Celestial City Name Generator

The story

Perrin's room in Astrenbridge contained a marble arch, a view of a distant sea, and a fireplace in which no sensible person would attempt a fire. All three were painted on freestanding canvas panels. Behind them was the plain rented stone room, which had a window, a door and an honest shortage of comfort. He had built the portable scenery from old theater pieces and lived inside it for seven years. The sea was his favorite part, especially in weather when the actual city supplied more rain than a man ought to see from his breakfast chair.

Then the eclipse market brought a poster of Nall. Perrin saw it hanging between two much grander performers and stopped so abruptly that the person behind him walked into his parcel basket. Nall stood in an admiral's coat, looking with immense suspicion at a feathered hat on a pedestal. The bill read Nall Has a Plan. Perrin had seen the performance years earlier, when Nall spent most of an evening explaining why the hat could not be trusted. He remembered the very particular silence before the audience began laughing, and the irritation of laughing harder each time Nall repeated an entirely unreasonable accusation.

The seller named her price. It was not the price Perrin had imagined while crossing the street. He asked whether it included the frame. It did. He asked whether she would remain after the eclipse, while the evening market was being taken down. She would not. This was the old print he wanted, preserved in its proper frame, with a faint layer of luminous ink behind the ordinary image. The seller offered to show him that part under a cover. Perrin knew the kind. He was looking at Nall's expression and counting money he did not have.

A theater buyer had offered to buy his room the previous week. She meant his portable painted scene, with its furnishings: canvas walls, arch, curtain, bed, table, lamp and the chair from which he admired the sea. Her troupe wanted a complete domestic setting it could transport. The stone walls and tenancy belonged to neither side of that bargain. Perrin had declined because he lived among the things she wanted. Now he found her at the loading court, named the actual lot again, and accepted her standing price. She counted the money into his hand before arranging collection.

He went straight back to the poster stall. When he paid, the seller took down Nall and wrapped the frame without a speech about what it might be worth one day. Perrin held the parcel against his chest and experienced a satisfaction so immediate that he briefly forgot he had sold the breakfast chair. His friend Sula found him there. She examined the uncovered top corner of the image and said the man looked as though he had just discovered a moth in his soup. Perrin said that was the expression. She did not find this an explanation of the price.

At his lodging the theater crew was already making the sea smaller. Two workers released one panel from its neighbor while a third held the painted horizon upright. The complete inner frame formed an awkward corner too wide to turn through the dogleg entrance of the public bridge. Separated panels could be carried edgewise along the ordinary maintained crossing. The crew had brought straps and a narrow trolley for that reason. Perrin put the wrapped poster on the real stone sill and held the next section while they freed its fastening. The view he ate breakfast beside went past him, followed by the chair.

Sula asked whether he had meant the bed to go as well. He said yes. She asked where he intended to sleep. He had several answers that would have been easier to give before someone carried the bed's first end down the stair. He said he would use his coat for the night. Sula looked at the coat. She was fond of Perrin, but there was no reason affection should alter the thickness of the cloth. When the washing screen came away from its supports, a perfectly ordinary bucket became visible behind the painted marble. One worker asked whether that was also included. Perrin said yes; they had already named it in the lot.

He helped carry the sea across the bridge. From one side it was blue water and a distant white boat. From the other it was canvas, wooden braces and several repairs he could identify without turning it over. At the bend they waited in the marked passing space for two people with a food handcart. Each panel went through separately. The bridge still needed its clear width for the people who crossed without a seascape. On the far side a child asked whether the boat was going somewhere. The crew leader said it was going into a comedy, which was true of the whole room.

The last journey carried the lamp and the folded curtain. Shops along the bridge were beginning their eclipse preparations; some closed their shutters, while vendors packed the goods they had promised to remove before the sky darkened. Perrin went home through people looking forward to a public spectacle. His own spectacle waited wrapped on the stone sill. The room now looked considerably larger and much less like a place he had chosen. Sula had to leave for work. She said she hoped he enjoyed the picture. Her tone suggested that enjoying it would be the minimum reasonable outcome.

He unwrapped Nall, leaned the frame safely against the bare wall and sat on the floor. The admiral's expression survived the loss of the painted sea surprisingly well. Perrin remembered that the hat in the performance had acquired a different accusation at every return. He could not remember the last one. This annoyed him enough to distract him from the cold coming through his coat. He looked toward the window. Its curtain had been part of the sale. Nothing remained to make the afternoon dimmer at his convenience, and he had been too occupied moving a room to examine the faint ink layer earlier.

The expected eclipse came. Across the court people called to one another, and the light on the stone sill thinned. In the darkening room a little line shone behind the poster's printed curtain. More of it appeared: a tiny second Nall, his cheeks puffed out, making a disgracefully silly face at the great feathered hat. The hat had been placed on a turnip. Tiny Nall was saluting the turnip with an earnestness that made the large admiral's suspicions look almost reasonable. Perrin began laughing before he had quite finished seeing it.

It was a very small joke to have sold a bed for. He laughed again. The little salute belonged to the same performer who had once made a hall wait through an enormous pause while he inspected the wrong end of a telescope. No one in the room was required to think the exchange wise. There was no one else in the room at all. Perrin could give the face his full ridiculous attention. He forgot to arrange a story in which the purchase would eventually become respectable. For those minutes he simply had the picture he had wanted.

When the ordinary light returned, the faint luminous drawing slipped out of view beneath it. He could see the little figure again after dark. For now the great admiral had resumed sole possession of the paper. Outside, the market began moving away. The room still had no chair, lamp or bed. He spread the coat more carefully on the floor, using its folded sleeve where a pillow ought to have been, and looked at the stern visible admiral. He was almost certain he remembered the turnip's exact expression. He wanted another look.