A Conspiracy of Truths

by Alexandra Rowland

  Rabbit wiggled his nose at her and twitched his whiskers and leaped all about, and then he sat down and tucked himself up into a little ball and said, “Yes, this is good. Is there anything to eat?”

  “There is snow,” said Woman.

  Rabbit ate a little, but soon he asked, “Is there anything to eat?”

  Woman said, “There is dirt.”

  Rabbit ate a little, but soon he asked, “Is there anything to eat?”

  “I don’t know,” Woman said sharply. “Why don’t you look around and find something?”

  Rabbit nodded. “A good idea,” he said, and he looked all around, and kicked the snow drifts with his heels until the sun set and the moons rose. “Aha,” he said. “Why don’t we eat those?”

  “You can try,” said the Woman. “I’m tired from walking all today. I will rest.”

  “You do that,” said Rabbit, and he kicked his heels and dashed off to see if the moons could be eaten. He came back in a little while, with a bowl of cheese curds and a bowl of brown rice. “Here,” he said.

  “Where did you get those?”

  “From the moons,” said Rabbit. “You may have them. They are not to my taste.”

  Woman ate with her fingers until all that was left were three grains of rice in the one bowl and the milky scum of the cheese curds in the second bowl. Woman took the three grains of rice and turned them into a bow, a fine hat, and a clay pot. Then she scraped out the milky scum with her fingernail and flicked it into the clay pot, which became full of milk. “Oh,” said Rabbit, “What is that?”

  “You may drink some, but I will have the rest in the morning when I wake up.”

  Woman went to sleep and when she woke up in the morning, the clay pot was empty but for two drops of milk in the very bottom. “That Rabbit!” she said, and stomped her foot, and the print of her shoe filled up with water and that became Lake Qoyora. “Now I will be hungry all day until he comes back, and then I will shake him by the scruff of his neck.” But she thought that Rabbit was very fast and she might not be able to catch him, so she scraped up more earth and mixed in a little lake water and the two drops of milk, and made Dog, who was brown with milk-white spots. Dog was very serious, and sniffed the bowl and sniffed all around where Woman had slept. “Yes, this is good,” she said. Then Dog said, “I can smell that Rabbit, and lots of other things too. I’ll watch the milk while you sleep.”

  “Good,” said Woman. “And if he steals it again, I shall shoot him with my bow.”

  “And I shall rend and tear his flesh with my teeth until he asks me nicely to stop,” said Dog.

  Woman walked along the shore of the lake, and she picked up pebbles here and there and flung them into the water, and they became fishes, and she flung pebbles into the air and they became birds. And in the evening, she came back to the camp and found Dog with Rabbit hanging from her jaws by the scruff of his neck.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Rabbit demanded. “What have I done, and who is this rude creature?”

  “That is Dog,” said Woman, “and she is a better friend than you are. You drank all the milk!”

  “I didn’t either!” said Rabbit. “I only stepped away behind a snow drift to attend to some personal business, and when I came back, it was gone.”

  “Because you drank it! And now I have nothing to eat.”

  “I will go back to the moons and get you more if that’s what you want,” said Rabbit, “only tell this Dog creature to let me go.”

  Woman nodded and Dog dropped Rabbit, who scampered off to the moons right away and came back with two more bowls, one of rice and one of cheese curds. Woman gave Dog a few cheese curds, and Dog went loping off to snap at fish in the lake. Woman scraped the cheese scum into the clay pot and it filled with milk, and then she fashioned her three leftover grains into a tent and a fine pair of boots. When she went to sleep, she told Dog to guard the milk from Rabbit, and Dog agreed.

  In the morning, Woman woke up and found that Dog was asleep and the milk was gone, and she kicked at the ground and cried, “That Rabbit!” The earth and snow she kicked up fell in a great pile to the east and became the Tegey Mountains. Dog was very embarrassed when she woke up and saw that Woman’s clay pot was empty again, and she went slinking off into the snow to feel sorry for herself.

  “I shall have to make something smarter than Dog and less deceitful than Rabbit,” Woman said, and she thought to herself for a long while. At noon, she gathered reeds from the waterside and fashioned them into a skeleton, and then she packed mud around it until it was almost the same shape as she was, and the two drops of milk left over in the pot went into his eyes, and then she had made Man. And Man counted all his fingers and toes and rolled his shoulders and looked at Woman’s tent and fine hat and fine shoes, and said, “Yes, this is good.”

  “I have a problem,” Woman said. “And if you help me, I’ll let you sleep inside my tent where it is warm, instead of out here in the snow.”

  “That sounds fair,” said Man.

  Woman told him about Rabbit, and the bowls of rice and cheese, and the clay pot full of milk that Rabbit drank every night. And Man nodded and cursed Rabbit’s name with Woman, and promised to sit up and guard the milk that night. He hid in the tent when Dog caught Rabbit that evening so that Rabbit wouldn’t see him, and Woman shouted at Rabbit until he scampered off to bring her bowls of rice and cheese. There wasn’t much to eat that night, for Woman had to share the two bowls between herself and Man and Dog, but they assured one another that they would drink their fill of rich, fatty milk in the morning.

  Man sat outside the tent with Dog, and Woman went to sleep, but no sooner had she drifted off than Man came charging into the tent, shouting and crying and carrying on. She jumped out of bed and would have smacked him, but she saw he was trembling with fright. “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “It’s Rabbit! Why didn’t you tell me he was so big?”

  “He isn’t! He’s small enough for Dog to pick up and carry in her teeth!”

  “Then he must be able to change shape!” Man cried. “This was huge, as tall at the shoulder as I am, and its head even taller, with enormous ears and fearsome teeth!”

  Woman grabbed her bow and ran outside. She saw that the clay pot was empty of milk, and in the light of the two moons, she saw something very large indeed disappearing over a swell of the steppe.

  “That can’t be Rabbit,” she said to Man. “I shall have to apologize to him. A wicked beast has come to steal from us, and Rabbit has been most sorely mistreated through no fault of his own.”

  But Man was still trembling with fright, and the thought of a wicked beast did nothing to soothe him, so Woman took him into the tent and made him lie down beside her, and showed him a little of her magic, so that he would have nothing to fear from wicked beasts, and showed him a little of what two people can do alone in a tent at night, so that he would forget about beasts entirely and go to sleep, which he promptly did when they were finished. Woman got up and put on her fine boots and her fine hat, and took her bow. She looked in the bowls and found three grains of rice that they hadn’t eaten. She made one into a long, stout rope, which she looped over one arm, and she put the other two grains of rice in her pocket.

  She went outside and made Dog lie down in front of the door to guard Man while he slept, and she told her, “If I am not back when the sun rises, take Man down to the lake and see if the two of you can find something else to eat. And be very polite to Rabbit if you see him.”

  Then Woman strode off into the darkness and found the tracks that the wicked beast had left, and she followed them across the steppe while the stars swung above her and the moons rolled down the other side of the sky and set.

  When the sky was just turning green in the east, Woman saw a big shape, and she began whistling to herself as if she hadn’t noticed. The wicked beast looked up and watched her approach curiously. When she got closer, she saw he was dark gray, like deeply tarnished silver, and the wh
ole lower half of his face was suspiciously white, as if he had dipped it in milk.

  “Hello,” she said, “I’m Woman.”

  “Hello,” said the wicked beast. “I’m Horse.”

  “What a fine color you are!” she said.

  Horse arched his neck a little. “I am a very fine color, yes.”

  “And what muscles you have!”

  Horse pranced in place. “They are quite strong, yes.”

  “And what a beautiful tail you have!”

  Horse flicked his tail. “It is very beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Very! You are clearly a mighty and noble beast—is there any other in the world like you?”

  “None,” Horse whinnied, extremely pleased with himself, and added, “I know magic things too,” because he didn’t want Woman to miss an opportunity to admire that as well.

  “Truly? How did you come by those?”

  “There is a magic lake with red banks and frothy white water, and every night I drink it dry, and every day it fills up again. It was after I first drank from it that I got my magic.”

  “I don’t believe you. Anyone could say that they’ve found a magic lake with red banks and white water,” she said, lofty. “So I don’t think you can do magic at all.”

  “I can, though!” said Horse.

  “Can you? Show me, then.”

  “Fine,” Horse harrumphed. “I will.” He flicked his tail and clouds filled the sky, and then he stomped a hoof and a bolt of lightning struck the ground in the distance.

  “Is that all?” Woman scoffed. “Why, I can do the same.” And she clapped her hands together and a roll of thunder roared across the steppe, and she shook out her hair and the clouds cleared from the sky.

  Horse snorted and shook his head and droplets of sweat flew into the air and became butterflies and shiny beetles. Woman spat on the ground, and the spittle turned into jerboas and mice, which hopped and scampered off into the snow and burrowed below the ground to keep themselves warm.

  Horse reared and stomped both hooves into the ground, and burning embers scattered across the grass between them. Woman took one of the grains of rice from her pocket and made an iron box, which the embers flew into. She put the box in her pocket. “We could be at this all day,” she said. “How about a different game?”

  “What is it?” Horse asked.

  “I have here a magic rope. Nothing can escape from it.”

  “I doubt it!” Horse said. “Have you seen my muscles? They are very strong!”

  “Let me put it around your neck, then, and I will climb onto your back. If you can get away from me, then I will admit that you are the more powerful magician.”

  Horse flicked his ears one way and another as he thought about it. “Well, all right,” he said. “That sounds easy.”

  So he stood still while Woman tied the rope into a halter and put it around his neck and head, and draped the end of it over his withers as reins. The Horse was busy looking at the butterflies and beetles that his sweat had turned into, and so Woman, while Horse was distracted, took the last grain of rice out of her pocket and turned it into a very fine saddle, carved with designs and decorated with malachite beads and gold leaf, and she cinched the girth strap tight and leaped into it before Horse noticed.

  “That feels very strange,” Horse said, arching his back and twisting one way and another. “Have we started the game?”

  Woman picked up the reins and said, “Yes.” And Horse whirled round and round, and bucked and reared, and then he began running as hard as he could across the steppe so that the wind blew his tail and Woman’s hair out behind them like war banners. He kicked and shied and he leaped high into the air, but Woman would not be unseated.

  “Is this all you can do?” she asked Horse, as if she were bored. Horse bared his teeth and ran her to the horizon, so close that the sun nearly burned them, and then he turned and ran the other way until the night wind almost froze them both to the bone, and still Woman would not be unseated.

  At long last, Horse fell still and dropped his head, his sides heaving and flecked with froth and his legs trembling a little. “I give up,” he said. “You are the greater magician, and I am bested.”

  “That is because it was my pot of milk you were drinking every night, foolish Horse! Are you ashamed? A kind Rabbit took the blame for you, and you will come and apologize to him.”

  “All right,” said the Horse, who was far too tired to argue anymore.

  Woman twitched the reins and guided Horse back in the direction of her tent at the pace of a slow walk. The froth dripped off Horse’s sides onto the ground, where it melted the snow and sprouted into grasses and flowers.

  When they reached the tent, they saw Man and Dog and Rabbit sitting together, looking very forlorn, and Rabbit’s whiskers were singed. “What’s the matter?” Woman asked.

  “We explained to Rabbit what happened,” said Man, “and he was very generous and forgave us our mistake, and he helped Dog and me catch a lot of fish from the lake, because we thought we could eat them, but they are cold and slimy and not at all good.”

  “So Rabbit thought that perhaps they would be better if they were less wet, and he went to get some embers from the sun to cook the fish over,” Dog said.

  “I had nothing to carry them in, and I burned my tongue when I tried to pick them up,” Rabbit finished, lisping a little. “So we have a pile of fish, which will begin to stink, and nothing to eat. What is that you’re riding?”

  “This is Horse,” said Woman, “and he has been drinking the milk.”

  The three of them kicked and stamped their feet in shock and cried out, “The wicked beast!”

  “Horse has something to say to Rabbit,” Woman said. “Hush, and attend.”

  “I drank the milk, and you took the blame for it,” said Horse. “I am very sorry, and I would like to make it up to you. Ask any gift of me.”

  “Hmmm,” said Rabbit, looking Horse up and down. “I shall have your beautiful long ears.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather have something else? They’re not very good ears at all, you know,” said Horse nervously, because he thought they were beautiful too and didn’t want to give them up.

  “They look fine to me, and mine are terribly stubby.” So Rabbit got Horse’s long, soft ears, and Horse had to make do with Rabbit’s old ones.

  Woman got off Horse’s back and gave the rope to Man so that Horse could not run away, and she took the iron box out of her pocket. She instructed Dog to help her dig a shallow hole, and they piled in grasses and dry animal droppings, and she poured the embers in and blew on them, and soon there was a comfortable fire. Man and Dog roasted the fish, and Rabbit ran off to the moons for cheese and rice. Woman made the iron box into an iron spike and drove it into the ground, and tied Horse’s rope to it. “You’ll have to stay here,” she said. “I don’t want you drinking any more milk, but here you can graze.” Horse was too tired to argue.

  They all ate well, and at the end of dinner, Woman scraped the cheese scum into the clay pot and it filled with milk, and she took the last three grains of rice and made another very fine saddle and two exquisite bridles. Finally Woman took the little bones from the fishes and some mud, and she made a beautiful Mare, which she painted pure white with the milk and the last patch of melting snow. Mare tossed her mane and shied at a stick on the ground and pushed her soft nose into Woman’s hand and said, “Yes, this is good.”

  “This is Mare,” said Woman to Man. “And she is kind and gentle, and so she will be yours to ride.”

  Then she took Mare to Horse, and she spoke to Mare. “This is Horse. He will be your mate, as Man is mine, but Horse is wild and he knows magic, so you must be wise and clever, and you mustn’t fall for his tricks, and you must help him learn that if he is less wild, then he will be fed until he’s fat, and brushed until he gleams like water.”

  “What a very fine color you are,” said Horse, eying Mare’s milk-white coat. “You look rather like
a magical lake I once drank from.”

  So Mare and Woman tamed Horse, and Man and Dog learned to fish and to cook, and Woman made all the animals in the world, and bore children until the earth was filled with them, and then she and Man struck down their camp. When everything was packed, Woman flung her clay pot into the sky, where it got stuck, and she sent Rabbit up to keep watch over it, since Rabbit had proved so respectable and trustworthy. Rabbit was very honored and promised to guard it well, and he walked in circles around and around the pot until the milk in it became a whirlpool.

  The last thing Woman did was to fashion a sled using four hairs from Horse’s tail, and then she and Man and Horse and Mare and Dog moved away and no one ever saw them again. But you can still find the Tegey Mountains, which Woman kicked up in her anger, to the east of the steppes, and you will still find Lake Qoyora, where Woman stamped her foot, and you can still find a huge hollow in the ground near the lake where she built the first campfire, and if you look into the sky on a clear night, you can still see the whirlpool of milk in the Woman’s Clay Pot. And that is how you know this story is true.

  Four weeks and six days later, I was lying in my cell that night, alternating between staring at the ceiling and counting the stones in the wall. I had pried a splinter of wood out of my bench towards the beginning of those five weeks, and I had kept track of the passage of time by scratching marks into the plaster of the wall. At that moment, I was contemplating marking the very last day. The last day of my life, I thought. I had almost convinced myself that I had accepted my impending death. Ylfing had come by briefly, early that morning, but he was too upset and afraid to linger for very long—those last days leading up to the supposed date of my execution were hard on him. He did what he could, drank down all the information I could give him, just in case. Consanza came too, less frequently, particularly after my appeal was flatly dismissed. And Ivo, even less frequently than that.