by K. C. Finn
The woman who had spoken wore a bun of grey hair sticking out of the back of a wide sunhat. She was dressed in a cream long-sleeved blouse with gentlemen’s trousers made of coarse brown fabric, and across her chest was a leather bandolier containing a variety of boxed and bound supplies. Over the ageing lady’s heart, the bandolier held in place a slim, golden telescope patterned with rich, shining jewels. She clutched at it with a silver-lined hand as she surveyed me, eyes narrow and dark.
“I say, you do speak English, don’t you?”
She was British, maybe even aristocratic. I wondered what she was doing so far out in the Arab lands alone. I thought she ought to have been sipping tea somewhere in a London parlour, wearing crinoline and lace. The desert had beaten me down, and I was a young, strong man. This woman had no chance of survival if the Moor found her at his dwelling.
“You should run,” I said, surprised by how dry my throat was from the day’s grind. “There’s a slave master here. He’s strong. If he finds you, he’ll—”
“Ah,” the woman interrupted, tapping her chin with one long-nailed finger. “Then this is the Temple-City of Abdul Kader?” Her voice rose with a pleasant, excited inflection.
“Yes, but—”
“In that case, I’ve come to the correct place.”
The old woman dismounted her contraption with a satisfied smile, and I had to admit, I was impressed by her spritely leap. She kicked out a steadying stand on the metal frame, and the winged bicycle rested precariously beside my rubble pile. Rotating the bandolier on her shoulder, the lady retrieved a slim vial of yellow liquid and a single metal spoon from one pocket. The spoon shone impossibly bright against her tanned hand, a silver-white metal that put my dull, rusting manacles to shame. She approached me with a kind, unperturbed smile, as though we were meeting in some country garden.
“I’m serious,” I warned her. “Kader’s a wicked man. If he finds you—”
“He won’t,” she cut me off again. “Rest assured young man, your salvation is come.”
She took the chains that held my manacles and gently tugged them, forcing me to hold out my wrists. Crouching, the elegant lady worked on the underside of my shackles, applying tiny droplets of her yellow tincture with the tip of the bright spoon. I heard a hissing noise, and the woman suddenly took hold of the iron ring on my left wrist and flung it aside. I shook off the right as well, watching it land with a thud in the shady sand, where it slowly burned itself away towards nothingness. I looked back to the woman as she replaced the trappings in her bandolier.
“How come your spoon didn’t melt?” I asked, hardly daring to believe that the whole moment wasn’t some feverish dream.
“Iridium,” she said, her thin lips crinkling into a smile. “Please hold all further questions until after our impressive escape.”
She held out her hand to me. Escape? Is she insane? Even if she was, there weren’t many options left open once my shackles had burned into contorted lumps of slag. If the Moor found me, there’d be more than a whipping in store.
I stepped forward and clutched her hand, a little lighter in the chest when I noted how she didn’t recoil from my soiled, bloody palm. She held me fast, like a mother with her charge, half-dragging my aching bones towards her bicycle. I threw myself into the back seat as she mounted the front, suddenly crying out when the open lash-mark across my spine connected with the hot copper rim of the seat.
“Lean forward and hold on,” she instructed with a shout. “I don’t want you falling off when we lift.”
“Lift?” I cried, doing as she commanded. “Are you saying this thing flies?”
She looked over her shoulder at me, dark eyes glittering. “Now, what did I say about questions?” The words were barely out of her mouth before we took off.
It didn’t so much fly as bounce. A small locomotive device sat under the bough between her seat and mine, which, once activated, enabled the winged cycle to leap into the air in the spirit of a flea. We travelled considerable distances above the golden sands, the wide sails at the vehicle’s rear helping us to steadily glide back to the ground after each assent.
The whole contraption had a lean to it, and I found I was clutching the back of the seat in front of me as my body shunted forward with every leap. However uncomfortable the journey seemed, I was thrilled to see the Moor’s pyramid fading to a distant speck on the horizon every time I turned my head.
When Kader’s Temple-City was out of sight, the old woman let the bicycle sink to the ground and began to pedal. The contraption’s thick tyres and heaving gears helped her to drive us on smoothly. Those angelic wings settled into a tail that trailed behind us, and I started to feel the heat of the afternoon sun sinking into my skin again. The wound across my back stung, and my forearms were tight with the strain of holding on during the flea-hops. When I let go of the seat before me, I was so shocked by the loss of feeling in my biceps, I nearly toppled clean out of my seat. I leaned forward again to keep my brow out of the sunlight, feeling my eyes grow heavy against my will.
“It’s not terribly polite to fall out of your rescuer’s vehicle in the middle of nowhere, you know.”
My eyes flickered open and closed as the woman spoke in that refined manner again. For all her lesson-like words, there was humour in her voice that stopped me from thinking she was haughty.
I was in the shade somewhere, with the rim of a bottle being pressed to my lips. I craned my neck, relieved by the trickle of water that filled my mouth. I swallowed the precious fluid and gasped, turning onto my back to get some air. I had forgotten about the lash mark again, but no sharp sting came when I put pressure on the wound. I felt around with a weak arm, twisting it under my body to find a thick, soft fabric held in place by taught straps of canvas.
“It’s just as well you were unconscious when I cleaned your wounds,” the woman said with a tut. “Ghastly things, whips.”
The shade was courtesy of the bicycle’s wings, which could be erected in the style of a breaker against the sirocco winds. I was lying on a thick blanket that dulled the heat of the blazing sands and the woman was seated in a cross-legged fashion. She looked down on me with a thoughtful pout in her wrinkled lips.
“Who are you?” I asked her.
“Mrs. Henry Crenshaw,” she answered, “but my given name is Maybelline.”
“Why were you looking for Kader’s place?”
Maybelline gave a little grin. “My, aren’t you a nosey one.”
“You said I could have questions after the escape,” I insisted. “So answer me. Why did you come to the pyramid?”
She reached out a tanned hand and put the back of it to my brow. She felt like warm leather against my dirty, sweat-soaked head, but there was something maternal to the touch that left me no desire to evade it.
“For you, of course,” she said.
I shuffled, lying there open-mouthed to take in another grateful breath.
“You know who I am?” I replied, not thinking it was possible.
“Not at all,” Maybelline answered.
A silence followed, and the old woman passed me some more water. As consciousness fully sank in, I was able to haul myself up and sit opposite her on the blanket. I rubbed my face all over with a little of the water, accepting a handkerchief from my saviour to wipe some of the grime from my skin.
“Would you mind if we dispensed with these short, cryptic answers?” I asked her. “Not that I’m not grateful for your help, but I find I’m having some problems trusting people after being tricked into being a Moor’s slave for the last six months.”
Maybelline raised her arms, patting the air down with a nod.
“It’s rather difficult to explain,” she said, “but I can certainly demonstrate my reasons for coming to you.”
She held her bandolier tight with one hand, using the other to free the gilded telescope over her heart. With a sharp tug, the ageing lady extended the full shaft of the device, gazing down at the blanket between
us through the lens. Amid the gemstones adorning its cylindrical shape, there were tiny golden dials and switches. Maybelline delicately touched them, as though she was playing a flute, and all the while, she kept the lens to one eye. After a few moments of adjustments, she handed the device to me.
“Take a look,” she demanded.
“At what?” I asked as the long device settled across my palms. “Where do I point it?”
“Anywhere you like,” Maybelline answered with a shrug.
I did as I was told, lifting the scope to one eye and pointing it out beyond the shade barrier of the bicycle. For a moment, I thought that it was broken, for all I saw within the lens was darkness, but then I realised that the scene inside the contraption was not the one ahead of me.
I could see the pyramid rising high into the twilight sky, its pointed precipice piercing navy clouds. At its base, my rubble pile was exactly as I had left it, my hammer and withered shackles in a heap in the sand. The Moor crouched beside the pile, lifting the lumps of iron that had once held me. His dark face was almost unfathomable in the moon’s obstructed glow, but the motion he made soon after his inspection was unmistakeable. He was raging and screaming words I couldn’t hear to people I couldn’t see, stamping his feet like a petulant child as foam grew on his snarling lip.
I felt the telescope being pulled away from my eye. I was blinded for a moment by daylight, and I sank my face into my hands, rubbing hard at my eye sockets once more. Faint clicks and presses told me that Maybelline was adjusting the scope once again.
“What is that thing?” I exclaimed. “Everything in it looked so real.”
“It was real,” Maybelline answered simply, “or at least, it will be tonight.”
It took me a long moment to understand what she meant. “That was Kader discovering that I’m gone?” I suggested.
Maybelline gave me a nod.
“But it was night there,” I continued, “and it’s day right now, so…”
She waited for me to say the utterly ridiculous words I was thinking, but it seemed that the suspense was too much for the old bird to take.
“So the Foresight showed you the future,” she concluded. “Here’s another. It might better explain my purpose in coming to you.”
She offered me the telescope again.
The future? Perhaps this was still a dream, and I was going to wake up any moment, still in my manacles, passed out beside that pyramid.
As much as I wanted to believe that I was free, the circumstances of my escape were becoming more incredulous by the minute. Still, if it was a dream, I had nothing to lose by peering through the future-lens once more.
This time, I saw myself within the circular view. It was day again, but I was standing at the side of a beautiful oasis, one hand poised on the central point of a pale canvas tent pitched in the sand. I was enrobed in turquoise folds, brighter than the azure sky above. They looked soft and new. I appeared far stronger than I currently was, smiling proudly as I swept open the folds of the dwelling and reached inside it. An old man emerged from within, looking haggard and underfed, but elated to see me all the same. He embraced me as a father would, his grey eyes gleaming with joy.
“Who is he?” I said.
Maybelline pulled the Foresight away from my eye once more. She looked into it too, a forlorn sadness sweeping over her lined features.
“My Henry,” she explained, exhaling a quiet sigh.
She contracted the telescope and replaced it in her bandolier, reaching out across the blanket to take my fingertips into her cupped palms. I met her eyes to find them shining with what appeared to be regret.
“My husband and I are seasoned explorers,” she revealed, “and we came to Egypt a year ago to seek new artefacts and wonders. The existence of this enchanted telescope was a particular myth that we were keen to see proven as fact.”
“Sounds like you succeeded,” I said, a smile curling one corner of my lip.
Maybelline did not smile in return. She only clutched my hands tighter.
“We paid our price for it,” she said gravely. “The Foresight belonged to a genie, one who wasn’t keen on the idea of us taking it away from him. Henry forced the object from him and handed it to me for packing. The next I knew, he was gone.”
“Gone?” I said.
The old woman nodded. “Banished, it would seem. Our acquisition of the telescope saw us separated across the length of the country. I was left totally alone, the genie had departed too, and all I had was this to aid me.”
She tapped at the Foresight where it lay nestled against her heart. I was starting to understand why she kept it there in particular.
“It has taken me three hundred days to learn to calibrate it correctly,” she explained, “and the vision I just procured for you is the day that Henry and I are reunited.”
“And I help you?” I asked her. “I help you to rescue your husband?”
Maybelline looked down at our fingers locked together, and then slowly let me go.
“It’s the only way,” she said in a heavy tone.
“Then what are we waiting for?” I exclaimed, a new, proud sensation swelling my chest. “Get that thing back out and let’s find which way to go.”
The lady did not look up. Her aged fingers were toying with a loose thread in her coarse trousers.
“What’s the matter?” I questioned.
She raised a hand to cover her mouth, fingertips rubbing at her cheeks nervously. “I’ve just spent so long looking,” she said hoarsely, “and now that I know who you are, know that the end is so close, I…”
I reached out to take hold of the tip of her chin, turning her weathered face to see my smile.
“I want to give Henry his freedom,” I assured her, “because I know exactly what it’s like to be a slave.”
“I know you do,” she whispered.
Her words became punctuated by sobs, and she promptly excused herself to prepare us some food. I could see her shoulders shaking in silent sorrow as she fumbled in the leather pouches of the bicycle. I didn’t blame her for being so overcome. I could have cried too at the sudden realisation of my true freedom. Maybelline and I would rescue Henry together, and the explorers could surely aid me in getting back to America.
I thought, for just a moment, about a split in the proceeds from the sale of the Foresight, but I desperately tried to push that greedy idea aside. No more gluttony. It had caused me too much trouble already. From now on, I would be a good man. Good men were always rewarded for their deeds.
I trusted the influence of the Foresight more and more as the days went on. Maybelline was able to navigate the Fleahopper (an inspired name in her mind, no doubt) to find obscure encampments and secluded oases that were surely unknown to any but those who lived there.
The old woman met with surprise wherever we landed the craft, but she rarely encountered trouble once her gentle words and bartering skills were put to use. It was hard-going, hopping and sailing along in the baking sun, but I had clothes, food and salves for my injuries. I was starting to remember the basic elements of my freedom, and I cherished every one.
I knew that the day of Henry’s rescue was drawing near when the turquoise robes gleamed at me from the stall of a travelling market. When Maybelline saw them too, a brief reluctance passed over her aged face, but she was mollified when we managed to haggle down the price. It was written in the future, after all, that I should wear this colour to rescue her husband. Still, in the final days of our journey, the old woman seemed to grow less and less excited by the prospect of fulfilling her year-long quest. Every time she consulted with the Foresight, she came away with tears in her eyes.
I knew the size and shape of Henry’s tent when I saw it appear below us. We were gliding the Fleahopper over a particularly good stream of warm air, slowly descending as the little pyramid shape came into view. The massive semi-circle of the orange sun was settling to our left as we brought the craft to rest, barely two hundred yards from
where the tent sat. I relished in the memory of Henry’s grateful old face when I recovered him.
“Come on,” I said eagerly. “Let’s get him!”
“No,” Maybelline said, grabbing my silken sleeve before I could move. “It’s dusk now. The vision was morning light.”
“Who cares?” I asked with a grin. “We made it here, we’ve got him now. For God’s sake, Maybelline, he’s right there!”
I spoke so loudly that I wouldn’t have been surprised if Henry had emerged from the tent on his own. The canvas shape remained still in the breezeless night. Maybelline’s face was rapt with worry once more as she shook her head. When I faced her, she traced a fingertip down my jaw, scratching against the short beard that had grown since she’d freed me from Kader’s shackles.
“The future is written,” she told me. “It is not for us to change our destinies.”
“But you changed mine,” I answered, reaching out to hold her shaking shoulders. “I thought I was going to be a slave forever, but you stepped in and changed it all.”
Her watery eyes observed me, her head tilting gently to one side. “What were you before you came here?” she asked. “Some sort of cowboy?”
I shook my head a little. “I wanted to be,” I said with a laugh, “but I never managed to rise above being a thief. Cowboys have a certain reckless bravery to them that I didn’t have back then.”
“Would you say that you were a good man?” Maybelline asked.
I swallowed hard against a sudden, immovable mass in my throat. “No,” I said softly. “Not at all.”
Something in the old woman’s face shifted, and she let out a heavy sigh that seemed to take all the weight out of her shoulders.
“I suppose, then, that this is your chance to be one?” she suggested.
“And I intend to take it,” I answered with a nod.
All night, I kept looking to the tent for signs of Henry. Each time my eyes opened to the sound of rustling sands, my gaze flew to the dark shape cast into shadow by the moon. Maybelline slept peacefully on the blanket beside me, wrapped up against the night chill with the salty tracks of dried tears beneath her eyes. She had cried us both to sleep, but my vivid dreams kept waking me as the endless night wore on. Dreams of shackles and Kader’s deep, pinhole eyes. I couldn’t shake the feeling that those eyes could see me, even when I was awake.