applied cosmetic. Black lined her eyes as if she had applied kohl, but when she licked her lips eagerly, I saw that her tongue was also banded with color. An extraordinary thrill ran through me; she was woman and wild animal, all in one, and the abrupt desire I felt shamed me. Her childish begging seemed innocent and natural in contrast to her tempting body. Rory held the tobacco out of her reach; with his free hand, he reached through the bars to stroke her haunch. She made no objection, but only giggled and tried to reach the tobacco in his other hand. He laughed drunkenly, as focused on her as if they were alone. I watched fascinated by desire as he slipped his hand over her knee and began to slide it up her inner thigh. She grew very still; her lips parted and she breathed through her mouth.
The keeper, who had been sitting bored on an upended keg beside the cage, stood suddenly. He was a scraggly fellow in a soiled striped shirt and rough canvas trousers. He hurried over to us, pushing his way through the crowd. He elbowed Rory back and jabbed at the Speck woman with a prod, ordering her angrily, “Back, back!” Then he turned on us and commanded us, “Step back from the bars. Don’t give them ’baccy, fella! It’s how we train them. Don’t you reward them for actin’ up. Get back, Princess. Gimpy, get back!”
The young female had completely captured my attention. For the first time, I noticed that the younger male had a shattered foot. Gimpy drew back warily from the keeper’s prod. He had not spoken a word. But when the keeper jabbed Princess, she turned on him, hissing. Then, in unaccented passion, she unleashed a stream of the foulest invective I’d ever heard. She finished it with, “A worm crawled up your mother’s hole and laid an egg in her womb, and that was you! Your trees have no roots and your dead do not speak to you! You lick yourself and think your vermin a fine meal! You-”
Before she could mouth another insult, the uncrippled male slapped her. “Quiet, quiet, quiet! Be good. Show the gennlemun your breasts.” Then, as she staggered back from the blow, he turned to the keeper. “I’m good. I’m good. ’Baccy, ’baccy? Some for good Beggar?”
“A bit,” the keeper conceded. From his pocket he took a black plug of crude leaf. I could smell the molasses mixed with it. He broke off a tiny crumble and put it into Beggar’s hand. Before he could carry it to his mouth, Princess attacked him. They tumbled to the straw on the floor of the cage, wrestling over the prize. The crippled Speck looked on, rocking from his good foot to his sound one, but not intervening. The surrounding crowd gave up a mixture of cries of alarm and applause. The keeper gauged it as general approval and let them fight. The male seemed intent mostly on getting his hand up to his mouth and wriggled away from the female’s blows and scratches. The sight of the two, near naked and struggling supine, was both disturbing and arousing.
“Let’s leave,” I said to my fellows. They did not even turn to hear me. But in the crate in the back of the cage, something stirred. A moment later an old man tottered out. I had not noticed him before. He had wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. Beneath it, he wore a robe of rough cotton. He had long graying hair, the stripes fading in it, and his face was lined as deeply as a crumpled leaf. I thought the elder would rebuke the fighting couple. Instead he came to the bars of the cage and looked round at us with rheumy eyes. He coughed, and then spat dark spittle into the straw. He said something in his native tongue. It was a strange language, flowing, with few consonants I could detect. The crippled Speck came to stand beside him. He replied in the same tongue and pointed in our general direction. The old Speck leaned close to the bars, sniffing loudly. His gaze suddenly met mine. He smiled with brown teeth, and nodded as if we were acquaintances meeting on the street. He held his hand toward me, palm up and open, as if inviting or requesting something.
“Whatturu doin’?” Rory demanded of me suddenly. “ ’Zat a charm?”
I looked down in horror. Of its own volition, my hand was moving, my fingers weaving the air. Dream words echoed in my mind. ‘Tomorrow you face a test. You will pass it and make the sign and you will then fight for the People.’ I seized my right hand in my left and massaged the fingers. “Just a cramp,” I told Rory.
“Oh,” he agreed.
Inside the cage, the aged Speck nodded at me. Then he took a step back. He slapped one hand on his chest, cupping the hand to make a larger sound than I would have expected. At the noise, the struggle on the cage floor instantly ceased. Both combatants came to their feet. The male hastily clapped his hand to his mouth as he did so, and I saw his tongue work, tucking his nubbin of tobacco into his cheek.
The old Speck said something to them. The girl replied negatively, almost angrily. The old man repeated himself. He did not raise his voice or sound more insistent, but suddenly all three of the other Specks cowered from him. The girl stood up straight then and announced loudly, “I speak, I speak. Quiet. Listen.”
“Hey, then, what are you up to?” The keeper demanded angrily. He shook his prod at them, but all of the Specks had stepped back, out of his reach. The girl, her face reddened and one arm bleeding from a long scratch, still manifested a sudden, savage dignity. It clothed her nakedness better than any garment. She tossed back her streaky mane and spoke clearly.
“Tonight, we dance. Right now. The People dance the Dust Dance. For you all. Come close, come close. See us dance. Only one time! Watch it now.” She beckoned us, waving her arms to urge us closer.
Beside the cage, the keeper’s jaw dropped open. “What’s this, what’s this?” he demanded angrily, but the Specks were no longer paying him any attention. He seized the chain that secured the door to their enclosure and rattled it threateningly, as if he were coming in. Beggar looked over his shoulder at the keeper, and then ignored him as the three males trooped back toward their shelter. The girl positioned herself in the middle of their cage, well out of reach of the keeper’s prod. Now she lifted her voice and her arms. Her clear tones rang out. “Dust Dance! Dust Dance! Gather all for the Dust Dance! You never to see this before! You never to see this again! Come one. Come all. Dust Dance of the People!”
Her tone was a fair imitation of the barkers’ outside. My estimation of her innate intelligence rose. As a man, we all pressed closer to the cage, even as the keeper warned us sternly, ‘Keep back! Keep back! Do not touch the bars!” When we all ignored him, he raised his own voice and began shouting, “The Dust Dance of the Savage Specks of the far east! Gather one, gather all. Only five tallies more to witness the Dust Dance. A mere five tallies to watch what you’ll never see again!”
But his efforts to profit went mostly ignored. Oh, a few fools dug into their pockets and counted money out to him, which he promptly stuffed into his own greasy purse. Inside the cage, the woman continued to cry her appeal for spectators while the males huddled inside their shelter. In a remarkably short time, they emerged “dressed” for the dance. Feathers, dead leaves, bits of fur, tassels of shells, and a pouch were suspended from strings tied round their waists. Their matted hair had been hastily plaited into queues down their backs. Long earrings of cheap beads dangled almost to their shoulders. I sensed items hoarded for a long time, perhaps in great hardship.
Their keeper had turned barker. “Never before seen in a city! Never before performed under a tent! The Dust Dance of the Savage Specks. Ladies and lords, come now, come now, to see the-”
His voice was suddenly drowned out by an ululation from the Speck woman. Before her cry died out, the Speck men took it up, modulating it to a deep-voiced chanting. They spaced their voices, like children singing a round, producing a strange echoing sound. Slowly, feet shuffling, they began to circle the woman. She stood, her arms uplifted like a tree’s branches, and swayed in place as she sang in a pure, sweet soprano. It did not matter that we did not speak the language. I could hear the wind blowing and rain dripping from leaves in her song. The men circled her slowly, once, then twice. The crowd drew closer to the cage, transfixed by the strange dance and odd song. Each of the men dipped a hand into his pouch and drew forth a handful of fine dark dust. They began to shake their hands over their heads as they danced round the woman. The dust leaked from between their fingers to float free in the air around them. The woman’s voice suddenly rose in an extended note she held for an impossibly long time. Again the men circled her, dancing in close and then out in a larger circle. Again, they dipped their hands into their pouches and shook the dust free in the air as they danced. The woman swayed like a tree in the wind, and the crowd oohed in awe as a ghostly wind shushed through the tent in seeming harmony with the dance. It carried the floating dust over the crowd and several people sneezed, raising brief flurries of laughter from those around them.
The dance went on and on. Long after I had wearied of it, I was trapped there. The crowd behind us pressed us close to the cage bars. Rory especially seemed enraptured by the woman and her song. He gripped the bars with both hands and hung on, as if he were the one imprisoned by her wildness. I saw the keeper look at him twice, and feared the man would come to bang his knuckles, but the press of the mob trapped the man as effectively as it did us.
The woman’s song and the men’s chanting built to a crescendo. Their shuffling dance became a swift walk, then a jog, and suddenly they were running round the edges of the cage, even the old man, even the limping Speck,
