“It is done then, is it?”
I nodded and mounted my horse. The sky was growing increasingly dark. I prayed the storm would hold until I was well beyond the Pasha’s territory.
Setseh pulled Katla close, placed a gloved hand on her shoulder. She kept her gaze locked on mine and said, “Well, well, little wife. Be sure you lie still when our husband comes to you, else you will feel the pain of his knife.”
“A knife in your heart,” Yarmaa said, undoing and taking the girl’s cloak, poking her slight chest. “To accompany the plunge of his shaft down below.” Dzhol smiled, and giggled. Third wives are of little use for much else.
In this way the women tried to taunt me, as if I were a true father. As if I cared what happened to Katla, as if I cared that they threatened her. I was glad to be rid of her, glad to avoid seeing her grow any older. Katla, too, seemed undisturbed. A hint of pink tipped her nose, the ends of her fingers. She held her head high while the women hissed and cooed in her ears. She was rose-colored, but not afraid.
The wives were oblivious to the sound of the Pasha’s stately footsteps crunching down the road to Yangjugol. His pace was not hurried but not slow. He descended from Zhureem Ordon with controlled anticipation. Katla watched silently as her new husband slapped his first wife, then tossed her aside like gnawed bones. She did not flinch when Setseh’s head clashed against metal bars, nor when Yarmaa and Dzhol began whimpering. She blinked when his voice boomed across the valley, announcing his claim. Declaring her his property, his wife.
A puff of relief escaped my lips, dispersed into the twilight.
She was his. No longer my Katla, no longer my concern. His.
The bitter rattle of iron on metal told me I was mistaken to relax so soon. I steered my mount around, just in time to see Setseh throwing open the door to the snow leopards’ cage. There was no time for her to scurry out of the way before they sprang; the gleam in her eye revealed that safety came second to her revenge. One leopard wrapped its teeth around the first wife’s throat, silencing her venomous words. Years of captivity hadn’t slowed the Pasha’s pets in the least. Their movements were lithe and swift.
The scant crowd of merchants scattered with fear, several running without being chased. These men were not warriors: they fled like selfish children, saving themselves with no thought for their lord’s plight. The Pasha was left to confront a muscular leopard with no army to support him. My lord wielded nothing more than a belt, which he lashed about like a whip. He fought bravely, even when a second cat slinked up behind him and took a great swipe at his hamstrings. A trio of leopards sped toward me; my horse reared but did not unseat me. His nimble hooves danced around slashing paws, striking teeth. He edged us closer to Katla, away from the road. The Pasha now lay wounded at her side, his leg a mess of blood and ligaments. She paid him no attention. Great cats appeared and disappeared in the thinning crowd — she followed them with her eyes.
Her gaze caught mine just as the leopard pounced. The sky twisted. The earth rushed up to meet me. My teeth crashed together, blood poured from my nose. I inhaled in sharp gasps. I looked at my horse, splayed on the ground, his back snapped. Saw my leg twisted in the stirrup, bent at an unnatural angle. I smelled the leopard’s stale breath before I felt its paws on my back. Without meaning to, I moaned. Death in battle is honorable; it should not be feared. But only shame can come from a death such as this.
My head snapped up as I heard the soft tread of footsteps. Katla crouched down before me, placed her hand on my head, met the leopard’s gaze evenly. I felt the weight of his forelegs leave my back. He snorted, drew closer to the girl I had made. His pale eyes were a shade darker than Katla’s; his composure rivaled a king’s. A low growl rumbled from his soft, white throat. There was no threat of a roar from one such as him. It was merely a purr.
She stroked my hair as the leopard coiled its long tail around her. Threaded it around her legs, beneath the thin cloth of her shift. His purrs intensified as he flicked his tail, in and out. Katla’s fingers spasmed, dug into my scalp — then went still for a moment. She draped her other arm around the thick fur of the great feline’s neck, then resumed gently patting my head. She licked the leopard’s cheek, the dark rosettes of his pelt round shadows beneath her wet tongue. Her gaze was fierce, unflinching, as she threw her leg over his back, pulled herself up, away from me. The chaos surrounding us seemed muted and unimportant. She looked down at her steed, then at me. It was the only time I’d see her smile.
The tip of the leopard’s tail trailed behind them as they left the clearing together, streaking the snow with moist dirt instead of blood. I watched them blend into the forest, stealthy as only cats can be, blinking as tears filled my eyes.
I could keep clouds at bay with a glance and a well-spoken word. I could outwit a Pasha and survive his snow leopards’ attacks. I would see love in my wife’s face until the end of my days and, Meitoshi willing, she would see the same. My clan would be strong with men; warriors and traders who would outlive and thrive without me. But only their names would be recorded in our people’s annals; their names and their children’s. Not mine. The bravest, the strongest, the wiliest clan-child would steal my title, gain control of our family. It was settled the moment Katla and her mate disappeared into the shadows. I knew then, as I had known from the moment I made her: no matter how mighty my deeds or how valiant, I would only ever be remembered as the master of dust and dirt.
The Brief Medical Career of Fine Sam Fine
Brent Hayward
Parties, & Promiscuity
Moira had been at figurative loggerheads with her sister for as long as she could remember; she imagined an ending to their relationship that would rival the greatest tragedies lyriques. Home life (it could only be termed this with the strongest of ironic intonation) was bickering and bitterness, uneasy silences, drunken rages, crockery smashing. Outings were a different sort of nightmare: fiascoes, each time the girls left their apartment.
But, by far, the most heinous occasions were house parties.
Needless to say, Lucinda had a fondness for attending these sordid affairs with unimaginative regularity.
A cool September night. Leaves crunching under feet and the faint smell of smoke from chimneys returned to the air after a long hot summer, but stuck in this stale basement Moira felt claustrophobic and nauseous, clammy all over. Like she did at every party. Mushed up against the back of a stinky couch (beer, mostly, and mildew), she waited, unseen, appalled.
Perhaps this boy entwined with Lucinda was someone once glimpsed standing, smoking, outside a corner store. Moira imagined her sister descending the stairs to spy him, sitting in the gloom, and then making her way over to where he sat, vapid on the couch, knees wide apart, big dirty football hands hanging between them. She imagined her sister introducing herself (though surely that wasn’t necessary: Lucinda was a legend in town).
And now she was draped over him. Or somehow semi-reclined. Without being able to see clearly, Moira, thankfully, could never be exactly sure of the compromising positions her sister achieved. Merciful, too, she could hear very little. Puccini’s Madame Lescault played in her mind, a baroque feast intended to smother remnants of any external din, such as the incessant thump-thump of so-called music and the drone of a drunken voice. Any snippets of conversation she overheard were, for the most part, composed of Lucinda’s inane twaddle — the same twaddle Moira had been listening to and feel hum up her spine for twenty-one years now!
Moira tried to breathe and choked on thick cigarette smoke; she stopped trying. Twice, inebriated louts had knocked her about. And Lucinda had banged into a wall or something else really solid; Moira was bruised pretty good, she was sure.
There was still the inevitable finale to look forward to, Lucinda’s fin-de-soiree on some settee or bed — maybe on this very couch — rolling around with a hormone-mad male.
Moira sighed. Her delicate sensibilities were stripped away at these parties. Such indignities, and all of them suffered cooped within the depths of Lucinda’s silly hat.
The Cat in the Hat Hat, & A Close Call
On this particular evening, Lucinda sported the Cat in the Hat hat: tall, unattractive, and ungainly. Striped red and white, it rose a good two feet. Some room inside for movement, but Lucinda had warned Moira against moving.
However, because the Cat in the Hat hat was made of felt it didn’t rub Moira’s skin raw, like some of the other hats did. But it certainly was rank inside. Moira was sweating.
Through pinholes, she saw unfathomable glimmers.
At one point, a warm, masculine forearm, thrown behind Lucinda, pressed the fabric of her hat up against Moira’s face until Lucinda was kind enough to move. Another time, the same boy (Moira hoped it was the same boy) tried to run the fingers of his free hand up the back of Lucinda’s head, actually working them under the elastic brim of the Cat in the Hat hat itself! One large, clumsy digit came within half an inch of Moira’s pounding breastbone!
From shadow, she watched its dreadful approach—
Lucinda diverted the boy’s attention.
Lucinda was good at diverting boys’ attentions.
Washrooms
Brief reprieves came when Lucinda went to pee, or to cake on more foundation powder. Or smear on more lipstick. And then only if she remembered, and felt like removing the hat. And if the bathroom door had a functioning lock. And no one was passed out on the floor. Or in the tub.
At this party — thank God! —conditions were met.
Lucinda yanked off the hat, leaving Moira blinking, gasping for the relatively fresh air. Even the dinginess of this water closet was too bright, blinding after several hours of being treated like a mushroom. Lucinda’s coarse hair had dragged across Moira’s body but Moira had given up complaining about that problem long ago.
“Did you see this babe I’ve been talking to?” Lucinda demanded, peering into a mirror; Moira, of course, watched the wall opposite. “This guy, Sam Fine? Did you see him? Hey, I’m talking to you back there.”
Had she seen him? Was there any point in addressing that question? What Moira wanted to say was, You tell me the same thing at every stupid party: ‘Some guy likes me, he really likes me!’ Then you let him slobber all over you and grope you and he never calls you again. So you sit at home, getting drunk and watching TV, crying, breaking beer bottles against the wall. You complain about your life as if it’s my fault when I refuse to take responsibility!
But Moira didn’t want to fight. She just wanted to go home. So she kept quiet.
Lucinda, meanwhile, popped a zit. When she bent to splash cold water on her face, Moira’s view of the wall changed to nothing but ceiling. Two pipes up there, painted green. Peeling. A big yellow stain. Moira wondered if her sister was going to vomit tonight — yet another all-too-common ordeal.
Over the sound of the water’s splashing, Lucinda repeated what she had said about Sam Fine. Then she asked, “Are you awake back there? Retard, I’m talking to you.”
“Of course I’m awake,” Moira finally replied. “You expect me to be sleeping? Maybe you were concerned I had suffocated.”
“I should be so lucky. You can’t suffocate. I know, I’ve tried many times. Listen, just do me a favor and answer when I ask you something. At least try to be a normal sister.” Lucinda fumbled to push her jeans down and then sat heavily upon the toilet. “Anyhow, what I was saying is that this guy is a babe. And I think he likes me. His name is Sam Fine and he is fine, fine, fine.”
How Moira hated her sister’s laugh, which unfortunately filled that tiny room for some time then, shaking her like quaking from Hell itself. (Right there, gray and spongy, dark sea to Moira’s tossing ship!)
Some while after her sister had calmed — Moira’s shoulder was pressed up painfully against the rusted underside of a cheap medicine cabinet — Moira said, “Could we please get out of here. Soon.”
“What?” Lucinda fumbled with the toilet paper. “You little twerp, what did you say?”
“Let’s get out of here. You’re just going to make a fool out of yourself. Again.”
“All that whispering back there. Idiot, speak up, will you? Whisper all the damn time. So negative. Now we just got here, okay? Didn’t you hear what I’ve been saying about Fine Sam Fine? Just relax and enjoy yourself for once. He’s in Med School, did I tell you that? A doctor. Or at least, he will be soon.” Getting up from the toilet, Lucinda had to hold onto the shower curtain to stop from falling into the tub. “Jeez-us,” she continued, regaining her balance (such as it was), “if only I could leave you at home but look, retard, we’re not splitting for a long time so deal with it, okay?”
Before Moira could answer, Lucinda had rudely pulled the Cat in the Hat hat back on and was fumbling at the doorknob with eager hands.
A Few Surprises, Followed by Some True Music, En Fin
The first surprise of the evening came when Moira realized how much the boy with Lucinda was talking. Not only could she detect the drone of his conversation but she could tell quite easily when Lucinda was just listening; there was little movement from her sister, except for nodding. Her curiosity piqued by this unorthodox interaction, Moira began to pay more attention, letting the operatic mantra she recited to herself fade. This Sam Fine, it appeared, spoke in reasonable tones, as if he might be actually be expressing ideas, sharing rational thoughts! Was that possible? Had Lucinda selected someone here, at this party, with thoughts of his own? In the darkness of the hat Moira smiled. If what she suspected was true, then the choice must have been an oversight. Serves Lucinda right; she was probably very disappointed!
But other surprises were in store, and they unfolded in succession, near to the end of the evening, the most astonishing being the fact that Sam Fine left the party abruptly, by himself, with nothing more than a hug for his time. And despite this, Lucinda traveled home on the last subway train in an oddly exuberant mood. When she and Moira finally arrived at their apartment (a shabby room, plus kitchenette and bathroom, on the top floor of a tenement situated on a dead-end street), Lucinda was actually bubbly. So good was her inexplicable mood that she acquiesced without prompting to change the radio station from Rockin’ 92 to Classical 88.2, which at this point was playing the Nightly Opera Hour, Moira’s favorite three hours of airwave time. Lucinda even moved the radio so Moira could better hear the wonderful arias!
(The deal the sisters had settled on, long ago, was that if Moira didn’t let the cat out of the bag, so to speak, at inopportune times, she would be rewarded with a book of her choice from the library or a few hours of radio, or Lucinda would sit facing away from the TV while some “dumb-ass” show on PBS aired. But rarely was it this easy, and never without some sort of grumbling.)
Lucinda lay upon the bed, talking nonsense about her future life with Fine Sam Fine, strategizing her next move while Moira listened to Schütz’s score for the Rinuccini libretto Dafne, her entire body pressed up against the thrumming speaker in an unbalanced embrace. How she reveled in that ancient piece (arguably the first opera ever written). The night was ending with a treat…
When Mozart or Lully or even good old Henry Purcell took hold of Moira, she was lifted to a world where she could leave Lucinda, walk away from her sister on legs of her own. When tenor voices swelled, she filled those small lungs of hers and imagined herself standing atop a mountain, the beautiful princess Electra, waiting for the sound of her knight Idamante, who was coming, racing breathlessly along the trail to sweep her up and onto the back of his throbbing stallion…
Thus reveling, Moira gazed dreamily at her treasures, precious items collected over the years and stored neatly in a series of recesses in the wooden headboard of the bed, just within Moira’s reach when Lucinda slept or reclined, as sh
e did now, giddy and waffling on and on about Sam Fine while music and the sight of her objets trouves flowed through Moira in ecstatic waves.
A Summary of the Contents of Moira’s Treasure Trove & Brief History Thereof
√ One (1) artificial rose, black in color, petals threadbare. Liberated from a vase in a doctor’s office while Lucinda bent to tie her boot.
√ Two (2) knitting needles, attached (irony not missed) by a nylon tether, with which, one day, hopefully, to make a garment (e.g.: custom sleeve/shoulder warmer).
√ One (1) creased Technicolor photograph of the venerable Marilyn Horn, whose flexible vocal range was most extraordinary, performing in Handel’s Orlando at the Lincoln Center for the Arts. (A show Lucinda had said she “would not be caught dead at,” when Moira begged her to go.)
√ Seven (7) very shiny brass buttons that distorted reflections to the point where one could imagine, if one so desired, one’s face looking quite different.
√ Two (2) HB pencils (leads broken).
√ One (1) small notepad.
√ One (1) wedge-shaped shard of mirror, perhaps six inches in length overall, used to see various parts of the room while Lucinda reposed or, sometimes, walked around hatless. The item was acquired after Lucinda had had a particularly bad tantrum in which she accumulated fourteen years of bad luck by throwing an ashtray at two separate mirrors — picking the ashtray up and throwing it a second time — while screaming phrases such as “you freak,” and “you parasite.” When Lucinda had eventually fallen asleep on the floor (for she had been very drunk that night), said shard was scooped up from the detritus that lay scattered about them both like a tornado’s aftermath.
√ One (1) desiccated moth, believed to have traces of red on its underwings — too brittle to confirm.
√ One (1) tiny figurine of a dog, glass, within which swam wondrous colors stretched like mysterious and beautiful taffy.
Tesseracts Fourteen: Strange Canadian Stories Page 6
