#markayuq

[heligan]

I just had the thought that even though Raphael couldn't/wasn't allowed to travel further than a few towns away from Bedlam, we know that markayuq can at least in special cases, therefore I present to you the idea: Merrick & Raphael's post-markayuqisation trip to the beach. Raphael should be allowed to see the ocean at least once, I think.

[tinypiratebastard]

LOVE IS STORED IN THE MARKAYUQ

[shadowseaofbooks]

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Natasha Pulley, autrice già famosa per L’orologiaio di Filigree street, in Le torri di vetro mette in piedi una storia ispirata ad una reale spedizione in Perù, aggiungendovi un tocco di mistero. Lei stessa ha intrapreso dei viaggi per conoscere la cultura e il territorio di cui si apprestava a parlare. Se doveste scrivere un libro, viaggereste per documentarvi o lo fareste unicamente da casa? O parlereste solo della realtà che avete attorno? Vi aspetto sul blog per leggere l'articolo completo! ⋆ #natashapulley #letorridivetro #thebedlamstacks #lorologiaiodifiligreestreet #quechua #inca #markayuq #mithology #perú #español #travel #bookstagramitalia #ticonsigliounlibro #libriconsigliati #leggereinsieme #consiglidilettura #bookpic #mylibrary #leggere #letteratura #lettura #libridaleggere #igbooks #igreads #booklover #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #booknerd #bookworm #bibliophile ⋆ (presso Bedlam) https://www.instagram.com/p/CPOFmxPKJ9y/?utm_medium=tumblr

[thenatashapulleyuniverse]

It's the way love is presented as a warning throughout The Bedlam Stacks.

‘That’s what you have to be careful of.' That's what the stewards warned Merrick as they passed the scene of the markayuq holding the human bones in his arms, the last moment being of them kissing. It comes as a warning to both humans and markayuq, especially the latter. They are not the sort made for love. That girl's bones won't be laid to rest, and that markayuq will wake up, probably grieving at what he's done.

Despite the grim scene, Mr "he had managed to become more important than Clem or cinchona or anything else" Tremayne over here BLUSHES. Because he doesn't see despair, he sees a private moment between lovers, put up on display for everybody to see!! This display is in the front fucking entrance for a reason!! Do you guys see realize how insane his reaction is??

It was the same way I couldn’t look at French postcards; a kind of pointless prudishness that came from never having married.

This line drives me nuts every single day.

And we come back to Raphael, who doesn't expect much from anybody. Who's first real friend died for him waiting, who sent his son in his place so that Raphael wouldn't wake up all alone, and who's OWN SON did what two previous generations of Tremaynes couldn't do: wait with the patience of a man who just wanted to have coffee again with his closest friend.

Love was a warning, that's how it goes for all immortal stories. But in a world where they'll never have enough time and the odds are against them, it's all they have. They can't have this, they shouldn't be allowed to have this and it will only end in heartbreak. But by GOD will they try, and be all the more better for it.

[paradisecost]

the tragedy of Raphael being so handsome and kissable but also a priest

[sunvault]

HEADCANON: JACK.

The markayuq that Jack took home with him, St. Matthew, was also responsible for taking Jack into the forest to find Raphael, which led to the memorial drawing that Merrick finds decades later. Jack considered St. Matthew a dear friend throughout his life; he’d known him from birth, after all, having grown up in New Bethlehem. He was only too happy to take him to England with him, though he did so only after Matthew had made it very, very clear he definitely wanted to go (and what clearer way to put it than to nearly walk off a cliff?). 

St. Matthew would unfortunately be a source of conflict in Jack’s marriage to Caroline, however. She had always had difficulty with his obsession with Peru, but once St. Matthew was home with them, Jack was constantly in the garden with him, talking to him and so on. Caroline, of course, was faced with the unpleasant feeling of being jealous of a statue (albeit one she knew was a person, or had been once) and having no real outlet for that. 

It’s likely that Caroline and Charles had the same reasons for resenting Jack as much as they did: although he loved them both dearly, his obsession with Peru overtook everything else to the point where he just couldn’t see that it was a bigger problem than he thought. 

The only person that didn’t grow to hate him was Merrick, and that was likely because Merrick was only eight when Jack died - Jack wasn’t around long enough for Merrick to be old enough to understand why he should resent him. Charles’ hatred of him came mostly from the fact that Jack was absent for so much of his life; he couldn’t accompany Jack to Peru, and felt excluded as a result. Caroline felt excluded too; despite having spent a good portion of her life in Peru with Jack, she too felt ignored when he started to travel back there without her, especially given his bond with St. Matthew. She often felt that he loved the markayuq and the people of New Bethlehem more than his own family, and more than her, which hurt. 

[intolerablexsacrifice]

zzapzzaptasers replied to your post: malakh’s blog list (aka, i really need to write...

Beep beep im gonna follow all of them!!!

GENTLE GASP,

[mx-myth]

I had an idea but I’m not sure I’m going to write it so I’ll throw it out into the void for y’all: PULLEYVERSE SOULMATE AU IN WHICH YOU GET A SYMBOL FOR YOUR SOULMATE (POSSIBLY APPEARS AT THE YOUNGEST’S BIRTH OR GAIN COLOUR WHEN YOU FIRST MEET) (SPOILERS FOR pretty much ALL PULLEYVERSE NOVELS) (feel free to use and write/draw/etcetera but please tell/link me because I WANT TO SEE)

Thaniel Steepleton who’s born with a mark spanning from shoulder to calf, a mess of gears and clocks and octopus legs (???) and lemons and random objects (that suddenly become clear the more time he spends with Mori because they relate to his clairvoyance) (his mark takes up so much of his skin because isn’t he just an ordinary man, isn’t Mori his everything?) (he gains a little lightbulb for Six once they “adopt” (cough kidnap cough) her and it moves around wherever she wants; even Mori’s mark makes way for hers because isn’t he the man who would do anything for those he loves?)

Keita Mori who doesn’t get his mark until decades after his birth but who isn’t bothered by it because he knows his soulmate already, and when it comes it’s morse code and piano keys and a single pocketwatch on a chain over his heart (his mark is only over his heart (and small in comparison to Thaniel’s) because hasn’t he held the memories of Thaniel close to his chest ever since he’s been alive, isn’t he the reason he loves and the reason he still lives? His beating heart personified?) (His mark for Six is also a little lightbulb that usually hangs behind his ear on a chain until she decides to make a game of it when she’s bored and rolls a die to decide where it will move next)

Merrick Tremayne who thinks he’s soulmate-less for the first several years of his life before he realises that there’s a spot of grey on the bottom of one of his feet; as he ages it grows up his leg and darkens in colour. He thinks it’s a coincdence that it’s the leg that gets crippled (even if twelve-year-old Keita couldn’t bear looking at it) until decades later Mori confesses that it was the only way to stop him from running after Clem. The last day he ever spends with Raphael it is indistinguishable from true stone; he dies with a rosary held in grey hands.

Raphael who is bonded with the whole Tremayne bloodline; he has a mark for Harry and then one for Merrick’s father (whose name I forgot) and then one for Merrick himself (the marks disappear when the person dies, so sometimes they overlap when father and son are both alive, but how much of it does Raphael really witness, because of his “sleep paralysis”?); he ends with all of them carved into his skin when he fully becomes a markayuq and they all form one big picture (insects and spiders for Harry, tree bark Merrick’s dad (relating to the storybook and the sketch of Raphael in the tree), the leaves of whitewood trees for Merrick)

Missouri Kite with the mark of a lighthouse and two pillars that bursts into colour when he meets Jem Castlereagh, that instantly loses colour and recolours when Jem turns into Joe Tournier, and loses colour again when Joe leaves. Until he finds Joe Zhang, and he never loses colour again.

Joe Tournier with the mark of a lighthouse and two pillars but is confused as to why it’s coloured (he figures that he met them when he was young or something, or tries to reason with himself that it’s Alice’s); Jem Castlereagh knowing immediately once he meets Kite; and Joe Zhang, who learns he has the words Dearest Joe, Come home, if you remember. M branded into his mind, and finally decides that he can’t leave Kite again

Konstantin Shenkov with rusty streaks the backs of his hands, tinged with frostbite, and tiny text wrapping around his wrists that he can only read with a magnifying glass (it’s some stuff about nuclear things that he thinks came straight out of a textbook and doesn’t fully understand until he meets Valery)

Valery Kolkhanov with all of his veins and arteries lined in black; they all end on his back in an untangleable knot (he traces them and retraces them with his fingers and it’s what gets him through prison, the small joy of knowing that his soulmate is coded into his blood, even if he’ll only be a burden to them) (he doesn’t notice until Shenkov notices but in the knot on his back are the names of Shenkov’s children)

[saintlygames]

Dust to Dust

Before I was set to descend to Bedlam, I met my uncle. He was the last priest of Bedlam and most recently turned Markayuq.

He stood on the dais of the monastery, petrified. He likely wouldn’t wake for a few more decades. He had a low brow and an expression of frozen concentration, as though he’d been pondering something interesting before he finished the transformation.

I’d never had a problem looking at the Markayuq. They were sacred and worshipped here. I cared for them as part of my service; waxing the leather robes, keeping their stone skin clean of dust, and making offerings. I couldn’t look at him though. It was the future’s fingernails scratching down the back of my neck.

When the two guards brought me down to the forest, my ears ached from the altitude change. My eyes adjusted to the dark below in the shade of the canopy. When I moved, I was taken aback when the air around me glowed. I waved my hand through it, leaving a golden afterimage that stayed until the wind swept it away.

‘Pollen,’ one guard explained. It was the first time either of them had spoken to me on the way down.

The walk to the village was a long one. By the time it got dark, I was shivering and had a hard time picking my way through the mangled roots of the forest floor. I tripped several times, and the guards were kind enough to pick me up.

It took two hours to reach the stacks, and seeing it made me uneasy. The buildings were visibly old and ramshackle, patched hastily in ways that were sure not to last. After growing up in pristine monasteries above the mountains, this place felt like it was made from splinters.

The paths of the village were lit with lamps whose light resembled the pollen from the forest. Inside the case, instead of a metal burner for fuel, there was a mechanism that spun to keep the pollen churning.

Walking canes and chairs outfitted with wide wooden wheels were leaned against the little houses. There were no stairs anywhere, only shallow ramps.

A line of salt was drawn on the ground. If I turned my head both ways I couldn’t see where it ended in either direction. At least three Markayuq had gathered at the salt, facing the village with their backs to the forest. I stepped over, careful not to disturb the grains. When I turned around to see if the guards would follow, they stayed well behind the line.

In the darkness, they were statues. ‘We were told to take you only this far.’

The steeple of the church was the tallest point in the village. The cross topping the tower loomed over me and I felt a roll of unease. I wasn’t Catholic the way the villagers were — they truly believed and I only practiced for the role, but if there was a God like they there was, I hadn’t heard from him yet.

The garden and the graveyard were overgrown and made shadowy limbs in the dark. Pulling my arms close, I took care not to touch them as I watched the guards retreat silently back into the treeline. I stood there until my fingers were numb from the cold before turning back to the church.

Inside, the air was stale. I groped around in the dark for something to start a fire or a lamp, knocking my hip painfully into a table corner as I went. My uncle had left ample firewood behind, and I tossed too much of it into the hearth without thinking that it was a waste. As the fire grew, I found one of those pollen lamps and fumbled with it for a minute before turning a key that made the metal parts churn the pollen to life.

With light to see, I wandered through the halls of the church. On one long stretch of walls by the first row of pews, there were fifteen portraits of Jesus carrying his cross to Calvary. I only managed to study four of them before the phantom ache in my shoulders forced me to move on.

There was a kitchen and a dining table in the same room as the hearth and past that, there was a chapel turned into a makeshift spare bedroom with two cots on either side of the room. I climbed up to the belfry and found only a bed and an empty shelf. I put my things on the mattress, stole the musty blanket, and clutched it around my shoulders. The bell was enormous, three times my size and swayed eerily above my head when a draft blew up from the church.

When a branch banged against the stained glass window I jumped and turned the lamp brighter, but all it did was lengthen the shadows of the room. Back home, I used to keep a lamp burning all night until I fell asleep because I hated the dark. I slept in the same room as my mother even when I started to be told that I was getting too old for it, but she never minded.

She was still there, probably in that room right now. I wondered if she would still keep a lamp on for me. I tucked my knees to my chest and cried into them, feeling swallowed by shadows and stricken by the fear of being alone for the first time.

Beyond the church, a house on the stacks turned the lights down. I watched the brightness in their window fade to dark until I couldn’t see the shape of the village against the mountains. All those people down there were mine to look after now.

I was twelve years old, all on my own and the only one of my kind. When I looked out the window the Markayuq guarding the salt line stared back at me, both lifeless and not. 

read the rest on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47615128

[syeniites]

Every day I think about the scene at the end of The Bedlam Stacks with the markayuq and the girl who was in his arms when he turned to stone — her bones suspended in wire so they’re not separated even in death. It’s haunting, and I understand that it was meant to be a warning against touching the markayuq, but there’s also something so… I hesitate to say ‘romantic’ but so moving about it. There’s poetry in that.

[formshaper]

“ i’ve been practicing. ” - Raphael

Raphael hummed in acknowledgment. She had been practicing Quechua; her pronunciation was better, her speech less stilted. Mostly the villagers found it endearing but incomprehensible, and swapped to Spanish or asked Raphael to translate. Sometimes his voice wasn't strong enough to talk and he'd watch Molly play an awkward game of charades with people, which to be fair she was very good at, being expressive and animated when she was excited, and being easily excited in the first place.

His breath caught. The light had changed while he'd been thinking. It was still daylight, like it had been, but brighter, sharper. There was a vial of salt in his hands, strings of knotted thread tied around his wrists. The table he'd been sitting at had been moved away, but the chair remained.

He knew without looking outside that it was Winter now. How long had he been frozen? Six months? Six years? Molly was gone, of course she was; there was no one in the church but him. He wondered how inconvenient it must have been to have a frozen man in the church for months or more, but he wasn't really a man anymore and he doubted anyone had looked at him like one. He was a markayuq like any other, and no one would dare think of moving him, or wanting him to be moved.

When he rose, there were no bugs on him and no dust. Someone had been taking care of him in the time he'd been away and the thought made him uncomfortable; he didn't want anyone touching him if he didn't know about it, even to keep the spiders away.

It jarred him to think that he might have been frozen for Molly's entire lifespan when he had spoken to her just two minutes ago.

Wherever she'd gone, he hoped she was alright.

[heligan]

Incoming ramble about the 24 whole hours for which Merrick and Raphael (NOT the ninja turtle) got to be friends:

Merrick keeps thinking Raphael is going to shoot him throughout the entire story up until two events in the forest, namely 1. Raphael teaching him how to read knots, because he wouldn’t be bothered to teach it to someone who he was about to kill, and 2. tent cuddling scene, because he definitely wouldn’t risk getting shot to protect the person he was going to shoot getting shot by someone else.

But after that, they get so much more obviously comfortable with each other than they were before! Previously the only times they touched (that I remember) were Raphael helping Merrick walk or lifting him off the horse that were necessary touches. Once they’re comfortable we get Merrick’s arm round Raphael, pulling him against his side, and them sitting with their shoulders leant against each other, and Merrick helping dress Raphael in the markayuq leathers and them jokingly pushing each other about (not to mention The Hug) as well as the usual handholding now that they both trust the other!

And of course Merrick goes from being convinced Raphael’s going to shoot him to ‘I am your friend’ and ‘he had managed to become more important than Clem or cinchona or anything else’ in the space of roughly eight hours, because he’s Merrick. AND as if it wasn’t already insane enough that he waited 21 years for a man he’d known for a fortnight, of that fortnight they only genuinely got to be friends for 24 hours (during which at least one life-changing Event happened).

Merrick just goes straight from ‘you’re probably going to shoot me’ to ‘no? then I’ll make the whole British Empire wait until I get you home safe’ with no in-between.

[incorrect-pulleyverse]

Anka The Markayuq: YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE COME HERE, HUMAN. WHY DO YOU CROSS THROUGH MY DOMAIN?

Merrick: I was on my way to the kitchen for a snack and I got lost.

Anka: YOU ENDED UP IN THE TWELFTH PLANE OF TORMENT ON YOUR WAY TO THE KITCHEN?

Merrick: I am not a clever man.

[eilidhink]

Raphael bumped the side of Eilidh's wrist gently with his own, his eyes fixed straight ahead at the markayuq he wanted her to look at. It seemed to be looking back at them. "Her name is Anka," he said quietly. As if on cue, the markayuq turned its head away.

Eilidh blinked, her heart fluttering in her chest. Things she had understood without fully knowing clicked into place, but something in her was still caught between wonder and horror. She imagined how it would feel to be stone, how heavy her body would feel, how slow, and she regretted it.

"She's different to the others." Eilidh's eyes were still on Anka, but her fingers wrapped loosely around Raphael's hand. "Do they call her a saint, too?"

[thenatashapulleyuniverse]

broke: raphael

woke: raphael thebedlamstacks

bespoke: Raphael Tremayne

[sunvault]

Merrick@Raphael, p-canon] Tiny specks of pollen are curling 'round Raphael's head, each one burning tiny streaks through the sky; a glowing reminder of the Saint he would have become. "Please, Raphael." Merrick keeps his voice low, and softer than the tickling breeze. His hand is settled, palm up and still against his solid knee. "You can't worry forever." He bows his head. "I won't turn to dust." He feels his own warmth bleeding into the strange stone-skin. "You can hold me. Just for a second."

@songofthestone

He isn’t due for another period of stasis; not a long one, at any rate, or the doctors would have told him. But knowing that and trusting it are two different things, and whenever Raphael thinks of Merrick in his arms he cannot help but also think of the Bedlam girl that had been trapped in her markayuq lover’s arms until only her bones remained.

He wonders if the markayuq has woken since then. The thought of either outcome fills him with dread.

He shakes his head, just once to either side. He hates denying Merrick anything, especially himself. But those bones come into his mind again and he rubs at his wrist, slower than he was twenty years ago but still feeling cobwebs on his skin.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, in English. His voice is a strange, humming rasp these days, when he uses it at all. Then in Spanish, guilt and longing tightening his throat: “A second is all it takes.” 

You could turn to dust, he thinks. I could blink and you’d crumble in my arms. 

He nudges his knuckles against Merrick’s hand, but doesn’t take it. He wants, badly, to wrap his arms around him; to kiss him; to hold instead of merely leaning into him as he does now. But he won’t. His other hand, when it presses against Merrick’s chest, remains resolutely flat.