by Anna Tambour
She smiled, and the sun broke through the window, killing New Dawn and tossing sparkle into her eyes. The Omniscient’s mouth opened. He remembered sun tossing seaspray on—
That wooden figurehead of Mistress Fokke had inspired him ever since she rode her first sea. He’d never understood the vast incuriosity of his writers—their wish for her to be lost forever, their need to deceive. Why did they not see what he saw in her? Why did they reject his facts and leave her unsalvaged till she was a wormridden mockery of magnificence? Why did they want her to be another Tragic Lost, travelling forever in a fog of mystery, a mistress damned by association? He’d loved her, but he, only the Omniscient, could not save her. Only the rubberies could do that. He could not make history.
The sun ran its fingers through the Muse’s hair.
You make your History!
His right hand flew to his chest where he felt something that he’d dictated so many times—a catch in his breath. ‘Catch’ was such a weak description for the grab at his throat from out of nowhere—terrifying and thrilling.
The Muse stared, bemused. Then, he wobbled, higher than safe for a human of that age and portliness (though he called them rubberies, rubberies don’t bounce, and she’d learnt, after catching her finger in the door, that this form of theirs could be hurt) and his mouth closed and opened again . . . and closed, his eyes caressing with the greatest delicacy: the lines of her face.
And she felt something also. Something . . . what?
She dropped her eyes and adjusted the neckline of her dress. She climbed off her bunk.
“Would you like me to get you a cup of tea?” she said.
Some lordes wyll soone be pleased & some wyll not, as they be of complexion.
—Wynkyn de Worde,
The Boke of Keruynge
Failure is not an option
THE GREAT Timursaçi was not as creative in his punishments as his late uncle, once a Great but since his death, remembered as Timur of a Thousand Pieces—but what the present Great Timursaçi lacked in creativity, he gained in the swiftness of his justice.
Munifer’s imagination took him to the feet of the Great Timursaçi, where he had just dropped after presenting the new moustache made out of who-knows-what?
“Tap,” would go the terrible staff upon his shoulder, and the chief eunuch would toss the first cord around him, and in the gulp of a throat, Munifer would be swaddled in ropes in front of His Greatness, who would rise and proceed, with Munifer carried like a baby, and the court following noisy as birds at dawn—to the Bridge of Dispatch and Divorce where Munifer would be tossed into the Pond of Sighs to the consternation of the assembled.
Would he be torn apart by Timursaçi’s crocodiles, or taken down whole by one? Men would tear their beards and cry out in grief when the pond stilled. Much was wagered at these games.
With all his heart, Munifer wanted to die an old man, spending his seed in the warm earth of a woman.
So he smothered his imagination and steeled himself to become a hunter—a difficult change of role for someone who had only ever gathered. The village-of-no-name had been so honoured by the Great Timursaçi’s mother, that they had no choice. They rendered unto Munifer, for the Great Timursaçi, and that was all. But now cruel life had intervened, and he could hardly go to Timursaçi’s mother and ask her bestow the honour on another village, since her rage at her honoured village thwarting her could entangle him. And of course, this virgin hair was not something that you could find by looking any more than you could find that precious mushroom that grows under the ground. No, you had to sniff around their fathers, and ask without asking. And how could he obtain it? Money would taint it.
Hunt, Munifer! he told himself and your quarry will reveal itself. You are a man who has been blessed, and this is a trial. A trial, not a sentence. Remember that.
He set off on his hunt, a handsome, well-dressed, wily man. A smooth man such as you would expect, since his very smoothness lent its grace to the length of the moustache that was without precedent or equal—the moustache that gave the Great Timursaçi his saçiness.
A week passed while Munifer hunted.
Another week.
Another.
Another!
He forgot to bathe. His underarms became rank. His long black eyelashes turned white and his handsome head of coal- black hair grew shaggy and long and grey and when he saw a man who must have a daughter, his upper lip curled back and his teeth gleamed long and yellow, which was no help at all in his wily smoothness.
On the fourth week of his hunt in a tavern packed with foreigners he heard of a certain Mulliana, a virgin with a voice of gold (it was said, which didn’t interest him), the looks of the sun (not that he cared), and hair so black and long and sinuous that it was said to coil around her at night and protect her from all harm.
She lived in a tower (they said) where her father had put her for safe keeping when she was still a child. There she had grown to a maidenhood so pure that no man had ever seen her, including her own father. Munifer overheard this from three earnest princes on a Quest. They had come from afar, as she was said to be a virgin without peer, for her skill at rugmaking would pay for all the years she lived, once her petals had fallen. They had apparently set out to woo and win her, or (later in the evening, with earnestness having slipped to the floor) just win her (brotherly sniggering) by the book of Quest, or the hook of a shepherd, stilts and rope, or by the crook of a forefinger to the father, if she cannot truly be stolen, for what could he want but the highest price?
Munifer was elated, and when they made their way out of the tavern, a serpent player could have followed them, braying his instrument at full obnoxiousness, and they never would have noticed. They fell in a heap in a field by the road, and woke when the sun was high—with sore heads but brotherly, youthful jest, and great energy to be on their way. He followed them, a tail that they never noticed, so loudly did they travel. They talked in yells, so the tales of their exploits were not only amusing, but wonderful for this lonely hunter who could otherwise be frightened in the strange wilds. They traversed mountains, a desert, and through the Cave of Sorrows. He followed the three princes there, too, having first held back. But that test they had spoken of so much in the days before must have been a doddle to them. When their shouts were no longer in the cave, but on the other side of the mountain, he just walked through with the most unpleasant part of his sojourn being: a stubbed toe.
Onward walked Munifer, behind the three princes. At night he slept as close as he could without making them look up from their fire with a “Hark!”, and the inevitable raised swords.
Week after week they progressed, and amazed Munifer with their Quest. The further they walked, the more exploits they must have performed (Munifer safely behind them and ready to run the way he’d come), yet they carried on and on. At the site of each exploit passed, Munifer paused to pay respects.
That rock. No gold ring that could not be pulled from it, jutted out.
That river. They must have tamed it. Munifer had no trouble crossing the timid flow.
Etc.
One night as the princes rubbed their muscles, Munifer overheard:
“We draw near, brothers.”
“A truer word was ne’er said.”
“Near we draw, I trow.”
“Brothers?”
“I think that I shall never see—”
“Fie, brother! Thoughts are virgins to the Evil Eye.”
Munifer drew as near as he dared, yet he could not distinguish one prince’s voice from another.
“I fear that when we come out of the Desert of No Return, I shall not be the prince I am.”
“Neither I.”
“Nor so.”
“So we are three. We will have conquested,” said one. “And then it is only a matter of fighting each other, for you, or you, or myself, to win the Singing Flower of Virtuous Usefulness, Mulliana.”
“Truer words hath never been.”
“Truly.”
“Brothers!”
They rose—and made lustrous black by the moonless night and the fire that leapt between them, they noisily crossed their blades.
“All to the fore!”
“Though it be seven years more!”
“And possibly, a score,” said the one who might have been the one who had earlier expressed self-doubt.
“Seven?” mouthed Munifer.
He slithered away in such sloppy haste that the next morning when the princes woke refreshed, the track that his body and his limbs made, put the end to the princes’ Quest.
Each would have liked to have said that he would leave the Singing Flower to his brothers, and walked away, but each did not. For as each woke and went behind a bush to relieve himself—he saw, as he squatted, the spoor of a dragon that must have been watching them; and each ran as fast and silently and alone as he could, away from the dragon’s Quest (and secretly hoping that, of the three brothers, his own spoor was the weakest).
The place where Munifer severed his tie to the princes was, he estimated, three months’ journey from the Great Timursaçi’s palace. Added to the time it would take him to create the moustache, Munifer had no choice.
In the first town he reached, he bought—yes, he was forced to purchase—a bag of virgin hair in the Quarter of Ill Repute.
Burden borne by a spy
HE BLAMED IT ON LOVE.
Mistress!
Master!
Coo coo coo
Sure, he’d seen what love did, and always dictated its illogicalities with the superior non-judgmentalism of the objective observer. Many of his writers had taken this as a license to be cruel—not that this bothered him then, before he was love’s victim.
Twilight. She was lying on her top bunk making that flicking sound. Flick. Flick flick flick. Flick.
“Miss all those men?” he asked casually.
The flicking got louder. “I already told you.”
“Don’t you miss that life?”
“Gorgonna, no.”
“I don’t want to pry,” he said, “but how many were there?”
“You should be able to guess.”
“Millions?”
“I never counted.”
“Did any of them treat you with as much respect as I?”
“They worshipped me.”
“You, or—”
“Me!” she screeched, but she broke into a jagged sobbing that turned into hiccups.
“Mistress,” he crooned.
“Master.”
Verily, she said the right thing with its concomitant exclamation mark, but he’d had eons of being an observer. Her non-enthusiasm was too eloquent for words. She’d cut off his flow with a guillotine.
And now, clutching a pack of cigarettes, she left. She closed the door behind her as if she cared for his privacy.
He suspected, you see.
All those trips to that smoking section. She wasn’t law abiding. Sometimes he couldn’t smell the fragrance of that nice young man’s wonderful tea because of the atmosphere in 3C—tobaccan smog. There must be another reason.
Motivation?
It was a curious fact that, since he’d taken on human form, he had gained emotional depth, and also lost. Now, in a cruel twist of history (of my own making) the Omniscient had to guess her motivations, and that guessing dug depth into him with a wooden spoon. My companion for eternity? Pshaw!
Love hurts.
Act like a man.
Alone in the cacophonic, wind-whipped smoking section between the carriages, she pocketed the cigarettes and reached into another pocket in her red dress and made that flicking sound (how many pockets does that dress have? None of them show and the dress swirls as much as a romance). She dropped her arms to her sides and the dress slid off to pool like blood around her feet. Her thigh- high red rubber boots unlaced themselves down to her alabaster toes. She kicked the costume to some corner that the Omniscient would have noticed in the old days, but couldn’t see now. Besides, he had to concentrate on her (yes, there he was, like a common rubbery, furtively watching through a hole in the window’s muck).
Her arms rose and a pure white Junoesque gown fell upon her, partly covering her perfect chests. She girded her waist; and silently, stealthily, infinitely treacherously, she vanished.
Retired, my foot!
If only the Omniscient could have followed, but the body he was dwelling in had trapped him, or rather, the History he had made (and, he thought bitterly, she).
Where has she gone? Who is she seeing? Why does she need them? And how does she return?
For return she surely had. This was a habit of hers that she had not kicked. That sneak. That perjurer! She’s not worth me saving.
Truth hurts.
Now I know why spies and death go together.
“Watching ’em isn’t a touch on smelling ’em.”
“Eh?” The Omniscient jumped back.
An old man shuffled between the Omniscient and the door, and uncricked himself vertebra by cracking vertebra. He rubbed at a lower place on the glass and peered, but as the Omniscient could have told him, there was no one there.
Eventually, “Ahh,” he said. He released his grip and subsided. “I also like to wait here. Why freeze?” Crisply, he saluted. “Your watch, comrade.”
The Omniscient nodded. What is he talking about? Not that it mattered, for this was the second friendly rubbery he’d met. This warmth was just what he needed. The Omniscient’s eyes dropped to his companion’s chest: the fabric of the coat (cardboard and whiskers?) and its repairs; the stiff rows of faded ribbons and grey- faced medals. “Yes indeed, comrade,” he agreed, to what, he wasn’t sure, but he smiled expansively and was suddenly so happy that he began (not that he noticed) to pet his own comfortable, cuddly round stomach covered by that gorgeous paisley waistcoat.
His new friend noticed. His eyes jumped to the waistcoat— its buttons, its embroidered tear drops—as warming as a song, against winter. His jaw jutted out. “It’s an unregulated space. You can’t stop anyone smoking there, and if you report me for innocently smelling them, I’ll report you for harassing a hero of the State.” He raised a knotted fist to the Omniscient’s chin. “Comrade!”
Manifesto delivered, he fled, fast as his bowlegs could scurry.
Blue velvet
UNNATURAL, a silenced bladder-pipe. The fall into the fire hadn’t burnt her alive. Faldarolo plucked her from the lips of that disaster—but in the moment that she slipped from the cloak (which was itself consumed by fire) sparks spattered her skin (so richly massaged with sheep’s brain). Each tiny spark ate its banquet, and expired.
To look at her, you’d never know that she was injured. Disfigured, yes. The red blotch besmirched her bold as ever. You couldn’t see the holes, but who sees stars in the sky in day? Faldarolo’s fingertips felt her voice fall through the holes to be lost as surely as water through a colander.
The musician hid in a cave for a day and a night. He mourned, tore fistfuls of hair, rent his robe, and emerged at last with so much confidence that he looked like a fakir: She was not dead. There were masters skilled in science who could restore the bladder-pipe to health. Faldarolo swallowed the truth, his bitter feast: he was now and until he could restore her, a bladder-pipe player with a silent bladder-pipe. How he would pay, he knew not. He’d never been anything but a bladder-pipe player, and this bladder-pipe had been given to him by his father (a man who had skill, but no sensitivity). Faldarolo walked out of the cave a determined man. If he had to be a slave to some master with a whip, he didn’t care. He would offer himself.
In the meantime, however, he, the slave of the bladder-pipe, set out with a goal if not a plan. He made his way down to the path and walked till the path became a road. And there he sat cross-legged, the naked bladder-pipe on his lap, shrouded as well as he could manage with his hands. A dried-fruit merchant passed, dropping onto Faldarolo from each of his donkeys, a little dust. A
shepherd passed with a flock of goats, their great udders swathed by kerchiefs knotted on the goats’ backs. Many other people and animals passed, and though some glanced at him curiously, none stopped. He mightn’t have seen any of them, such was his disregard. Eggs, he didn’t seem to notice. A heaped donkeyload of freshly cut chickpeas. Feasts passed, and he, to whom one dried apricot would have been a banquet, looked past all of them as if he expected someone (perhaps dropped from the sky in a bubble).
Finally, his eyes lit with an unholy-man glow. Up he jumped, ran into the road, and begged, with preliminaries so respectful, to reveal them would be indecent: “blue velvet—only an arşin- length”.
The cloth merchant was so intrigued by this starved beggar with the bladder-pipe (yes, the merchant saw the bladder-pipe, and the way Faldarolo tried to shield it) that he ordered his donkeys led off the path and hobbled, and camp to be made for the night. He promised to give Faldarolo all the cloth he needed on condition that Faldarolo tell him why.
Faldarolo had never eaten so well. “Another fig?” urged the merchant.
“Thank you, no.” Faldarolo itched to hear what the merchant wanted of him. He had asked a number of times but been told to go on with his story, as that was “payment enough”. He knew from experience that it could never be. He was a musician, not a story- teller.
“And now I am not a musician,” he insisted yet again. He needed to feel the pain from that piercing truth the better to keep his resolution strong. If only that fire had burnt holes in my skin rather than hers. “I would die a thousand deaths rather than—”
“And so you shall,” the merchant laughed indulgently, “where I’m sure to meet you again.”
Faldarolo dropped his eyes. Under the square of velvet on his lap lay the bladder-pipe. As soon as they were alone, Faldarolo would sew her cloak. He was eager to leave the merchant, who had been so kind that Faldarolo expected the punishment any moment.