would be a deep pit, and weakened as her clan’s warriors now were, the stranger could take all he wanted if he so chose. And more, she was troubled by that sled, for bundled as it was, she knew it bore a body. If it lived it would need caring. If dead, the warrior was delivering a curse upon her people.”
“A curse?” Sellup asked. “What kind of curse?”
Calap blinked.
Seeing that he had no specific response to this question, I cleared my throat. “Death leaves such camps, Sellup, and that is well and as it should be. This is why the elders, when they decide it is time to die, walk out into the white. It is also why all kills are butchered well away from the camp itself, so that only meat, hide and bones intended to be made into tools-gifts to life one and all-enter the camp. Should death come into the camp, the hosts are cursed and must immediately make propitiations to the Reaver and his demon slaves, lest Death find the camp to his liking and so make it his home. When the Reaver finds a home, the living soon die, do you see?”
“No.”
Sighing, I said, “It is one of those rules couched in spiritual guise that, in truth, has a more secular purpose. To bring someone dead or dying into a small camp is to invite contagion and disease. Among such a close-knit clan, any infection is likely to claim them all. Thus, the Imass had certain rules to prevent such a thing occurring, yet those rules, alas, conflicted with that of never turning a guest away in times of need. So the woman was with troubled thoughts, yes?”
“But he’s evil-he has to be! He’s the Reaper himself!”
“Reaver,” I corrected, “or so the citizens of Aren so call the Lord of Death.”
Calap flinched and would not thereafter meet my eyes. “So she stood, trembling, as the stranger, who had clearly chosen her as his destination, now drew up to halt nine paces distant. She saw at once that he was not Imass. He was from the mountain heights. He was Fenn, a giant of Tartheno Toblakai blood. And too, she saw that he bore the marks of battle. Slash wounds that had cut through the woolly Tenag hide had encrusted the slices with the warrior’s own blood. His right hand and forearm were blackened with old gore, and so too was his face spattered in violent maps.
“He was silent for a time, his heavy eyes held upon her, and then he spoke. He said-”
“Finish this tomorrow night,” Tiny Chanter said, cracking a wide yawn.
“That’s not how it works,” Tulgord Vise said in a growl. “We can’t very well vote if one of the tales remains incomplete.”
“I want to hear more, don’t I?” Tiny retorted. “But I’m falling asleep, right? So, we get the rest tomorrow night.”
I noticed that Nifty Gum was endeavouring to catch my eye. In response I raised my brows and shrugged.
Oggle Gush said then, “But I want to hear Nifty’s story!”
Nifty made to silence the girl, if the twitching of his hands and their spasmodic clutching (miming throttling a throat) was any indication, though who but Nifty could truly say?
“Tomorrow during the day then! Same for the other one-we got time and since there ain’t nothing to see anyway and nothing to do but walk, let’s have em entertain us till sunset! No, it’s settled and all, ain’t it, Flea?”
“Aye,” said Flea. “Midge?”
“Aye,” said Midge.
“But the night is still young,” objected Arpo Relent, and one could tell from a host of details in his demeanor that the sudden dispatch of impending death-sentences had frustrated some pious repository of proper justice within his soul, and now in his face there was the blunt belligerence of a thwarted child.
Purse Snippet then surprised us all by saying, “I will tell a tale, then.”
“My lady,” gasped the host, “it was settled-there is no need-”
“I would tell a tale, Sardic Thew, and so I shall.” With this assertion muting us all she then hesitated, as if startled by her own boldness. “Words are not my talent, I admit, so forgive me if I stumble on occasion.”
Who could not but be forgiving?
“This too belongs to a woman,” she began, her eyes on the flames, her elegantly-fingered hands encircling her clay vessel. “Loved and worshiped by so many-” she sharply looked up. “No, she was no dancer, nor a poet, nor actress nor singer. Hers was a talent born to, yet not one that could be further honed. In truth, it was not a talent at all, but rather the gathering of chance-lines and curves, symmetries. She was, in short, beautiful, and from that beauty her life was shaped, her future preordained. She would marry well, above her station, and in that marriage she would be the subject of adoration, as if she was a precious object of art, until such time that age stole her beauty, whereupon her fine home would become a tomb of sorts, her bedroom rarely frequented at night by her husband, whose vision of beauty remained forever youthful.
“There would be wealth. Fine foods. Silks and fetes. There would be children, perhaps, and there would be something… something wistful, there in her eyes at the very end.”
“That’s not a story!” Oggle Gush said.
“I have but begun, child-”
“Sounds more like an end to me, and don’t call me child, I’m not a child,” and she looked to Nifty for confirmation, but he was instead frowning at Purse Snippet, as if seeking to understand something.
Purse Snippet resumed her tale, but her eyes were now bleak as she gazed into the fire. “There are quests, in a person’s life, that require no steps to be taken. No journey across strange landscapes. There are quests where the only monsters are the shadows in a bedroom, the reflection in a mirror. And one has no companions hale and brave to stand firm at one’s side. This is a thing taken in solitude. She was loved by many, yes. She was desired by all who saw the beauty of her, but of beauty within herself, she could see nothing. Of love for the woman she was inside, there was none. Can the pulp of the fruit admire the beauty of its skin? Can it even know that beauty?”
“Fruits don’t have eyes,” said Oggle Gush, rolling her own. “This is stupid. You can’t have quests without mountain passes and dangerous rivers to cross, and ogres and demons and wolves and bats. And there’s supposed to be friends of the hero who go along and fight and stuff, and get into trouble so the hero has to save them. Everyone knows that.”
“Oggle Gush,” Apto Canavalian said (now that he’d done plucking cactus spikes from the back of his head), “kindly shut that useless hole in your face. Purse Snippet, please, go on.”
Whilst Oggle gaped and mawped and blinked like an owl in a vice, Steck Marynd appeared to add more wood to the fire and it occurred to me that the stolid, grim ranger was indeed doing woodly things, which meant that all was well, though of greater tasks and higher import something must obtain with this personage, sooner or later. One hopes.
“She would stand upon a balcony overlooking the canal where the gramthal boats plied carrying people and wares. Butterflies in the warm air would lift as if on sounds to gather round her.” She faltered then, for some unknown reason, and drew a few breaths before continuing, “and though all who chanced to look up, all who set eyes upon her, saw a maiden of promise, indeed, a work of art posed thus upon that balcony, why, in her soul there was war. There was anguish and suffering, there was dying to an invisible enemy, one that could cut the feet beneath every mustered argument, every armoured affirmation. And the dark air was filled with screams and weeping, and upon no horizon did dawn make promise, for this was a night unending and a war without respite.
“A lifetime, she would tell you, is a long time to bleed. There is paint for pallor, the hue of health to hide the ashen cheeks, but the eyes cannot be disguised. There you will find, if you look closely, the tunnels to the battlefield, to that unlighted place where no beauty or love can be found.”
The fire ate wood, coughed smoke. No one spoke. The mirror was smudged, yes, but a mirror nonetheless.
“Had she said but a single word,” muttered someone (was it me?), “a thousand heroes would have rushed to her aid. A thousand paths of love to lead her out of that place.”
“That which cannot love itself cannot give love in return,” she replied. “So it was with this woman. But, she knew in her heart, the war must end. What devours within will, before long, claw its way to the surface, and the gift of beauty will falter. Dissolution rots outward. The desperation grew within her. What could she do? Where in her mind could she go? There was, of course,” and inadvertendy her eyes dropped to the cup in her hands, “sweet oblivion, and all the masks of escape as offered by wine, smoke and such, but these are no more than the paths of
