Sword and Song

by Kate Story

  “A traitor, a collaborator with the North,” breathes Pim.

  Ophelia wants to turn away. It’s going to be some kind of awful game like she’s read about in Roman history. The centaur and the knight will fight.

  The centaur shakes his spear around his head, working up the crowd. He turns circles, performs dressage, pumps his shield into the air. He gallops toward the knight, wheels away just in time. Again and again he charges the lumbering metal thing and dashes out of reach. The knight turns and turns in place, seemingly blind, swinging his sword. He is tiring.

  “Why are you doing this? Stop it, make it stop.”

  “The Mender orders it,” Pim says. “It is a story we tell ourselves.”

  The charging grows monotonous, the crowd yells and boos. The centaur taunts the knight more closely, tarries within reach of that sword.

  The knight, quick as lightning, stabs into the centaur’s flank.

  The creature crashes to the ground. Blood flows from one of his hind legs. It is terrible to see: the horse-like rolling, the uncomprehending body; the human torso twisting to see; the human face knowing what has happened. The knight’s sword has slashed a tendon in the centaur’s back leg.

  Ophelia doesn’t want to watch. But the centaur calls her back with a scream of pain, lurching up onto his hooves. The hind foot that has been slashed hangs horribly, a wrong angle, dripping blood onto the dust and stone that pave the arena.

  The green knight lumbers around him, looking for an opening, looking to kill.

  Kill Render! Kill Render! the crowd chants at the centaur.

  The centaur drops his shield and limps in.

  The people yell, no one is cheering. The centaur swings, misses, leaves himself open. In one sudden movement the knight grips the centaur around the waist with a metal-clad arm. The centaur freezes. The knight stabs up into the centaur’s throat.

  Ophelia will be sick, she will be sick.

  Her face is in her hands. It is dark. This is a movie. She hears the voices in the crowd swell, hysterical. Pim beside her vibrates with excitement, she grips Ophelia’s arm.

  “Look, look!”

  Ophelia looks.

  The centaur writhes on the pavement. He is dying, choking on his own blood.

  The knight turns to face Ophelia, to face the white-robed woman and the Virgos. He raises his sword.

  The white-robed woman lifts a weary hand.

  From out of the dark yawning doors, a sound rolls. High, piercing singing, an operatic travesty. And another figure emerges. It’s a woman, or someone dressed as a woman, in a huge, frothy pink dress.

  The crowd leaps to its feet, everyone grabbing their elbows and doing the forearm dragging gesture. The singing Barbie doll of a woman rushes out, waving her arms. Chosen! she sings, and Chosen! chants the crowd. Chosen! Chosen!

  “What is it?”

  “It’s you, Ophelia.”

  Ophelia goes cold.

  The knight lumbers toward the woman, sword held out like a phallus. She screams, campy and hilarious. She runs, deliberately falls. Her frothy skirt tips up over her head, revealing bright red underpants. She kicks her legs. More screams. The crowd howls with laughter.

  “Pim, that isn’t me.”

  The knight lumbers closer, sword held lewdly at crotch level, ready to stab. The crowd shrieks with laughter.

  “Jesus, Pim, what is this?”

  “It is a story we tell ourselves.” Pim’s voice is strained.

  “It’s sick! It’s . . .”

  But Ophelia never has time to elaborate, for at that moment there is an explosion from the dark maw of a door.

  Smoke and sparks gush out, delighting the crowd. A high-pitched scream heralds several coloured balls of fire. Fireworks shoot out of the dark. There’s a grinding sound, a rumbling that shakes the very stone of the arena.

  Out from the door comes a mechanical serpent, a trumped-up dragon thing.

  The frothy pink woman takes her comic time getting to her feet, and turns to face the dragon.

  The knight turns as well, and backs away.

  It takes Ophelia a moment to see how it is formed. A series of small wheeled chariots are chained together, and riding each is a human woman wielding two swords. The swords bristle up to form something like a dragon’s crest. The head is made of metal, it is a giant helmet being worn by a horse or perhaps—yes, it must be—another centaur, who is drawing the whole train behind him. The centaur’s armour, and that of every woman warrior riding behind, is painted to look like the scales of a dragon, red and gold; on the centaur’s chest are painted two large black and white eyes.

  The mechanical dragon grinds into the arena, and stops in front of the frothy pink creature.

  She climbs up onto its back.

  A mighty cheer from the crowd.

  And the dragon and woman begin to ride around the coliseum. Faster they go, and faster still.

  They pass by the dead centaur. The pink woman shrieks and sings. The dragon train moves in long, sweeping arcs toward the so-called Green Knight. The Green Knight stands still, waiting. He stands in the very centre of the arena. It will be impossible for this lone knight to stop the creature, won’t it?

  The Green Knight doesn’t even try.

  The dragon winds around and around him. He stands there in his armour and staggers slightly as the twenty swords come at him. They stab into him, finding chinks and joins in his armour. Slowly he begins to crumble. The armour won’t let him fall. Blood begins to run out over the bright metal. He is on his knees. He has fallen sideways. Still the dragon warriors stab, the woman sings. The screaming of the crowd hurts, it all hurts, the sun beats down and blood runs over the stones.

  “Fuck, Pim, they were never going to survive, were they? The centaur, the knight. They were always meant to die.” Ophelia thinks she is crazy, she must be going crazy. This isn’t her other place. This isn’t the green and happy land, her refuge.

  Pim’s beautiful face is distorted with something, excitement or pain, Ophelia can’t tell which. “It is an enactment,” she says. Her tongue comes out between her lips, and slowly licks; Ophelia thinks her lips are too pale. Pim looks like she is ill. “It is a dream,” her friend says then. “It is a story.”

  “Of a knight killing a centaur, then being slaughtered by a dragon?”

  “Of the Render’s Green Knight fighting against us, and of you, our Chosen, riding the Dragon to save us. But this story is incomplete. There is another . . .”

  “Another what?”

  “Sometimes in dreams I see how it is meant to be. You . . . apply the cure. To the crackbone of his heart.” Pim is panting. “The Dragon and Knight . . . join . . .”

  The crowd roars. The dragon winds around the arena, people cheer. The knight’s body is dismembered, there in the centre. An arm has been flung metres from the body; the two legs lie twisted, hacked from the trunk. The head is nowhere—no, Ophelia sees it, the dragon is kicking it like a ball, in front of it as it circles the arena.

  “Do you understand?” Pim stares at Ophelia, eyes blank. “The crackbone of his heart!” Her eyes are unfocussed, she is pale.

  “Fuck, Pim, let’s go.” Ophelia stands, pulling on her friend’s arm. She must get Pim out of here.

  “This is a nightmare,” Pim’s voice is low. “You are right. The fantasy is wrong, sick. The Dragon can’t triumph. Things will not become better. My mother is wrong, it would . . .” she can’t get her breath “. . . destroy everything. . . .”

  It’s insane, what happens next.

  The sky to the north turns red, red as blood. Some in the crowd notice. The Mountain! they cry. The Mountain!

  The coliseum begins to shudder. Something is pushing, rushing through the archways. Water. The coliseum is flooding.

  The dragon train rears up and breaks apart. The blood, the poor centaur, hacked-up pieces of knight, and the pink dress disappear, washed under. The armour-clad dragon warriors struggle, weighted down; they founder.
People scream and scramble from the lower levels. It rises fast, dirty water, coming through the archways in a solid gush.

  “The Dragon cannot win. You cannot let the Dragon win!” Pim grips Ophelia’s arms, eyes wide. “Please, my dearest friend.”

  The earthquake has caused the ocean to hurl itself at the land, and the arena is filling, filling with the sea.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Indeterminate Broken Things

  The great wave floods the coliseum in a matter of minutes. The sounds of panic, terror, the roar of the water, fill Ophelia’s whole body. Another tsunami, Ophelia thinks; it must be another, even bigger tsunami.

  “Pim, listen. Is there some way to the top?”

  Water swirls and eddies, people scream. The lower part of the arena is completely submerged. Some of those on the higher levels try to help, flinging scarves and robes out across the water, dragging people up to safety.

  But Pim sags against Ophelia, her eyes rolling back into her head. Ugly, dun-coloured water floats and swirls in the rising eddies.

  Pim is so tall, a dead weight, all arms and legs, sliding away no matter how hard Ophelia tries to hold her. Ophelia looks up at the black-robed women; they are huddled in a knot. The Gor stands, holding the white-robed woman in his arms.

  “Help us!” Ophelia calls.

  The Gor turns his face toward her; he’s heard her. He pushes through the black-robed women, springing up onto the stone balustrade of their balcony, holding the white-robed woman as if she is a bundle of feathers. The Virgos cry out in dismay; some pluck at him. But he leaps again, down to Ophelia and Pim. He jumps the two or three metres that separate the boxes like it is nothing. He lands next to Ophelia, so close that the air of his jump brushes her hair. His hooves make a clopping noise on the stone. The woman in his arms barely stirs.

  “Something is wrong with Pim.” A smell comes off him: musky, maybe a bit animal, but something else, too, not unpleasant. He is standing so close. He smells like a man, Ophelia thinks. Whatever that means. Why is she thinking like this while the ocean rises, her only friend lies unconscious, and she’s in a horrible nightmare version of her beloved Antilia? What is this feeling passing through her stomach and thighs?

  Cold sucks at her toes. Ophelia suppresses a scream; the water has reached their level.

  “Can you get us out of here?” She makes her voice hard and business-like.

  The Gor looks up at the top of the wall. “We should go up there.” His voice is deep and resonant. “First I must take care of the Mender. Then I will come back for you.”

  He turns and flexes his thighs to leap, then pauses.

  He shoots Ophelia a look. It is a merry look, full of suggestion, and she feels heat rising in her cheeks.

  Then, like the goat he partly is, he turns and leaps lightly from balcony to balcony, to the top of the coliseum wall. He places the Mender on the floor of the topmost balcony the way you would lay a baby in a cradle.

  The Virgos wail.

  Again the cold sucks at Ophelia, halfway up to her knees now. She won’t, won’t scream like a girl. But the water is rising and she can’t hold Pim up for much longer. . . .

  And then he’s there. He picks Pim’s lanky body up like she’s nothing and leaps again to the top.

  He returns for Ophelia fast as a thought. He doesn’t ask; he simply picks her up, and for a moment he buries his face in the hollow of her neck. She feels his breath underneath her ear, his lips flutter, as he whispers, “Soft.” A thrill goes through Ophelia. She is sorry when he takes his face from her skin.

  They leap. His muscles gather and release; his hooves land so surely. Her stomach swoops, she has to suppress a giggle. One of his hands has slid up her thigh, her green dress has bunched up between her legs. He gets her to the top balcony.

  Pim and the Mender are lying side by side, seemingly unconscious. He puts Ophelia down; her dress swings back down to her knees.

  “I must get the others,” he says, palm resting on her back. He slides his hand up her spine to the nape of her neck. His palm radiates heat.

  Does she like it?

  And then he is gone.

  Ophelia goes to Pim and kneels at her side. She takes her friend’s hands; cold, they are cold.

  The Gor brings up each of the Virgos, indistinguishable under their red veils.

  Two or three of the Virgos take off their veils, talking quietly among themselves. They fold their veils and place them under the Mender’s head. One comes toward Ophelia and Pim, kneels down. She is the one who held the copper lamp, the Night Light.

  “She is breathing?”

  “Yes,” says Ophelia.

  The woman takes off her veil. She’s maybe forty years old, muscular and blonde. She feels for Pim’s pulse, seems satisfied.

  “Nothing to do now but wait.”

  The way the Virgo says this puts a chill in Ophelia’s heart.

  Time passes. The Gor has gone down to the lower levels, helping in the rescue efforts. The Virgos murmur among themselves, grouped around the still-unconscious Mender, whose face remains covered under her gossamer veil. Ophelia rubs Pim’s hands. She can’t think what else to do.

  The sun beats down.

  Finally, the water seems to stop rising. Things float in it. Whole trees and bits of indeterminate broken things, dead creatures. A drowned goat, a dog. People. Don’t look.

  More time passes.

  The water starts to drain away.

  “Do you think Pim will be okay?” Ophelia asks the blonde Virgo. The woman’s clear, grey eyes pierce Ophelia.

  “She will wake up, if that’s what you mean.” Her voice is almost as deep as a man’s.

  “Has she been like this before?”

  The Virgo shakes her head. “It has begun.”

  “What? What has begun?” The earthquake, the tsunami, the volcano?

  But the Virgo doesn’t answer.

  Ophelia looks over at the motionless figure in white. The flimsy fabric of the veil flutters with each exhale of her breath, rising and falling, a delicate rhythm. Ophelia cannot make out her features. Her hands look old, blue veins raised up under white skin. “What about the Mender?”

  “What about her?” The Virgo’s voice sharpens and Ophelia feels her cheeks flushing.

  “What is wrong with her?” she pushes.

  The blonde Virgo looks over at the white-robed woman with an expression that reminds Ophelia of how her mother looks at Darryl when he’s sleeping.

  “She’s dying.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I Walk The Line

  It takes a long time for the water to drain out of the coliseum, and even longer for it to leave the city. Ophelia can see almost everything by standing on tiptoe, peering over the high wall of the arena. The wave leaves in its wake mud, mangled trees, rocks, death. The wave leaves in its wake moaning, crying, keening grief.

  Ophelia follows the Virgos and The Gor. They pick their way down and out of the arena, through the city.

  The Gor carries the Mender, the Virgos carry Pim. Ophelia scurries along behind. She doesn’t know where they are going. Maybe back to that courtyard high above the city where she woke up.

  They file into a gaping dark archway that punches through the wall surrounding the city, and they climb. The street is slimy with refuse, everything vomited by the terrible surge, horrible beneath Ophelia’s bare feet. Up and up, a tight spiralling street paved with cobblestones that hurt underfoot. Soon they are high enough to have left the predations of the wave behind them.

  The Gor leads them through another dark tunnel. A great stone building looms over them. The outside is carved, so ornately decorated that Ophelia thinks it must be a church or a temple. “The Palace,” the blonde Virgo says. The Gor leads them all up the steps and he gives a vast wooden door, studded with iron, a mighty kick with his hoof. It flies open. They walk wearily inside.

  The way Pim’s neck lolls between the Virgos’ hands puts Ophelia’s heart
in her mouth.

  The sumptuous entrance hall is hung with rose and gold cloth. Nothing has a right angle. Countless doors open off to either side, and staircases carved from pink-white stone, like lacy froth, surge upward in curves. They pass through a great ballroom, curling and swooping like the interior of a giant pink marble conch shell. Passages twist and turn.

  I’ll never get out of here, Ophelia thinks. If I get lost, I’ll starve to death.

  The Gor turns into a large room with big windows looking out onto green. Couches and daybeds are scattered across a rich blue and green carpet, all upholstered in silvery hues. The Virgos place Pim on a daybed.

  Ophelia kneels by her friend. Her breathing is shallow, her lips are pale. When Ophelia takes her hand, it is cold.

  The entourage is leaving, filing out. “Where are you going?” Ophelia yelps. “Can’t someone get the doctor?” She hasn’t seen him, she realizes, since the hangings.

  The blonde Virgo looks over her shoulder. “You must take care of Pim.”

  The murmuring women, footsteps quiet on the carpet, flutter out the door. The white robes of the Mender trail through the air behind The Gor like a dragonfly’s wings, brushed backward with the speed of his passage. Then they are gone.

  “Wonderful.” Ophelia looks around the lavish room. She needs a blanket, she thinks—Pim is cold, perhaps she’s in shock. Then something warm to drink would be good, for when Pim wakes up. Because she will wake up. The thought of being here alone, without Pim—of never hearing Pim’s voice again—is intolerable.

  There are no blankets in the whole goddamn room.

  There are, however, tapestries hanging on the walls. They have obviously been made for this room. They hang from ceiling to floor, long and narrow, all in the same style. They look like Chinese pictures, bright and rhythmically patterned.

  Ophelia goes to one and gives it a tentative shake. It’s woven of some light, dense fabric—silk?—and depicts a fantastical battle. A dragon, and two knights.