Free Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente

blond curls and cruel laugh and hidden pistols and leaps of pristine logic. Madame always got her man. This was after Clotilde Charbonneau left us quite bereft and ran off with Clarence Feng, darling of the Red Westerns. Papa and I were both disconsolate. And I looked at my father and I pointed at the screen and I said: I want her for my new mother .
    And he got her for me.
    It took almost a year of gentle, insistent courting to seduce Madame Mortimer for my personal use. But Mary Pellam moved in by Christmas and had taught me to shoot like a bandit queen by Easter. The night after my father put a ring on her finger I sat up quite late, thinking very seriously about what had just occurred. I could ask for anything and receive it. Even people. Even a mother. I had a terrible power. I could easily become a monster like Kilkenny. Monstrous in my appetites, and each of them satisfied without end. I was reasonably certain I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I’d never seen a movie about someone with power who turned out nicely. If you have something, well, you’ve got to use it. I cried myself to sleep that night. I had been given a destiny, and that destiny was to be a villain, when all I wanted was to be Madame Mortimer.
    Mary Pellam was a good mum. She taught me the Four Laws of Acting, which she had made up over gimlets at the Tithonus Savoy one afternoon so she could make a little scratch teaching between MM features.
    [SEVERIN breaks into a glossy imitation of Mary Pellam’s crisp Oxford accent.]
    No one will listen to a word you say if you don’t gin up a System of some sort. Everyone loves a System. Laws, Rules, Keys. You can sell Laws. You can’t sell, “Just be good at this for God’s sake; I’ll need a drink if you’re going to keep on like that.” If there’s a System to follow, that means it’s easy—why, patting up a good strawberry tart is a harder job than acting! If only we had known all along! Jolly good we’ve got you to set us straight, Mary. Offer up a System and everyone relaxes.
    Mother Mary’s been retired for a while now, so I won’t be stepping on her side gig if I reveal her secrets. Miss Pellam’s Four Immutable, Immaculate, Ingenious, Imitable Laws of Acting:
    1. Show up on time.
    2. Bring your own makeup.
    3. If you’re going to sleep with someone on set, make sure it’s the director.
    4. Remember that the expressions and vocal patterns you are committing to film will become synecdoches. That’s a big word for a little mouth like yours, Rinny. It means something little that stands in for something big. Your smile will stand in for all human happiness. Your tears will be a model for everyone else’s sadness. Wives will copy your red nose, your shaking voice, the shape of your aghast mouth when they beg their husbands not to abandon them. Rakes will arch their eyebrows the way you do, grin just like you, tip their hat at your hat’s angle, and, with the weapons you give them, they will seduce the folk of their choice with ease. The more successful your film, the wider these synecdoches will spread. You have a responsibility to the people who will repeat your lines, wink your winks, imitate your laughter without knowing they are imitating anything. This is the secret power that actors hold. It is almost like being a god. We create what it is to be human when we stand fifty feet tall on a silk screen.
    So you’d better be good at it, for God’s sake.
    Mary Pellam was pretty as a playbill and hard as a hammer, but she was a philosopher, too. I used to stand next to her in the upstairs bath and we’d practice our faces in the mirror.
    Determined. Betrayed. In Love. Awed by the Numinous.
    She had 769 faces in the bank, she said, and was working on Number 770. She kept a little notebook with a green velvet cover that had all her Systems inside. But she wouldn’t write in a face until she had it deep