They challenge him to mortal combat.
They measure their own prowess by this most arduous and dangerous of tests.
For you see, the king has at last become the Flawless Wine.
*
Chapter 13
‘Yet this cave…’ Mima began doubtfully, having listened to the man’s tale, ‘it’s far across the sea, surely, from where those famous battles took place?’
The man gave a nod of his bull’s head.
‘We sought to leave our unwanted fame behind us. Cerissa had heard of my plight while building the great horse. She provided a ship to bring us here, the masks to scare off all but the very bravest: the bull mask,’ he added, aware of Mima’s doubtful narrowing of eyes as she stared once more at the discarded mask, ‘is more fearsome than my own head. Something about the magic used, it seems; it bleeds with our universal fear of nightmares, of death, I believe.’
He looked towards his wife’s mask, the serpents still hissing, writhing.
‘I have seen warriors struck dead by the simple appearance of my wife; their hearts give out, leaving them frozen rigid, petrified.’
‘I am seeking Cerissa,’ Mima admitted.
‘I don’t know where she lives, I’m afraid. I’m not sure anyone does.’
As he spoke, he stretched out an arm into the empty air beside him. There was a crisp fluttering of wings as a raven flew out of the cave’s more solid darkness and perched itself on his wrist.
‘But we can send word to the captain of the ship that brought us here.’
*
The raven was not a real bird.
Like the masks, it was a construct of waste or otherwise redundant materials.
Its wings, for sure, were of dark feathers. Yet there were also creased leaves there. Its legs were twigs. For eyes, it had globules of spit, and maybe chewed berries.
Even so, it cocked its head curiously as the man talked to it. Then it flew off, as if it had clearly understood every instruction given it.
‘We need to get you to the harbour where the ship will meet you,’ the man said to Mima and Detritus as they watched the raven get ever smaller in the sky, until it was nothing more than a dark speck.
While he had talked, his wife had been preparing what had appeared to Mima as nothing more than a pile of large branches, old hides and torn blankets. As she had opened up these supposedly chaotic piles of waste, however, they had taken on the shape of horses; yet curiously incomplete horses. Indeed, they formed only the rear of a horse – there were neither forelegs, nor heads and necks.
‘These will swiftly take you there,’ the woman said with a pleasant smile, inviting Mima to be the first to see how these strange horses would carry them.
*
Chapter 14
Mima thrilled to the incredible speed they were managing as they galloped along the meandering paths running through the woods.
It was fortunate that they had left the donkey behind with the man and woman – she would not have been able to attain this ferocious pace even for a minute, let alone keep up as they ran for mile after mile, rushing towards the far off harbour.
The sound of pounding hooves echoed around them; which was indeed most strange, for neither the legs of the horses nor indeed their own – of course – had been shoed in any way.
If anyone had caught sight of them as they hurtled though the densely packed trees, they would have stared in disbelief. For it was Mima and Detritus themselves who had to fulfil the role of forelegs and head of the mounts they had expected to be riding.
The constructs of hind legs had been securely strapped around their waists by the woman, even as she had assured them with a knowing chuckle that she wasn’t crazy; they would take on the grace and agility of a horse, she added. And she knew this for sure, as she and her husband had used them long ago to ride into the hills.
Mima had glanced down at her legs; and gawped in a mix of horror and disbelief as they transformed into those of a horse, albeit one seen only in a hazy dream. Yet now those legs pounded the ground as effectively and rapidly as any well-bred stallion.
In the trees spreading out to either side of them, there were no longer any signs of the hanging armour, tinkling musically to the drumming beat of the bones they encased. There were ever more signs, however, of stilled warriors, men who appeared alive yet frozen rigidly in place. They had been suddenly stilled like this in the very midst of a sword strike, or the violent thrust of a spear.
Were these the heroes, Mima wondered, who had been petrified by the angry glare of the serpent-haired woman?
They seemed to lie too far too far away to be her victims. Yet the woods were filled with more and more of them, until their ranks began to include stranger creatures, hybrids of man and animal or animal and beast.
They arrived in a clearing where they came across yet another petrified warrior; only for the man to angrily spring into life, threatening them with raised sword and shield.
*
‘Sorry, sorry! You startled me!’ the warrior apologised, seeing their own startled reactions to his unexpected attack.
Recoiling and rearing on their hind legs, both Mima and Detritus had briefly believed they would die from a deep slash of the warrior’s sweeping sword. Fortunately, his skill with his weapon was such that he stopped his blade in mid-strike.
‘Such remarkable creatures!’ the warrior gasped, gawping in awe as he took in their strange form. ‘Here’s something else for you to capture, eh, sculptor?’
He looked back over his shoulder, towards where a man in craftsman’s garb was carefully studying a boulder that lay on the ground before him.
‘What?’ The man looked up, as if at last made aware of Mima and Detritus’s presence. ‘Oh yes, yes! Indeed, indeed!’
Like the warrior, the sculptor stared at Mima and Detritus in wonder. He approached them, his admiring eyes lingering over every aspect of their powerfully undulating forms.
‘Please, please,’ he pleaded with them, ‘I must capture your likeness in stone!’
‘We don’t have time to wait around for you to carve us, I’m afraid,’ Detritus replied firmly yet politely enough not to cause offence. ‘We have another three day’s journey ahead of us at least!’
‘You must be travelling far, to the coast at least, for it to take such magnificent beasts so long!’
Detritus bridled at the sculptor’s description of them as ‘beasts’.
‘The sculptor works miraculously swiftly,’ the warrior assured them. ‘You may watch, if you wish, as he preserves me so I might be remembered by all those who follow me; whether I am successful against the beast – sorry, monster – or not!’
Mima observed the young man with a sorrowful frown.
‘Please, I would advise you to turn around now, or you will only end up dead, like so many other warriors we have seen on our way here.’
‘All the more reason, then, why the sculptor must complete his work!’ the young warrior grinned nonchalantly.
‘You can stay tonight with me,’ the sculptor offered, indicating with a wave of his hand that it was already getting dark. ‘I have food, a pool to bathe in, and fresh bedding.’
As he added this, he looked doubtfully at them both, obviously wondering what type of bedding they would prefer. He saw, too, the hesitation in their eyes; they had almost been swayed by his offer of a comfortable night.
‘I could carve you quickly in the morning. It will be too dark to do it now, as I have to finish my sculpture of this brave young man.’
Mima looked at the boulder the sculptor had been contemplating. He hadn’t even made a start on carving the young warrior. Moreover, it was far too small to be used to carve anything but the poor man’s feet!
The sculptor hadn’t even prepared his tools. There were none in clear sight, at any rate.
‘As my friend has already explained,’ Mima answered kindly, ‘we have no time to waste.’
‘Then I can help
you there too,’ the sculptor promised, ‘for I can show you a much quicker route to the coast!’
‘We were told to head this way,’ Detritus insisted, remembering his friend’s care in describing the route they should take.
‘And so you shall – yet I can make it even quicker for you!’
*
Chapter 15
The young warrior struck up his heroic pose once more.
The sculptor bent over the large yet still obviously inadequate boulder.
And still he had no tools about him.
He talked to the boulder.
It was a series of whisperings, of suggestions.
They were accompanied with a careful caressing of the stone, like some men will care for a favoured dog, or potters will bring their clay into a chosen form.
And the boulder began to move, to grow, beneath his hands.
The sculptor teased the stone into new shapes, with tender strokes, with flattery, with admonishments. What had been hard before was now malleable, almost viscously fluid.
And still it continued to grow, vigorously, more plant-like rather than of rock and earth.
And as it grew, the sculptor bent it to his will, into the shape he required it to take on.
In the time it took for the sun to finally set, he had created this remarkable simulacrum of the young warrior. Full of colour. Full of life.
A life the young man will soon no longer possess, Mima thought sadly, when he bravely insisted he must be on his way.
*
They slept remarkably comfortably on bedding of fresh straw and tender vines.
Detritus awoke with a start, wondering what had disturbed his sleep.
Pah! It was nothing more than a leaf, which had landed on his brow!
Now that he was awake, however, he sensed an urge (as all old men are want to do, late in the night) to vanish for a moment into the nearby bushes.
As he put the finishing touches to readjusting his garb, having finished his most natural of tasks, he jumped slightly in surprise as he heard a rustling of bushes and undergrowth. There was a flash of white, of brighter colours – and a small hybrid creature of goat and boy stood before him, as startled as he was.
The boy, however, remained rigidly still, as if one of the statues.
In fact, he now looked so much like one of the statues that Detritus peered at him curiously – wondering if he hadn’t, in fact, been there all along. Just one more of the sculptor’s creations littering the woods.
He drew closer to this statue, close enough to observe every detail. He especially peered intently at the boy’s face, so close now that the breath from his nose rippled against what would have been the statue’s skin.
The boy’s eyes were frozen wide – and then they moved ever so slightly, ever so fearfully.
‘Hah!’ Detritus exclaimed triumphantly.
The boy made to run off –but was abruptly held firmly in place by the hand of Detritus clamping down hard on his shoulder.
‘What’s going on here?’ Detritus demanded.
‘Oh please please let me go!’ the boy wailed. ‘I thought you were the evil sculpto–’
‘Evil sculptor?’ Detritus repeated suspiciously.
‘Yes, yes! He takes the souls of the people he carves! We live forever, while they age and die!’
‘Hah!’ Detritus exclaimed triumphantly once more. He had suspected as much!
‘But,’ he said doubtfully, still keeping a firm grip on the struggling boy, ‘how come you’ve come to life; if you were a statue, I mean?’
‘Yes, I was a statue! But my real self is aging so quickly, he realises he’s been tricked. He plays the magical pan pipes, calling me to save him!’
With a growl of satisfaction, Detritus let the boy go – and the boy thankfully vanished as quickly and silently as he could into the dark undergrowth.
*
Chapter 16
The sculptor awoke the next morning to find that his two new and most marvellous subjects had already risen and left.
He was surprised. What on earth could have made them change their minds?
As he had promised them, he could have helped them cut down their long journey to less than a day!
Even though they had left him without a word of explanation, he felt no rancour against them. He decided he would help them on their way anyway.
Carefully, he began to rearrange the small boulders around him, forming them into a more pleasing pattern.
He also took up finely contoured pieces of wood, and placed these too into his miniature landscape.
He included some woven vines, some intertwined stems.
Yes, he nodded in satisfaction: it was all a very pleasing pattern indeed.
*
After such an unexpectedly early start to their day, and in combination with a broken sleep too, Mima felt a little exhausted by the furious pace they had been maintaining all morning.
Sweat ran down her brow, stinging her eyes, making her vison hazy.
In this semi-dazed state, she saw what appeared to be the hills around them momentarily shifting, flattening here, rising there.
A valley appeared before them, when she had been sure she had seen only a despairingly high rising of the mountains only a moment ago. The woods stretching out ahead now thankfully seemed far less dense than she had previously imagined.
They passed easily through the valley, slaking their thirst in the sweetly trickling streams that had gradually carved this vale through the mountains eons ago. The valley opened up onto a clear view of the coast, which now lay only a short ride from them.
‘How did we arrive here so quickly?’
With his one good arm, Detritus stroked his head in bewilderment. Mima merely shrugged, thankful that the bull-headed man had underestimated the speed they could attain as these horse-like hybrids.
When they reached the harbour, however, perhaps it was all her earlier experiences of Cerissa’s magic that prepared her for the strange sight awaiting them there.
For the ship wasn’t of wood and canvas, as she might have expected.
It was, rather, of bone and flesh.
*
Chapter 17
With the oars of the rapidly approaching galley rhythmically dipping into the blue sea to the steady beat of a drum, the ship glided across the smooth waters of the natural harbour.
The sail of skin was lowered to the deck. The oars rose upright together as if by one, sole commanding hand.
The ship slowed as it approached the sandy beach where, with a sigh, it’s hard keel bit into the edge where shore met gently lapping waves.
There it waited silently, with no visible movement on board.
Mima and Detritus galloped joyously along the beach, relishing their sense of effortless power, in many ways regretting that they would soon be jettisoning their new-found powers.
Before boarding the still silent, still patiently waiting ship, they un-strapped and removed the constructs of Cerissa. As requested by the man and woman, they stored the horse constructs in a small alcove amongst the rocks, where they would be collected later.
They covered the rest of the distance towards the ship on foot, feeling strangely ungainly and slow.
The ship was yet another apparently crude structure, unrefined in all its detailing, as if put together by a madman.
There were bones of every kind of animal involved in its construction, including those of the whale, its jawbone and ribs.
There were also a great many of what could only be parts of human skeletons, the hip bones forming the blocks that controlled the rigging, the rib cages lanterns that hung from prow and stern.
Flesh, hide and furs formed the skin of the hull, the covering of shields running along either side, the now furled sail.
And yet the only sign of life Mima could make out was the raven, who eyed their approach with glints of suspicion in its orbs of spit.
*
Mima sensed tha
t other eyes were watching them.
Or, rather, another eye.
For, she realised, the eye painted onto the ship’s side was flickering slightly, following their every move with obvious interest as they drew nearer.
A rope ladder made of hair, of bones, was thrown over the hull’s side by unseen hands, there for them to climb up and mount the deck.
There was no one but the curiously eyed raven on board. No one was seated in the rows controlling the whalebone oars. And yet the oars began to move once more, as if first lowered then levered by a ghostly crew.
The oar ends pushed against the sand of the beach, pushing the ship back out into the deeper water.
As soon as there was room, the oars on either side took up opposing strokes, swinging the ship around until it pointed out to sea once more.
The oars bit deep into the sea. The mast and sail of flesh rose and unfurled, as if of its own accord.
The ship sped across the bay, cleared the enclosing headlands – then set out across the darker ocean.
*
Even an exploration of the ship came up with no signs of life.
The only signs, in fact, were of death.
The deaths of the creatures whose bones and skins formed this strange ship.
The deaths of the invisible crew whose spirits seemed to continue to power it.
‘What kind of ship is this, that needs no crew?’ she asked Detritus warily.
‘A ship, maybe, like the great horse that came to life,’ he answered sagely, voicing her own fears. ‘It was the sacrifice of the men inside who gave it life; their deaths for its life.’
The only thing aboard that could be said to have some form of a more natural life was the raven of leaves and feathers. It flittered about the rigging, soared a while on the wind; always eyed them curiously, suspiciously.
Then it took of, rose into the sky – and as once before, it was soon nothing more than a small, dark speck in the sky.