“Complicate things.”
“Perhaps because I am a complicated sort of man.”
“But if it makes people frown or blink or otherwise stumble in confusion, what’s the point?”
“Dear me,” said I, “here you are, elected as Judge, yet you seem entirely unaware of the magical properties of language. Simplicity, I do assert, is woefully overestimated in value. Of course there are times when bluntness suits, but the value of these instances is found in the surprise they deliver, and such surprise cannot occur if they are surrounded in similitude—”
“For Hood’s sake,” rumbled Tiny, “get back to the other similitudes. The maiden knew nothing so it fell to the Fenn warrior to teach her, and that’s what I want to hear about. The world in its proper course through the heavens and whatnot.” And he shot Apto a wordless but entirely unambiguous look of warning, that in its mute bluntness succeeded in reaching the critic’s murky awareness, sufficient to spark self-preservation. In other words, the look scared him witless.
I resumed. “We shall backtrack, then, to the moment when they stood, now facing one another. He was well-versed—”
“Now it’s back to the verses again,” whined Midge.
“And though heated with desire,” I continued, “he displayed consummate skill—”
“Consummate, yeah!” and Tiny grinned his tiny grin.
From the gloom close to the wagon came Mister Must’s gravel-laden voice, “And that’s a significant detail, I’ll warrant.”
So did I twist round then to observe his ghostly visage in its ghostly cloud of rustleaf smoke, catching the knowing twinkle that might have been an eye or a tooth. Ah, thinks me, a sharp one here. Be careful now, Flicker.
“Peeling away her clothing, unmindful of the damp chilly air in the guest hut, he laid her bare, his rough fingertips so lightly brushing the pricked awakening of her skin so that she shivered again and again. Her breaths were a rush of quick waves upon a rasping beach, the tremulous water sobbing back as she gasped to his touch where it traveled in eddying swirl about her nipples.
“Her head tilted back, all will abandoned to his sure embrace, the deep and steady breaths that made his chest swell and ease against her. Then his hands edged downward, tracking the lines of her hips, to cup her downy-soft behind, and effortlessly he lifted her—”
“Ha!” barked Tiny Chanter. “Now comes the Golden Ram! The Knob-Headed Dhenrabi rising from the Deep! The Mushroom in the Mulch!”
Everyone stared for a moment at Tiny with his flushed face and puny but bright eyes. Even Midge and Flea. He looked about, meeting stare after stare, a little wildly, before scowling and gesturing to me. “Go on, Flicker.”
“She cried out as if ripped asunder, and blood started, announcing the death of her childhood, but he held her in his strong hands to keep her safe from true injury—”
“How tall was she again?” Flea asked.
“About knee-high,” Apto answered.
“Oh. Makes sense then.”
Relish laughed, ill-timed indeed as her brothers suddenly glared at her.
“You shouldn’t be listening to this,” Tiny said. “Losing maidenhood ain’t like that. It’s all agony and aches and filth and slow oozing of deadly saps, and shouldn’t be undertaken without supervision—”
“What, you think you’re gonna watch?” Relish demanded, flaring up like the seed-head of a thistle in a brush fire. “If I’d known brothers were like this, I would have killed you all long ago!
“It’s our responsibility!” snarled Tiny, that finger back up and jabbing. “We promised Da—”
“Da!” Relish shrieked. “Till his dying day he never figured out the connection between babies and what he and Ma did twice a year!” She waved her arms like a child sitting on a bee hive. “Look at us! Even I don’t know how many brothers I got! You were dropping like apples! Everywhere!”
“Watch what you’re saying about Da!”
“Yeah, watch it!”
“Yeah! Da!”
Relish suddenly crossed her arms and smirked. “Responsible, that’s a joke. If you knew anything, well, ha ha. Ha!”
I cleared my throat most delicately. “He left her exhausted, curled up in his arms, stung senseless with love. And much of the night passed unwitnessed for our lovely woman for whom innocence was already a fading memory.”
“That is the way of it,” Tulgord Vise said with solemn nod. “When they lose that innocence to some grinning bastard from the next village, suddenly they can’t get enough of it, can they? That... that other stuff. Rutting everything in sight, that’s what happens, and that boy who loved her since they were mere whelplings, why, all he can do is look on, knowing he’ll never get to touch her ever again, because there’s a fierce fire in her eyes now, and a swagger to her walk, a looseness to her hips, and she’s not interested anymore in playing hide and seek down by the river, and if she turned up all slack-faced and drowned down on the bank, well, whose fault was that? After all, she wasn’t innocent no more, was she? No, she was the opposite of that, yes, assuredly she was. The Sisters smile at whores, did you know that? They are soft that way. Innocent, no, she wasn’t that. The opposite.” He looked up. “And what’s the opposite of innocence?”
And into the grim silence, in voice cool and low did I venture: “Guilt?”
Some tales die with a wheezy sigh. Some are stabbed through the heart. At least for a time. It was late and for some, dreadfully too late. In solitude and in times broken and husked and well rooted in contemplation, we find the necessity to regard our deeds, and see for ourselves all that which ever abides, this garden of scents both sweet and vaguely rotting. Some lives die with a sated sigh. Some are drowned in a river.
Others get eaten by the righteous.
At certain passages in the night the darkness grows vapid, a desultory, pensive state that laps energy like a bat’s flicking tongue a cow’s pricked ankle. Somnolent the wandering steps, brooding the regard, drowsy this disinterest. Until in the murk one discerns a tapestry scene of the like to adorn a torturer’s bedroom.
A mostly naked woman stood in fullest profile, her arms raised overhead, balanced in her hands a rather large boulder, whilst directly below, at her very feet, was proffered the motionless head of a sleeping sibling.
Soft as my approach happened to be, Relish heard and glanced over. “Just like this,” she whispered. “And ... done.”
“You have held this pose before, I think.”
“I have. Until my arms trembled.”
“I imagine,” I ventured, drawing closer, “you have contemplated simply running away.”
She snorted, twisted to one side and sent the boulder thumping and bounding through some brushes in the dark. “You don’t know them. They’d hunt me down. Even if there was only one of them left, I’d be hunted down. Across the world. Under the seas. To the hoary moon itself.” She fixed wounded, helpless eyes upon me. “I am a prisoner, with no hope of escape. Ever.”
“I understand that it does seem that way right now—”
“Don’t give me that steaming pile of crap, Flicker. I’ve had my fill of brotherly advice.”
“Advice was not my intention, Relish.”
Jaded her brow. “You hungry for another roll? We damned near killed each other last time.”
“I know and I dream of it still and will likely do so until my dying day.”
“Liar.”
I let the accusation rest, for to explain that the dream wasn’t necessarily a pleasant one, would have, in my esteem, been untimely. I’m sure you agree.
“So, not advice.”
“A promise, Relish. To free you of their chains before this journey ends.”
“Gods below, is this some infection or something? You and promises to women. The secret flaw you imagine yourself so clever at hiding—”
“I hide nothing—”
“So bold and steady-eyed then, thus making it the best of disguises.” She shook her head. “
Besides, such afflictions belong to pimply boys with cracking voices. You’re old enough to know better.”
“I am?”
“Never promise to save a woman, Flicker.”
“Oh, and why?”
“Because when you fail, she will curse your name for all time, and when you happen to succeed, she’ll resent you for just as long. A fool is a man who believes love comes of being owed.”
“And this afflicts only men?”
“Of course not. But I was talking of you.”
“The fool in question.”
“That’s where my theories fall apart—the ones about you, Flicker. You’re up to something here.”
“Beyond plain survival?”
“No one’s going to kill you on this journey. You have made sure of that.”
“I have?”
“You snared me and Brash using the old creep, Calap Roud. You hooked Purse Snippet. Now you shamed Tulgord Vise and he needs you alive to prove to you you’re wrong about him.” She looked down at Tiny. “And even him, he’s snagged, too, because he’s not as stupid as he sounds. Just like Steck, he’s riding on your words, believing there are secrets in them. Your magic—that’s what you called it, isn’t it?”
“I can’t imagine what secrets I possess that would be of any use to them.”
She snorted again. “If anybody wants to see you dead and mute, it’s probably Mister Must.”
Well now, that was a cogent observation indeed. “Do you wish to be freed of your brothers or not?”
“Very deft, Flicker. Oh, why not? Free me, sweet hero, and you’ll have my gratitude and resentment both, for all time.”
“Relish, what you do with your freedom is entirely up to you, and the same for how you happen to think about the manner in which it was delivered. As for me, I will be content to witness, as might a kindly uncle—”
“Did you uncle me the other night, Flicker?”
“Dear me, I should say not, Relish.” And my regard descended to Tiny’s round face, so childlike in brainless repose. “You are certain he sleeps?”
“If he wasn’t, your neck would already be snapped.”
“I imagine you are correct. Even so. It is late, Relish, and we have far to walk come the morrow.”
“Yes, Uncle.”
Watching her walk off to find her bedding, I contemplated myriad facets of humanly nature, as I selected the opposite direction in which to resume my wandering. Capemoths circled over my head like the bearers of grim thoughts, which I shooed away with careless gestures. The moon showed its smudged face to the east, like a wink through mud. Somewhere off to my right, lost in the gloom, Sellup was singing to herself as she stalked the night, as the undead will do.
Is there anything more fraught than family? We do not choose our kin, after all, and even by marriage one finds oneself saddled with a whole gaggle of new relations, all gathered to witness the fresh mixing of blood and, if of proper spirit, get appallingly drunk, sufficient to ruin the entire proceedings and to be known thereafter in infamy. For myself, I have always considered this gesture, offered to countless relations on their big day, to be nothing more than protracted revenge, and have of course personally partaken of it many times. Closer to home, as it were, why, every new wife simply adds to the wild, unwieldy clan. The excitement never ends!
Even so, poor Relish. Flaw or not, I vowed that I would have to do something about it, and if this be my weakness, then so be it.
“Flicker!”
The hiss brought me to a startled halt. “Brash?”
The gangly poet emerged from night’s felt, his hair upright and stark, thorn-scratches tracked across his drawn cheeks, his tongue darting to wet his lips and his ears twitching at imagined sounds. “Why didn’t anyone kill him?”
“Who?”
“Apto Canavalian! Who won’t vote for any of us. The worst kind of judge there is! He wastes the ground he stands upon!”
“Arpo Relent attempted the very thing you sought, dear poet, and, alas, failed—perhaps fatally.”
Brash Phluster’s eye’s widened. “The Well Knight’s dead?”
“His Wellness hangs in the balance.”
“Just what he deserves!” snarled the poet. “That murderous bag of foul wind. Listen! We could just run—this very night. What’s to stop us? Steck’s lost somewhere—who knows, maybe Nifty and his fans jumped him. Maybe they all killed each other out there in the desert.”
“You forget, good sir, the Chanters and, of course, Tulgord Vise. I am afraid, Brash, that we have no choice but to continue on—”
“If Arpo dies, we can eat him, can’t we?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“And maybe that’ll be enough. For everyone. What do you think?”
“It’s certainly possible. Now, Brash, take yourself to bed.”
He raked his fingers through his hair. “Gods, it’s not fair how us artists are treated, is it? They’re all vultures! Don’t they see how every word is a tortured excretion? Our sweat drips red, our blood pools and blackens beneath our finger nails, our teeth loosen at night and we stagger through our dreams gumming our words. I write and lose entire manuscripts between dusk and dawn—does that happen to you? Does it?”
“That it does, friend. We are all cursed with ineffable genius. But consider this, perhaps we each are in fact not one, but many, and whilst we sleep in this realm another version of us wakens to another world’s dawn, and sets quill to parchment—the genius forever beyond our reach is in fact his own talent, though he knows it not and like you and I, he frets over the lost works of his nightly dreams.”
Brash was staring at me with incredulous eyes. “That is cruelty without measure, Flicker. How could you even imagine such diabolical things? A thousand other selves, all equally tortured and tormented! Gods below!”
“I certainly do not see it that way,” did I reply. “Indeed, the notion leads me to ever greater efforts, for I seek to join all of our voices into one—perhaps, I muse, this is the truth of real, genuine genius. My myriad selves singing in chorus, oh how I long to be deafened by my own voice!”
“Yearn away,” Brash said, with a sudden wicked grin. “You’re doomed, Flicker. You just made me realize something, you see. I am already deafened by my own voice, meaning I already am a genius. Your argument proves it!”
“Thank goodness for that. Now, sing yourself off to sleep, Brash Phluster, and we will speak more of this upon the morning.”
“Flicker, do you have a knife?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m going to make Apto vote for me even if I have to kill him to do it.”
“That would be murder, friend.”
“We are awash in blood already, you fool! What’s one little dead critic more? Who’d miss him? Not me. Not you.”
“A dead man cannot vote, Brash.”
“I’ll force him to write a proxy note first. Then we can eat him.”
“I sincerely doubt he would prove palatable. No, Brash Phluster, you will receive no weapon from me.”
“I hate you.”
Off he stormed, in the manner of a golit bird hunting snakes.
“His mind has cracked.” With this observation, Purse Snippet appeared, her cloak drawn tight about her lithe form.
“Will no one sleep this night?” I asked, in some exasperation.
“Our cruel and unhappy family is in tatters.”
To this I grunted.
“Do doubts finally afflict you, Avas Didion Flicker? I intend no mercy, be certain of that.”
“The burdens are weighty indeed, Lady Snippet, but I remain confident that I shall prevail.”
She drew still closer, her eyes searching mine, as women’s eyes are in the habit of doing when close we happen to stand. What secret promise are they hoping to discover? What fey hoard of untold riches do they yearn to pry open? Could they but imagine the murky male realm lurking behind these lucid pearls, they might well shatter the night with shrieks and
flee into the shelter of darkness itself. But this is the mystery of things, is it not? We bounce through guesses and hazy uncertainties, and call it rapport, bridged and stitched with smiles and engaging expressions, whilst behind both set of eyes maelstroms rage benighted in wild images of rampant sex and unlikely trysts. Or so I fancy, and why not? Such musings are easy vanquish over probable truths (that at least one of us is either bored rigid or completely mindless with all the perspicacity of a jellyfish, and oft I have caught myself in rubbery wobble, mind, or even worse: is that intensity merely prelude to picking crabs from my eyebrows? Oh yes, we stand close and behind our facades we quiver in trepid tremulosity, even as our mouths flap a league a breath).
Where were we? Ah yes, standing close, her eyes tracking mine like twin bows with arrows fixed, whilst I shivered like two hares in lantern light.
“How, then,” asked Purse Snippet (eyes tracking... tracking— I am pinned!), “do you intend to save me, noble sir? In the manner of all those others, in a tangle of warm flesh and the oblivion of sated desires? Have you any idea just how many men I have had? Not to mention women? And each time a new candidate steps forth, what do I see in those oh-so-eager eyes?” She slowly shook her head. “The conviction writ plain that this one can do what none before was capable of doing, and what must I then witness?”
“I would hazard, the pathetic collapse of such brazen arrogance?
“Yes. But here, and now, I look into your eyes and what do I see?”
“To be honest, Lady, I have no idea.”
“Really.”
“Really.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Do you see? She had crowbar in hand, the treasure chest looms (mine, not hers, we’re being figurative here. We’ll get to the literal in a moment), and the lock looks flimsy indeed. And in her eyes what do I see? Why, the conviction that she and she alone has what it takes (whatever it takes, don’t ask me), to crack loose that mysterious lockbox of fabulous revelations that is, well, the real me.
Bless her.
Do you all finally understand my angst? I mean, is this all there is? What is this anyway? I don’t know. Ask my wives. They pried me loose long ago, to their eternal disappointment, of which they continually remind me, lest I stupidly wander into some impractical daydream (such as this: Is there some woman out there who still thinks me mysterious? I must find her! That kind of daydream). As tired old philosophers say, the scent is ever sweeter over the garden wall. And my, how we do climb.