The highest form in view was the volcano which Father, and more recently Needol, had spoken of: a sleeping giant that had spared mankind within its valley basin and secret tunnels that mined and wound into its subsurface.
On a raised stage above the auditorium, the king reclined in a red leather chair. He was a tough, stern-looking man, a few years older than Father had been, and he wore tailored trousers with a snakeskin belt. Only a thatch of chest-hair kept him warm on top, yet he showed no sign of feeling the draught which had crept in with his guests. He had a muscular frame, but a bulging belly that suggested he fed more than most. The king had a most peculiar brown mustache, shaped to an almost perfect square, no wider than his nose. It was distinctive, but ludicrous. None had time or need to groom themselves in such a way. Father had been grizzly, as were most. This man was at best an oddity. He had no hair upon the top of his head and a short young man was going about shaving the back and sides with an old barber’s knife, running it back and forth. He’d already done the same to the king’s eyebrows, and their absence made him look inhuman – an unsettling, and no doubt intentional, effect.
The king sat still, his eyes rolling in his head. Blood streamed down his face where the barber’s knife had nicked his scalp in places; the absence of brows meant the tide of blood had no barrier to break upon and prevent it from streaming into his eyes. Like the men punching the ice outside, the king didn’t flinch, nor attempt to wipe away any of the blood, and it dripped onto the red leather he sat upon and the wooden flooring.
Henry gazed at the wood, finding the material fascinating.
The barber continued running the blade back and forth, occasionally wiping the blade upon his gown, originally a woman’s nightshirt.
Henry noted a gray old woman sat near to the door, wrapped in furs, reading a brown, faded sheet of paper with words printed all over it, much like the books that Henry had read, but larger. Like most things in the Favela, this scene appeared to Henry nothing less than insanity, like something out of the book he had read so many times as a child. He hoped it would soon end. He could think of no way out, save a miracle.
Lanner coughed to signal his arrival and the king opened his eyes wide, as if he’d just woken from a dream. His eyes fell on Henry and remained there. The king became a statue, then finally, after a minute or so, the statue spoke. His voice carried around the room, the acoustics of which had been designed for it.
“There is a circle of hair upon my head that chooses not to grow. So, I have enlisted the use of a barber to cut it tight.” The king spoke in a deep monotone and the only word he accentuated was barber, which he pronounced in a childlike way. Ba-ba. The blood continued to trickle down his face and neck. Slowly, he raised a hand to his lip and stroked the mustache that adorned it. “This is the fashion of a tyrant, which I am. Because I choose to be.”
Just like when he’d first started conversing with the Orfins, Henry had no idea what the king meant, but it was unnerving. The king had an imposing presence, already captivating his audience.
He rose from his chair and wiped the blood from his head and face with a piece of old fabric, already stained crimson from previous use. The barber sat on a sofa and crossed one leg over the other as the king took center stage behind him. The frozen vista made for an imposing backdrop. The gray old woman was yet to look up from her newspaper. Only a spider, creeping across the table, distracted her. She grabbed it with long, curled nails and ate it. Delicacy.
“A full house, Mister Lanner? Uncle Tom Cobley and all,” the king remarked in an accent just as odd as his appearance. His face remained still, as if it were incapable of expression.
“Was no task. Just fished him from the drink. Cunk practically pulled his own cueca down and left his cutters on the ice. Ain’t much of a warrior, this ‘un—”
“Still managed to knock you down, coward,” Henry muttered.
“Skindred here gave him up. Gave him a dram as recompensa. Sissel needs a word with,” Lanner added, ignoring Henry’s comment entirely.
The king regarded the traitor Orfin and Skindred flushed red, unable to return the steely gaze of his sovereign. The king seemed to enjoy that. From his pocket he withdrew a set of brass knuckles and tossed them to Skindred, who caught them clumsily.
“Brass knucks for yourn grassing. Put them to good use, mine little spittle,” the king said before focusing his attention once more on Henry, who’d been pushed forward into the light. The king’s eyes widened.
“You come here with quarrel? With blazing eyes and tense shoulders? Olhe those veins! I see you balling your fists like you would hammer at the very doors of hell and punch whoever opened them. What if I opened those doors?” The king adjusted his posture. “I see someone vengeful and unforgiving in strange attire. Why are you before me, boy? Diga-me.” The king dropped the bloodied fabric to the floor and looked out the window as Henry’s words spilled from his mouth without thought. They were his truth.
“Your people killed my mother and father. They killed our bairn and they took my sisters and little brother here against their will. My brother died in a room below the ice today. I have not seen my sisters. I came here because I want them back. And I want revenge. I want to kill him.” Henry pointed at Ginger Lanner, who raised his hands in the air, smirking through his gapped teeth.
The king turned toward Henry once more and let out a deep barrage of laughter. The sound bounced from the vessel’s walls and ceiling.
“The great and reckless idiocy of youth!” replied the king, still laughing. “This is my planetarium. The whole shabooley. What I say goes. What goes I say.”
“You ordered it?”
“That I did. That’s my lot. My doing. I’m a magnificent rascal!”
“What kind of king does such a thing? What kind of man allows this?” demanded Henry.
“Mister Lanner told me about a family living alone on the ice. He had been looking for a friend of mine.” The king leaned forward then as if he was a conspirator and placed his hand over his own mouth momentarily, indicating Lanner. “He thinks you might have eaten the meat of him. Little pincers. Tut, tut. That was my property. My protein. And I didn’t even get to pick his bones! I have no trophy. Nothing to commemorate the death of a dear subject. But I am open-minded and I forgive you, Henry. Yet you would do me harm, given the chance. Am I right?”
Henry glowered at the king and said nothing. He hadn’t spoken his own name since his arrival and nothing had been announced by Lanner, yet the king knew it well. A familiar backgammon board lay upon a glass table, missing most of the carved pieces. Inside, Henry’s heart was thumping hard as the king continued, his bald head bleeding anew from his barber’s cuts.
“My men are loyal and follow orders. Let me demonstrate this very thing so you understand a little more about the situation. Omeed!” One of the guards at the door left his position and strode casually past Henry to the raised area where the king performed. Omeed was an ugly man with thick black curls, just years past his Ritual. He walked as if his frame was larger than it actually was and bowed slightly when he reached his liege.
Henry observed Skindred looking at the young guard with envy, no doubt wishing he held the same rank and favor.
“Omeed is like a son to me.” The king stroked the guard’s face tenderly, then rested his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Omeed, open your mouth.” Omeed obeyed without question. The king held the back of Omeed’s head with one hand, then forced his other hand into Omeed’s wide-open mouth, pushing it in as far as it would go. Omeed began to gag, but did nothing to defend himself. The noises from his throat were muffled and muted, but the sound of bile rising and his stomach churning as he heaved were audible to all in the room. The king held his fist in the man’s mouth, and Henry fought down his own urge to gag. Even Lanner looked disturbed as tears rolled down the guard’s face, which was slowly changing color. None dared to speak or go to his aid, just as the salvager children had remained silent when Henry had
been hauled from the ice by the adults.
“Omeed did what I asked him, knowing that failing to do so would encourage me to punish him considerably. What horror! At this moment, Omeed knows that I might leave my hand in his mouth, blocking his airway, until he chokes and dies. You can see he is not resisting me, just reacting to his ordeal. Omeed does not question my ways of thinking or my orders. He accepts whatever I decide. Omeed is like a son to me.”
Finally, the king removed his fist from the guard’s mouth. With it came a curvature of ejected vomit which the barber in the nightgown began to mop up with the old bloodied fabric. Henry wanted to be sick as well.
The guard fell to his knees and the king patted him on the shoulder dotingly before wiping his hand on his tailored trousers. Omeed’s lips were cracked and torn, his lips painted red with his own blood. He held his jaw protectively. Erasmus and Needol helped him back to his post by the oak doors. After wiping his eyes and regaining some composure, he stood straight like he had when they’d first entered the room. The king came down from his stage and circled Henry then, like an animal closing in on its prey.
“Mister Lanner followed my orders, just like Omeed did just now. And he trekked all the way out on that dangerous ice, to extend an invitation to you all to join us here at the Favela—”
“He killed them! Why couldn’t you leave us be?” Henry cried.
“I know he did, chap. We’ll get to that in a moment. But what you need to grasp, wholly, is that I can’t have people just being. If I allowed people to go off and be, then others might get the same idea and think that rules can be ignored. People talk in whispers. You can hear them at night, scratching around their hovels like crabs. Tearing the meat off each other. They would skulk off and diminish our number, even regroup and challenge. No king would tolerate that. We are all that is left of a civilized world. Our rules ensure we all continue to be. This is where we be. Here. Gathered. Strong. I am the king of it all. The entire world. This planetarium.” The king held his arms open wide with the vista behind him.
“There is nothing out there. You are the king of nothing,” Henry remarked, before Lanner slapped him about the side of his head.
“Esta bem, Ginge. We’re getting to the end of it. Henry, you would have had a good life here.” The king’s face changed then and he leaned close to Henry. “But your mother killed two of my peacekeepers, and your father killed three. Five human beings, I had. Cinco humanos. They were subtracted from me. Each of them mine property. Your family owed me a debt just then. I took four. The chook made five. The fact is, a bairn can’t contribute. It does nothing but consume food. Maybe my lot were faminto. Either way, we’re all square, see?”
“You…” Henry struggled to find the words to express his anger. “You’re no king! You’re the devil! Where are my sisters?” Henry yelled.
The king remained calm. Henry looked at the others and could see the excitement on Lanner’s face. Skindred seemed enthralled, his fist enrapt in the brass knuckles that the king had given him. He looked so eager to try them out.
“They’re here in the palace, of course. I’m going to wed one of the elder ones. Haven’t chosen which yet. The prettier one is some kind of mute and the other one, the sour face, has spikes upon her. She can learn to smile. I’m in a quandary, Henry, but I see it as a luxury problem, like I’m standing in the middle of a rainbow! The little one is promised to Mister Lanner here. Catharin, what say you?”
The gray old lady placed her newspaper neatly on the table before her, then croaked her reply from a black mouth that held just a couple of teeth within it.
“Not yet a woman. Not for him to ruin. Give her a year and she’ll ripen for wedlock,” she said.
“But rei?” Lanner begged.
“Mister Lanner, calm your bit. She will serve as our Canary until she comes of age. We do things proper. Do you dispute Catharin’s assessment? Do you dispute?” The king stroked Lanner’s pock-marked face as tenderly as he had the guard’s, tracing his fingers over the man’s lips, touching his bottom teeth momentarily before withdrawing.
“I—I don’t,” Lanner replied in a soft, broken voice.
“Back to you, Henry.” The king ran his hands down his scalp and face as if he were clearing his mind with the gesture. “If I kill you now, which I might, would it make me a terrible person? Would it make me a better king? I would certainly enjoy it, as I do most things which are appalling. But you and I are to become family, like it or not.”
“I want to see my sisters.”
“You shall not. You shall listen. Now, where were we? Your death. If I kill the brother of meu amor, I would look unreasonable. Hey presto! My mercy upon you would serve me better with the chosen sister, no doubt, whichever one that shall be! I can be decent and lenient when I choose, and a tyrant otherwise. I am decisive nonetheless.”
“I am going to—”
“You, Henry, are going to leave the Favela. I did not bring you here and I do not want you here to make your noise. You’re not taking mine property with you, and if I see you here again, I will lift the skin from your flesh and make one of your sisters a wedding gown out of it. That’s not a threat. It’s a promise.” The king waited for a response. When none came, he continued. “You lost before you even knew it had started. Same with your pa. I can’t just let you walk away, untouched by me. Unmarked. I’ve been trying to think of what I can do to you. It has to be something big and brilliant, that you would not forget. If you remain here, you would try to kill me eventually. I know this. This I know! I can see it in your eyes. The way you look at me is beyond hatred. It’s beyond defiance. That is the look of someone who would have his revenge if the opportunity was extended, not just upon Mister Lanner here. To all that have wronged you and yours, of which I am at the very summit of the kill list, in large, bold lettering. Top rascal. Hold him.”
Lanner and Skindred grabbed Henry by the arms. The king went to a cabinet in the corner of the room and came back holding a sleek wooden box which he placed on one of the tables. He opened the box and took out a corkscrew, the kind once used to open bottles of wine.
He returned to the cabinet once more and this time he fetched a glass jar with a screw-top lid. The jar was filled with remains; some black and rotten, others more recent, although it was hard to tell what each of the pieces were. He placed the jar on the table and turned it slowly until Henry saw a human ear. His heart raced painfully.
“Don’t get upset. This is the deal. Our treaty! I’m going to take one of your eyes and add it to my jar, so I will never forget that glare and the threat you pose. Whether you die in the cold hereafter is not my concern, nor fault. I admit survival is most definitely unlikely. But I am not killing you here and now, and for that you should be grateful. If you come back, I will make that wedding gown out of you so you can be close to a sister one last time, as I do my bit.”
“Not my eye! Please!” pleaded Henry, all bravery gone from him and replaced entirely by fear. Fear for himself. Horror for what lay in store for him alone. He no longer felt like the son of the Bearkiller. He trembled as the king approached with the implement in his hand. Skindred laughed; Henry could feel his breath in his ear.
“Hush, Henry! Shut your row! The decision has been made and it – is – done,” said the king, and he drove the corkscrew into Henry’s eye as if it was nothing, pulling it out just as quick, ripping the eyeball from his face and freeing it from the tendons that rooted it.
The first sound was like the seal’s brain matter absconding when Henry had struck it with the pick. This time, Henry’s blood sprayed so far, even he could see it. The second sound was piercing and continuous; a surreal animal cry, high-pitched and shrill.
All Henry could hear at first was the unavoidable sound of his blood rushing and pumping in his ears and out from the void in his eye. His head was both fire and ice. The air entering the void in his head caused a sharp pain; a most nauseating sensation. But, the rest of his skull felt like someone had
poured the contents of a blubber lamp all over him and set it alight.
Lanner let Henry fall to the floor, where he writhed on his back.
He vaguely made out the silhouette of the old woman, Catharin, approaching with a handkerchief. She straddled him and forced his arm away from the socket, pushing the cloth deep into the wound in an attempt to stop the bleeding.
“Can’t have you dying in his favorite room,” she sniggered.
Behind her, the king casually took Henry’s eye from the end of the corkscrew and held it to the light. It had split but remained in one piece.
“See how it came off! It looks delicious. Such waste to let it go,” the king said and he popped the eye into his mouth, holding it between his teeth, so the ruined pupil faced out. The king bit down on it, chewed fervently and swallowed the eyeball.
“Now you can see what’s inside of me, Henry,” he tormented, then to his men, “such bravado! He came here with the will of a man, but look at him. He’s just a menino; a little one-eyed boy, my brother to be.” The king handed a new rag from his pocket to one of the guards,. “Walk him back to Lantic, beyond the Bone Yard - where I will shit his eye - and point him in the direction of home. He can lie with his parents until the end of time, if he doesn’t cross any Big Whites! Give him no pelt nor coat. The boy can knock at the devil’s door in his undergarments.” To Henry, he said, “I could have really liked you, Henry, but you scream too much. Boa sorte. Despedida.” Good luck. Farewell.
Henry was dragged from the palace in agony, and as he met the cold wind outside, it brought him new pain as the sub-zero air blew into the open wound, seemingly boring into his skull and mind itself.
The songs had fallen silent. The people of the Favela looked on as Henry was led bleeding through the snow, leaving a dark red trail behind him. They ceased drinking. They ceased cavorting. The artisans had stopped working and the prizefighters no longer pounded at the ice with their fists while the procession of Lanner’s men guided Henry to the edge of the Favela and through the maze of circles on the salvager’s bay.
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