it, and return home. All I ask is that you surrender your battle standard.'
Sir Michand sat with his mouth slightly open in surprise. He quickly caught himself and straightened his posture.
'Very well, General. You have beaten us in fair combat. My honor demands that I do no less. I accept your terms.'
Black
Black, the symbol of death and despair, can be characterized as morbid, impatient, incorporeal, and stagnant. It is the color of pollution and pestilent, festering swamps. Those who show fondness for this color are not the type to show off. They will impress those worthy of their time by their real substance and weight. Black leans on the side of mystery and darkness but can be mighty and dignified. Black is a stark color, the beacon of nothingness, but those who favor this color abhor inevitability. They would hold to the present forever if they could and they will probably try. Black is for those who hide their darker sides behind an air of sophistication, for those who lurk in alleyways and dark corners, and for those willing to pay the price of greatness.
Dark Water
Tayva walked from the stone hut, the morning crisp and cool with a light dusting of dew. She stretched her back and heard the creak of aging bones and poor bedding. She called over her shoulder in a raspy voice that had begun to shrill with age. 'Loria, I'm going to check the birds. '
Usually Tayva checked the pigeons later in the morning, but some of the caged birds had looked unwell the day before. She coughed in the cool air as she tried to clear the dust and smoke of the night's fire from her throat. Nerving herself to face the day, and unwrapping the greasy shawl from her shoulders, Tayva threw it into the dark doorway behind her. She just missed tangling the feet of her cousin.
Loria exited and tilted her face to the sun burning through the morning haze. Her features were finer and more delicate than those of Tayva. She wore dull rags, but they hung neatly, and while patches and crude stitching formed most of the smock, there were no actual holes. She held a wooden comb in her left hand and rubbed her eyes. Turning back to the hut, she picked up a crude bucket with her free hand.
The hut the two women exited was small and poorly thatched. The walls were of irregular rocks and turf the pair had cut years before, while the smoke from the stoked fire oozed through the roof. The dry weather had allowed repairs to the roof and walls to be delayed, and it appeared more ruin than residence. The hovel lay on the shore of a new lake, the water clear and cold in the morning light. The doorway looked out at bare and eroded hills in the distance rather than the water close at hand. The cousins cared little for what they saw.
Tayva walked to the back of the hut, as Loria continued to the lake edge and filled the bucket with water. She began wetting and combing her hair to look her best for the coming day. Tayva sighed as she considered how pathetic Loria's morning routine appeared, the careful and complete beauty preparations of their youth reduced to a soapless wash in cold water.
Tayva moved to the dovecot set behind the hut. The building was backed with carefully cut and fitted stone, and the roof and three of the walls were a woven lattice of wicker and pieces of wood. The wood was in the form of barrel staves, bought at great cost for two poverty-stricken women. The cot, though weathered and aged, was far better than the near ruin the women inhabited.
Tayva swept the ground with her eyes as she stood by the cot. As carefully maintained and constructed as the building was, she still feared it would be raided, but as usual, there were no tracks other than her own. She opened the door and quickly stepped through to prevent any birds from exiting.
The pigeons nested in open racks and wicker cages. The birds were quiet. She could hear only soft cooing and the occasional movement. Usually, when she renewed the feed dispenser, a swirl of birds would envelop her, but now she radiated stillness. The birds looked at her without expectation. Tayva peered through the dappled light and saw that one of the pigeons had died in the night. She immediately took the small cage from its mounting and carried it to the entrance of the cot. There, by the door, stood a small barrel of feed and behind it a pottery vessel of herbal oil. A large crock of the oil rested behind the back wall of the dovecot, but she kept a smaller vessel inside for quick use. Gathering up the bottle and two basketlike cages, she returned to where the dead bird lay.
Tayva poured the herbal oil over the straw and hay on the floor of the cot and doused the hook from which the cage had hung. The oil was to control and cloak whatever disease might have killed the bird. Then with tender hands she gathered immediate members of its brood and gently transferred the torpid birds to the traveling cages. She could identify the family relationship among the birds with the same surety that, in decades past, she would have known the names and particulars of her own social circle. She passed the baskets and the dead bird out of the cot and took them behind the stone backing of the building. Kneeling by the large crock, she removed the cap and brought out the dead pigeon-a male in the prime of life when it died-and immersed it in the oil. She began to croon strange off-key melodies. Her care in rubbing the oil into all the feathers of the bird, and her odd reverence, would not have been out of place in the internment of a king.
After its oil bath, Tayva carried the avian corpse and the baskets of pigeons to the slough only a hundred feet away. An offshoot of the lake, the slough was an aberration in the surrounding country. A pustulant green in the surrounding pastels, it drew and fascinated the eye. Nothing disturbed its surface, and no insects flew over its stagnant waters. She arranged the cages around a patch of packed earth and placed the live birds near the water. The dead bird she lifted from the cage and carefully positioned it to form the tip of a triangle in relation to the live birds, the point facing away from the water. Tayva stooped and cupped a handful of water from the slough, then straightened with difficulty and poured it over the still bird. The water left a coating of decay on her hand, and only with conscious effort did she refrain from wiping it clean. Drawing a single deep breath, she knelt at the edge of the water with eyes closed. Her tension and breath eased out of her in a sustained exhalation until she slumped forward, totally empty. Suddenly Tayva's head snapped back and tremors rippled along her body. A grimace swept her visage, emotions unknown and incomprehensible trying to express themselves. Her hands jerked and pawed at her sides. The birds called in fear and tried to flee. When Tayva's hands finally grasped the baskets the birds attacked her fingers. Any pain she might have felt was swept away by something else as she lifted the birds over the still water and then plunged them through the surface. The cages submerged only halfway, slowed by strange wiry plants hidden in the water. A blast of stench came from the disturbed water that blinded Tayva and tears poured from her eyes. The birds beat the water with their wings and pecked at Tayva, the wickerwork, each other, and even the water. But their movements grew more feeble by the second, and Tayva kept pushing the baskets down. The pigeons were laboring and dying, pulled down one by one, as if some small animal was inside the basket with them. Tayva forced one cage beneath the surface completely and had to use both hands to push the other down. Only one bird was left. It attacked her fingers as she forced her hands below the roiled surface. She nearly fell in as more tremors shook her and then sat back on her heels hard. She shuddered and shook her head as though dislodging flies. Tayva heard the rustle of damp feathers behind her. The dead bird preened itself and looked at the small of her back with one dull eye. A great slow smile spread over her face, and she clasped her bleeding, scarred hands together and groaned with pleasure and remembrance of better days.
Tayva and Loria reclined on cushions piled along the walls. Though the room was in a basement, it had been carefully decorated to suggest freedom. The walls and ceilings were covered in swathes of cloth that gave the room the appearance of a great tent. A thick layer of sand covered what should have been a muddy floor, and good drainage kept it dry. Vents from a holocaust drove a continuous stream of hot air over everything. Despite the warmth, braziers sat in every corner burning great blocks of incense, throwing streamers of smoke through the air. Loria and Tayva took no notice of their surroundings. Their eyes were steady on the woman in the center of the room.
