She clawed furrows in the hard ground as if swimming for shore, but the riptide of my lust held her fast. It was, assuredly, do or drown for Relish Chanter. Her gasps gusted clouds of dust round her face. She coughed, she hacked, she moaned in the manner of mothers behind the pantry door, and with her hips she bolted like a cow before the bull, only to lunge backward with small animal cries. I leaned forward and wrapped close my arms, hands finding her breasts. I took hold of full nipples and tried to twist them off, failing but not for want of trying to be sure.
As all know, lovemaking is the most gentle art. Sweet sensations, tender strokes of desire, the sudden nearness of hovering lips, a brush of cheeks, the sharing of wine breaths and so on. Clothes peel off languorous and sultry, shadows tease and warmth invites and then drips, and about all the bedding closes to enfold soft and fresh.
Lacking such amenities of the seductive, let the dogs howl. Beneath savagely cold stars, in beds of wiry stunted bushes, broken branches, rocks and buttons of cacti, this was the scrape and gouge of seed’s wild spill, a life’s banking in a dubious vessel of potential posterity, when said vessel is all there is on offer. Burgeon proud seed! Steal vigorous root in sweetest flesh! Bay with life’s triumph! I held her very nearly upside down as I unleashed my hungry stream, and if she didn’t weep white tears it is no small miracle.
The reparations that followed were conducted in sated silence. She combed through her hair to remove the bark, pebbles and saliva. I rubbed my face with sand and would have cut off my own left arm for a bowl of water. We hunted down our wayward clothing, before each in turn staggering off to find our bedding.
Thus ended the twenty-third night upon Crack’d Pot Trail.
A Recounting of the Twenty-fourth Day
LIKE RUBBING A glossy coat the wrong way, secret amorous escapades can leave the elect parties stirred awry in the wake, although of course there are always exceptions to the condition, and it would appear that, upon the dawn of the twenty-fourth day, both your venerable chronicler and Relish Chanter could blissfully count themselves thus blessed. Indeed, I never slept better, and from Relish’s languid feline stretch upon sitting up from her furs, her mind was as unclouded as ever, sweet as unstirred cream upon the milk.
Far more soured the dispositions of the haggard mottle of artists as the sun elbowed its way up between the distant crags to the east. Wretched their miens, woeful their swollen eyes. Harried their hair, dishevelled their comportment as sullen they gathered about the embers whilst Steck Marynd revived the flames with sundry fettles of tinder and whatnot. Strips of meat roasted the night before were chewed during the wait for the single small pot of tea to boil awake.
With bared iron fangs, the day promised torrid heat. Already the sun blazed wilful and not a single cloud dared intrude upon the cerulean sands of heaven’s arena. We stood or sat with the roar of blood in our ears, the silty tea gritty upon our leathery tongues, our hands twitching as if reaching for the journey’s end.
From somewhere close came the keening cry of a harashal, the cruel lizard vulture native to the Great Dry. The creature could smell the burnt bone, the ravelled flaps of human skin and scalp, the entrails shallowly buried in a pit just upwind of the camp. And with its voice it mocked our golden vigour until we felt nothing but leaden guilt. The world and indeed life itself lives entirely within the mind. We cast the colours ourselves, and every scene of salvation to one man shows its curly-haired backside to another. And so standing together we each stood alone, and that which we shared was unpleasant to all.
With, perhaps, a few exceptions. Rubbing a lump on his temple, Tiny Chanter walked off to fill a hole, humming as he went. Flea and Midge grinned at each other, which they did with unnerving frequency. Both had sore skulls and only moments earlier had been close to drawing knives, the belligerence halted by a warning grunt from Tiny.
Mister Ambertroshin filled a second cup of tea and walked over to the carriage, where a chamber pot awaited him set on the door’s step. A single knock and the wooden shutter on the window opened a crack, just wide enough for him to send the cup through, whereupon it snapped shut, locks setting. He collected the chamber pot and set out to dispose of its contents.
Tulgord Vise watched him walk off and then he grunted. ‘Looked to be a heavy pot for some old lady. See that, Steck? Arpo?’
The forester squinted with slitty eyes, but perhaps that was just the woodsmoke drifting up to enwreathe his weathered face.
Arpo, on the other hand, was frowning. ‘Well, she took two helpings last night, so it’s no wonder.’
‘Did she now?’ and Tulgord Vise glanced over at the carriage. He scratched at his stubbled jaw.
‘Must get horrid hot in there,’ Apto Canavalian mused, ‘despite the shade. Not a single vent is left open.’
Arpo set off to see to his horse, and after a moment Tulgord did something similar. Steck had already saddled his own half-wild mount and it stood nearby, chewing on whatever grasses it could find. Mister Ambertroshin returned with the scoured pot and stored it in the back box, which he then locked. He then attended to the two mules. So too did the others address to sundry chores or, as privilege or arrogance warranted, did nothing but watch the proceedings. Oggle Gush and Pampera set about combing Nifty’s golden locks, while Sellup bundled bedding and then laced onto Nifty’s feet the artist’s knee-high moccasins.
Thus did the camp break and all preparations were made for the trek ahead.
Calap Roud and Brash Phluster came up to me in the course of such readying. ‘Listen, Flicker,’ said Calap in a low voice, ‘nobody’s even told the Chanters about your deal last night, and I’m still of a mind to argue against it.’
‘Oh, did the Lady’s word not convince you then?’
‘Why should it?’ he demanded.
‘Me neither,’ said Brash. ‘Why you anyway? She won’t even look at me and I’m way better looking.’
‘This relates to the tale, surely,’ said I. ‘A woman such as Purse Snippet would hardly be of such beggarly need as to consider me in any other respect. Brash Phluster, I began a tale and she wishes to hear its end.’
‘But it’s not a believable one, is it?’
To that I could but shrug. ‘A tale is what it is. Must you have every detail relayed to you, every motivation recounted so that it is clearly understood? Must you believe that all proceeds at a certain pace only to flower full and fulsome at the expected time? Am I slave to your expectations, sir? Does not a teller of tales serve oneself first and last?’
Calap snorted. ‘I have always argued thus. Who needs an audience, after all. But this situation, it is different, is it not?’
‘Is it?’ I regarded them both. ‘The audience can listen, or they can walk away. They can be pleased. They can be infuriated. They can feel privileged to witness or cursed by the same. If I kneel to one I must kneel to all. And to kneel is to surrender and this no teller of tales must ever do. Calap Roud, count for me the times you have been excoriated for your arrogance. To be an artist is to know privilege from both sides, the privilege of creating your art and the privilege in those who partake of it. But even saying such a thing is arrogance’s deafening howl, is it not? Yet the audience possesses a singular currency in this exchange. To partake thereof or to not partake thereof. It extends no further for them, no matter how they might wish otherwise. Now, Calap, you say this situation is different, indeed, unique, yes?’
‘When our lives are on the line, yes!’
‘I have before me my audience of one, and upon her and her alone my life now rests. But I shall not kneel. Do you understand? She certainly understands – I can see that and am pleased by it. How will she judge? By what standards?’