The Golden Cut

by Merl Fluin

  Little Dove or False Uncle led TJ by the hand into the centre of the room. The other twin pulled back one of the drapes to reveal an arch in the wall. It opened onto a ramp that disappeared downwards.

  “Wait here a minute, TJ, you’re in for a big surprise.”

  The sound of hooves on cobblestones. TJ ran to the archway and peered into the gloom.

  Little Dove or False Uncle was climbing the ramp, pulling herself up the steep rise with the help of a long rope threaded through metal eyelets along the length of the wall. In her free hand she held a pair of reins. The reins were attached to the belt of a young woman. The woman’s skin was suntanned; soft red lips glistened in a smooth and serious face. She was immaculately dressed in a powder-blue bolero, with matching trousers cut slim to the hip and ankle to show off her well-formed legs. Her white shirt was fastened at the throat with a black bolo tie. She looked down at her boots to watch her footing as they ascended the ramp.

  TJ gasped and wailed. “My beautiful girl, I thought I was never going to see you again!”

  At the sound of TJ’s voice, the girl raised her face. She had no eyes.

  TJ pulled her to the top of the ramp and threw her arms around her, kissing her along over her face and neck. “Cowhead, my darling, I’ve come to take you home.” She held Cowhead’s head in both hands and placed her palms on Cowhead’s temples. Cowhead’s left eye gazed out from the back of TJ’s thumb.

  Cowhead pulled away from TJ with a grimace. “Where’s Cantos?” she asked the twins.

  The twins burst out laughing as Cantos appeared in the opposite doorway. He opened his arms wide, letting his crutches fall to either side. Little Dove or False Uncle dropped the reins and Cowhead dashed into his embrace, kissing him on the chin.

  “I’m afraid I couldn’t resist a little game of cup and balls with you after all,” said Cantos over the top of Cowhead’s head. “Or perhaps it was find the lady. Forgive the cliché.”

  “What are you talking about?” said TJ.

  “Ladies, have either of you told her who it was that took Cowhead from the ring that fateful night?”

  The twin on the left took a bow while the twin on the right mimed applause.

  “If only she’d managed to get you at the same time, TJ, a great deal of fuss and nonsense would have been avoided. I apologise on behalf of us all. But think of the fun we’ve had along the way, huck! Our adventures with the Star gang, my my! All the memories that we’ve made and that I will treasure. You too, my little love,” he told Cowhead. “You most of all.”

  “It was us who set the Two Slits on fire as well,” said one of the twins.

  Cantos flashed an indulgent smile. “I told them to make things hot for the Eleven Twenty-Threes after we left. Guess they took me kind of literally.” He winked. “But it came out for the best in the end. Nothing like a little exodus to put a tribe in the frame of mind to receive its messiah. Sorry about Mei-Lin.”

  TJ threw herself at Cantos. Her hands flailed at his face. She screamed insults and curses, then fell to the floor.

  Stepping over the helpless TJ, one of the twins stooped to pick up Cowhead’s reins while the other handed Cantos his crutches. He moved across the room with extravagant swings of his body and manoeuvred himself up the steps and onto the throne. Cowhead snuggled onto his lap as he lounged back with his Golden Thigh thrust out straight before him.

  “Did I forget to explain the rules of the house?” He kissed Cowhead’s nose. “Hacienda Alexandria is a haven for mages and scholars, but it only shares its secret knowledge with those who return the favour. In order to gain access to this beautiful Golden Thigh – my beautiful Golden Thigh, I can say now – I had to bring a worthy contribution to Alexandria’s collection as a replacement gift. And you, my lovely TJ, are that gift. You and plucky young Cowhead here.”

  TJ stared at him through haggard eyes. “You mean we’re... What? Specimens?”

  “Oh no. Specimens are representatives of a genus. You two are most definitely sui generis. Two become one of a kind. Perhaps it’s wrong of me to profit so nakedly from your lack of insight or imagination. But it’s been very much to my benefit that you never figured out the real significance of the eye-popping stunts you and Cowhead used to pull whenever you entered a state of grace in the ring. On your own you’re just a horse-girl freak and a tawdry circus hustler, but together you’re a portal. So thank you both for the good times, but now I’ve reached a point where I’ll have even better times without you.”

  Cowhead raised her head from his shoulder. “What?”

  “Don’t be sad, Cowhead, my dear. It’s not as if I’m going to be leaving you all alone. Alexandria will love you even more than I have done. It will polish and file you alongside all its other portals, amulets and scrying stones. Little Dove and False Uncle here even brought your vaulting kit for you.” He gestured towards the twins. “What do you say, ladies? Shall we take TJ and Cowhead downstairs to their room so that they can continue their touching reunion? Or shall we fetch their costumes up here and see if they’ll be so kind as to give us a performance, so that we can enjoy the thrilling spectacle one last time before we leave?”

  Cowhead threw her arms around Cantos’s neck and sobbed. He prised her loose and pushed her off his lap to the floor.

  One of the twins produced a wand from her pocket and threw it in TJ’s direction. It resembled the wand she had used in her circus act with Cowhead, but this one had an orb at its tip and a green leaf at its root. It clattered onto the tiled floor.

  TJ froze. Her strawberry blond hair was wild around her shoulders, her Adam’s apple gauntly prominent beneath her beard. Cantos sat high on his throne, his hair in pigtails on either side of his face. The twins stood before him as if in adoration of a magus. Cowhead crouched and wept.

  At the centre of the tableau the Golden Thigh blazed, a sun at the centre of a cosmos. Its surface teemed with lines and points, a mathematical map of an ancient sky.

  25.

  It was the throne room, but it was also several of the hacienda’s other rooms at the same time. Each space was folded inside all of the others. Cantos sprawled at the densest point of intersection, the fragrant heart of the rose. He lay back in the throne, his head lolling to one side, his legs spread wide, his six-fingered hand lazily caressing the flesh between his thighs. A long velvet robe flowed around his naked body and onto the floor. Rich red and black scabs glittered like jewels around the seams of the Golden Thigh, one row at his knee and another beneath his hip. His eyes glittered too, green as bile beneath sweat-beaded brows. He smiled languidly. “My my, little huckleberry,” he drawled, shifting in his seat. “How tired you look. You should take another of those delicious naps of yours.” He giggled and closed his eyes, running his fingers along the rim of the thigh and licking his lips. “Once I get my beautiful new self out of Alexandria, the world will fall open and soft to my touch, like a lovely red mouth in which my fingers will become teeth. Like your lovely red mouth. Not the one in your face. The Mouth of Hypatia, that’s the orifice of interest. The mouth that pouts open in the face of the world when you and Cowhead do your sexy ring thing. So now I need you two cuties to get cute together and give Alexandria a little demonstration.”

  “I won’t do it.”

  With a sigh he rose, hoisting himself out of the throne. He limped from the dais to stand close up against her with his chest almost touching hers. He smelled of blood, and sex, and fever, and roses. “Yes, you will.”

  He produced a six-gun from the folds of the robe. His head and torso flickered, morphing into those of a lion and back again. The hangings on the wall behind the throne glowed: silk tapestries of sinewy flowers became porcelain anatomical models that in turn became coloured drawings of posed human bodies. Indecipherable calligraphy swirled between her feet. “Yes, you will.” The gun still in his hand, he trembled and gasped, bent double to kiss his own thighs. Sweat or dew purled on the sunflowers on his shoulders. His hair snaked along the
floor and wrapped itself around his ankles. TJ spat on it.

  He stretched upright and smiled from beneath hooded lids. “My little firecracker.” He gazed over her shoulder. “Here’s our girl.”

  TJ turned to see that Cowhead’s mane and tail had been washed and braided. Her coat shone red against the white saddle and bridle. Little Dove or False Uncle handed TJ a bundle: her vaulting shoes and performance skin. TJ turned them over in her hands, then looked up into the barrel of Cantos’s pistol.

  He watched as she changed into them, his robe thrown back to show the cyclone of rams’ horns and tentacles tattooed on his ribcage. When she was dressed and ready, the twins took her by the hand and led her to join Cowhead on the far side of the room.

  The throne changed and grew before her eyes. The bulb of flesh that crowned it darkened with streaks and whorls that took the form of a bull’s head. The floor and walls began to peel. The strips became scrolls of parchment covered in unknown alphabets and diagrams, formulae and flickering images. Birds, numbers, polygons, cuneiform and cursive scripts sprouted on every surface. Giggling idiotically, caressing his own chest with his free hand, Cantos half-wandered, half-staggered around the room, stooping to flip the parchment strips with the end of the pistol. The movement releases clouds of white and black spores that formed gauzy skeins: sperm clouds floating above the coral brain of Alexandria.

  Standing at the foot of the colossal bull, Cantos breathed deeply, deliberately sucking spores into his mouth, then blew them out again with a roar:

  “Hundi and spinnuka, the parchment under the eyes! I seek admission to your circle by bringing you a gift to add to your collection: the Mouth of Hypatia.”

  The bull opened its eyes.

  “Don’t fuck this up,” said Little Dove or False Uncle under her breath, “this shit is way more dangerous than any six-gun.”

  Cantos stroked Cowhead’s muzzle and blew spores into her nostrils. “Darling, make me smile one last time.”

  Cowhead nickered. Her hooves showed silvery white amid weird phosphorescence.

  TJ saw the room through a fisheye lens. Cantos sat on the throne with Little Dove or False Uncle across his lap. Playing cards scattered around the dais.

  She watched herself climb onto Cowhead’s back. They moved into a trot, then a canter round the perimeter of the room. They picked up speed, TJ twisting and somersaulting while Cantos watched. She vaulted on either side of Cowhead’s flanks, did some jumps and twirls, stood on Cowhead’s haunches and arched forwards to hold her mane with both hands.

  The Mouth of Hypatia appeared.

  26.

  The Fool evokes an enormous burst of energy. Between hangings all of his time is spent oiling his ropes and fiddling with his infernal machine. Macabre remarks such as “I never hanged a man who came back to have the job done ag’in” occasionally spill from his lips. After careful study of Egyptian and Greek art, and what he called the architecture of plants, shells, man, and the five regular solids, he developed a theory of dynamic symmetry. He did not put the gun on his shoulder, he only raised it a little. Once you’ve done it correctly, and you feel all excited, now really surprise yourself by going through the list backwards. The case led through knee-deep swamps and creeks. On the subatomic level, where solid matter gives way to geometry, that may have been an omen. What is a wave, which moves on water without carrying with it any drop of water?

  This is the boy, the boy one still is even after forty years have passed, the boy one should have been if not born a woman. If this is correct, one is prompted to ask two questions. The whole universe is enfolded in everything, and each thing is enfolded in the whole. The terror is intense; such a scampering! Such remedies have been tested in the fairest way to see whether they actually have any impact compared to a placebo. Amazed to see the message slowly appearing as a solar number which passed through her body under the sign of the square root.

  The Magician is an androgynous individual working with light and shadow, an honest business that is little more than a cloak for illegal operations. Embodied in its unique ability to relate the parts to the whole, and after several hours drinking and smoking cigars, you can wonder how deeply you are going into trance. His nimble fingers went right on dealing faro in the new location, his handsome, sober face masking his deadly secret. Its proper use, however, is for cosmological purposes, a possible way out of this predicament if you have followed me thus far.

  The answer to the mystery of the High Priestess may perhaps be found in the egg accompanying her. A signal could be nothing more than a lone column of smoke. The marriage of the whole and its parts is elegantly accomplished in a number of personal quarrels that escalate into shootings. I see that there is a child’s wind-up toy spinning at the top. The trail of blood leads to the fish and the rhombus. Have a drink and cut a rug with the soiled doves. Space, too, can only be made of elementary chunks that cannot be divided.

  Her green eyes are the eyes of eternal Nature in relation to the celestial forces. A troupe of lovelies have been poured into pink tights, a leg-show burlesque act nested inside an octahedron. I begin to feel faint from my wound and black out. These things are best discovered over time by a person with serious interest who is prepared to pursue a certain amount of study. Gunsmoke drifts lazily across the streets, standing respectively for rational order and transcendental imagination, not much more than a wide place in the trail. The wonderful poem from which we know the ideas and spirit of ancient atomism.

  These interpretations impel us to study the negative aspects bearing allegiance to a self-appointed organisation. The inverse also applies. The sheriff inflicts the punishment. Curiosity is vital for the progress of science. At his hips swing two shining pistols, their pearl handles filed with notches, their plated silver barrels glistening, formed by the union of two equal circles. He wanted to settle the trouble with gunplay in the subtle irregularities of space.

  It is plausible that the uneven nature of the plates of this scale displays the instability that is proper to Nature. Making marionettes of the local politicians and lawmen, the world soul binds together, into one harmonic resonance, Gold Rush violence and curiosity for the possibility of real magic. The skills required of every man in that raw country. For the world-creature galloped out of the tollgate to build upon pre-existing theories which synthesised empirical knowledge across vast fields of nature.

  But we can see an amazing transformation, a revolution, or a radical change in this. Shamans have been observed plunging glistening knives into empty air to bloody the blades. Not only the microcosm and mesocosm display a liking for the divine proportion. The brutal world in which he lived made it mandatory that he have at least a rudimentary degree of skill with the pistol and knife. Emotions can leak out during deception, a long winding staircase which curves sharply halfway down. Hermaphrodite octagons result in the deaths of outlaws. This is a tremendous result.

  A female sex organ inhabited by an exultation or an individual. The early-morning sunlight filtering into the cool interior. Simply mark three equal rods with the golden section over a corral gateway. I happily admit to cheating, as it’s all part of the game. Open all the cell doors or I’ll shoot you. The circumference of the inner circle provides the firmament. He shoved the throttle ahead and the train began to move. Have you ever seen a really empty glass?

  THE ETERNAL PALINDROME: WHEN YOU GET TO THE MIDDLE AND START PRONOUNCING IT BACKWARDS, THE EXPANDING UNIVERSE BEGINS TO CONTRACT.

  There is nothing inside me that resists me. Reality is not what it seems. This book would not exist except for the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is impossible to understand a word of it. Stripped of all myth, the appeal of the imaginary is an authority in crime, policing and vigilantism. The Fibonacci sequence of the Old West.

  In my extreme darkness, I am the eye of the unthinkable. Certain problems posed in antiquity continue to be crucial in our under
standing of the world. Go get your gun, the geometer’s creation: outlaws, tentacled, multi-limbed, slithering creatures, a long granite gorge spuming foam and whitewater, Nature’s Greatest Secret, the Encyclopaedia.

  The nine climbing triangles go back to the very origin of scientific thought. We’ll fight it out. The leaves of the tree are now legendarily come alive as with wild tempers through toughened and confusingly-focused glass. My eye is caught with the glimpse of something zealously guarded by her custodians from those who would profane or abuse the wisdom factually.

  An act of communication, a union, a marriage surprisingly close, man to man. Ignorance should not be seen naked. Know then this, that men are as the time is. This fabricated subterranean labyrinth resounds with the sordid cry of “gold! Gold!! GOLD!!!” The golden thread of perennial wisdom bears in.

  To enter her, it is necessary to seduce her, which is not easy. A crucial journey for the history of knowledge pauses just inside the doorway. Almost every writer is familiar with the “library angel” that causes you to pick up the one book first published by the madness itself. He restores them to liberty, tablet of the Old West.