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I told her to let it lie, I told her, but she could not. Do I go whining back to the desert when an Upas dries up her sap and lies down by the water? No, I do not. But she could not let those who did not love her nearly so well as I lie still behind her as they ought. And so she heard from this man in his ridiculous hat that her father had died, and the Bell of Amberabad chimed in mourning, day and night.
Hind twisted her black beads. She looked at me, stricken, and buried her head in my mane. I pressed my broken jaw to her face, and her tears were hot as Upas milk.
“It is all right, my girl,” I whispered into her hair. “They are gone now and you are free of them. I will sing for you at any window you indicate with the smallest of your fingers, and we will be happy. There are many ways of being happy. We will find ours.”
Hind looked up at me miserably, scarlet strands of my hair clinging to her face. “No, Grotteschi. I must go home. I will not be forever the wicked sister. I must do as much as any woman does for her father, for her sister.”
I crouched down in the small mound of pearls that had spilled out over her toes, my paws dark against them, and made my voice soft as fingers stroking old drumskins. “I will never go back to that place. My jaw aches when I think of it—I will never touch amber again with these paws.” Hind wept silently. I could not look at her. “Are you leaving me?” I growled.
She flung her arms around me, and her beads were hard on my cheeks. “Find me in Ajanabh,” she whispered, pearls streaming over my shoulders like tears. “I will go there, when all things which should be in the ground are buried. I will go there, and you will find me, and sing at my window, and I will come out to you.”
When the first silver streaks of dawn began to stream across the valley, she was gone, and so was the Vstreycha. A few tent spikes remained, a few pearls rolling loose and dirty. Taglio might have consoled me, and I went padding about the wreckage of the makeshift camp to find him, to find his boot-black hooves and his smiling face, which was dear to me, if not quite so dear as a wicked sister and her loud laughter.
Immacolata and her Gaselli were down in the depths of the vale, by a freezing stream which gurgled blue and frothy through the tall weeds.
“I am going,” said the odalisque quietly. I don’t think I ever heard her raise her voice, in all the time we walked paw by foot. She was calm as tea in a cup.
“She knows you care for her; you do not need to do more,” said the eunuch, his head low.
“I will repay her gift to us. I have heard the story from three fools and a tragedian of her death, of how she killed the King, and how her brother carried her body off from the palace. Where did he take her? What can she have in that cold, dark place where Stars go? I will not let her languish—she did not let me!” Finally Immacolata’s voice did break, and she struck her fists against the chest of her ersatz lover. “What did you give to the Star?” she wept. “I will give her no more than a little leaf. What did you give? What did you give?” She ripped her scarlet ribbons from her braid, long strands of hair coming with them, her tears terrible,
like water boiling to a white scrim on the bottom of an old pot. “I am not like you! I don’t care about religion. She saved me, she saved me when you only watched and guarded the door. She said we were sisters! How can I let her go into the dark alone? I cannot abide a sister’s suffering!”
“I am sure she has enough of wild followers and grief-stricken siblings.”
“She saw the leaf in me. She knew this day would come. Drink my tea and you will know what I dream of. Wear my shoes and you will know what I dream of. I dream of my sister, alone, weeping!”
He held her then, stroked her torn hair. I could not hear what he said against her skin, but I saw the sharp gleam of blood again, and I saw him dry her tears. She stood back from him, an old, familiar smile on her face.
“I have one last thing for you, who has as much of my blood in him as his own.”
“I do not want anything else. I only want you to stay.”
She tried to laugh, but it came out poorly, a broken cello string. “Please, my love, don’t. She needs me.” The odalisque shook her hair back. “I am made of tea, remember? It will be as though I simply steep, in endless water. And because of that, I can do a thing which would amaze anyone in the Vstreycha. Come close, my dear gazelle, and jump through my ear.”
“What? Don’t be ridiculous!” Taglio recoiled. She only laughed.
“I am only tea—can you not leap through a tea bush? So you may leap through me and come out the other side.” She went to him, put her hands on his face, kissed his eyelids. “Taglio, dearest shepherd, dearest sheep, in this way you may enter me, and it will be as though we neither of us have lost anything in our lives.”
He pressed his head into her, and I could hear his sobs, the sound of them like planks of wood splintering under a bronze ax. But he drew back, and to my never-ceasing surprise, took a running start, and leapt into the ear of Immacolata.
THE TALE
OF THE
TWELVE COINS,
CONTINUED
“HE CAME OUT OF HER CLOTHED ALL IN GREEN, as he was before the harem, as the Gaselli always were. His buckles shone brilliant, his cap was soft as a mule’s nose. But he looks at the green now and sees no pretty dell and unguarded campfire. He sees her leaves. Mourning clothes, he calls them, the green of young tea plants. He has never taken off the clothes of her body, and in this way, I think, he dwells within her always.
“They waded into the stream together, then, hand in hand; waist-deep in the rushing, icy water, Immacolata turned to her eunuch and smiled, tears spilling down her cheeks like cream onto a rich table. She reached up, behind his ear, and with a little flourish, produced a shimmering silver leaf out of the air.
“‘You must find the Isle of the Dead, and take this seed of me to her. I know you will do this for me; I know it as well as I know the lines of my palm and the hairs of my head. Go into the world, and take me out of it. This is my heart—carry it with you. I will dream of you in the dark, and you will taste it in my tea, and feel it in my shoes.’
“With that, Immacolata dissolved slowly into the water, like sugar. She drifted apart, each brown leaf wafting slowly onto the stream. The current held her for a moment, a great circle of leaves with green-clad Taglio in the center, and then carried them off and away.”
Oubliette and I gawked at the Manticore, our mouths hanging open as though we had gone simple. And as we sat curled in her tail, the great red beast closed her sparkling eyes and began to sing, low and soft, like a wooden flute and a diamond trumpet playing together. She did not lie about her songs—we wept openly under the strokes of her voice, the lost, sorrow-bound notes moving against us like hands, telling us how beautiful Immacolata was as she drifted downstream, and how it pierced Grotteschi to hear Taglio keen and scream as he did on that lonely bank.
