"You know how rumors can get out of hand. They don't even have to be truth, exactly. Why, just a subtle insinuation submitted on totally unsubstantiated evidence, could cause one, or even two, of our fine town folk to find themselves in a bit of a murky bath. Naturally, as mayor, I - er, that is, in the name of justice, of course, it would be my official duty to see that such a charge, er, insinuation be totally investigated until the truth be fully revealed to the satisfaction of the minds and hearts of the people of Nuttinnew.”
“Of course, it would, also, be my duty to reveal, whatever small and, insignificant observations I, myself, may have inadvertently made concerning said persons, about whom the insinuations have been made.” Pentalope sighed deeply, as if she truly found no pleasure in such a prospect, but her eyes revealed quite a different emotion.
“No!” The word burst forth from between Fleetra’s dry, trembling lips. Then, slowly, she reached up and took Pentalope's hand and guided it near her partially exposed tote. “I mean, yes. Yes, I'm sure, Lord Mayor, Mardrith will be very pleased to do whatever it is you desire of us - both of us. You know I, as always, am at your beck and call, whenever and for whatever purpose you desire of me."
"Lord Mayor?” Pentalope mused. The term "lord" was an ancient one which had survived only in the songs of the children. Pentalope liked the sound of it very much. It clung to her ego and she would not forget it. Again, she bent down to Fleetra’s ear. "Yes, yes my lovely Fleetra. I’m sure you will help her understand just how important it is to me to have her full participation and cooperation in this most deplorable matter."
As she spoke, the palm of Pentalope's hand glided over Fleetra's tote. The younger female gasped, as her nipple instantly hardened in response. "Hurry now! There is no time to waste. The others are already gathering at Growing Rock,” Pentalope coldly commanded as she spun about, her mantle of many pieces glimmering in the dawn, casting beams of light in all directions.
Yes, Fleetra knew she would always be at Pentalope's beck and call, and she hated herself for it; still, she couldn't seem to help herself. As it often happens when human life wallows in stagnation, that which makes one powerless, one submits to; and what one cannot escape, one makes the object of their desire. For Fleetra it was no different.
As soon as Fleetra closed the door, Mardrith burst from her place of hiding in the hall.
"Oh, Veget!” she cursed. "What did that ugly, old, evil, filthy female want of you this time? By Veget, I hate her. I wish she was dead!” Mardrith ranted while making violent, threatening gestures in the air.
"Mardrith, don't say that!” Fleetra admonished. "She just wants our help to protect Nuttinnew from the rebels.” Fleetra felt both sick and excited as she brushed past Mardrith and dashed into the privy, where she fell to her knees before the waste basin. She was sure she would vomit.
Mardrith continued raving as she followed loosely behind. "I won't do an-y-thing to (ugh) help that (ugh) fe-ma-le (ugh).” She punctuated her words with grunts as her hands punched the air before her. “I won't lift a finger! She’s a horrible, horrible ... ugh! I can’t even bring myself to call her a person. Fleetra, I despise the way she treats y... Ahh!” Mardrith screamed with a gasp.
Fleetra turned and saw her cousin form frozen in the doorway. Her head was turned to the side with her eyes fixated on something down the hallway toward her sleeping room. Mardrith’s face was so pale she looked sicker that Fleetra felt, as she slowly crawled to the doorway on her hands and knees to see what had so shocked her cousin. Then, she too, gasped in like manner.
There, on the floor, beside the sleeping room door was a shiny piece of the sky with loops of veget thread wrapped about each of its irregular protrusions. It was a piece from Pentalope's magnificent mantle of many pieces - a piece Fleetra, herself, had attached. Seeing it laying at the entrance to their private sleeping room could only mean one thing.
***** ***** *****
When the two females arrived at Growing Rock, five other couples were already assembled there. The males were trying to lift Pentalope onto the Rock which stood about as high as Pentalope was tall. After several unsuccessful, back-wrenching attempts, they unanimously agreed that although the mayor was tall, there wasn’t enough of her to be so heavy. Therefore, the mantle had to be the source of the additional weight and would have to be removed.
At first, Pentalope vehemently rejected the notion. For the more she wore her precious mantle, the more it became a coconspirator in her quest for power. Without it she felt miserably weak and absolutely vulnerable - a feeling which didn’t suit her at all. However, after several more undignified lifts, drops, pokes and pinches, she finally acquiesced and allowed the mantle to be removed.
As quickly as she commanded, the males hoisted her upon the rock with very little effort. Convinced now beyond a doubt that the excessive weight was in the mantle which had been allowed to slough to the ground off Pentalope’s shoulders, two of the males bent down to pick it up. Fully expecting to be lifting something quite heavy, each male took a firm hold of it from opposite sides and lifted with all their might.
The mantle and its many pieces rose as swiftly and as lightly as a puff on the wind, causing the momentum of the males to send them hurling over backwards in opposite directions, while still dutifully holding onto their half of the mantle.
Rip! The mantle tore apart at the center seam.
Pentalope gasped, then began screaming and cursing them with every insult they’d ever heard and many they hadn’t. Interspersed among her tirade were calls for her seamstress.
"I'm here. I'm here,” Fleetra called as she dashed up to the base of the rock.
"Look! Oh, just look what they have done to my magnificent mantle. Oh....” Pentalope swooned to her knees and began to whimper like a little child deprived of its favorite bedtime toy.
"Now, don't get yourself in a fussy puff, ma’am. I'll fix it - fix it quick - good as new. You'll see. I'll have it back to you before you know you’re not even wearing it. You'll see,” Fleetra declared as Pentalope wrapped her arms about herself and curled into a whimpering, quivering ball of flesh.
Fleetra grabbed up the mantle halves laying on the ground between the two men.
"Careful!" a third male warned. "It's very heavy. You'll need help to....”
"Oh, don't be ridiculous!” she remonstrated as she gathered the pieces in her arms, and dashed off toward her hut. "Mardrith," she called. "Come with me, quickly, please.” Mardrith obeyed without hesitation. It was her preference to be as far away from Pentalope Pulpitt as possible.
The other ambassadors stood by in amazement at the strange turn of events. The magnificent mantle was so heavy when Pentalope was wearing it that four males couldn’t even lift her to shoulder height. Yet this slender young seamstress was able to whisk it away like a puff stuffed pillow.
Adding even more to their confusion was the whimpering bundle of pitiful humanity crouched on top of Growing Rock. Could this be the same person for whom they held in such high esteem, such reverence, whose every whim they were so eager to obey just moments before?
A short time later, Mardrith returned with a sleeping cot cover which Fleetra had asked her to cover Pentalope with, for she somehow identified with Pentalope's feelings of naked insecurity and pitied her pain. Mardrith was not nearly so compassionate toward the mayor, but she did love Fleetra. So, against every fiber in her being, she set out to fulfill her lover’s request. "Mayor, Mayor Pulpitt!” she called to the top of the rock which was a rod or so over her own head. "Fleetra told me to give this to you to cover yourself,” Mardrith said, but “bury yourself in it for all I care,” is what she thought, as she held the cover at arms length overhead. The trembling bundle of flesh gave no response. Mardrith tried several more times. "Well, do you want it or not?"
Other than the continual whimpering, there was no response from the mayor. So Mardrith shook out the cover, held it at two corners and flung it as high as she could over the rock as i
f she were spreading it over a very tall sleeping cot. The cover draped completely over Pentalope like a fallen pup tent.
Everyone expected the mayor to start screaming again, but she didn't. Instead, their grand leader, the object of their worship, their vehicle to power, remained buried beneath the cot cover with her quivering limbs huddled beneath her. Not knowing what to do nor what to expect, the chosen couples remained where they stood, fidgeting in silence.
Having completed her task, Mardrith didn’t know what to do. So she quickly returned to her hut and found Fleetra sewing in the last few stitches along the mantle’s seam. Being an expert at her craft, it hadn’t taken her long to mend the ripped out stitches. Mardrith took the brief opportunity to express a multitude of disparaging words concerning Mayor Pentalope Pulpitt. Fleetra listened quietly until she tied the last knot in the veget thread and bit off the excess with her teeth.
"Oh, Mardrith, Mayor Pulpitt isn’t as bad as you say. Why, I've been her personal maid and seamstress for years and she's always treated me....”
"... like a piece of - of....”
"Mardrith, swear to me, do you really hate her so much?"
"Yes, I do!"
"For Veget's sake, why?"
"Because she wants to destroy us, our love, our life together."
"Oh now, Mardrith, I don't think she wants to do any such thing. I'm sure she doesn't mean us any harm. If she did, why would she want us to be a part of her very special group?"
"For Veget's sake, Fleetra, does that female have total control over your mind? She came into our hut and spied on us. She saw us together - naked - in the same cot. Who knows how long she was there. Maybe she even saw us....”
"Mardrith!” Fleetra shouted as the thought embarrassed her; not the thought of the intimate act, but the thought of Pentalope watching them engage in it. "I don't want to discuss this anymore. The mayor is waiting and if she is half as heartless as you believe she is, well, all I can say is we’d better not make her angry at us. And, Mardrith, for Veget's sake, keep your thoughts to yourself. And promise me you’ll do whatever she asks of you."
"What?"
"Mardrith, for my sake, promise me,” Fleetra choked as every desperate human emotion began to fill her all at once. "I - I don't ever want to lose you - or what we have together.”
"Did that female threaten you?”
"Promise me!” Fleetra both begged and demanded.
"Yeah, yeah, I promise. I love you Fleetra. You know I wouldn't do anything to hurt you."
"Thank you.” Fleetra sighed deeply, leaned forward and kissed Mardrith on the mouth. It was a long kiss, but less than either desired. "I love you,” she said, then gathered up the mended mantle and dashed out through the hut door.
Mardrith followed. The more she loved Fleetra, the more she loathed Pentalope. She wasn't sure why she had so much animosity toward the mayor. In reality she barely knew her, and probably wouldn’t have had any contact with her at all had Fleetra not decided to become her personal attendant at Center House.
Even then, Mardrith wasn't sure that some of her anger wasn’t misdirected. For as much as she loved Fleetra, she couldn’t stand the way her lover always defended the mayor's rude, over-bearing, and, generally, obnoxious behavior. At least once a week Pentalope would demand from Fleetra more than Mardrith could tolerate. Each time this would lead to an argument in which Mardrith would beg Fleetra to quit her position at Center House.
“You’re a talented seamstress,” she would argue. “The merchants would pay well for your skills.”
However, she could never convince Fleetra, who would remind her that the reason she took the job at Center House in the first place was to keep their personal lives among the shadows, detached from the malicious scrutiny of the rest of the town folks.
Or maybe what bothered Mardrith the most was her suspicion that Fleetra was, somehow, physically attracted to Pentalope. Mardrith knew the look, the smell, the feel of Fleetra when she was sexually aroused. Sometimes when she returned from Center House, traces of these essences engulfed her like mist among a field of ripened veget.
Several times she almost confronted Fleetra about her suspicions, but always refrained. For, although she often doubted Fleetra's ability to make sound judgements, she never once truly doubted her love and loyalty. Still....
"Fleetra, there's something I want to ask you,” she called as Fleetra bounded out the door.
"Can't it wait? The mayor..,” Fleetra responded without breaking stride.
"Yes, it can wait,” Mardrith called back, relieved the question was never asked, for there were times she feared the answer to that question more than anything. This was one of those times, and may have been the reason everything seemed to be strangely surreal as she prepared to follow her.
Ahead, she could see the brilliant, multi-colored reflections from the mayor’s mantle as it flowed from her lover's arms. Farther in the distance, she could see its destination; the bundle of decrepit humanity pitifully huddled under a cot cover atop Growing Rock.
With all the strange events permeating the complacency of their little town, all she knew for sure was that nothing was for sure. So, although Mardrith decided in her mind to go along with Fleetra and do the mayor's bidding, it surely wasn’t for the same reason.
Without a director to coordinate their endeavors, it took some doing for Pentalope's select group to manage forming a human ladder up, which Fleetra could climb to their huddled leader. Once there, she removed the cot cover from Pentalope, and draped the mantle of pieces over her shoulders. Like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, Pentalope slowly unfolded and straightened to her full stature.
The sun had just fully ascended over the rolling hills and its beams struck the mantle’s pieces, reflecting all the brilliant colors of a skybow. The small entourage was more than awestruck. It was overwhelmed by the metamorphosis of their leader arising from the heap of human helplessness, to be reborn as the sun-flamed, statuesque entity now towering above them.
Fleetra was still kneeling as Pentalope rose. The reflected light momentarily blinded her. In response, she covered her eyes with both hands and bent forward in a bowing gesture at the mayor's feet. To the others, such a self-effacing pose was the only appropriate response to what they were experiencing. Each in their place, fell to their knees and took up a similar position of submission.
Even Mardrith felt the power of the impression, but not sufficiently enough to bring her to her knees. Instead, she slowly eased her way around the Rock, out of sight of the others. Looking northward, she could see the gentle, round humps of the rolling hills. They hardly looked as terrifying as their representation in the songs of the children. Still, the thought of being banished among them caused her to shudder.
“At last!” Pentalope reveled, as she adjusted the crown on her head, “I am being treated with the dignity I am due.” Like a newborn infant taking its first breath of life, she sucked in a deep breath of morning air. It was somehow more tart than she had ever noticed before. It pleased her much. She felt as if she had died only moments before and now had been reborn into a new life - the life of her destiny.
When she opened her mouth and spoke, nobody was more surprised than she, at the timbre of her voice. It was much lower than its normal shrill, resonating with an air of authority congruent with her destiny as the Fate ordained Savior of Nuttinnew. The tones of it struck the ears of the listener with the reverberative quality one gets by speaking into an empty ration bucket. Even when her voice lowered to barely above a whisper, her words filled the air with a clarity and distinction heretofore thought impossible when orating in the open outdoors. All these extraordinary phenomena only added to the mystical aura of the Honorable Lord Mayor. Pentalope was in her glory. "You are gathered here at this moment in your lives for the opportunity to choose between rising to your true destiny or remain mired in the muck of your miserable, mundane lives. You are at a juncture where you must either act courageously, embracing
the call to personal sacrifice under my leadership, or continue in your pitifully powerless positions, with no prospects but to be felled to your untempered knees and forced to grovel in cowardly submission to those who would force their treasonous dominion upon you.”
Pentalope paused for the first time and focused her attention on her audience. Throughout her oratory, her ambassadors had remained bowed, thus she couldn’t see their faces. As much as she loved their voluntary self-abasement, she did desire to see their faces - especially, their eyes.
People can stand as firm as a rock or sway back and forth like the plants in a veget field during an early evening autumn breeze, and no one would really know what was in their hearts or on their minds. However, one look into their eyes would reveal all to a gifted observer like herself. For their eyes betrayed the desire of their hearts. And above all else, she wanted their hearts to caress or to squeeze, as she fancied. Seeing, through their eyes, the fear , the envy and the greed growing in their hearts would be half the reward for planting it there.
"Up! Up!” Pentalope commanded. "Your bestowing of such honor is most admirable and inevitable. I encourage you to express it freely , and often in the future to show others your commitment to me, er, and to our cause. However, you are my chosen ones, my ambassadors, and this very morning we have much to accomplish. So listen carefully, for the hour is late, and we must ‘strike while the iron is hot!’” she quoted a phrase she had heard her husband mumble in his sleep, one particularly restless night. “Whatever does that mean?" she considered momentarily, but no one else appeared to wonder at all.
She also began to wonder if the content of her words had any consequence whatsoever. Then, as the last chosen ambassador lifted her face, Pentalope could see into all their eyes, and their eyes told her each had succumbed to the emotion of the moment. It really didn't matter what she said, as long as she said it in a way that kept them gliding along on their own selfish motivations. And this she most assuredly, planned to do.
Pieces: Book One, The Rending Page 26