “And we do have a cure. For her, for you, for everyone.”

Gabriela kept rubbing her upper lip, tapping her desk or table with her other hand. Behind her, the room was bright yellow, decorated with miniature paintings along the wall. “Well, I guess now's as a good a time as any to tell you, Beck; I went to see my doctor yesterday.”

Rebecca leaned forward. “You did? You're not sick, though, are you?”

“I'm not coughing up blood, no. But I was feeling a little short of breath at the gym last week, for a few days in a row, so I went in, thinking of Julia, of course. He listened to me breathe for a while, and he's a little worried. Wants me to come in for tests in a few days.”

“Fuck, Gabi.” Rebecca dropped her head into her hands.

Cosima squeezed in closer to the screen. “Um, Gabi? I know we've, like, just met, but that sounds a lot like the first symptoms of the disease. Would you mind if we came up to look you over? We can make sure the disease never progresses farther than this.”

Gabriela looked down, then nodded. “Sure.”

“So, what?” Rebecca said, “You think I should get the shot, too, then?”

With a sigh, Gabriela looked back up at her. “That's up to you. I just know that Rodrigo is worried about me.”

“Didn't you say Rodrigo's been acting a little strangely recently, though?” Rebecca said. While they spoke, Cosima pulled herself away long enough to discretely check Gabriela's page in their notebook. Sure enough, Rodrigo, assuming it was the same man, had been Gabriela's monitor for seven years, and they'd been married for four.

“Yes, he's been stuck to the internet for months. I'm getting used to it.”

“What kind of stuff is he looking up on the internet?” Cosima asked. “Do you know?”

“Sure I know. He's on these news sites, looking at these big companies falling apart with scandals. He's really into the ones whose CEOs have mysteriously died recently.”

“Like Dyad?” Delphine asked.

“It sounds familiar.”

Meanwhile, Rebecca leaned the chair back on it's hind legs and rubbed her arms. “Okay, well, if you and Rodrigo think this treatment is a good idea, maybe I'll get it. What are the side effects?”

Cosima chimed in the answer. “Light fever is the most common. Some people get dizzy for a day or so afterwards. That's for the vaccine, which it sounds like you would need. If the disease has already manifested with symptoms, the treatment's a little more involved.” She turned to face Gabriela directly. “Hey, um, this is gonna sounds really unpleasant, but can you maybe get your doctor to do a uterine biopsy in the next couple of days? You might not feel anything now, but if you're already short of breath like this, you probably have polyps in your uterus, too, and that's where we'll need to administer your treatment.”

Gabriela shifted in her chair. “It's in the uterus, too?”

“I'm afraid so, yeah.”

“That explains that, then.” Gabriela seemed to be talking to herself, so no one responded.

Delphine picked up the notebook with Gabriela's page open and asked when they could see her in San Juan. A few minutes later, they had it all arranged, and Gabriela signed off of Skype. Rebecca still held her forehead in her hands.

“A vaccine, huh?” she said.

Delphine nodded. “Yes. We can give it to you now, if you'd like.”

Cosima sat on the armchair, leaning towards Rebecca. “It's scary, I know, but trust me, the vaccine's a lot easier than dealing with treatment once you get sick. And without the vaccine, you probably will get sick, we just don't know when.”

“And you've gotten it yourself, then? This vaccine?”

“No. I was pretty sick by the time we got a cure, so I had to have a bunch of treatments. Trust me, the vaccine's easier.”

Rebecca rubbed her forehead. “You were sick. Julia's sick now. Gabi says she might be sick. Christ. And we're all clones.”

Quietly, Delphine moved around her to her medical case near the sliding door. She pulled out a vial of innoculate and a syringe, and set them down on the desk without a word. Rebecca eyeballed them. “Just one?” she asked.

“Just one. In your upper arm.”

Rebecca blew out a loud breath and swore. “What the hell.” Rolling up her sleeve, she closed her eyes. “Just don't tell me what you're doing. I try not to think about needles when they're going in me.”

Smiling now, Delphine put on her gloves, cleaned the site on her arm, and injected the vaccine into Rebeeca's left deltoid. Rebecca hissed and swore in what might have been Gaelic, then shook herself all over once Delphine said it was over.

Fifteen minutes later, after Rebecca left, Delphine perched on the arm of the chair where Cosima sat looking at their list of Ledas, and handed her a green highlighter. “That went well, I think.”

Cosima grinned. “Yeah. Thank God for Gabriela; I wasn't sure we'd get Rebecca on board before.”

“I've already booked the flight for San Juan, the day after tomorrow.”

“Why not tomorrow?”

“I thought we should look some more for Erika Maria Santos while we're here. And besides, we still haven't done that sunrise breakfast on the beach you promised me.”

Cosima giggled and nuzzled Delphine's chest. “That's because someone decided it was a better idea to be sick for three days right after we got here.” She slid a hand up Delphine's shirt and tickled her stomach, careful to avoid her scar, which she knew had been aggrivated by all the heaving Delphine's abdominal muscles had been doing recently. “You're feeling better, though?”

“Much.”

“Good.” She let her lips linger on Delphine's jaw for several moments. “Because after sunrise breakfast on the beach, I might have some plans for us that do not involved anyone else, at all.”

* * * * * * *

Note:

While I have been to Cahuita, I never went to the clinic there, so the representation here shouldn't be taken as based on reality.

#orphan black fanfiction #post-canon #canon compliant #cosima niehaus #delphine cormier #originial characters

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