“I imagine you are correct. Even so. It is late, Relish, and we have far to walk come the morrow.”
“Yes, Uncle.”
Watching her walk off to find her bedding, I contemplated myriad facets of humanly nature, as I selected the opposite direction in which to resume my wandering. Capemoths circled over my head like the bearers of grim thoughts, which I shooed away with careless gestures. The moon showed its smudged face to the east, like a wink through mud. Somewhere off to my right, lost in the gloom, Sellup was singing to herself as she stalked the night, as the undead will do.
Is there anything more fraught than family? We do not choose our kin, after all, and even by marriage one finds oneself saddled with a whole gaggle of new relations, all gathered to witness the fresh mixing of blood and, if of proper spirit, get appallingly drunk, sufficient to ruin the entire proceedings and to be known thereafter in infamy. For myself, I have always considered this gesture, offered to countless relations on their big day, to be nothing more than protracted revenge, and have of course personally partaken of it many times. Closer to home, as it were, why, every new wife simply adds to the wild, unwieldy clan. The excitement never ends!
Even so, poor Relish. Flaw or not, I vowed that I would have to do something about it, and if this be my weakness, then so be it.
“Flicker!”
The hiss brought me to a startled halt. “Brash?”
The gangly poet emerged from night’s felt, his hair upright and stark, thorn-scratches tracked across his drawn cheeks, his tongue darting to wet his lips and his ears twitching at imagined sounds. “Why didn’t anyone kill him?”
“Who?”
“Apto Canavalian! Who won’t vote for any of us. The worst kind of judge there is! He wastes the ground he stands upon!”
“Arpo Relent attempted the very thing you sought, dear poet, and, alas, failed-perhaps fatally.”
Brash Phluster’s eye’s widened. “The Well Knight’s dead?”
“His Wellness hangs in the balance.”
“Just what he deserves!” snarled the poet. “That murderous bag of foul wind. Listen! We could just run-this very night. What’s to stop us? Steck’s lost somewhere-who knows, maybe Nifty and his fans jumped him. Maybe they all killed each other out there in the desert.”
“You forget, good sir, the Chanters and, of course, Tulgord Vise. I am afraid, Brash, that we have no choice but to continue on-”
“If Arpo dies, we can eat him, can’t we?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“And maybe that’ll be enough. For everyone. What do you think?”
“It’s certainly possible. Now, Brash, take yourself to bed.”
He raked his fingers through his hair. “Gods, it’s not fair how us artists are treated, is it? They’re all vultures! Don’t they see how every word is a tortured excretion? Our sweat drips red, our blood pools and blackens beneath our finger nails, our teeth loosen at night and we stagger through our dreams gumming our words. I write and lose entire manuscripts between dusk and dawn-does that happen to you? Does it?”
“That it does, friend. We are all cursed with ineffable genius. But consider this, perhaps we each are in fact not one, but many, and whilst we sleep in this realm another version of us wakens to another world’s dawn, and sets quill to parchment-the genius forever beyond our reach is in fact his own talent, though he knows it not and like you and I, he frets over the lost works of his nightly dreams.”
Brash was staring at me with incredulous eyes. “That is cruelty without measure, Flicker. How could you even imagine such diabolical things? A thousand other selves, all equally tortured and tormented! Gods below!”
“I certainly do not see it that way,” did I reply. “Indeed, the notion leads me to ever greater efforts, for I seek to join all of our voices into one-perhaps, I muse, this is the truth of real, genuine genius. My myriad selves singing in chorus, oh how I long to be deafened by my own voice!”
“Yearn away,” Brash said, with a sudden wicked grin. “You’re doomed, Flicker. You just made me realize something, you see. I am already deafened by my own voice, meaning I already am a genius. Your argument proves it!”
“Thank goodness for that. Now, sing yourself off to sleep, Brash Phluster, and we will speak more of this upon the morning.”
“Flicker, do you have a knife?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m going to make Apto vote for me even if I have to kill him to do it.”
“That would be murder, friend.”
“We are awash in blood already, you fool! What’s one little dead critic more? Who’d miss him? Not me. Not you.”
“A dead man cannot vote, Brash.”
“I’ll force him to write a proxy note first. Then we can eat him.”
“I sincerely doubt he would prove palatable. No, Brash Phluster, you will receive no weapon from me.”
“I hate you.”
Off he stormed, in the manner of a golit bird hunting snakes.
“His mind has cracked.” With this observation, Purse Snippet appeared, her cloak drawn tight about her lithe form.
“Will no one sleep this night?” I asked, in some exasperation.
“Our cruel and unhappy family is in tatters.”
To this I grunted.
“Do doubts finally afflict you, Avas Didion Flicker? I intend no mercy, be certain of that.”
“The burdens are weighty indeed, Lady Snippet, but I remain confident that I shall prevail.”
She drew still closer, her eyes searching mine, as women’s eyes are in the habit of doing when close we happen to stand. What secret promise are they hoping to discover? What fey hoard of untold riches do they yearn to pry open? Could they but imagine the murky male realm lurking behind these lucid pearls, they might well shatter the night with shrieks and flee into the shelter of darkness itself. But this is the mystery of things, is it not? We bounce through guesses and hazy uncertainties, and call it rapport, bridged and stitched with smiles and engaging expressions, whilst behind both set of eyes maelstroms rage benighted in wild images of rampant sex and unlikely trysts. Or so I fancy, and why not? Such musings are easy vanquish over probable truths (that at least one of us is either bored rigid or completely mindless with all the perspicacity of a jellyfish, and oft I have caught myself in rubbery wobble, mind, or even worse: is that intensity merely prelude to picking crabs from my eyebrows? Oh yes, we stand close and behind our facades we quiver in trepid tremulosity, even as our mouths flap a league a breath).
Where were we? Ah yes, standing close, her eyes tracking mine like twin bows with arrows fixed, whilst I shivered like two hares in lantern light.
“How, then,” asked Purse Snippet (eyes tracking… tracking- I am pinned!), “do you intend to save me, noble sir? In the manner of all those others, in a tangle of warm flesh and the oblivion of sated desires? Have you any idea just how many men I have had? Not to mention women? And each time a new candidate steps forth, what do I see in those oh-so-eager eyes?” She slowly shook her head. “The conviction writ plain that this one can do what none before was capable of doing, and what must I then witness?”
“I would hazard, the pathetic collapse of such brazen arrogance?
“Yes. But here, and now, I look into your eyes and what do I see?”
“To be honest, Lady, I have no idea.”
“Really.”
“Really.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Do you see? She had crowbar in hand, the treasure chest looms (mine, not hers, we’re being figurative here. We’ll get to the literal in a moment), and the lock looks flimsy indeed. And in her eyes what do I see? Why, the conviction that she and she alone has what it takes (whatever it takes, don’t ask me), to crack loose that mysterious lockbox of fabulous revelations that is, well, the real me.
Bless her.
Do you all finally understand my angst? I mean, is this all there is? What is this anyway? I don’t know. Ask my wives. They pried me loose long ago, to their eternal disappointment, of which they continually remind me, lest I stupidly wander into some impractical daydream (such as this: Is there some woman out there who still thinks me mysterious? I must find her! That kind of daydream). As tired old philosophers say, the scent is ever sweeter over the garden wall. And my, how we do climb.