by Marc Secchia
“A conundrum indeed.”
“May I make a suggestion?”
Only he could make it sound like an option tabled at a strategy meeting. Cue another of her lengthy silences.
At length she whispered, “Alright.”
“I propose to call you Nyahi … if it’s all the same to you.” He could have chewed off his tongue. The name of a perfume? “Temporarily.”
“Temporarily forever?” the voice replied. “What does Nyahi mean?”
Growing more miserable and frustrated with every syllable he spoke, Asturbar replied, “The Nyahi is a rare and beautiful type of anemone. It likes to flourish in hidden places, like tiny clefts between rocks.”
Their conversations so far could be measured more in silences than in words, he thought dejectedly, wishing he were not such a helmet-headed infantryman when it came to ladies. This time, her stillness felt like a deep, yawning, unending plunge into the Cloudlands. Long minutes passed, in which he berated himself with just about every word he knew, and a few he didn’t but seemed to make sense anyways. Here she was, literally the last woman in the Island-World as far as their mutual situation was concerned, and he making a perfect buffoon of himself.
Asturbar took to beating his forehead against the rock repeatedly, mouthing, ‘Idiot. Slug brain. Numbwit. Blunderer. Pox-blasted, skanky son of a –’
“I like it.”
By the choked quality of her voice, he wondered if she had been crying silently. “Sure.” Shrug of the shoulders. Completely missed the mark, on his part. “Hoped you would.”
“You strike me as an uncommon man, for a mercenary. Not that I know … many, uh, men.” Her hasty clarification made him smile. A girl of morals, with an educated upbringing? “Considering the reputation of the Mistral Fires … oh, forget my judgemental nonsense. Since when did any stereotype capture the complexity of life itself?”
He pursed his lips. Toss the mad castaway theory off the Isle, too. “Might I fetch you another dress, Nyahi? Is the name acceptable?”
“More than,” she breathed. “I … I … would have called you Boots, but that seems crass now in light of your … ah, your thoughtful offering. I must offer something back. That’s my culture, see?” She was babbling, and Asturbar’s heart was off like a shot, soaring amidst clouds. “Here’s my offer. I want you to take a walk. Say, an hour. Then come back. I will try – no, I couldn’t. I can’t. Not happening, it’s … even just thinking about it …”
“What about using familiar ground?” he suggested, alarmed by the panicked edge in her voice. Either she was incredibly shy, or she truly was afraid she would hurt him as she had suggested before. “Would that help?”
“Familiar ground?”
“Your hut, I meant. I take this walk. I return. I sit outside. You are inside. Behind the door. You see … if it might work … to show yourself.” His thoughts seemed reduced to staccato simplicity, one monad per heartbeat. “We give you some space. After all, this cavern seems a little perilous.”
Filled with a magic that had braided his limbs through his nostrils. Aye.
“The hut?”
“Yes. It is your domain. I … well, I sort of owe you a repair of your floorboards as well.” He longed for her laughter, but his reward this time was only a brief warble, like an emerald nightlark’s cry. “You stuffed me down that trapdoor so effectively that I couldn’t get out again. I didn’t fit. So I made a few general alterations in order to effect my escape. Can you make it to the hut?”
“I think so. If you go.”
“And this time, may I return?”
She hesitated. “Only if you keep a safe distance.”
“Upon my honour.”
“Upon the part of your honour which committed a parlous act of thievery –” he almost howled in mortification “– or the rest of it, the greater part?”
Asturbar screwed up his face. Time for a dose of blunt honesty? With a gulp, he ventured, “Nyahi, you are incredibly vexatious, shockingly forthright, and completely correct – in this instance. Upon the honour I only wish I possessed in full measure, I swear. Right. Off for a walk. You have one hour to find another dress, or so help me …”
He left the threat unspecified, both because she was chuckling throatily again and he could not think of a single phrase that did not sound lewd, or desperate. He could not think at all.
March, soldier!
What would he find when he returned?
* * * *
In exactly one hour according to the changing angle of the suns, bathed, dried and tidied up as best he could manage – both of his shirtsleeves were shredded almost to the point of nonexistence – Asturbar presented himself at the girl’s barren home. The bushes had been stripped to the roots. So many dead, the path reminded him of a bloodied field of combat. It seemed that the sunlocusts must have explored every nook and cranny they could fit into, dragged out their victims, and butchered them.
He came smartly to attention. “Presenting Commander … uh, curse it … Commander Boots! In his boots! As he was born.”
The hut looked deserted.
“I am here!”
Only his voice rang in the silence, but then he thought he saw a section of shadecloth twitch. Aha! This girl was bashful to the point of paranoia. No surprise, having lived on her own for seven years. She must be mentally deranged. There it was.
Then she sang out, “Commander Boots, please take a seat upon yonder boulder. I shall attend you shortly. I hope.”
Her mellifluous tones, with that closing aside of droll self-deprecation, continued their exquisite play upon his senses. He could put up with ten plagues of sunlocusts merely for the opportunity to listen to her speak. He wondered if she told bedtime stories. Then, he wondered if he was just a sad, lonely soldier entertaining debauched fantasies that hearkened back to the boyhood he had never experienced. Other boys enjoyed bedtime stories. The education of the Marshal’s children necessitated a large coterie of full-time tutors – many stories, and much laughter. Asturbar had been assigned a Drillmaster, and military tutors. Not the same.
He found the flat stone she had indicated. Freshly placed, judging by a few drag marks. Nyahi could shift that much weight? No frail reed was she.
After placing his rump upon this granite throne, he called, “I am seated! I will not move!”
This had to be the most peculiar meeting he had ever attended. Asturbar perched approximately twenty feet from her door, elbows upon his knees, and waited for Nyahi to emerge. She did not. He rubbed his bald pate and made a vague attempt at moistening his lips. Failed. Twice, he heard movement; the second time there was a yelp and a crash. The shadecloth on the leftmost window, as he faced the hut, twitched as if it were being attacked by a feral dragonet.
Wretchedly, the girl called, “Sorry. Not working so far.”
“Are you dancing with dragonets in there?”
“No. Give me a moment.”
With another oddly whooshing sound, the door banged shut. She muttered something acerbic which he did not catch. Then, predictably, came yet another yawn-worthy hush.
Eventually, Asturbar said, “Do you play that instrument on your wall?”
“I do,” said a voice that sounded suspiciously like it had just emanated from the ceiling above the window to the right of the doorway? He startled, but the bright suns-shine rendered the inner darkness impenetrable. “Do you sing too?”
“Roughly, after a fashion,” said he. “The military were never strong on vocal training, except as it related to Drillmasters bawling out hapless recruits until they cried. Would we even know the same songs?”
“I shall sing you something, if you can put up with my voice’s imperfections.”
“I’d enjoy that.”
Her fingers were deft upon the strings, having not quite the expertise of a professional musician, but a pleasingly skilful touch accompanied her burry, expressive alto. Her music was full of exotic chords and fourth and sixth vocal jumps as she
sang him a tale of the realm of Yazê-a-Kûz. Asturbar reminisced quietly, letting her voice flow over him in honeyed rivers of sound. The illustrious, sprawling Archipelago was located far to the Northeast in a region renowned for its wines, golden ales and fierce winter storms. Having grown up in more southerly climes he had never known the hite of winter, but that area experienced wild, protodragon-infested storms whirling in off the mighty Mesas. In his early years of soldiering, the Mistral Fires had undertaken a summer campaign in the western borderlands of Yazê-a-Kûz, knocking out a Gladiator Pit which had become so ambitious, it threatened the ancient Uxâtaayn Kahilate, the ruling Line. He did not know many details, but he understood the campaign had been a messy, costly affair which almost sank Marshal Chanbar.
When Nyahi finished, he leaped to his feet and performed a stomping dance of approval, clapping his hands boisterously against the tall shin guards of his infantry boots. “Excellent. Most excellent!”
Boom! Ka-da-boom!
Asturbar’s eyes rolled wildly as something large ricocheted around inside the hut, left-right first, thumping the beams and panels with a series of powerful blows, before the roof leaped several inches off its infirm moorings and the floorboards rattled concussively, as if ten beasts or limbs had smashed down all at once. BLAM-DADOOM!! He felt that impact right through his boots.
The beast was in there with her! Must be!
Warily, fully expecting a purple talon or three to blur toward his neck, Asturbar resumed his seat. “Still here.” Embarrassingly, his voice shook. Calm! “I apologise for standing up. Must have alarmed you there, ma’am – uh, Nyahi.”
He felt rather than heard a magical pop! in the aether. It was deep in his gut, this sensation, which led him to surmise that the Jewels were somehow abetting … well, something. Very precise definition. But the turmoil inside the hut subsided. He cracked his knuckles one by one.
“My turn?”
Her sigh betrayed deep frustration. “What’s the use?”
“Only that entertainment is in short supply around this Isle, I’m led to believe.”
“Whilst soldierly wisecracks abound.”
“Haven’t left yet.”
Her chuckle sounded weak and somewhat dispirited. “That’s quite the appetite for risk you have, soldier.”
Asturbar slapped his knees heartily. “I declare it was well sung! ’Twas well sung indeed, certainly a better performance than this sandpaper-throated soldier will ever produce. Since I feel perfectly safe over here, I shall now attempt to return the favour.”
The notion of safety being somewhat relative around this Isle.
It took a few minutes, but they soon found a tune she knew and he could sing; Asturbar drummed on his boots as he sang her a few martial verses about the doings and dreams of infantry soldiers marching off to war, laughing in the face of danger, dodging feral Dragons and suchlike. Sung to a girl, it was downright embarrassing fare. How would she respond?
She said, “It was robustly sung and most enjoyable, Commander Boots. Do you know The Lay of Sahiushi?”
“I do.”
His unit would have laughed it off as soppy drivel – as he might have, in another time and place – but somehow here, at the end of the Island-World, this choice seemed appropriate. Asturbar picked up the deeper bass harmony, but his gruff efforts felt misplaced against Nyahi’s haunting melodic line, a captivating interpretation of the popular piece he had never heard before.
Strumming a few bridge chords, she suggested, “More gently, soldier. You have it within you. This style of lay should be sung like a hand’s caress upon silk.”
Asturbar clamped down upon his idea of what he’d like to caress at that point, knowing he would lose a hand and likely most of the arm attached to it. “I’ll try.” He shut his eyes, and truly tried. Maybe there was a place of tenderness within him, and a mellower use for a voice used to barking orders above the clamour of battle. It seemed an unfamiliar capacity unfurled within, for his throat worked and reformed its configuration; he cleared his throat with a thunderous cough, apologised briefly, and set to singing with a new tone. Deeper. So profound, his notes reverberated through the soles of his feet and back up through the stone he sat upon. Yes, he could sing! He lacked a great deal of dramatic training, he supposed – she supported her lyric phrases far better than he, and produced dramatic vocal embellishments of which he could only dream …
Something snapped inside the hut; the girl gave a squeak of outrage, and the instrument clattered upon her floorboards.
“Er, Nyahi?”
“I … oh fiddlesticks, I broke it!” A sob broke through her complaints. “I was … I was so enjoying that … ah, harmonising with you, I mean. You’re a natural singer, soldier. Unlike my garbled wreckage of a voice –”
“What?” he snorted. “Who told you that pox-raddled lie? You believed them?”
“Well, I … in my culture, it’s the purity of the voice that counts. Not – what did you call it – a sandpaper-throated travesty of –”
“Claptrap and ragion-outgassing!” Oof. That was bolder than he had intended! Since he was on the attack, he had better continue. Asturbar added forcefully, “What passes for culture around the Isles is sometimes indescribably stupid. Or atrocious, blind or downright nasty. There are many types of music and many different qualities and styles of singing. For the record, the only official record that exists, I will have you know, in these seventeen thousand square leagues of Wyldaroon – I think you have an amazing voice. It’s … it’s, ah …”
“So awful it defies description?”
“Opulent.”
Bite the tongue! He winced. The nerve of his sally earned Asturbar another clatter and a wild yell from inside the hut, “Honestly! Can I not purchase a moment’s peace? Stupid magic!”
“Do I need to fix your table, too? Any furniture left whole in there?”
“Funny, but yes,” she grumbled. “I’m afraid the table has suffered, as did my vase and my eight-stringed sithastroon. It’s all your fault.”
“Mine?”
“Yes! You suggested the hut.”
“Well, you’re the one who can’t control your … oh. Oh!” Crash! Bang! “You can’t control your –” KABOOM! Asturbar ducked as a piece of doorpost whirred past his head “– magic, can you?”
That was it! The key insight. An increasingly alarming and damaging series of crashes and bangs and growls emanated from inside the hut, then the door blasted off its hinges and a lavender-green blur rocketed out, like a scorching bolt aimed at his throat. Asturbar, however, was battle-primed. He dived aside with a neat forward roll, tucking in his legs. He came up fast and on the defensive, because the blur swirled toward him in a flurry of proto-limbs and talons and impossible divergences from actuality, but he focussed simply on avoidance and self-protection. A bluish grey thicket of talons shot past his neck, reversed course, and somehow deflected off his bare arms.
“Nyahi! Nyahi, it’s alright!”
With a sound like a sob, the creature lashed out again, but Asturbar sprang aloft with all the power of his Azingloriax frame, and the steel-taloned uppercut that tracked his movement clanged off the soles of his boots. Still, the force of the blow sent him spinning a dozen yards over her repaired chair and into a sandy patch on the edge of the drop, dotted with fist-sized pebbles. He landed, skidded and whirled in one motion.
He flung out a hand. “Shh, girl. Softly now.”
A panting, writhing bundle of something bluish and organic which was pulsating and changing form so rapidly he could barely make out a single tangible feature, faced him. Then it shot off so fast, the concussion blew Asturbar off his feet. He tumbled over the edge. To his surprise, his outflung hand caught a firm one-handed grip on a tree stump perhaps fifteen feet over the Island’s rim. His back and arm muscles wrenched painfully; his feet dangled over a three-mile drop into the Cloudlands.
Then, he had a shock of a different kind. The Seven Scamps whizzed down toward hi
m out of the brilliant morning sky, chirruping piteously – they were clearly distressed, and then unmistakably overjoyed to find him alive. Lithe little muzzles rubbed his arms and squirmed around his neck. A flurry of squeals and chirps volleyed around his head. How touching. Perhaps their stomachs did not want to see the demise of their main provider?
“Hey!” Asturbar chuckled. “Er … careful there. Perilous spot.”
Now tiny, strong paws gripped his clothing and began to tug. Up, up, he imagined the dragonets urging. One guided his left foot to a good foothold, another chirruped crossly at him until Asturbar raised his arm and found grip on a shallow ridge. Wings fluttered behind his back. What a team! He began to climb with more confidence. The rock was solid and not crumbly, so he could trust the chinks he found. In short order, the infantryman clambered up top and collapsed in the dirt there, breathing heavily. Relief. Shock. Wonderment.
Nyahi was not mad – only her magic was mad. When it triggered, probably at times of high emotion, it became an uncontainable, elemental force. He did not know if it came from without or within, but it seemed from what he had observed, that the magic took possession of her yet she was still somehow present, but not in any shape or form in command of her responses.
Any sane person would be terrified.
He could not imagine what storm he might set off if they ever so much as held hands. A kiss might blow up the Island. Asturbar touched his own neck gingerly. Risk-taker, eh? Well, now he had some idea of the fires with which he played. He glanced up the path to the cavern, where she had taken refuge. Wisdom dictated he should give her a little time and space to recover. Meantime, he’d clean up inside her hut, and repair what needed to be repaired.
Corpses aplenty to shovel off the Island, too.
Chapter 8: Charily, Charily Does It
For four days, Asturbar did not find a scrap of food. There was nothing left. No mind, his belt could do with a dint of tightening. He duly counted notches, and winced. Despite his exile, he had only dropped three. Still roughly the dimensions of a barrel – he must improve his training regimen. Yes. Each morning and evening he checked on Nyahi’s cavern, but the wards remained inviolable and his calls received no answer. He thought once that he heard something snoring in there, but the gentle rasp could have been the wind’s play.