Woe and Other Remedies By Michae

by Woe

  But more he was taken with the arithmetic of a fast census. He took measure of the dead and of the living, and by estimation nine of every ten nobles was slain. The emperor walked the carnage with the rest, arms swinging, stride long, seeming a man much pleased with extra space.

  And of course, there upon her chair, sat Dejanira, cold and lovely and nobly poised.

  It was Anda the Aynx who first began ringing her finger cymbals. Then it was Witting IX, and Arfest VIII who had somehow survived. Gama III joined in and so did the rest, and soon the applause was ringing loudly across the hall. The Emperor only stood smiling his satisfaction. The cymbals rose higher and higher in their noise as the experiences of the night came flooding back again. There came cries of “splendid!”, “grand!”, “superb!”, and soon every throat was raised in celebration of this woman the artist.

  Dejanira swept the hall with her gaze, locking eyes with every surviving soul. Her mask of calm then broke suddenly, and there flashed across her face an explosion of emotion. Hatred, Witting IX would swear later. Rapture, would claim Anda the Aynx. It would forever remain a mystery, for Dejanira then began to wail in powerful laughter, her every fiber shuddering until abruptly the eruption ceased. She went still, her eyes staring at the far wall. The applause completed its great length and fell to silence, and it was the Emperor who at last approached the chair. He reached his hand, then turned to announce to the survivors that Dejanira, their host, was dead.

  Out in the light of the new year, where the winter sun had risen and rewritten the night’s frosts and the broken moon floated in its scattered pattern, a pale ghost of its nighttime gleam, the survivors paced the yard of masterless palanquins and carriages, each facing the terrible quiet.

  Already the Dread and Thrill of the night were vaporized into nothing, so far out of reach as to exist only as the information in Gama III’s thoughts, and he was facing that hollowness with no hope of reprieve. The artist was dead. Never would her like be seen again.

  He looked out beyond the castle gate, to the road where it wound through a field of white grasses that rippled to the horizon; tall enough, perhaps, to hide the hulks of the freedmen who had fled the castle and who could be watching with their pale eyes, like hunters, unseen. And he could summon nothing to his blood. Not now, when the relaxed jargon of his peers was too real, the threat too uncertain. He could not stir himself. Not here.

  In his desolation he studied his peers, eager to catch any emotion to spark his own , and by chance he witnessed Witting the IX and Anda the Aynx pass one another, shoulder to shoulder, with no flicker of feeling between them.

  And Gama III had a vision.

  He saw the survivors, the castle, the Emperor and the lands, old nobles and young and esteemed and reviled, all encased and immobilized inside a crystalline gem. They were, every one, as bubbles caught behind the facets, beautiful and eternal. The sameness of safe. The safety of same.

  Gama removed his chimes. The music of them rang out briefly, and the gaze of every survivor turned by habit. With the chimes in hand Gama took a step and felt a pressure in his breast. A second and felt a beat. A third and the beating broke loose. Witting saw him coming and began a bow, then saw his demeanor and froze.

  Gama extended the chimes in unsteady hands, in sweating, prickling hands. “For you, cousin,” he said.

  Witting only stared, so Gama laid the chimes at his feet.

  “I should feel jealousy,” said Gama out loud, and the beating became a thunder. “I do,” he said. “I am jealous. I would have liked to kiss you,” he said to Anda. There were gasps across the yard. His blood roared in his ears.

  Reeling, Gama turned his back to them and walked. Whose land was this? Where was his home? What direction was he going? He could remember none of it. He could hear the survivors muttering some ways behind him. Would any follow? Would any understand? But he gave no more mind to them. His only mind was for the aching in his breast, which he followed like a lode—under the gate and along the road then off the road into the wild white grass.

  To his bliss or to his death, unknowning if the twain were one.

  He only went out.

  Only knowing his heart.

  Excruciated by his heart.

  The hungry crushing of his heart.

  © Copyright 2017 Michael Anthony Ashley