by Rhys Hughes
Pressing my ear to the peeling paint, I listened to him lecture his companions on the finer points of mythical anatomy. Strain as I might, I could not catch the replies. Was he cutting open the harpy to obtain the mystic gem? But I knew them all as ruthlessly ambitious dabs: a solitary specimen would not go far between three.
While I pondered, my harp took up a bizarre melody, quite without a player. My cat was still curled in my coat; my fingers were nowhere near the instrument. It was a shimmering tune, such as the wind might blow in autumn twilight, but the chamber was tightly shut and no breath stirred. I was fascinated and perturbed by the phenomenon and dispatched my other ear to the task of recording the theme.
During the last movement of the song, there was a knock at my door. I stood and opened it, finding myself squinting into the feral visage of Weasel. He placed a finger to his lips and ushered me back into my cell. I listened to his babble with a shiver.
“I’ve been crouching in the room the other side of them,” he began. “Trying to eavesdrop on the devils, I was! Not all their voices carried. Caught only the woman’s speech, I did.”
This was highly convenient, as I’d managed to remember most of what the anatomist said. We compared notes.
“He works in the University of Aberystwyth,” I stated. “He acquired the harpy from a Swiss student. He’s been planning on excising the stone for months, but he needed special assistance.”
“Jane answered his advert in the paper,” Weasel added. “Her task is to transport the gem to Monmouth and sell it.”
I scratched my head. “But why are they carrying on in such secrecy? It’s only a small harpy, after all, nothing illegal. There’s rather more to it than this, I’d say. They’re strong-minded dabs, insisting on equal shares: not the sort to be satisfied with a pittance. So something big’s afoot. Why else meet on neutral territory?”
“How do you know that they have?” Weasel asked.
“Geography!” I grinned. “The anatomist comes from Aberystwyth, Jane is from Llanboidy and Icarus lives in Cray. What do these places have in common? They’re all precisely twenty-five miles from Lladloh! Imagine an equilateral triangle with corners at these places: the very centre would be this tavern. This suggests a reluctance of the rogues to venture into each other’s domain. Instead, they set out and converge right here. They keep their dignity and shoes intact!”
“Pity neither of us heard the tinker speak.”
I snapped my fingers. “Perhaps my harp did!”
In response to his puzzled frown, I told him about a weird acoustic effect called resonant frequency. The right vibrations in the air caused objects to pulse in tune with the source of the sound. It was the method used by sopranos to shatter false eyes.
“Our ears are tuned to different pitches,” I continued. “The tinker is inaudible to us, but the strings of my lyre picked up his words. They made it play the melody of his speech.”
“There’s posh for you!” Weasel was impressed.
“If we reconstruct the notes it played, in the right order, we will be able to work out all his sentences!”
I remembered the shimmering melody and sought to play it again with my voice alone, hissing words at the strings, adjusting my tone until an unearthly shiver ran through the instrument. The hairs on Pushkin’s back stiffened to pins. When I had the frequency of the tinker’s voice it was a question of trial and error. By matching the words to the notes in the correct sequence, I would know the content of the tinker’s colloquy. The experiment produced very rapid results.
“An alchemist, he is!” Weasel gasped. “That cart of his is a device for performing unlawful transmutations!”
I nodded grimly. “An exchangoscope. I believed they existed only in the dreams of misers. They swap the dimensions of big and small objects. This explains the whisky and mead glasses!”
The case was clear to me. The trio had gathered to conduct the most unique fraud of the aeon. Medardo provided the harpy and opened its head while Icarus magnified the jewel and Jane carried it to market. A mystic stone of such girth would ruin the supernatural economy. It was our duty as honest pagans to stop them. I rushed outside and tugged at their door but it was locked. Weasel descended and returned with Emyr and the poet. We kicked at the wood, to no avail.
“Stand aside!” cried the laureate. He swung his manuscript over his head and brought it down on the frame. Nothing could withstand a book of such density: the door split asunder and we raced into the room. I don’t like to mention what we saw inside, but I will for the sake of the plot. The trio were crouched over the coffin, which was open. The harpy’s head had been pulled apart like a rotten peach, exposing the turquoise stone. A miasma of ineffable misery engulfed me.
The tinker was turning the wheel on his gambo. One tentacle nestled on the gem in the skull, the other was draped on the creature’s body. As we watched, the harpy shrunk to the size of the jewel and the jewel grew to the size of the harpy. My jaw dropped. I had never encountered such a gargantuan brain-stone: it would make a laser powerful enough to cut the astral plane in two, sending every phantom and spectre created since the invention of death hurtling to their doom.
Icarus glanced up at us with a sarcastic smile. “Too late, bach! We shall be the richest scoundrels in Wales!”
Lifting the enormous gem, he passed it to Jane. The anatomist threw open the window for her and she climbed through. Balancing on the ledge, she turned and blew me another kiss before jumping off into the dark, surely to a messy demise. I hastened to confirm this.
Reaching the casement and peering out, I realised how Spring-Heeled Jane had truly earned her name. Clicking her shoes together as she fell, she produced two coils of wire from her soles which cushioned her impact and propelled her in a graceful arc, higher than the tavern. In a series of elegant hops, she vanished out of sight.
I was aware of movement behind me. I wheeled and narrowly avoided a tentacle, which the tinker was trying to attach to my neck. “Exchange an idiot with his harp!” he bellowed. He lunged again and would have caught me but Pushkin leapt out of my coat and straddled the fleshy electrodes. Icarus yelped angrily at this interference.
His back to the struggle, Medardo spun the wheel, assuming the howl was a signal to operate the machinery. I fell to my knees as my cat grew smaller and smaller. Something on its back expanded in tandem: a pair of harpy fleas, locked in an insectile embrace. Sickened, I waited for them to attain full size and clubbed them unconscious with my harp. They must have jumped on poor Pushkin the first time we examined the coffin. Small as a flea, his mewl was silent as a bite.
Now there were four of us and only two of them. The poet and Weasel tackled the anatomist, while Emyr and myself disabled the tinker. With a sheet from the triple bed, we lashed the rogues tight. Finishing the job with a sigh, the barman was philosophical.
“What a night! Like a story from a lost anthology!”
I brandished my harp. “What do you mean?”
Emyr winked and patted me on the back. “It’s this village, mun! The things that happen here are just like the tales in the books you imagine exist in the attic of some mysterious house. You search your entire life but never find the house, the attic, the books.”
“Because this is where the stories are,” Weasel said.
“What shall we do now?” I asked him.
“Make the best of a bad thing, mun! Lladloh has been a bit short of citizens lately. Chased away by a centaur, they were. But we can replace them with these dabs. Amateur explorer, I am, which is why I entered the room on the other side. A lonely profession it is, and I could do with a bit of company. The tinker will do fine.”
“Medardo can stay on as resident anatomist,” agreed Emyr. “But look at this! A pygmy harpy! Never been known before, will improve my placing in the Michelin Guide. Our new mascot.”
He picked up the reduced creature and put it in his wallet. “Sew up its head and display it above the bar, I will!”
T
he poet leant over and stroked the nearly invisible Pushkin with a delicate thumb. “He can’t go roving with you now. So I’ve got a new pet, if you don’t object. Makes sense, it does.”
I puffed out my cheeks. “Be my guest.”
Icarus struggled in his bindings and cried: “Mustn’t make plans. Be in the gutter soon, the lot of you. Jane has got the gem. Reach Monmouth before it melts, ruin the economy, she will!”
“Melts?” The poet fanned himself with his manuscript.
Ignoring this cryptic reference, I prodded the tinker with my foot. “Why did you do it? What was the reason?”
“Nationalists we are, bach! Tidy harpies we’ve got now, mythic fuel for our righteous fires. And our female activists are quick as lime! You won’t catch Jane, she’s on the rebound!”
I saw the fleas were beginning to wake. An idea formed itself in my talented mind. I called to Weasel to borrow two of his whiskers. He must have understood my scheme at once, for he tugged the wiry hairs from his cheeks without a murmur. I strapped the fleas to the bottom of my shoes. Harp in hand, I climbed onto the window ledge.
Praying the whiskers would hold the insects to my soles, I launched myself into the void. Emyr, Weasel and the poet cried out: I landed with the soft touch of an acolyte dancing on coals. Then I was ascending once more, over an adjacent building, into the cemetery, moulded like the sob of a monkey, and past the mortuary chapel. I used my lyre to maintain my balance, held in front of me like an aileron.
Large as cats, the harpy fleas were more powerful than Jane’s coils of wire. I left the village and bounded down the lane. Soon I saw her in the distance, springs flashing in the moonlight. I followed her over the nameless hills between Mynydd Pencarreg and Mynydd Llanybyther, and deep into forgotten valleys, where saurians raised sleepy heads to snap at my progress. I steadily gained on her.
At the apex of each hop, I had a sublime view. I could see Lampeter to the north, with its college of sorcerers. In the other direction, all the snaking paths and streams in the gloomy forests were exposed. It was obvious now how Icarus had crossed the broken bridge. One of the snapped foundations had expanded to connect both banks, while the river was thin as a fang. The work of his machine.
I knew my fleas would eventually tire, but my wavelength was longer than Jane’s and I was confident our trajectories would shortly converge. When she was within earshot, I hailed her, modulating my tone to balance the effects of my oscillation. Glancing over her shoulder, she flashed a warped smile, the light of fanaticism smouldering in her eyes. There was no reasoning with her: she poked her sensual tongue out and I averted my gaze. She led me into a region of ravines and chasms gouged in the weary earth, a landscape of unfinished cromlechs.
One of my fleas landed awkwardly and sprained a leg. Listing to one side, I saw I was losing control. I was almost on top of her now, but we had slipped out of phase. Each time she connected with the ground, I was at the crest of my jump. We grazed each other in opposite directions: it was obvious what was going to happen. Perhaps I should have done more to prevent it. I could have discarded my harp and seized her in my arms. My instrument is too delicate to drop from a great height, so I shrugged my shoulders and abandoned Jane to cruel fate.
On the next hop, our flight-paths were identical. She came up, with all the power of her springs behind her, while I plummeted down. My lyre was still extended. We collided: Jane passed through the strings like an aubergine through an egg-slicer. The accident sounded an eldritch chord. The gem span from her shredded grasp. I quivered as I descended: it took an age to touch the ground. Far below, the mind-stone smashed into three pieces. Jane drifted like ham around me. I saw she lacked a skeleton and was formed from a mucilaginous substance.
While I was still falling, I was astounded to witness a bustle amid the abandoned stone-circles. A cart appeared from nowhere, drawn by what looked suspiciously like a centaur. It was the tinker’s cart, cleared of its junk and manned by Emyr, Weasel and the poet. They must have trailed us from the village. Reining in the beast, the passengers dismounted and gathered the shards of mystic jewel. Then they turned the centaur about, climbed aboard the gambo and galloped off.
I landed, rolled onto my back and untied the fleas. Jane settled on me a moment later. I collected her segments and furled them into a tight cylinder, which I thrust into my pocket like a newspaper. The loaf in my other pocket throbbed, as if chuckling in anticipation. Hunger and grief are occupational hazards for a bard. One of Jane’s springs vibrated near my own foot. I retuned my harp and used the metal coil to strike a note. Time to resume my song of Salty Myfanwy:
When her body was recovered,
And rolled back to my house,
I stored it in the cupboard,
But it was eaten by a mouse.
I wandered part of the way back to Lladloh. To my astonishment, the bridge which led to the village had shrunk. Crossing over, I realised my mistake: the stream had expanded. So the effects of the tinker’s machine wore off after a short while! This meant the shards of harpy-stone would soon be utterly worthless and the miniature monster in Emyr’s possession would grow back to bland dimensions. More pertinent still, Pushkin would resume his identity as a normal cat.
Entering the tavern, I was set upon by my three former friends, who chased me out and hurled abuse at my retreating form. They held the tiny splinters of the magical gem in their fingers and branded me a cheat and fool. “Tin Dylan? More like Copper Tom!” they shouted. Greed can turn an eccentric into a lunatic. Far down the road they hunted me, until I lost them in a forest of giant toadstools. Sitting under a deathcap, I played my harp the old way, raising blisters:
Her lovely skull is a ruin,
But her limbs are not dead.
Her arms are in the kitchen
And her legs are in my bed.
I finished with a discord, which was the best my sore fingers could do without Pushkin to assist me. But I was pleased with the song and the adventure. They say a lot, I think, about the Welsh spirit. When we lose our misogyny, we’ll lose our culture. The two are joined in a provincial marriage. Our ignorance is as resilient as an iron dragon; it will still be here tomorrow. By the time we’re forced to treat women as fellow humans, we’ll have evolved into sentient clouds.
The future frightens me. I’m happier with the past. I don’t want to imagine a world without gender, populated by globes of pure reason, like what they already have in Sweden. My stomach grumbled and I cut the loaf into thick slices by pushing it through my harp. Placing slivers of Jane Van Hopp between hunks of bread, I soon had a traditional sandwich ready for consumption. We’re eternal children in these parts. The way my teeth went up and down, it was plain nasty.
Less Is More
Private empires are a luxury of the past, but Belperron was determined that he should have one too. Every night since moving into his isolated house beyond Gualeguaychú, he dreamed of his previous lives. He had been a hero in every incarnation, fighting in battles from the dawn of recorded history to a time just before his birth. It was clear he was destined for greatness. But he wished to surpass these earlier exploits. He imagined a domain with his name stretching from the Pampas to the Serra do Mar. To achieve this he needed to rely on his own myriad initiatives and innumerable muscles. He planned to summon his other selves into the present. They would serve him, for he was them, the next step in their mystical evolution. He had read enough on the subject to know that the law of karma is logical and progressive. They had led marvellous lives and so he had been reborn as the finest of all. His present incarnation must be the highest self he had ever attained.
His house was large and lonely with many rooms. He planned his campaign in a chair on the patio. An army made up of all the heroes he had ever been would march right across Uruguay to Rio Grande do Sul, seizing every town on the way and establishing garrisons there. Once he reached the sea he would turn back. He would fix his capital in Artigas or Quaraí at the centre of his kingdom. I
t would be interesting to inspect his troops in chronological order. Any man who died in battle would have a memorial in the grateful bones of his successor. The situation would be strange. And yet Belperron believed the philosophical difficulties might take care of themselves. He was a man of action and preferred dangers to doubts. He owned a long knife with a wavy blade which he liked to toss in the air and catch by the handle. This was just a method of killing time before he could employ his talent for aggression in real combat. When he cut his hand, he never bandaged the wound.
He knew a man in Montevideo who was a dealer in rare books. He wrote a letter to this friend, reminding him of a favour owed, a trivial matter concerned with a false passport. Herr Otto Linde had contacts in India who in turn knew of obscure manuscripts in temples in Bali. Within a year, Belperron had the secret in his possession. He opened the parcel with his long blade and held the parchment in his scarred hands. He had already taught himself the tongue of the Majapahit scholars. Because he did not want unexpected visitors, he locked every window and door in his house. Even out here, an occasional rider might pass and decide to beg a cup of yerba mate or spoonful of dulce de leche. Belperron washed his face before conducting the difficult ritual. He was quick to learn secrets and mysteries. His sharp mind and talent for business were rewards for so many generations of heroic life, the product of centuries of good karma, accumulated through past deeds.
But the riches he had already won, and those he had spent buying this vast house, were nothing compared with what awaited him. Thoughts of his empire swam in the candlelight before him, washed on the tides of flickering orange as he spoke the ancient words over the flames. The spell was done. His cleverness and determination had pulled all his other incarnations from their own ages into his present. He had focussed the broad waveband of his cosmic soul to a point no larger or longer than his house. There was a sound of inverse thunder. The hundred empty rooms were now full. The displaced air rushed through the keyholes and chinks in the walls. The candles extinguished themselves. Belperron stood, but he did not need to move to understand his fatal mistake. It was all around. It pressed tightly against him from every direction. He cursed Herr Otto Linde and all books and empires, but there was too little free air to carry his words. Soft bodies absorbed the sounds, even as they made their own noises. And most were not men.