far more secular nature—to wit, how much can I bilk all these fools for?”
Mister Ambertroshin puffed on his pipe. “You do indeed walk a wasteland, sir.”
“And does yours look so different?”
“We may agree on the rocks and stones, sir,” he replied, “but not their purpose.”
“Rocks?” Tulgord said, eyes a little wild. “Stones and purpose? Aye, give me a rock, something for you to trip over, driver, but for me, something to bash in your head.”
Mister Ambertroshin blinked. “Why, Mortal Sword, why ever would you do that?”
“Because you’re confusing things, that’s why! Flicker’s telling a story, right? By all meets he must now give voice to the evil whispers seeking ill of our heroes.”
“I think he just did,” the pipe-puffing old man said.
“The knights hold to honour and purpose and the two are one and the same,” proclaimed Tulgord Vise. “While the pilgrims seek salvation. Now, who else travels with the worthy ones? Someone diabolical, no doubt. Speak on, poet, for your life!”
“I hesitate, good knight.”
“What?”
“Without the Chanters, there can be no proper vote, can there? And by their collective snores one can presume only that they are insensate to the moment. Lady Snippet, does your need devour all patience?”
She regarded me with some slyness. “Do you promise redemption, poet?”
“I do.”
Sudden doubt in her eyes, perhaps even a trembling vulnerability. “Do you?” she asked again, this time in a whisper.
I gave gentle nod.
“It would seem most honourable,” suggested Apto, studying me grave and seriously, “that your fate, Flicker, now be made to depend solely upon Purse Snippet’s judgement. Should you achieve redemption of the woman in her tale, your life is secured. Should you fail, it is forfeit. This being said, and by all the nods I see it is a notion well-met, it would not do to string her along and so assure your survival. So I pose the following provision. Should she decide, at any time in your telling, that you are simply... shall we say, padding your narrative, why, one or both of the knights shall swing their swords.”
“Wait!” cried Calap Roud. “I am not nodding and this is not well-met—not by me anyway. Can we not all see that Lady Snippet is a woman of mercy? And not such a soul as would so cruelly condemn someone? This is Flicker’s devious mind at work here! He makes a promise he cannot keep, but only to win his life upon this terrible journey! Perhaps indeed they are in cahoots!”
At that the dancer straightened in perfect haughtiness. “Bitter words from you, poet, dredged from a poor and squalid mind. I have performed before the most fickle tyrants, when it was my life that was at stake. Of harsh yet true adjudication, I have learned at the feet of masters. Do you think I would dissemble? Do you think I would not cast a most hardened eye upon this man who so boldly promises redemption? Be it understood to all, that Avas Didion Flicker chooses—if he dares—the deadliest of courses in the days ahead!”
So stark and shocking this bridling that all were humbled, and as all eyes now fixed upon me, I knew the truth of this bargain. Did my courage quiver? Did my bowels loosen more than a stomach full of human meat warranted (and yes, Ordig was indeed most sour)? Shall I take this instant to weave the woeful lie? I shall not. Indeed, I make no comment whatsoever, and before that sharp wealth of regard, I tilted head a fraction toward the venerable dancer and said, “I do accept.”
And to that she could only gasp.
Weariness soon landed on bat wings, ears twitching, flitting ghostly among us all, and this night was, by silent consensus, done. As I rose to walk watery into the darkness for a few moments of cold desert air and mocking stars, beyond all heat and light from the dying hearth, I drew close about me my threadbare cloak. It is the still moments in which doubts assail the soul. So I’m told.
The notion was untested as soft arms closed about my waist and two full and generous breasts spread across my back. A breathy voice then murmured in my ear, “You’re a clever one, aren’t you?”
Perhaps not so clever as I believed, as my right hand dropped and stole back to find the outside of her thigh. What is it with men, anyway? To see is as good as to touch when seeing is all we can manage; but to touch is as good as to explode in milky clouds in the spawning stream. “Oh,” murmured I, “sweet Relish. Is this wise?
“My brothers snore, do you hear them?”
“Alas, I do.”
“When they’re snoring, you can drop rocks on their heads and still they won’t wake. I know. I’ve done it. Big rocks. And when they wake up with knobs and bruises, I just tell them they all knocked heads together last night, and so they get mad at each other and that’s that.”
“It would seem that I am not the only clever one here.”
“That’s right, but then, maybe you ain’t so smart after all. She’ll see you killed, that bitchy dancer, you know that, don’t you?”
“It is indeed quite possible.”
“So this could be your last night left alive. Let’s make it a fun one.”
“Who saw you leave the camp?”
“No one. I made sure everyone was bedded down.”
“I see. Well, then...”
Shall we titter and wing gazes heavenward now? Shall we draw the veil of modesty upon these decorous delicacies? Is it enough to imagine and paint private scenes in the mind? A knowing smile, the flash of bared flesh, a subtle editing of grunts and pinches and shifts as elbows prod and jab? Dreamy our sighs, delicious our ponderings? What’s wrong with you?
She straddled my face. The meaty flesh of her thighs closed like the jaws of a toothless leg monster, oozing with suffocating intentions. My tongue discovered places it had never known before, and partook of flavours I wish never to revisit. After some frenzied mashing of orifices that made the bones of my skull creak ominously, she lifted herself clear with an ear-crackling sucking sound, twisted round and descended once more.
There are places in the human body where no man’s face belongs, and this fact found its moment of discovery for hapless Avas Didion Flicker at that precise instant. Well, once her fullest intentions were made evident, that is. The heave with which I freed myself was of sufficient vigour as to throw her over my feet and flat on her face upon the stony ground. Her grunt was most becoming. She endeavoured a vicious kick which I deftly dodged as I rolled up and onto her back, forcing both knees up between her legs. Twisting, she flung a handful of sand and gravel into my eyes. Ignoring this ambiguous gesture I took hold of her meaty thighs and lifted them off the ground, and then impaled her most mightily.
She clawed furrows in the hard ground as if swimming for shore, but the riptide of my lust held her fast. It was, assuredly, do or drown for Relish Chanter. Her gasps gusted clouds of dust round her face. She coughed, she hacked, she moaned in the manner of mothers behind the pantry door, and with her hips she bolted like a cow before the bull, only to lunge backward with small animal cries. I leaned forward and wrapped close my arms, hands finding her breasts. I took hold of full nipples and tried to twist them off, failing but not for want of trying to be sure.
As all know, lovemaking is the most gentle art. Sweet sensations, tender strokes of desire, the sudden nearness of hovering lips, a brush of cheeks, the sharing of wine breaths and so on. Clothes peel off languorous and sultry, shadows tease and warmth invites and then drips, and about all the bedding closes to enfold soft and fresh.
Lacking such amenities of the seductive, let the dogs howl. Beneath savagely cold stars, in beds of wiry stunted bushes, broken branches, rocks and buttons of cacti, this was the scrape and gouge of seed’s wild spill, a life’s banking in a dubious vessel of potential posterity, when said vessel is all there is on offer. Burgeon proud seed! Steal vigorous root in sweetest flesh! Bay with life’s triumph! I held her very nearly upside down as I unleashed my hungry stream, and if she didn’t weep white tears it is no small miracle.
>
The reparations that followed were conducted in sated silence. She combed through her hair to remove the bark, pebbles and saliva. I rubbed my face with sand and would have cut off my own left arm for a bowl of water. We hunted down our wayward clothing, before each in turn staggering off to find our bedding.
Thus ended the twenty-third night upon Crack’d Pot Trail.
A Recounting of the Twenty-Fourth Day
Like rubbing a glossy coat the wrong way, secret amorous escapades can leave the elect parties stirred awry in the wake, although of course there are always exceptions to the condition, and it would appear that, upon the dawn of the twenty-fourth day, both your venerable chronicler and Relish Chanter could blissfully count themselves thus blessed. Indeed, I never slept better, and from Relish’s languid feline stretch upon sitting up from her furs, her mind was as unclouded as ever, sweet as unstirred cream upon the milk.
Far more soured the dispositions of the haggard mottle of artists as the sun elbowed its way up between the distant crags to the east. Wretched their miens, woeful their swollen eyes. Harried their hair, disheveled their comportment as sullen they gathered about the embers whilst Steck Marynd revived the flames with sundry fettles of tinder and whatnot. Strips of meat roasted the night before were chewed during the wait for the single small pot of tea to boil awake.
With bared iron fangs, the day promised torrid heat. Already the sun blazed willful and not a single cloud dared intrude upon the cerulean sands of heaven’s arena. We stood or sat with the roar of blood in our ears, the silty tea gritty upon our leathery tongues, our hands twitching as if reaching for the journey’s end.
From somewhere close came the keening cry of a harashal, the cruel lizard vulture native to the Great Dry. The creature could smell the burnt bone, the raveled flaps of human skin and scalp, the entrails shallowly buried in a pit just upwind of the camp. And with its voice it mocked our golden vigour until we felt nothing but leaden guilt. The world and indeed life itself lives entirely within the mind. We cast the colours ourselves, and every scene of salvation to one man shows its curly-haired backside to another. And so standing together we each stood alone, and that which we shared was unpleasant to all.
With, perhaps, a few exceptions. Rubbing a lump on his temple, Tiny Chanter walked off to fill a hole, humming as he went. Flea and Midge grinned at each other, which they did with unnerving frequency. Both had sore skulls and only moments earlier had been close to drawing knives, the belligerence halted by a warning grunt from Tiny.
Mister Ambertroshin filled a second cup of tea and walked over to the carriage, where a chamber pot awaited him set on the door’s step. A single knock and the wooden shutter on the window opened a crack, just wide enough for him to send the cup through, whereupon it snapped shut, locks setting. He collected the chamber pot and set out to dispose of its contents.
Tulgord Vise watched him walk off and then he grunted. “Looked to be a heavy pot for some old lady. See that, Steck? Arpo?”
The forester squinted with slitty eyes, but perhaps that was just the woodsmoke drifting up to enwreathe his weathered face.
Arpo, on the other hand, was frowning. “Well, she took two helpings last night, so it’s no wonder.”
“Did she now?” and Tulgord Vise glanced over at the carriage. He scratched at his stubbled jaw.
“Must get horrid hot in there,” Apto Canavalian mused, “despite the shade. Not a single vent is left open.”
Arpo set off to see to his horse, and after a moment Tulgord did something similar. Steck had already saddled his own half-wild mount and it stood nearby, chewing on whatever grasses it could find. Mister Ambertroshin returned with the scoured pot and stored it in the back box, which he then locked. He then attended to the two mules. So too did the others address to sundry chores or, as privilege or arrogance warranted, did nothing but watch the proceedings. Oggle Gush and Pampera set about combing Nifty’s golden locks, while Sellup bundled bedding and then laced onto Nifty’s feet the artist’s knee-high moccasins.
Thus did the camp break and all preparations were made for the trek ahead.
Calap Roud and Brash Phluster came up to me in the course of such readying. “Listen, Flicker,” said Calap in a low voice, “nobody’s even told the Chanters about your deal last night, and I’m still of a mind to argue against it.”
“Oh, did the Lady’s word not convince you then?”
“Why should it?” he demanded.
“Me neither,” said Brash. “Why you anyway? She won’t even look at me and I’m way better looking.”
“This relates to the tale, surely,” said I. “A woman such as Purse Snippet would hardly be of such beggarly need as to consider me in any other respect. Brash Phluster, I began a tale and she wishes to hear its end.”
“But it’s not a believable one, is it?”
To that I could but shrug. “A tale is what it is. Must you have every detail relayed to you, every motivation recounted so that it is clearly understood? Must you believe that all proceeds at a certain pace only to flower full and fulsome at the expected time? Am I slave to your expectations, sir? Does not a teller of tales serve oneself first and last?”
Calap snorted. “I have always argued thus. Who needs an audience, after all. But this situation, it is different, is it not?”
“Is it?” I regarded them both. “The audience can listen, or they can walk away. They can be pleased. They can be infuriated. They can feel privileged to witness or cursed by the same. If I kneel to one I must kneel to all. And to kneel is to surrender and this no teller of tales must ever do. Calap Roud, count for me the times you have been excoriated for your arrogance. To be an artist is to know privilege from both sides, the privilege of creating your art and the privilege in those who partake of it. But even saying such a thing is arrogance’s deafening howl, is it not? Yet the audience possesses a singular currency in this exchange. To partake thereof or to not partake thereof. It extends no further for them, no matter how they might wish otherwise. Now, Calap, you say this situation is different, indeed, unique, yes?
“When our lives are on the line, yes!”
“I have before me my audience of one, and upon her and her alone my life now rests. But I shall not kneel. Do you understand? She certainly understands—I can see that and am pleased by it. How will she judge? By what standards?”
“By that of redemption,” said Calap. “It’s what you have offered, after all.”
“Redemption comes in a thousand guises, and they are sweetest those that come unexpectedly. For now, she will trust me, but, as you say, Calap, at any time she can choose to abandon that trust. So be it.”
“So you happily trust your life to her judgement?”
“Happily? No, I would not use that word, Calap Roud. The point is, I will hold to my story, for it is mine and none others.”
Scowling and no doubt confused, Calap turned about and walked away.
Brash Phluster, however, remained. “I would tell you something, Avas Flicker. In confidence.”
“You have it, sir.”
“It’s this, you see.” He licked his lips. “I keep beginning my songs, but I never get to finish them! Everyone just votes me dispensation! Why? And they laugh and nobody’s supposed to be laughing at all. No, say nothing just yet. Listen!” His eyes were bright with something like horror. “I decided to hide my talent, you see? Hide it deep, save it for the Festival. But then, this happened, and suddenly I realized that I needed to use it, use it to its fullest! But what happened? I’ll tell you what happened, Flicker. Now I know why I was damned good at hiding my talent.” He clawed at his straggly beard. “It’s because I don’t have any in the first place! And now I’m sunk! Once they stop laughing, I’m a dead man!”
Such are the nightmares of artists. The gibbering ghosts of dead geniuses (yes, they are all dead). The bald nakedness of some future legacy, chewed down illegible. The torture and flagellation of a soul in crisis. The secret truth is that every
artist kneels, every artist sets head down upon the block of fickle opinion and the judgement of the incapable. To be a living artist is to be driven again and again to explain oneself, to justify every creative decision, yet to bite down hard on the bit is the only honourable recourse, to my mind at least. Explain nothing, justify even less.
Grin at the gallows, dear friends! The artist that lives and the audience that lives while they live are without relevance! Only those still unborn shall post the script of legacy, whether it be forgotten or canonized! The artist and the audience are trapped together in the now, the instant of mood and taste and gnawing unease and all the blither of fugue that is opinion’s facile realm! Make brazen your defiance and make well nested your home in the alley and doorstep or, if the winds fare you well, in yon estate with Entourage in tow and the drool of adoration to soothe your path through the years!
“Dear Brash,” said I after this torrid outburst, “worry not. Sing your songs with all the earnestness you possess. What is talent but the tongue that never ceases its wag? Look upon us poets and see how we are as dogs in the sun, licking our own behinds with such tender love. Naught else afflicts us but the vapours of our own worries. Neither sun nor stone heeds human ambition. Kings hire poets to sell them lies of posterity. Be at fullest ease, is it not enough to try? Is desire not sufficient proof? Is conviction not the stoutest shield and helm before wretched judgement? If it is true that you possess the talent of the talentless, celebrate the singularity of your gift! And should you survive this trek, why, I predict your audience will indeed be vast.”