“Your street tried to stop me coming,” she said to Wyrisa.
“It’s not like any street I’ve seen before.”
“What are other streets like, then?”
“Haven’t you seen them?”
The other laugh, the unpretty one, came again, but this time sour and thin.
“My room has no door,” she said. “There’s a song about it.”
And she told Bue all she had to call a tale:
•
Door unborn, waits in the walls, blooms when love calls….
Why do they sing, these shining shadows? Why make the
shapes they do? Ladies with bird-faces and velvety lizards,
crawling toads with heads upon heads upon heads;
instruments strung with star-white water, strummed by bonefish
with their spines—my only companions! They sing all
night, lullabies left by my mother and father.
I heard the city’s big as a world, and full of things to chew you from the spirit out. The songs won’t tell me what gnawed up my family—if I had a family. Sad girls always do, in songs, but not the things that tempt and snare poor wanderers-by—which do I seem, to you?
Oh, but these walls sometimes sing of a man and woman who were slowly swallowed by something, who loved their girl so much that they wouldn’t leave her in human hands—who can you trust? I think it’s me they mean, so a girl I must be.
Maybe I’ve some desire to snare, certainly to sing, never to gnaw on souls. But if the songs are true, who can live in the city without a spare face or two? So they left me with shadows, and such a clever house to dwell, to keep me tight and safe and well! Wood from the boughs of a hundred trees; walls with a hundred haunt-gifts.
I used to think they’d come back—like one of the songs says:
Mother’s gone to the forest
Hush-oh sleep,
Or the crow will eat your eyes
The snake your insides
Hush-oh sleep!
She will bring back lychees
From the demon’s tree
To keep your cursed days sweet.
Hush-oh, sleep.
She never came. The lychees did, and other plump fruit to eat, every dawn on my table as if they grow in the night. Jewels, come like damp with the rains, and they rot if I don’t scoop them up. My ceiling puts out new lamps in summer, and the window lets me show my lovely face. I’ve all I need in my little room, till the day love comes boating by and it buds me a door—oh, it must be nearly now—
•
She whispered so, Bue had to half-climb the ragged walls to hear, tip-toe on the boat’s railings. Flakes fell from the house like ash; gold light shone through the cracks.
There was only the sound of houses clucking softly together under the heavy black breeze, as Wyrisa leaned out.
The shadows in the carven window-frame came with her, as if unwilling to let her face go; catching at her tumbling sky-black hair, blotching her taut cheeks.
Her lips tasted just like her songs—sweet and dark cinnamon and plum.
“Do you know, you’re the only one who’s ever come back,” she whispered against Bue’s face. “The door’s a summer fruit, I’m sure.”
The shade shifted on her cheek, something with splaying toes and a twitch of a tail.
Bue tumbled to the boat-deck, stammered something about needing to get back.
“To your master?” Wyrisa said, looking down, windowframed once more, flawless and cold. “A fine mask to wear.”
“I’m not he!” Bue said, and slapped the boat, and fled.
Shadows thicker than the night stayed sticky on her skin.
•
Next day—one more day until Crossing—Jerrin found Bue sleeping on the deck. “Up, Bue! You should be cleaning the boat by now, but I won’t tell. Did you see her? What did she say?”
Bue stared at him, with the look of one who has woken from a deep, devouring dream and gulped down too much dawnlight.
“She didn’t say yes, she didn’t say no, spoke in riddles. Her room’s doorless; her people chewed up by the town long ago.”
This was wonderful news to Jerrin. “No door? Then she’s waiting for a brave lover to cut the way! Oh, perfection, we’ll go at once and free her!”
“Beauty so perfect is a sure sign of ghosts,” said Bue. “That house is rotten with death—what if she’s dead too? I won’t go back there.”
Now to Jerrin the day seemed to be turning sweet as a story—but ah, this is not his story. His father appeared then, commanding Bue to ready the shop; Jerrin to call at the docks.
And so both lads spent the bright hours working, both hearts whirling. How tired their hands and heads were when night came, and they met again.
“Tomorrow, at first light,” promised Jerrin, and crawled to his rest.
Bue lay down on the shop floor, adrift on instant sleep despite the boat’s dark prickling. It spiked into Bue’s dreaming, Bue who walked as a prince through trees of snapping shadow, with the boat’s knotted ghosts for companions; all seeking release. They tugged him forwards, and Bue woke to feel the night sliding over his cheek.
Had he forgotten to secure the boat, or had it slipped away of its own accord? It went slow, predator-quiet. Bue went to look over the bow. Late wanderers went by in needle-boats or drifted over bridges. Lights floated in the water, living pearls imported from the Night Isles, and centipedes from the same land twinkled over the knotty banks. The double-god Kam’s faithful were out, lighting shrines by the high water or creeping with clay-filled hands to change the sex of any deity-figure they found. The streets and houses murmured all around, hazed by white smoldering trees, glowing branch-tips that trailed throat-burning fragrant smoke. They dropped ash on the boat as it swam below. Between the trees were shining plants, branches laden low, offering bottle-glossy fruit to pluck.
The humming air shaped itself into words: away, away, come away….
And Bue was awake and hungry. He pulled down fruits and opened them, and found oily pastes instead of pulp. Gold, white, green, red. He gazed into the black water and painted himself: eyes and cheeks of a proud queen, jaunty moustache of a questing prince.
The boat went on under the ashy air to a window adorned with sleeping birds. The house flickered, paper-thin against the lamplight beating within, shadows licking up the walls like a flowing tide. No face shone from the window; no song fell.
“Wyrisa?”
“You, again.” She came to the window, golden face almost translucent. “And with a new mask—what new games have you come here to play?”
“It’s nearly Crossing-day! My master’s coming in the morning, to cut a doorway and rescue you. You want to come with me, come see the city putting on its lights, or wait around for him?”
“If he’s not your invention, perhaps he’s my true love,” she sighed. “And the walls wear themselves thin to welcome him.”
“You truly think?”
She seemed almost transparent now, eyes huge in their sockets—Bue almost expected to see veins and the creases in her skull. “I think the door could be another monster’s maw, to gulp me down to my fate. I think I’d be a fool to wait dreaming for that. But then is my choice to be rescued by you instead? And who are you, with your smiling boat?”
“I’m not asking you to come away forever,” said Bue. “Just for the festival. But it’s true enough: you’ve no call to trust me.”
Then he told her all: his girlhood, her boyhood, the boat’s bargain, Jerrin’s bet. “Last night I half-convinced myself that you’re a dead thing hungry for my soul, but that’s not it. Seems we’re both in a net—”
“Seems you got into yours yourself—”
“—but we can go, paint ourselves new! Look, the city’s growing festival fruits.” He held them up, ripe, split, oozing gold and silver paste. As if in answer, the decayed walls put out new shoots, thick and thorny.
“And my house is growing brambles to keep me in. If I cli
mb out they’ll tear my face, and who’ll want me then?”
He swore he would—if she wanted him—and she pulled herself up to crouch on the windowsill, and took a wide look at the night, and jumped through the thickening stems. Bue fell as he tried to catch her, fell still-grinning to the deck. Oh, but don’t be so quick to grin with him—
Wyrisa looked at him, and her face was blotted with a mark like a lizard, petal-scales and claws of thorn, curling from jaw to forehead along the left curve of her skull.
“How do you like my real face?” she said, and finished her earlier song:
“Mother’s gone to the forest,
Hush-oh sleep,
Or the crow will eat your eyes
The snake your insides
Hush-oh sleep!
And she will bring you branches
From a ghost-fed tree,
To frame your cursed face sweet.
Hush-oh, sleep.
“Boughs from a hundred trees to make my room, a hundred haunt-gifts, and the best of all to make the window. A ghost so fixed on beauty that it cast faces on anyone who’d stand in its shade, lovelier than any living thing. That ghost’s pale shadow, you loved; not me.”
“But your eyes,” said Bue, looking at her, at the life that bloomed in place of those polished black stars. “They’re just like eyes!”
She laughed. “That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard said. And my bad-luck mark—aren’t you scared?”
“Haven’t I told you?” Bue said. “I’m lucky enough for two.”
Very well, then: be quick to grin with him, as you do for heroes full of luck and pluck. We could leave them there—only the moon was high and the night was big and the drums were calling over the waters. And so, let’s follow them.
“To the festival?”
“To the festival.” She jutted her face forward, and Bue painted her like a boy hero from a masked play, then pulled her up to the narrow sidewalk. “Go on,” he whispered to the boat. “Go celebrate however boats do.” Then they sidled around the corner to the next canal, where they saw the tail of a great crowd, boats and bank-walkers, winding into the thick of the city.
They followed the fattening crowd to a lantern-starred isle strewn with sand and straw, where Kam’s tall shell-studded temple stood. The air was full of swelter and balm, the compound crammed with entertainers and market stalls.
“What’s this?” said Wyrisa, as Bue bought the hottest, sweetest, stickiest items from every stand to pile into her hands.
“This?” Bue looked to the great tent of white paper that stood, like a giant’s lantern, at the heart of the temple courtyard. “It must be a shadow-show! Let’s see it!”
“Not more shadows,” said Wyrisa, but Bue tugged at her hand.
“These aren’t your haunt-shadows. Just puppets and light.”
“Ah!” cried Wyrisa as they ducked inside. “So bright!” She shied her eyes from the tent’s core, not a wooden pole but a column of lamps like a dazzling fish-spine, going up, up, up to the slatted ceiling. All was still, the paper-wrapped space holding its breath.
Everyone in Salt-Plums knows the story played in that place, but I’ll tell it to you, and forgive my words—poor shadows of shadows!—for not getting close to the wonder of it.
First comes the colorful shade-parade of acrobatic tigers, serpents, bulls, peacocks, chased by the long-tongued storyteller who calls to them to stop and see the tale: The Wandering Lovers, or How Kam Married Theirself.
“But where’s the puppeteer?” said Wyrisa.
Where indeed? There was only streaming light and no place for a puppet-man to hide, though all could hear his chanting. Musicians dangled their legs over the slats above, but the shadows could not be flung from up there. The dancing silhouettes seemed part of the tent-wall itself.
Were even temples now turning to haunt-tricks to awe the crowds? No, Bue thought, it must be Kam’s magic, holy and joyful!
Now the story unfolds: here is Kam the tiny god, performing small kindnesses where it can. Here, a princess who stepped out to see a little, only a little, of the world but fell so in love with walking that she could not stop. Here, a prince who fled his father, a wicked sorcerer-king. See them journeying from opposite directions, see them reach the Town Where Salt-Plums Grow, where instead of ever onwards, the wanderer is drawn ever inwards. Shadow-houses and filmy trees flicker and twist, light rippling like water between them.
See Kam the tiny god meet with a hundred little mishaps.
It tries to help a fisherman but tumbles into the water. See the shadow-fish leap! Kam is pulled out by a fisher girl (our princess in disguise, of course); the god promises her a favor.
Oh! she gestures. See her thoughts: a man kept as a demon’s slave (isn’t he that same exiled prince?). The fisher girl would rescue him if she could leave her duties for just a day. So Kam splits itself in two: one half dons the princess’s face and takes her place, the other puts on the prince’s shape and stays with the demon while the lovers make their escape.
Now, with them safely away, prince-shaped Kam challenges the demon: who can produce the most astonishing thing from this locked cupboard? The demon brings forth a man who breaths out full-grown lions, lions with vines for manes, vines whose fruits burst into stars that float up to the sky. The god nods and takes its turn, opens the cupboard to reveal itself—theirself—split twice more into the shape of the new-married couple. The demon’s mouth stretches so wide in surprise that it snaps back, envelops his body, and he’s gone.
Now see Kam the great god, stooped double to fit on the walls, dancing the year round. For a season she is the princess with her fish-basket. For another, he is the runaway prince.
And for the final season the pair united in one form, the god male and female.
And now it’s the heart of summer, the day when Kam makes that crossing again, and all the revelers cross in turn.
Perhaps just for the day—morning after, many will cross back to being sons or daughters, wives or husbands, but others will stay. And there are those who don’t call themselves men or women in any month, who dance along today’s canal-banks with everyone else, dance in perfection. For summer has come. And summer mingles all things.
•
See the lovers, new light on their gilded faces.
See the wide deep street, turned by the sun to burning silver.
Hear the drums, the bells, reverberating over the water.
But hear, too, the low melody hiding in the air, hiding with teeth and tails in it. “My room,” Wyrisa whispered. “It’s somewhere near.”
“Forget it,” said Bue. “That ghost-eaten thing, it’ll be dead by evening.”
And so they stepped over the threshold of this day that stretched long and lovely as a shining lake before them.
But sharp and secret things lie under lovely pools.
See the thin house peering from a thin alley, dripping the dust of its walls to the muddy ground.
•
The procession wound all round the canals, faces flashing bright. Wyrisa and Bue followed on sidewalks and over bridges and, as the day ripened and burned off the shallowest streets, along the cracked mud and slime. A summer novelty, to walk on the canal beds rather than skim above, among the year’s inventory of lost and sunken things. They saw drowned toys, trinkets and animals’ bones. They saw a stranded Carnival boat of young boys with painted ladies’ faces, striking parody poses, all but one making themselves giddy laughing at each others’ antics. The last of their number simply peered at her new reflection in a puddle and smiled; her friends didn’t laugh at her.
They came to the Market Square, where the water was still deep, and saw a floating stage, where the mask-features of the dancers flashed from prince to princess to both to entirely other with each flick of their fans. They watched, delighted, from a platform under a heaped block of shophouses, swinging feet above the flower-starred water.
“My lullabies never told me there w
ere so many other ways to be,” Wyrisa said.
“Most days, there aren’t. Kam’s religion is young, but the way their story-chanters have it, there were once more than a hundred genders—you can tell from old stories, they say, whispered histories, and from the shape of our language—but the city merchant-princes boiled them down to two. All the rest get squeezed into this one festival. And we should squeeze them back out. Or, that’s what some of Kam’s followers say.”
“Wear ourselves however we like, whatever the season?”
“Yes.”
“Well, get this face you’ve painted off me then, and let me do my own.”
So Bue wiped Wyrisa’s cheeks clear. Under her fingers, the lizard-mark was warm as any other skin, warm and still. They said nothing, only saw each other brimming with light and shade both. And Bue did not see the thing that thrashed across the square: a rough-hewn canoe with a crocodile’s tail, and Jerrin scowling atop it, face unpainted, eyes searching the crowds.
But Jerrin saw Bue and stopped sharply under the platform. “What have you done with my boat?” he yelled up.
“Where’s my bride?”
Bue looked at Wyrisa, who turned her face away. Of course, Jerrin could not recognize her without her windowface.
What to say?
Before Bue could think up a story, Jerrin yanked her by the ankle to the churning craft. Hitting the wood and twisting to look back, Bue saw that the old rotted house had somehow crawled in among the jumbly tower of shops. There was a flash in its triumphant window: Wyrisa’s foot, glassy and golden, vanishing inside. Had it swallowed her up, or had she fled there?”
“Wait—!” Bue called.
The canoe shot away, ghost-fast.
•
Now, Wyrisa saw Bue snatched away, but all she could hear was wood creaking like sharp musical strings behind her:
eat your insides, it rang. Had she ever thought she would escape that place? Oh, they had beaten it once. Oh, but it was so empty, so waiting.
She turned to face it, and the lizard-marked side of her face twitched cold. Then she went, as she had known all along she would, climbing into the waiting shell of her room, where old blue shadows lay on the floor like drifted ashes. Canal-light came through slack-mouthed gaps in the walls, dancing up over the beams. Pulse of silver. New season, new world, how strange and bright! How to snatch it back, and catch Bue again too?
Heiresses of Russ 2014 Page 27