Heiresses of Russ 2014

by Melissa Scott

  The planks went warm, and wet, with a hollow gurgling noise that rose into a whisper. I hope you never get to hear that sound. It turned in my guts like a key; said I’d woken it.

  “Good,” said I. “You’ve work to do.”

  Then I saw that the sound came from mouths and mouths and mouths that had opened like wounds in the screens and railings, all toothed with thorns, and all with a voice like a twisted crowd jammed in a bottle with just one throat between them.

  “I’ll swallow you up,” it said, “and suck the spirit from your bloody bones.”

  “Ha!” said I; “I’ll jump overboard first, and I swim fast.”

  And with a ring of mouths that drew close to me along the floor, it said: “I’ll eat you right where you cower.”

  And, trailing mouths across the ceiling, it said: “I’ll catch you if you swim, too.”

  “Oh, so you can catch anything?” I scoffed, and—

  “Anything!” it grated with all its splintery mouths. Oh, I had it then.

  “Well I say I can release a fish you can’t catch.” How it laughed! Didn’t it wake you in your big house-boat? It laughed like it knew I’d end up squeezed among the untold deaths in its gut, and asked if I was so ready to bet my life on that.

  “I am, and a bet it is,” said I.

  And so we made a deal: if it could catch my fish, it could eat me and whatever else it liked. If not, it would do as I bade.

  And it seemed to still be laughing, but the sky was lightening, though night’s hours hardly felt spent, and I saw that what I had taken for mouths were in fact just cracks in the red paint.

  The merchant came. Time to test my luck! I tossed one little basket-fish over the side. In the water it turned lively and, feeling the furious thing behind it, shot away. The boat went after it with such a jerk that it broke its mooring, but it stopped at the busy street corner, not knowing which way the canny thing had gone.

  “Now, boat,” I whispered into its wood, proud as anything, “remember our bargain. Chase again if you catch its taste, or else go where I steer.” The merchant clapped his hands; I took my place by the monster’s tail, and away we went!

  •

  “You were so sure your creature would be fast enough?” said Jerrin.

  “Child of fish and ghost,” said Bue. “What could be quicker?” He told them how easily the boat responded to him, tail-rudder beating in the water; how the people who lived on that canal came to the windows of their stilt-borne houses and waved, shouting “he’s done it at last!” He told how they wove this way and that, calling out their wares: frozen treats, chilled teas from across the seas. The dawn blazed, the water was calm, and the things the boat had said were easy to forget under the dancing shadows of the flame trees.

  “Ah, enough,” said Jerrin, though the other boys looked glad of a chance to think of daylight. “We don’t want to hear about father’s work. Let me have my turn now.”

  “You’d do well to listen,” scolded Cail. Jerrin frowned and poured another cup of their father’s wine down his throat.

  “I’ve more mysteries,” promised Bue, who had tasted what it is to have an audience. “Listen: this is the best bit.”

  •

  Round another corner, we came to a wide water-square, where market boats mingled and the shoppers went needling between them in their canoes. They all turned to stare at us, knocking their boats’ noses into each other, as we moored ourselves at the square’s edge. We did good trade, selling sweets in icy syrup to curious customers; serving tea right at this table. If they saw the boat’s great big grin just under the water, they stayed quiet.

  Just as we got set to go, I spied something in the water, and the boat sensed it too: flick of a palm-leaf tail. And we were off, so fast that the pots of tea leapt from the table and were on me like freezing rain and I was on the floor. The merchant didn’t topple like me but he yelled louder, shouting at me to stop it, but what could I do? I tried, pounding on the floor like a fool and saying no, no, not now! But I knew we’d go till the boat lost the fish—or caught it.

  Well, it lost the trail in the end, and we found ourselves in a dark street with tall teak houses all leaning together over the water: rich-looking, but with something secret and starved and half-mad about them. Their jutting fronts stood on skinny stilts with slimy ribbons wound around, little ghost shrines hanging like birdcages on chains from under box-windows.

  We glided under a red glass bridge that hummed when shadowy folk walked on it, and beyond it the water was even darker and quieter, like dusk. It spooked us both; I think even the boat wanted to be out of there. But the way was too narrow to turn, so on we went to the end—and were stopped by a song.

  It fell from a high window in a high house with walls carved to look like rotted leaves; so thin I could see light shining through them.

  And what a window! It had some haunt-charm on it: a frame carved with birds that beat their wings and dipped their wooden beaks in wooden flowers. And what a song! Its telling was nothing so strange, a maiden who comes to Salt-Plums chasing her sweetheart and gets snared by a demon, but the singing of it—

  •

  “That song!” cried Jerrin, wild-eyed. Bue reached for the slack thread of the story, but Jerrin blocked him again. “Do you remember it?”

  A word about the ice merchant’s sons. You know how brothers are in stories. Everyone knew that Cail, born when his father had first arrived in the city and could afford to eat only plain rice, raised in uncertain years, was clever and dutiful.

  Everyone knew Jerrin, born in his father’s fine house-boat, raised without hunger or care, was lazy and stuffed with dreams. He loved indulgence, in smoking or gambling or falling in frequent hopeless love.

  Even more, he loved words, long strings and bolts of them, more wonderful to him than things. There were words enough to be found in the city, perhaps too many, budding in its orchards and dancing on its spires. He could hardly look at the sun sequinning the canal without verses threatening to burst him open. But how dappled the city’s song; how knotted its meter! He wrote calm water but knew the water might hide market-trash and murders and magic. He wrote angel-faced beauties but knew lovely faces might mask all manner of bodies. He wrote in a bold black hand but knew city ink had stories of its own.

  Still he sat, with heat-fogged head, fighting the ghosts that flowed in his pen, late into the night. And once, this led to a strange adventure—listen to him tell it to the boys on the boat, now:

  •

  It was a year ago, on one of those nights when everything bloats, when I heard that song myself. I was sitting at a window in the house-boat, trying to pen something calm, something still, but outside I could see the fruit on the trees swelling enormous in time with the tide. Too hot to write, or to think, I went to walk in the garden, under the glower of houses with their windows lit late.

  The air, flat; pressed down by the sweltering belly of a long summer. I plucked a peach and bit; it burned my tongue with salt. A pair of lovers lay like stifled dead things in the old stone pavilion, and a barge, a barge stole past on the water, with shutters thrown wide against the heat, glittering voices and light out onto the deep rippling street. It was a learning-boat, and inside a scholar was reciting ancient verses, in perfect shape; sweet and spare.

  I’ll follow that boat, I thought, out of this cut-up windowy night and into whatever calm place of reflection it’s bound for.

  So into its wake I slipped, in the lovers’ cast-off coracle. The boat drew me up and down the waters, its wake so bright, but oh, night’s streets—how they drift you astray.

  I felt a thin breeze and lifted my face hungrily into it, and so I never noticed the city stirring until the way had diverged and a dark current was drawing me down a dark canal. There, spindly houses pressed together as if sharing a delicate secret, and in the gloom of that place I was caught in a net of black honey that oozed from a window above, and that honey was song.

  I saw a hou
se above me, with walls carved like worm-eaten flowers. And the window—it was no trick of the shadows—unpainted grain shifting like light, and wooden hummingbirds shifting in their sleep. And then the singer showed her face. Shining golden as the young moon, eyes black stars—oh, and this is pathetic praise, words cannot touch her. But how I burned.

  I’ve long forgotten the purity of the poem that led me there, only the mess of the song that fell on me from her window—you know what I speak of, Bue, if your story’s true!

  That song, oh, sing it!

  •

  So Bue sang:

  ‘Who is there,

  Boat in the shadows?

  Be merchant, be pilgrim or thief?

  Only your lover

  That followed the lure

  Of jasmine in your night-long hair

  Come where it’s secret

  Over the river

  My face a mask

  My teeth are sharp’

  And Jerrin replied:

  ‘Who is there,

  Boat in the shadows?

  Be soldier, be fisher or priest?

  Only your lover

  Unwinding the lure

  Of jasmine in my night-long hair

  Come where it’s secret

  Over the river

  My face a mask

  My teeth are sharp’

  “And her face, Bue, did you see her face?” cried Jerrin.

  “Was it not perfect?”

  “Like the moon rose in her room instead of the sky,” said Bue.

  “Like she was grown as a pearl in a shell—how bright, how cold!” Jerrin grasped the servant’s face and kissed him in joy.

  “Bue, you’ve saved me! I tried to call up, that night, but no words would come—I took myself home to write them, but nothing was good enough. I went back to find her, but you know how this city is, how it moves according to its own sour whims. I searched and searched and it was no good. Either she was a dream sent to madden me, or she’s Poetry itself and the jealous streets twist to keep us apart. But she’s no dream, you saw her—and surely our clever boat can find her again!”

  Cail laughed. “And then what, Jerrin? Bring her home and settle down like an honest man? I know you, you’re too idle, too selfish to marry.”

  “I would marry her!” said Jerrin. “Bue, you’ll help me, won’t you?”

  Jerrin had grown fond of Bue from the first moment they’d spoken. Here was a boy with quick wit and a hunger for the world; despite their different circumstances, conversation came easily to them. Now here he was offering Bue a part in a wonderful romance, and yet Bue was silent.

  “Besides,” continued Cail, “you’re incapable of uttering a word to her, you said so yourself.”

  “That was a year ago! I have some words now; I’ve dreamed of her every night since last summer.”

  “Keep dreaming,” said Cail. And so on. Kindled by Bue’s story, Jerrin grew more fire-hearted the more his brother taunted.

  And Bue? Bue felt the helm of the story snatched away. Was this adventure over so soon; were girls at windows better suited to tangle with city-sons than swamp-daughters?

  She had not told them the final scene of her story. On that dark street, the ice merchant had clapped Bue on the shoulder, told her to put on a bold voice and cry out their wares while he put his scattered goods back in order. So Bue did, and the singer stopped her song, said she would try a bowl of icesyrupy fruits. Her voice was as impossible as her face, gold ringing on glass.

  She lowered down a basket with a shining ruby inside. “Is it enough?” she asked.

  “Oh, more than enough!” said Bue, and sent up the bowl, cold sugared fruit sliced in thin ribbons. The woman’s black eyes glittered bright at the taste, and she threw another ruby down. “Keep that,” she said. “And bring me a bigger bowl next time.”

  And heat rose in Bue’s chest like a summer tide.

  But she said nothing of this to Jerrin, who, furious at his brother, declared he would win the girl before the week was out. “That’s an empty claim,” said Cail. “Make it a bet if you mean it. I say you won’t marry, and certainly not by Carnival-Night.”

  “And I say I will, and a purse of gold says so too.”

  “A purse of father’s gold? That’s no bet. How about your inheritance?”

  “Are you mad?”

  “No, child, you are, for thinking anyone would marry such a lazy fool.”

  Well, drink and brother-baiting make a heady cocktail.

  Jerrin agreed to it quickly: his luck, he knew, had turned with Bue’s coming.

  “You’d better find out her name, then,” said Cail, and laughed and laughed.

  •

  A city takes longer to dress for a festival than you or I, and no city loves to decorate itself more than the Town Where Salt-Plums Grow. There are days, as the season thickens, when the water-traffic and the shining air sound like a pulse, thrumming eager for the nights when the streets will deck themselves with painted faces, the buildings with bright lights. The trees bend over the water and try out new colors and scents. The island of Kam’s temple sends out paths and channels like arms multiplying, beckoning people into itself, to come hear the tales of the double-god; to mark the nights until the Crossing.

  The next day was one such, and Jerrin lay on the canal bank by his father’s house-boat, with his head as night-bruised as his innards. The sky was all buzz and blossom, snarling through his thoughts. When the afternoon congealed to a sticky yellow, the shop returned from its rounds, drifting through the dusk like an old red ghost. He called out, and after securing the boat in place, Bue came to lie on the bank beside him.

  “Nothing’s clear, this time of year,” Jerrin moaned. “It’s this heat that’s to blame for my rashness last night.”

  “Changed your mind, then?” said Bue, who had brought Jerrin’s pipe, filled it, and taken a long taste before handing it over.

  “No!” he cried. “I can’t lose her again. Say you’ll help me, Bue? You must know more of girls than I do—how would you win her?”

  “Tell a dazzling story, write a pretty verse, make her laugh. And if I were you, make some modest remark about my father’s wealth.”

  “Ah, I wish I had your manner.” As he said this, a wonderful idea struck him. “You’ll talk to her for me!”

  “Oho, you’ll keep your fortune by getting another to do your courting for you? You’re a better businessman than your brother guesses.” Jerrin cuffed Bue lazily, and Bue took the pipe back. “So what’s my bribe?”

  Jerrin pretended not to hear the last. “I’ll write the words, you’ll take them to her. A perfect romance, words over distances—speaking without speaking.”

  “Are you going to talk to her when you’re married, or will I have to stick around to help you then, too?”

  “You’ll do it,” said Jerrin, bored of joking. “Or I’ll have you sent back to your swamp, where you can practice your wit on the crabs.”

  •

  So Bue, with cautious hand, tried to steer the tale again.

  Through the gloaming, through the vapor-clogged air; trusting the boat to taste its way back.

  Night stretched and breathed, spilling its people onto the bobbing sidewalks, shining its lanterns, slipping into the blood.

  The boat glided on streets Bue had never seen, but here a doorway, there a bridge, was familiar. And here was the corner to the old thin street—but when the boat tried to enter, its bow crunched against a bank of marshy ground jutting with mangrove-roots.

  “That’s new,” Bue. “But you can get past it, can’t you?”

  The boat made no response, only sat waiting as the tide crept up. Sampans wandered by, their occupants unconcerned by the changed land.

  When the water was lapping over the banks, the boat pulled itself up by its fins and crawled, red paint flaking on the hard roots. The scraping of its hull sounded like bitter threats against Bue, but it still went, lashing its tail and chomping at the gro
wth. Then they slid into the deep street beyond, where a warm breeze knocked the houses together so they chuckled low. Song trailed on the water, reeling the boat to the wide-open window where Bue tilted up her face, mouth open as if to catch the sound on her tongue.

  The song broke.

  “Who’s there?”

  “A poor beggar.”

  “I’ve no coin.”

  “Then spare me your name,” said Bue. “My master would worship you, if he only knew what to call you.”

  A face appeared in the window, and all else fell into deeper shadow. “You! It’s late to be selling sweets, isn’t it?”

  “That’s not what I’m here for.”

  “But still to do business. This master of yours, does he let you sleep?”

  “Never mind that. He wants you to know, O melodious moon, that he’s spent a year of sighs on you—won’t you repay him?”

  A light laugh like breeze, shaking petal-flakes from the house’s wooden skin. “Sighs are a strange currency,” she said.

  “What can I do with them?”

  “Oh,” said Bue, “he has a lifetime more to offer. He’s a poet, sweet lady, and a single one of his sighs beats ten of any other man’s. And do with them? Why, nothing at all, but won’t it be nice to know how worthy they are?”

  This made the girl laugh again, but this laugh was better:

  sudden and belly-deep, an escaping thing, quickly bound up again. Leaves of house-wall showered and sank. “I’ll give you my name for that,” she said, lips of dusk-red rose, tiny teeth of pearl. “Though whether it’s really for your master is anyone’s guess. I’m Wyrisa.”

  “I’m Bue.”

  “And how did you come to steer a monster, Bue?”

  “I know a few tricks with haunt-stuff.”

  What was it that stirred on that shining face? Bue thought she could see the hollows under Wyrisa’s cheekbones, as if her golden skin was just a thin-stretched film. Such lovely skin.

  And sharp and secret things lie under lovely pools.

  Bue’s blood-beat said: away, away, get away. What was this place?