“Her head tilted back, all will abandoned to his sure embrace, the deep and steady breaths that made his chest swell and ease against her. Then his hands edged downward, tracking the lines of her hips, to cup her downy-soft behind, and effortlessly he lifted her-”
“Ha!” barked Tiny Chanter. “Now comes the Golden Ram! The Knob-Headed Dhenrabi rising from the Deep! The Mushroom in the Mulch!”
Everyone stared for a moment at Tiny with his flushed face and puny but bright eyes. Even Midge and Flea. He looked about, meeting stare after stare, a little wildly, before scowling and gesturing to me. “Go on, Flicker.”
“She cried out as if ripped asunder, and blood started, announcing the death of her childhood, but he held her in his strong hands to keep her safe from true injury-”
“How tall was she again?” Flea asked.
“About knee-high,” Apto answered.
“Oh. Makes sense then.”
Relish laughed, ill-timed indeed as her brothers suddenly glared at her.
“You shouldn’t be listening to this,” Tiny said. “Losing maidenhood ain’t like that. It’s all agony and aches and filth and slow oozing of deadly saps, and shouldn’t be undertaken without supervision-”
“What, you think you’re gonna watch?” Relish demanded, flaring up like the seed-head of a thistle in a brush fire. “If I’d known brothers were like this, I would have killed you all long ago!
“It’s our responsibility!” snarled Tiny, that finger back up and jabbing. “We promised Da-”
“Da!” Relish shrieked. “Till his dying day he never figured out the connection between babies and what he and Ma did twice a year!” She waved her arms like a child sitting on a bee hive. “Look at us! Even I don’t know how many brothers I got! You were dropping like apples! Everywhere!”
“Watch what you’re saying about Da!”
“Yeah, watch it!”
“Yeah! Da!”
Relish suddenly crossed her arms and smirked. “Responsible, that’s a joke. If you knew anything, well, ha ha. Ha!”
I cleared my throat most delicately. “He left her exhausted, curled up in his arms, stung senseless with love. And much of the night passed unwitnessed for our lovely woman for whom innocence was already a fading memory.”
“That is the way of it,” Tulgord Vise said with solemn nod. “When they lose that innocence to some grinning bastard from the next village, suddenly they can’t get enough of it, can they? That… that other stuff. Rutting everything in sight, that’s what happens, and that boy who loved her since they were mere whelplings, why, all he can do is look on, knowing he’ll never get to touch her ever again, because there’s a fierce fire in her eyes now, and a swagger to her walk, a looseness to her hips, and she’s not interested anymore in playing hide and seek down by the river, and if she turned up all slack-faced and drowned down on the bank, well, whose fault was that? After all, she wasn’t innocent no more, was she? No, she was the opposite of that, yes, assuredly she was. The Sisters smile at whores, did you know that? They are soft that way. Innocent, no, she wasn’t that. The opposite.” He looked up. “And what’s the opposite of innocence?”
And into the grim silence, in voice cool and low did I venture: “Guilt?”
Some tales die with a wheezy sigh. Some are stabbed through the heart. At least for a time. It was late and for some, dreadfully too late. In solitude and in times broken and husked and well rooted in contemplation, we find the necessity to regard our deeds, and see for ourselves all that which ever abides, this garden of scents both sweet and vaguely rotting. Some lives die with a sated sigh. Some are drowned in a river.
Others get eaten by the righteous.
At certain passages in the night the darkness grows vapid, a desultory, pensive state that laps energy like a bat’s flicking tongue a cow’s pricked ankle. Somnolent the wandering steps, brooding the regard, drowsy this disinterest. Until in the murk one discerns a tapestry scene of the like to adorn a torturer’s bedroom.
A mostly naked woman stood in fullest profile, her arms raised overhead, balanced in her hands a rather large boulder, whilst directly below, at her very feet, was proffered the motionless head of a sleeping sibling.
Soft as my approach happened to be, Relish heard and glanced over. “Just like this,” she whispered. “And… done.”
“You have held this pose before, I think.”
“I have. Until my arms trembled.”
“I imagine,” I ventured, drawing closer, “you have contemplated simply running away.”
She snorted, twisted to one side and sent the boulder thumping and bounding through some brushes in the dark. “You don’t know them. They’d hunt me down. Even if there was only one of them left, I’d be hunted down. Across the world. Under the seas. To the hoary moon itself.” She fixed wounded, helpless eyes upon me. “I am a prisoner, with no hope of escape. Ever.”
“I understand that it does seem that way right now-”
“Don’t give me that steaming pile of crap, Flicker. I’ve had my fill of brotherly advice.”
“Advice was not my intention, Relish.”
Jaded her brow. “You hungry for another roll? We damned near killed each other last time.”
“I know and I dream of it still and will likely do so until my dying day.”
“Liar.”
I let the accusation rest, for to explain that the dream wasn’t necessarily a pleasant one, would have, in my esteem, been untimely. I’m sure you agree.
“So, not advice.”
“A promise, Relish. To free you of their chains before this journey ends.”
“Gods below, is this some infection or something? You and promises to women. The secret flaw you imagine yourself so clever at hiding-”
“I hide nothing-”
“So bold and steady-eyed then, thus making it the best of disguises.” She shook her head. “Besides, such afflictions belong to pimply boys with cracking voices. You’re old enough to know better.”
“I am?”
“Never promise to save a woman, Flicker.”
“Oh, and why?”
“Because when you fail, she will curse your name for all time, and when you happen to succeed, she’ll resent you for just as long. A fool is a man who believes love comes of being owed.”
“And this afflicts only men?”
“Of course not. But I was talking of you.”
“The fool in question.”
“That’s where my theories fall apart-the ones about you, Flicker. You’re up to something here.”
“Beyond plain survival?”
“No one’s going to kill you on this journey. You have made sure of that.”
“I have?”
“You snared me and Brash using the old creep, Calap Roud. You hooked Purse Snippet. Now you shamed Tulgord Vise and he needs you alive to prove to you you’re wrong about him.” She looked down at Tiny. “And even him, he’s snagged, too, because he’s not as stupid as he sounds. Just like Steck, he’s riding on your words, believing there are secrets in them. Your magic-that’s what you called it, isn’t it?”
“I can’t imagine what secrets I possess that would be of any use to them.”
She snorted again. “If anybody wants to see you dead and mute, it’s probably Mister Must.”
Well now, that was a cogent observation indeed. “Do you wish to be freed of your brothers or not?”
“Very deft, Flicker. Oh, why not? Free me, sweet hero, and you’ll have my gratitude and resentment both, for all time.”
“Relish, what you do with your freedom is entirely up to you, and the same for how you happen to think about the manner in which it was delivered. As for me, I will be content to witness, as might a kindly uncle-”
“Did you uncle me the other night, Flicker?”
“Dear me, I should say not, Relish.” And my regard descended to Tiny’s round face, so childlike in brainless repose. “You are certain he sleeps?”
“If he wasn’t, your neck would already be snapped.”