by Mel Dunay
Vipin’s voice was flat and expressionless as he stepped forward and said: “Let me handle it.”
He tilted his head up to make eye contact with the monkey, and once again Rina spotted a flash of gold in his dark eyes as they caught the sunlight. As soon as the monkey locked eyes with him, it froze, and became dead-quiet.
“Here, monkey, monkey,” Vipin said, which was pretty much what everyone said at least once in the process of trying to get stuff back from a thieving monkey.
But usually they sounded like they were either pleading with the monkey or cursing it out, or maybe talking to it like it was someone’s pet.
Vipin sounded like he was ordering it to come to him. The monkey slid partway down the pole, and skidded to a stop about on a level with Vipin’s face. When he stretched out his hand, it gave him the phone without breaking eye contact and then turned and ran away.
“Wow, thank you so much! How’d you do that?” Rina asked as he handed over her phone.
Vipin shrugged. “I’ve tangled with their kind before, and somehow they can tell that.”
“Wish you could teach me that trick,” Rina said.
“We’ll see,” Vipin said.
The fruit trader, who had been watching the whole business with the monkey without saying anything, snorted skeptically. When Vipin looked at him, the trader turned the snort into a cough and looked nervously away.
“Speaking of annoying pests, have you seen Amita around?” Rina asked.
“She was walking towards the hotel at the other end of town in her gym clothes after lunch.” Vipin said. “I didn’t talk to her. She...seemed to have her mind on other things.”
“And you wanted to keep it that way.”
He blushed, which was startling on a tall strong man who could scare monkeys into good behavior and only needed a magic voice recorder to convince the elderly that he was a Oldblood out of the old stories.
The skin on his face went from golden to bronze when it flushed-Rina thought it was rather cute.
“I don’t think she would have paid much attention to me this morning. What happened on the bus happened because she was bored.”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Rina agreed. “And she’s going to be bored on the bus again today. Do you want me to take the middle seat this time?”
“Not if she’s going to make a fuss,” Vipin said. “We can laugh about what happened yesterday, but a long, drawn-out tantrum in front of a bus full of strangers is no fun at all, even after the fact.”
“Leave that to me,” Rina said. “I’ll sort her out.”
But first they had to convince the bus driver to wait for her.
“I want to get on to the next town and get this over with,” The driver complained.
“So you can deliver that crate full of shoes to your cousin in Goatsfart,” Vipin said. “Yes, I’m sure you’re in a hurry to get that done. But do your employers let you run a hauling business on company time? I could call them and get permission for you.”
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it open, ready to dial. That slight growl he’d used on the other bus driver was back, and there was a hard look in his eyes. A far cry from the man who’d blushed when she teased him about Amita.
The bus driver crumpled. “We’ll wait for your friend,” He said weakly.
Eventually Amita sauntered up, her hair limp and sweaty from her workout.
“I need to get back into our room,” She told Rina. “They wouldn’t let me shower at the hotel.”
“I’ve already checked out of our room, and your bags are on the bus,” Rina retorted. “You’re going the way you are.”
“You’re going to regret not being nice to me when we get up to Thundermouth,” Amita pouted.
“I know,” Rina said. “That’s why I’m going to let you have the window seat.”
It took some more jollying along to convince that Amita that the window seat was meant as a peace offering, but she finally accepted it.
She did not seem pleased when Rina took the middle seat and spent a lot of time invading Rina’s space so that she could flirt with Vipin more easily.
Eventually, Vipin rather pointedly closed his eyes for an afternoon nap, and Amita was forced to relent.
It was one thing to molest him in his sleep when she could pretend to be asleep herself right next to him, but Rina had correctly guessed that she would find it harder to pull off with Rina in the way.
This was a long, boring leg of the trip, with the road winding around the north face of the Peak before it reached Goatsfart on the east side.
The north face got less rain than the rest of the Peak, and although it wasn't completely bleak, few people lived here, and there was a mass blooming of rocks on the slope beneath them, rather than a mass blooming of flowers.
After Rina caught up on her mobile novels, there was little to do besides listen to Amita complain and watch Vipin sleep. And although his face looked sadder and gentler in repose, and the slow rise and fall of that muscular chest was strangely hypnotic, even watching him got old after a while.
Rina got her sketchbook out of her purse and began to rough out some new silhouettes for clothing.
“That’s too weird,” Amita complained, peering over her shoulder at a long, sleek evening gown of the imperial type with a collar that was cut low in front but rose to ear height in the back, topped by elaborate ruffles.
“It would look good on someone like you,” Rina argued.
“Anything looks good on someone like me,” Amita retorted.
Just then, the bus screeched to a halt, and Vipin blinked awake with his usual lack of fuss. It was amazing, Rina thought, how much you learned about the sleeping habits of total strangers when you were stuck on a long bus trip with them.
“Now what?” Amita demanded.
“It looks like there’s been a rockslide up ahead.” Rina said.
The rockslide had been partially cleared, but the opening was not wide for a vehicle to pass.
Rina checked the GPS function on her phone. At least she got reception here. “It looks like Goatsfart is less than half a mile away,” she said. “It would be a good walk on foot, but at least we’d get somewhere.”
“Or we could just ride the bus back to Skymarket,” Amita argued.
“Driving in reverse all the way. Down Mount Snarl,” Rina emphasized. “Does that sound like a good idea to you?”
It ended up being a moot point, because the driver decided he needed to deliver his cousin’s boots more urgently than he needed to take the bus back.
He pulled the keys out of the ignition and a particularly stylish pair of boots out of the crate, told the passengers to get their things out of the bus, and once everyone was out, he locked down the bus and started to walk up with the rest of them.
His plan seemed to be to hire a cart in town to take the rest of the crate up. Amita, in spite of her fitness, was a leisurely walker, and Rina soon found herself falling further and further behind the other group led by the bus driver.
She couldn’t leave Amita behind, given how plugged-in the girl was both down in Rivertown and up in their hometown, even though she wished she could. The only good news was that Vipin stuck with them instead of moving up with the others.
“We should totally report that guy to his employers,” said Amita, when they’d been walking for half an hour. “Driving backwards down the Peak is looking pretty good right now.”
“I’m just glad we got you onto the bus before you had a chance to dress up,” Rina teased her. “Think how much your feet would hurt if you were in heels instead of gym shoes.”
“Don’t be silly, I would have changed my shoes before we started walking,” Amita snapped.
And delayed us by another half hour, Rina thought, but all she said was: “We need to keep walking if we want to reach Goatsfart before dark.”
“What happens after dark?” Amita said. "Is Shaipinob the Mountain King going to come down come from his c
ave above Thundermouth and eat us, like in those stories we used to tell around the bonfire when we were kids? Or is his sister Shaipinob Bhana coming for us.”
Maybe it was the uneasy dreams from last night, but Rina felt a flicker of the old childhood fear at the other woman’s words, then she shoved it aside as best she could.
That kind of thinking would make her no different from the old men who didn’t want the modern world to reach their mountain or their women, or the even older men who were rude to a perfectly harmless anthropologist because they didn’t like the gadget he used.
“I don’t want to go over the edge in the dark,” she said. “And some people claim that the mountain panthers range this far north.”
"I've never heard of anyone who saw a panther on Mount Snarl,” Amita said. “And I work under the minister of agriculture.”
Rina bit her tongue to keep from sniggering inappropriately about that “working under” part. Vipin, who’d had little to say for himself and was carrying most of Amita’s luggage came to Rina’s rescue.
“Aren’t the panthers a protected species?” He asked.
“I’ve heard stories from the north, where they still have a few tigers...they say that villagers will kill them because they think they’re a threat to their herds, and then cover it up when anyone tries to make inquiries, because they can’t afford to pay the fines.”
“The minister isn’t like that,” Amita said, in the sweet, dignified tone she probably only used in her public relations job.
“He cares about the farmers and herders of this region, and if anything like that were to happen, he would look after the people.”
Rina frankly thought this was a moot point. She had heard stories of mountain panthers, and there were goat herders on the Peak who carried a sawed-off shotgun for protection, but she'd never heard of anyone on the Peak taking a panther down.
The panthers were usually very shy of people, and from what her father said, it didn’t seem like they lingered very long on the Peak.
They’d kill a few goats over the course of a week and vanish as quietly as they'd come. But there was always the first time, and Rina didn’t want to be the first time.
She heard rocks rattling above, and the next moment she was lying on the road with Amita next to her and Vipin sprawled on top of them both. He must have heard the same sound and shoved them out of the way.
“Sorry about that,” he said. Rina felt his voice as a rumble against her back.
He got up and help them to their feet. His eyes flared gold in the sunlight, and his face looked stern.
“Oh no,” Amita squealed. “Ruined! It’s all ruined!” Rina and Vipin turned to see what she was fussing about.
A large boulder stood in the road, and Rina could just barely make out one of Amita’s squashed bags underneath it.
Vipin must have dropped Amita’s luggage and his own bag and shoved the women forward when he realized that the three of them were in the boulders path.
Amita went off into an attack of hysterics, and it took Rina several minutes to talk her down. Vipin was not much help.
He watched mutely with a look of embarrassment on his face, and only occasionally tried to offer suggestions. Finally Rina managed to get Amita calmed down.
“What am I going to wear now?” Amita demanded.
“Whatever you’ve got in that bag...” Rina pointed to the large tote bag Amita still held in a death-tight grip.
Rina had been carrying her purse and her only bag; Amita had been carrying her purse and the lightest of the bags she’d brought.
They'd somehow managed to hold to these when Vipin grabbed them. Rina just hoped that tea-tin she’d bought hadn’t opened up and spilled tea leaves all over the inside of her bag. Vipin was left with his wallet, phone, and the clothes on his back.
“Those are the clothes I was going to wear for the ritual,” Amita grumbled.
Rina was surprised. She would have thought Amita’s parents would have bought the ceremonial clothes, maybe had an heirloom sari they wanted to have her wear for the marriage to the Mountain King.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, you might want to go on wearing your gym clothes then, especially since we’ll probably be hitching a ride on a buffalo cart at the next town.”
Amita snorted at that, but followed the other two down the road.
CHAPTER THREE
“Only the inhabitants call The Town by its correct name. Due to local feuds, everyone else on the mountain calls it Goatsfart. As the nickname implies, the town relies primarily on its herds of goats that graze on the upper slopes under supervision, although there is also some farming in the area.
Because the villagers are descended from a valley tribe, their wool textiles show unusual patterns that combine elements of both their ancestral valley culture and the more typical Mount Snarl aesthetics.
Their houses are also unusual: they are dome-shaped with a chimney in the center, and made of cut stones laid without mortar. The Town is unusual in preferring kefir (fermented goat’s milk) to beer or mead. Electricity is uncommon, usually pirated, and indoor plumbing is not available.”
(Excerpt from The Tourist’s Guide to The Blue Smoke Mountains.)
“Speaking of Goatsfart, I’m sure there’s an interesting story behind the name,” Vipin said with one of his nasal chuckles.
“But I guess it’s probably not the kind of thing you ladies would tell me.”
Amita sniffed. “I’m sure I never heard of any story, and my mother’s related to one of the village elders.”
“The people there just call it The Town,” Rina said.
“They do things a bit differently there. They mostly keep to themselves, except when they have to marry out their daughters to other villages or import brides for themselves.”
“So who calls it Goatsfart?” Vipin asked.
“Goatsfart is a nickname from I don’t know, fifty years ago? When they were feuding with Barleyfields. It kind of stuck.”
"Hmm. Do you know what the feud was about?" Vipin asked.
“Not really,” Rina said. “I have a friend from Barleyfields, and one time she told me about Goatsfart. I asked her the same question you just did, and she didn’t know what the feud was about either.”
Rina saw a dark shape out of the corner of her eye, and spun towards the mountain slope on their right.
“What’s the matter?” Amita asked. “Saw a panther? Or our future husband?”
“Hush.” Rina said. “I thought I saw a person crawling up the rock face, but he’s not there any more.” The people of Goatsfart didn’t let the women out much, so if it was a villager it was almost certainly a man.
“Wait! I see it now too!” Amita said, pointing at a green and yellow something that scurried up the slope, further up from where Rina had seen the climber.
“That almost looks like a Gnosha,” Rina said, as the thing disappeared from sight among the rocks above. “What I saw just before...seemed different.”
Vipin's nostrils flared. He was probably just annoyed with the interruption, but the gesture, and the stillness of his face as he watched the slope above them, made Rina think of a large dog on the hunt.
“What did it look like to you?” He asked Rina. “The first climber you saw, I mean.”
“Like a person in dark clothes. Skinny-though you’d expect that. A heavy person probably wouldn’t do that kind of climbing for fun. Taller than most of the villagers on the mountain.”
Rina recalled just how tall and thin the figure had seemed, like a Gnosha but with the wrong coloring, and its limbs were jointed in the wrong places. Rina shivered, but she said nothing.
Vipin looked at her intently, as if he could tell she were holding something back, but then he apparently decided not to press it. “Let’s count this as a breather and push on from here,” he said.
They did reach the village by sundown, not that it did them much good. Fussing about with Amita’s luggage had put them far behind most o
f the other passengers, and the encounter with the boulder hadn’t helped.
There was a very small hostel next to the deserted bus stop in Goatsfart-basically a one-room dormitory for men with an outhouse behind it-but it was packed full. Rina remembered an old widow who rented space to female travelers, but she had no space either.
“Nothing for it but to try the local tavern,” Rina said.
“Maybe for you,” Amita said with a smirk. “I’m going to look up my mother’s cousin.”
“I don’t suppose your cousin would help the rest of us find rooms?” Rina asked.
“No.”
“Just checking.” Rina would have felt safer tonight if she were rooming with a woman she knew, but if Amita wasn’t going to play nice, Rina would survive.
The tavern was a small house of the same design as most of the rest of the houses in town: a round, one story structure made of unmortared stones with a chimney in the middle and smoke coming out of it.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Vipin asked.
“They might be able to put you up for the night, and there might be someone here who knows where I could stay,” Rina said.
“I don't know if it’s a good idea to split up,” he objected.
“Sorry, I’m just a little too old-fashioned to spend the night with a man I barely know, no matter how helpful he is,” Rina told him. “Even if I do have pepper spray.”
He ducked his head in embarrassment. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Up here on the mountain, it’s liable to be taken that way no matter how you meant it,” Rina warned him. “Be careful in here. And by the way, the only beverages they serve in this town are water, goat’s milk and fermented, alcoholic goat’s milk. They call it kefir for short. Even if you’re a drinking man, I don’t recommend the last one.”
“Thank you, but I don’t like alcohol much...it makes me hyper.”
Rina tried to imagine what a hyper Vipin would be like, and failed miserably.