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“Nothing, son,” said the ancient ferryman, his voice relenting to softness. “No one who crosses this water ever had another choice.” He poled the silt-stuck bottom of the lake, and somewhere far off, a bird keened, a gull or cormorant. Seven thought the trees were closer now, that the silver line of a beach gleamed below them, but he felt sick with the rocking of the ferry, and his eyes were rubbed raw by the wind’s fingers. The sky was so blank he could not see the sun, and he thought he smelled a coming snow. Idyll’s cutting voice sank into his thoughts.
“Tell me, how many of those awful old things do you have left?”
“One,” the young man said. “I saved two. One to get me to her, the other to get us back. I saved enough for this, for her. That’s all that’s left.”
“And that leaves four to fill out your tale, before the storm screams in and there is no more room to talk beneath the white winds.”
Seven nodded and coughed roughly. “Four. Four coins for a cripple and a monster to ply the road—that’s all there was outside of Marrow, once Vhummim had punched through the fish-bone wall at the edge of the city for us. Roads, paved and dirt-packed, cobbled and painted and bricked. We followed one, we might have followed any of them, but we followed that one, and now I am crossing a lonely lake to her, to her, my sister and my friend…”
THE TALE
OF THE
TWELVE COINS,>
CONTINUED
WE CHOSE A ROAD, AND FOR THE FIRST TIME IN seven years, a golden sun, hanging in the sky not unlike a ball, shone on our skins. It turned us red. We swam in blue rivers and splashed each other. We ate blackberries and walnuts cracked with flat stones. We did not work. Yet when we swam and I saw her naked flesh shoot by under the cold, clear water, I still saw nothing beautiful, only dhheiba, lurking beneath.
We wandered for a long while, she and I. We might have searched out our homes again, or homes which would suit us now, but we had, by mutual agreement, done with cities. We kept to the green orchards like foxes, and sucked at sweet owl eggs. Autumn was beginning to swell the apples before we saw anyone on our road, and I am sure we looked quite feral by then. Oubliette’s hair was even growing long and shaggy, crow black, framing her face like rough hands. We had no mirrors or shears, and my hair was longer than hers. We were in quite a state—though happily gorged on apples and rabbit haunches, as we were between us quite clever at catching them. After agate and jasper, soft meat and crisp fruit were miracles to us, and we sought them out, starving. And so, when we heard the cart clattering down the lane, we were still in rags and shoeless, but fatter than we had ever been.
The cart had two great wheels, which towered over the thing itself, painted blue and spangled with silver stars. A little wagon was suspended between the wheels, with a peaked gypsy-roof and round windows. Doors opened in each side, and it seemed spacious enough; maybe it was even pleasant to sit inside and watch the spokes clack by. It was drawn by a lithe man clothed all in green—hose, doublet, fetching little cape and hat, all greener than apple skin. He had hair the color of egg yolks that stuck out from under his cap and a thin, affable face. His feet, from the knees down, were the spindle-swift legs of a dun brown gazelle, and his green hose ended just before the fur in a brass buckle, old enough to have gone slightly green itself. Oubliette and I stared, our mouths gaping.
“Well, good morning, little ones! How does the glabrous day find you?” he said, curtseying as well as his legs allowed. He did not let go his long blue poles, and his voice was like a thrush’s chirping song. He smiled—his teeth were small and bright and sharp as a fox’s.
“Good… good morning,” I said. Oubliette held my hand tightly.
“You are fortunate to have crossed paths with us, my wastrels! I can see you are in need of c
ivilization, and art is the midwife of the civilized soul. We are performers and minstrels, singers of songs and players of scenes, catamites and castrati, the finest and brightest and best-dressed of all of these. For a coin we will show you the world on our stage, for two we will teach its ways to you. I am Taglio—juggler, dancer, eunuch, acrobat, and scenery-wrangler, and superlative knight of the cart!”
We introduced ourselves shyly, but neither of our hands went to the hidden purse. We could not afford to spend my body on this colorful man, no matter what he promised. He beamed at us with sparkling green eyes. As we looked closer, we saw that the silver stars were simply bits of tin suspended from the wheels. The paint had worn in places, from a startlingly dark and vivid cobalt to pale turquoise. The effect was very pretty all the same, and the stars made a tinkling sound in the breeze.
“Wouldn’t you like to have a little dance?” he trilled, hopping from one hoofed foot to the other. “A little scene—‘The Princess and Her Faithful Cat,’ perhaps? ‘The Huldra, the Bull, and the Tree’?” Oubliette looked stricken, and Taglio hurried on. “Or something more grown-up, as befits two upstanding young things such as yourselves? ‘The Murder of King Ismail’? ‘The Rape of Amberabad’? ‘The Siren’s Seraglio’? Or perhaps just a song, a card trick, a coin from behind your ear? We are flexible, we are amenable, amicable, and amiable, as all must be in times such as these. We too are hungry for sparrow pies and blueberry cordials, and barter our talents for such reasonable fees.”
A large red paw emerged from one of the blue windows. It stretched lazily, extending its scarlet claws and retracting them again.
“Who is that, Taglio my pet?” a low voice came from behind the bird-skin curtains. It had a growl to it, but was not unpleasant, like rubbing fur against the grain.
“That will be my mistress and my partner, the other half of my ‘we,’ my menagerie, my muse, my terror, my darling!” said the green man, finally setting his long poles onto the dappled ground and gallantly opening one of the moon-round doors of the spectacular cart.
Out of the blue stepped a Manticore.
I know this now, because she has since carefully shown me all the parts of her body and explained their origins and uses, but then she seemed an outlandish vision, and I could not have named her for a hundred bone coins. She was a lion, of sorts. Her pelt was red as leaves, and oiled to a glossy shine—but her head was that of a woman with enormous blue eyes, the same blue as the cart, her aristocratic face framed with stiff, wiry hair the same shade as her fur. Haloing her head like a mane, it flowed back over her muscled shoulders like a genteel shawl. As she exited the cart completely, her tail came into view—it was that of a great serpent, mottled green like old copper, scaled and scabrous. At its tip was a scorpion’s barb, hard and shiny as a beetle’s carapace.
“Grotteschi the Red,” Taglio crowed, “actress, beast, mezzo-soprano!” The Manticore inclined her head modestly, her ruddy cheeks high and lovely. There was something strange about the line of her jaw—it did not close quite right, like a child’s broken music box, but it was wide and generous, her lips like a swipe of blood. In her jaw were three rows of sharp yellow teeth. “Will you not hear her sing? It is worth five times anything you might pay to listen, I swear by my Absentia.” Oubliette crooked a quizzical eyebrow, and the gazelle-man grinned. “A eunuch is lacking in some things, and flush with others. That which I do not possess are naturally absent from me, and thus, in polite company, I refer to them as my Absentia. We must all be allowed our little eccentricities. If you will sit yourselves down on the grass—a cushion fit for lords and ladies of twice our collected ranks!—I will tell you the tale, should it please you. The first taste is always free.”
The Manticore rolled her bright eyes.
“How can they decide if they want the whole show if they do not get a taste of us?” he protested.
“Go on, then, and don’t complain to me when it’s mice for dinner again,” the red beast retorted.
Taglio smiled his sharp, glittering smile, tapped the earth with his hooves in a shuffling two-step, and began.
THE TALE
OF THE EUNUCH
