by Victor Poole
"Who are they?" Ajalia asked. She pressed the rag to the large painting, and dust and steam rose up.
"That's Jerome," Chad said. "This one," he pointed at the portrait of the woman in the colorful robe, "is his wife."
Ajalia looked up at Chad. She waited for more, but Chad did not say anything else.
"Who's Jerome?" Philas asked. He sat down next to Ajalia and began to clean the painting with her. Ajalia felt a surge of heat; she had missed Philas. He was the only person she had known for a long time that did not make her feel as though she were about to be attacked.
"Jerome led the old slaves out of all the other lands, back before Slavithe was founded," Chad said. "He was the one that built the city."
Ajalia looked up at Chad. "He built Slavithe?" she asked.
"With magic," Chad said. "He raised the white rock out of the earth, and formed it into the city, and he took the animals and plants from the sky, and put them into the rock to make the pictures that you see."
"There are animals and plants in the sky?" Philas asked.
"Yes, they live in the clouds," Chad said. "Jerome pulled many of the plants down to surround the city, and animals and birds came down from the clouds to live around the city as well. That is why there is so much desert all around, but there is wild growth all around the city. Jerome also cut a long river out to the sea, through the mountains."
"With magic," Ajalia said.
"Yes," Chad said. "That was his wife. She didn't help him at all. She complained a lot."
"Oh," Ajalia said. She did not know what else to say. Chad did not seem to understand that what he had just said was more in the vein of legend than possible fact. He was looking at her earnestly.
"Look," Chad said, and took the basin of poison tree juice from her. "Oh," he said. "This is all gone. Let me go and get some more, and I'll show you."
Ajalia was going to say something to stop the young Slavithe man, but he hurried out of the house with the basin in his hand.
Philas pressed his piece of rag into the painting, and watched the dust sizzle up into the air. "I think this stuff is doing the same thing to my insides that it is doing to this dirt," he said, staring at the colors that were being gradually revealed on the painted surface.
"Animals and plants drawn down from the sky," Ajalia said. "He doesn't seem to doubt it."
"It's not any worse than the things we say," Philas said. "Just a different way of making things better with words."
"How far do you think Lim will go?" Ajalia asked Philas. She meant, how far will he go in trying to get rid of me.
"I feel as though, when I drink this," Philas said, lifting up the rag, "the grease and rust in my soul gets oiled out. It lifts out of me, somehow."
"It's probably killing you," Ajalia said.
"I'm already dead," Philas said. He began to sing one of his sea songs, and Ajalia squeezed the rest of her rag into the paint.
"And then the prince came from the water," Philas said, and sang another line. He nudged Ajalia, and sang the words again. She had never learned his strange language, but she imitated him. "Then the sky was dark," Philas said, and taught her more words. The melody was aching and melancholy, and throbbingly awful. "The queen was sad, because the prince went back into the sea, and his father could not follow him." He sang the melody, and showed Ajalia the words again.
"I won't remember this," she told him. He shrugged.
"The prince went far away, where his parents could not see, and he was no longer a prince." Philas threw his rag across the room. It slapped gently against the opposite wall, and made a dark stain before it hit the floor.
"This stuff stinks," Ajalia said.
"Do you ever think about before?" Philas asked suddenly.
"No," Ajalia said quickly. She did not have to ask what he meant. She knew what he meant.
"Why not?" Philas asked. "We could go back."
"I can't," she said.
"You could too go back. What is stopping you? You could be dead, or you could pretend to buy yourself through someone else. Why don't I do that?"
"Do you have anyone to go back to?" she asked him. "I don't."
"You might," he said ominously, but she knew he was wrong. "I might," he said, but he sounded sad.
"Who were you before?" Ajalia asked. She did not look at Philas, but he looked at her.
"I had parents," he said.
"Who didn't?" Ajalia scoffed.
"They don't know what happened, maybe," Philas said. "It's complicated."
"Did you run away?" she asked.
"Not really," he said. "Maybe. They would have called it running away, but I wanted an adventure."
"Did you have one?" Ajalia asked. She was not making fun, but Philas laughed.
"No," he said. "I didn't have an adventure. I tried to run away to sea to be a cabin boy, like in the old stories. But they kept me below and sold me to pirates."
"Really?" Ajalia asked. "Pirates?"
"It wasn't pleasant," Philas said acerbically.
"But that is an adventure," Ajalia insisted. "Any sentence that involves the word pirates is an adventure."
"No," Philas said.
"Yes," Ajalia said. "My life was not an adventure at all. At least there were pirates in yours."
"What happened to you?" Philas asked.
"Nothing," she said.
Chad came back into the house, carrying a vessel of the black liquid. "Look," he said, and raised the black liquid. "Stand back," he added.
"What are you going to do?" Ajalia asked. She did not move back. Philas stood up.
"Let him show you," Philas said.
"Not if he's going to ruin my paintings," Ajalia said.
"You don't know if he's going to ruin your paintings," Philas said.
"He doesn't know what he's doing," Ajalia said. "He's going to melt the paint off."
"I'm not going to melt the paint off," Chad said indignantly.
"Have you ever thrown this slop at a painting before?" Ajalia said.
"No," Chad said.
"Then get away from my paintings," Ajalia said. She took the black liquid from Chad, and dipped her rag into it.
"It would have been faster my way," Chad mumbled.
"You are not a clever young man," Ajalia said. "Stop acting as though you are. Maybe your ideas will always be bad ones."
"That's a little harsh," Philas said.
"But true," Ajalia said.
"That's not very nice," Chad said.
"Who is the one who can show you how to buy your family back?" Ajalia asked.
"You're showing him how to buy his family back?" Philas asked.
"No," Ajalia said.
"Yes," Chad said.
"When did you get so soft?" Philas asked. He pressed his damp rag into the painting. "Help," Philas barked at Chad.
"He can't help," Ajalia insisted. "He's too stupid."
"He isn't that stupid," Philas said.
"He is, too," Ajalia said.
"I'm standing right here," Chad said.
"And you are that stupid," Ajalia said. "No one is going to help you. You aren't worth helping. No one is going to go out of their way to keep you from doing dumb things and alienating people."
"She's mean," Chad told Philas.
"You're helping him," Philas told Ajalia.
"I'm amusing myself and berating him," Ajalia said. "That is not the same thing as helping. Helping would be explaining things."
"You're explaining things," Philas said.
"Be quiet and clean," Ajalia said.
Lim came into the room. He had been hiding upstairs since the incident with his hair. Philas looked up at him when he came in.
"It looks better this way," Philas told Lim. "You should thank her."
"She could have killed me," Lim blustered.
"Still could," Ajalia muttered.
"Be nice to each other," Philas said, but he didn't mean it.
"What's going on?" Chad asked Ph
ilas.
"Shut up," Philas told Chad.
"What's he doing here?" Lim asked sourly. He pointed at Chad. Lim had straightened out and evened through his hair the cut that Ajalia had made. His curly hair was cropped close now, and hugged against his face. He did look better.
"It suits you short," Ajalia said.
"I didn't ask you," Lim said, and Ajalia could hear a vivid insult trembling on his lips.
"He's Ajalia's charity case," Philas told Lim.
"He carries stuff," Ajalia said.
"Charity case," Philas said again.
"I'm going out," Ajalia said shortly. "Will you see that they don't ruin these? They have tried in the last five minutes to ruin these," she told Lim, and she gestured at the paintings. Lim's body jolted as though he had been struck on the head.
"What have they done?" he cried.
"Nothing yet," Ajalia said. She pressed the rag into Lim's soft hands, and went up the stairs. She heard Lim starting a lecture about preserving fine art as she passed out of hearing. She went to the top of the house and collected the things she had put away. She gathered up the leather pouch, which she had kept near her since she had brought it home, and put the heavy gold ring and the rest of her money into it.
Ajalia went back down the stairs and went outside. Lim was leading the cleaning efforts, and Ajalia saw that he had given Chad a small rag and was berating him loudly about how to press it properly into the dirty painting. Chad looked flustered, and Philas was smiling.
The day outside the house was beautiful and clear. It was broad daylight still, and the sun against her eyes made her remember how long it had been since she had eaten or slept. She told herself that she would rest after she had hidden her things away. She did not want to sleep while she was carrying so much money on her person. She had a horror of being handled while sleeping, and she would rather wait to sleep until she felt secure about the money she had gotten on this trip so far. She still needed to investigate the houses that belonged to the keys she was carrying, and she wanted to go and see after the sunburnt black horse as well.
Ajalia felt as though she could not really see what was happening around her. The street was full of people, but she felt alone. The sunlight was drenching the stone, but she could not feel the sun reaching into her heart. She walked through the streets, and held the leather pouch against her stomach. She had put on the two layers of clothing that she had previously sewn coins into, and she carried the leather pouch close to her skin. She moved her fingers over the edge of the leather, and fingered the stitching. She walked for a long time, until she came near the entrance of the city, and the main gate to the outside. There were fewer people near the gate, and Ajalia examined the gate anew.
The gate was open, and a second, smaller doorway was visible in the shadows against the heavy wall. Ajalia wandered over near the small door, and looked at it. A Slavithe man appeared, and stood with his arms folded.
"What do you want?" the Slavithe man asked.
"Can I go for a walk outside?" Ajalia asked.
"Anyone can go outside," the man said, but he moved over and stood in front of the smaller doorway.
"Thank you," Ajalia said, and went out the main gate. She did not know why anyone would care if someone went out through the main gate or the smaller door. The main gate was made of heavy wood, and was hung with heavy pieces of metal that had been shaped into crude hinges. The doors were not opened wide, but one heavy wooden piece had been left ajar, making a space several feet across between the two wooden doors. The world outside was deeply in shadow. The heavy city wall made a blue, cool shadow over the ground, and Ajalia walked through the fine sand to the road that she had followed into the city.
The space between the city and the green places was not wide, but the ground was cold from the deep shadow.
Ajalia had studied the foliage when she had ridden her horse into the city, but now she examined the growth anew. Everything looked different from on foot; the trees were much taller, and the shadows much deeper, and the sun much more brilliantly shimmering against the tops of the trees where they reached beyond the shadow of the city walls.
The trees and bushes were not merely green, and the rattle and buzz of insects and small animals was constant. Ajalia could not see any wildlife, but she could feel it. The air vibrated with life, and the air was strangely moist.
When she had gone a little into the forest that hovered over the edges of the road, she went off the path into the growth. The ground was surprisingly difficult to walk through, and she had to lift her legs and set them down between clusters of grasses and bushes. She felt as though she was going to step in the middle of a bird's nest. The ground was very soft. The trees here were red, with bark like rough pebbles, and leaves that branched out from the limbs with hints of blue and green in the veins.
In a few moments, Ajalia felt that she was invisible from the road. The growth was thick, and came close against her face. She looked up, and could see fragments of the sky through the heavily overlaid leaves. There were taller yellow trees here as well, with trunks that were very thick.
When she had walked for some time into the forest, she began to think about where she was going to hide her cache of money. She did not particularly want to be able to find her money again easily; she wanted to know where it was when she found it, but she didn't mind it if was going to take her a long time to find it in the future. Ajalia's attitude towards money was contradictory in the extreme; she wanted to keep everything that she laid her hands on, but as soon as she had more than a few coins, a quiet nagging began at the bottom of her skull, and would not stop until she had made a secure hiding place somewhere.
Ajalia walked through the forest, and the scent of growing things was overwhelming. She did not know how it was possible that such moisture and wetness and life and heat could exist right against the miles of desert that had stretched outside of the ring of cultivated land and wild growth that clustered against the city.
A colorful bird exploded up from the undergrowth, and Ajalia jumped back. She watched the whirling feathers, and saw that the bird's feathers were like the feathers that had been painted in the portrait of the Slavithe founder's wife. The bird had long plumage that curled up at the ends, and a black beak with a hooked end. The bird went up into the top of a thick yellow tree, and Ajalia looked at the limbs of the tree. They were high, but she thought she could reach them if she climbed one of the shorter trees nearby.
She put the leather pouch around her neck and gripped the branches of a pebbled red tree. She climbed up the red tree until she came to a higher crotch in the branches. The big yellow tree had spreading branches that were reaching out towards her; she put out a hand, and gripped the branch that was nearest. It was as thick around as her arm, and she was sure it would hold her weight. She swung her body over to the yellow branch, and hooked her legs around it. She shimmied along the branch, upside down, until she reached the intersection of two larger branches, and then she climbed over to the top, and went to the trunk of the tree.
The tree was massive. She was still not too far from the ground, but the view from the tree was entirely different than the view from the ground. The bushes and grasses looked wilder, greener, yellower, more dangerously alive from up here. She watched the undergrowth, and saw tiny movements in the leaves. Small animals were moving around, now that she was no longer walking through the plants. She waited until she could glimpse one; it was a tiny version of the strange deer-like creature she had seen on the approach to the city, with the flame-colored tail. This creature was only five inches tall, and it stepped with incredible daintiness through the grass.
Ajalia wondered how many animals lived in this wild place, and how many of them were used by the Slavithe people. She wanted to stay in the tree until she saw everything there was to see. The trunk was wide, and cool to the touch. A buzzing of insects filled the air, and Ajalia felt drowsy. She wedged herself against the trunk of the tree, and after more con
sideration, climbed to a higher crotch that was more angled and narrow. She thrust herself into this part of the tree, and hooked her legs around the smaller branches that came up from the one she was sitting over. She took the leather pouch down from around her neck, and wrapped her arms around it. The money gave her a feeling like a security blanket; the money was a wall between her and life, between her and men. If she had money, she did not have to feel as though she was owned.
Ajalia never thought about herself; she tried very hard not to think about anything at all, but when the light was filtering now through the afternoon, and the birds and bugs made louder noises in the air around her, and she closed her eyes and told herself to sleep, she could not stop herself from thinking. She thought about what would happen if Lim won. She thought about what would happen if Philas talked her into being his housemate. She thought about the woman with the children and the pretend husband, and whether or not she would buy her way out of servitude, and grow her hair out long. She wanted to think about the rich woman with brown hair, in the palace of white stone, but her mind skipped over the pictures of what she remembered; she conveniently forgot to think about this.
Ajalia sighed, and climbed higher up into the tree. She had had a vision of sleeping in the tree. It would have been soothing, but she couldn't do it. She would never relax, she decided. It was the end of sleeping for her. She rose higher in the branches of the big yellow tree; the leather pouch was between her teeth; her muscles stretched and pulled against the reaching and climbing, and when she had gotten as far as she wanted to go, she sat with her back against the trunk and looked around.
She had risen up to about three fourths of the way up the tree; the horizon around her was less cluttered with trees and foliage, and when she looked up, she could see much of the sky. The air was less humid here, and when she looked to the north and to the east, she could see an edge of white and yellow sand, where the desert lay. It was impossible, that this lush forest should be where it was. It was ridiculous that there should be clouds of steaming vegetation clustered right here, where for miles upon miles had been nothing but unrelentingly barren sand.
Ajalia looked up at the sky. The afternoon was long and lyrical; the sun was still high, but not forbidding, and there were clouds that lowered over Ajalia's head. The clouds were white, and they were massive, like threatening scoops of some wide white ocean up in the air. Swirls and gaps in the clouds made layers of deeper gray and blue, and as Ajalia looked up at the clouds, she felt as though she could feel them singing, or groaning through the sky with some immense weight.