Sword and Song

by Kate Story

  But the tapestry isn’t dusty. They must have an army of housekeepers here, when they’re not being inundated with earthquakes and tsunamis. She rips it down; underneath, the wall is cool grey stone.

  Ophelia tucks the tapestry gently around Pim. “Can you hear me? Wake up, okay?”

  It has begun, said the Virgo. What the hell did that mean?

  Pim doesn’t stir.

  Ophelia studies the tapestry. It’s very beautiful. A distant mountain spews lava, gold and red pouring down its sides. It’s Antilia’s mountain, that much is clear. The knights are close up, bright against a green field. One, wearing a white plume-crested helmet, has been stabbed through the heart with a sword. The other knight is huge, dressed in green armour. It’s some beautiful version of the travesty of the so-called games. Blood from the white knight fountains onto the green knight, staining the bright grass. A person in a pale robe stands by, mouth open, hands clasped. There’s a tower in the background, white against the green. The dragon, red and gold, twists around its summit.

  When Pim spoke of “another,” did she mean this? A white knight?

  Someone Ophelia is supposed to cure? The crackbone of his heart.

  Ophelia hates the picture.

  She chafes Pim’s hands. Still cold.

  Looking around the vast room, she thinks that the tapestries tell some kind of story. Or is it fragments of many different stories? The same story, unfolding in multiple ways? In every one, the fiery mountain looms in the background.

  There’s the same pale-robed figure, straight black hair in a braid down their back, riding the red dragon.

  Then she sees the green knight and the white-plumed knight facing off. The white knight has a sword; the green knight is unarmed.

  There’s something about the white knight that catches Ophelia’s attention. For a knight he is very slight, and his hair is long, black, streaming out from under his helm.

  Then there’s the gap Ophelia has made by tearing down a tapestry for Pim.

  Next to that, a tapestry depicts the green knight and the vast dragon facing off. Still the green knight has no weapon.

  Then the dragon looms over the white-robed figure with the black braid, mouth open, like it is going to eat him or her.

  Beside that, there’s a gap, the stone wall bare.

  But then the pictures continue. The white-robed person, apparently unharmed, again with mouth open—singing?—lays hands on the white knight’s chest as he lies on the blood-soaked ground. The crackbone of his heart.

  No. Not “he.” The helm is off now and it’s clear as day: the white knight is a woman. Ophelia feels a sort of thrill go through her. A woman faced off against that giant green knight!

  In the next tapestry the green knight’s body is within the dragon’s jaws.

  And finally, a tapestry made up of red and gold threads in a swirling pattern of fire. A green dragon with a human face is engulfed in the flames. The creature’s eyes are filled with joy.

  There is another gap where the stone wall is bare, beside the door. That would be where the story—if it is a story—begins.

  This is the true story, Ophelia senses. This is what should have been represented back there in the coliseum, like Pim was trying to tell her. The white-robed person is a singer. The pink creature during the so-called games was a singer, supposedly representing Ophelia herself. Clearly, these tapestries depict something that happened, and is happening again: the mountain erupting, and maybe Ophelia herself is supposed to . . . What?

  But someone has taken part of the story away. You can see that tapestries should be hanging in the gaps on the walls; there are even some loose threads dangling, high up . . .

  She thinks she feels Pim stir. “Pim?”

  Nothing.

  The face at the window is so unexpected that Ophelia gives a little scream.

  A small face, on a small person, presses against the glass. It looks so much like the little boy, the one who stole and was almost hung. It is—it is him. He must have been able to climb above the wave. He must have followed her.

  When he sees she’s spotted him, he holds up his hand in greeting, opening and closing his fist like a toddler would. This reminds her again of her brother, Darryl. This child is older, perhaps six or seven, but a little on the small side. He looks half-starved.

  Ophelia goes to the window. It is a sort of door, this window—a French door, is that what it’s called?—there’s a handle and hinges, opening out onto the green lawn of a little walled garden.

  Ophelia opens the window.

  The boy stares up at her with wide brown eyes. He is filthy, pale and grimed with muck.

  “Did the water catch you?”

  But the boy doesn’t answer. He keeps gazing at her, mouth hanging open. He must be terrified . . . but Ophelia catches herself thinking uncharitably that his expression is just this side of idiotic. Maybe he’s sort of delayed? Or, simply, traumatized?

  “Are you okay? Come in.” She stands aside from the window-door.

  As if he’s been waiting for the formal invitation, the boy hops over the lintel quick as a cricket.

  “My name is Ophelia.”

  “I know.”

  Good, the boy can talk.

  “Everyone knows who you are.”

  “Do they?”

  The boy nods vigorously.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Pest,” the boy says promptly.

  “No way. Your name is Pest?”

  Another nod.

  “You’re sure that’s not just a mean thing people call you?”

  A definitive head shake.

  “Okay. Well, Pest, maybe you can help me.” She’s about to ask him to go in search of a kitchen, or at least water, or maybe the doctor, when the floodgates open.

  “I will help you. I am here to help you. You saved me. I belong to you now. You are my saviour. You are responsible for me now. For my life, forever. I belong to you. You saved me. You are Ophelia, you are the Chosen. I love you.” It all comes out jerkily, like the words are pulled in a string from his stomach. Ophelia can’t tell what his feelings are; he speaks like he is describing the night sky, or the properties of electricity.

  “Whoa, slow down, little guy.”

  “I will stay with you always. I will help you.”

  “You don’t have to do anything like that. I just wondered if . . .”

  Pest hops agitatedly from one foot to the other. “I want to. I must. I belong to you.”

  “Pest, no one person belongs to another person.”

  “You saved me.” Pest tilts his head to one side and gives Ophelia a considering look from his brown eyes. “Maybe you are stupid? You are not from here.”

  The word stupid, Ophelia notes with amusement, brings out an answering flinch of offence in herself; if there’s one thing she can’t stand to be accused of, it’s stupidity, even from a ragged urchin in a strange land. “It’s true, I am not from here.”

  “You are from the other place. The hell. You are here to fix things, but people don’t want them fixed, not like they used to, not anymore.”

  Ophelia’s head whirls; is he prescient, or just freaky?

  Pest’s eyes fall on Pim. “That is Pim!” he shrieks.

  “Yes.” How does he know Pim? “She’s what I want your help with.”

  “Yes.” The kid nods once, sharply. He stands, his mouth hanging open. Ophelia realizes he’s waiting for her to tell him what to do.

  “Pest, can you try and find someone to help? A nurse or a doctor?”

  “Yes.” Pest takes off at a flat run, out the door.

  —

  Waiting is not something that Ophelia has ever been much good at.

  She tries rubbing Pim’s hands again, tries calling her name, softly at first. She slaps her cheek, gently. Calls, “Pim!” Calls again, louder.

  Pim is a dead weight.

  “For God’s sake, wake the fuck up!” yells Ophelia at last, and she takes h
er friend by the shoulders and shakes her.

  Pim wakes then.

  Her eyes fly open and they are green, green like the sea. Her mouth opens and Ophelia thinks she never noticed before how long and pointed Pim’s eyeteeth are. Her mouth opens and Pim, she roars.

  Ophelia remembers reading that if you are on the plains of Africa and you hear a lion roar—really hear it, out there in the savannah—your hair literally stands up. The sound is so deep, so primal, you can’t help but respond. You are, you realize in that moment, prey.

  The sound that comes out of Pim is loud, and deep, and impossible. It makes the hair stand up all over Ophelia’s body. She feels her scalp prickle, her skin crawl. She backs away from Pim and is surprised to find something hard behind her—the wall. She’s backed in a trice across the whole expanse of the room to get away from that shaking, roaring girl. Pim’s body convulses. Her eyes have rolled back in her head again, but she doesn’t pass out—she springs up onto her hands and knees. Her back arches and her muscles ripple like something is moving under her skin. She puts her hands out blindly before her and they shake, make fists and claws. The next roar is desperate. Pim falls off the couch, arching and trembling.

  She’s having a fit, Ophelia thinks. Epilepsy or something. I shouldn’t be afraid. I need to help her.

  Ophelia remembers something from first aid classes; not to worry about swallowing tongues and all that, but try and protect the person from their own flailing, from hitting things like furniture. This goddamn parlour or whatever, it’s packed with furniture. Pim is on her back on the floor now, flailing, arms bent up like a praying mantis. The rhythm of her movements gets faster and faster, her limbs are a blur. She is moving faster than a person should be able to move. Ophelia unglues herself from the wall and darts forward. She takes the tapestry, tossed aside by Pim’s convulsions, and flings it over her friend. Pim’s legs knock into her, hard—it hurts, but she kneels on the floor and does her best to tuck the tapestry around the flailing body, to contain it.

  “Hush, hush now.”

  Pim screams like an animal.

  Ophelia does the only thing she can think of. She begins to sing.

  She wants to sing something epic. A medieval ballad would be good, but the first song that comes into her head is silly. She sings it to Darryl when she’s putting him to bed. She last sang it to him in the car with her mother: Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line.” Darryl loves it when Ophelia sings to him. Ophelia remembers his soft little face, his eyes closing, the cute way he tries to keep himself awake because he doesn’t want to miss anything; he never wants to go to bed.

  It’s a song with a drive like a train. She hums the simple guitar line, two notes, up and down. A song about loyalty, and love.

  She’s not singing very well. Pim is rigid now, on her side, thrumming from head to toe. Ophelia takes a shuddering deep breath and keeps going. She wishes she had a deep voice, a man’s voice. The song wants a deep voice, she thinks. The key keeps changing. Is it her imagination, or is Pim’s body relaxing? Her lips are closing over her bared teeth now, at least. She is looking more human. What’s the next verse? Ophelia can’t remember the next goddamn verse—uh, okay, skip to another one.

  It’s a love song. Funny, she’s never realized that before.

  Pim has stopped convulsing. Her breathing is deepening, there is colour again in her lips. That’s when Ophelia lets herself remember that her father used to sing this song. He used to sing it to her.

  Tears come into Ophelia’s eyes, her throat has that ache in it.

  Pim’s eyes open, they look like her own again. Her eyelids flutter. “Ophelia . . .”

  “Pim, are you okay?” The two friends reach out simultaneously, Pim tugging her arm out from beneath the tapestry, and they clasp hands.

  “You sang me back. . . .” Pim turns her head toward the doorway and her eyes widen. “Look there.”

  There, in the doorway, is the little boy Pest, holding the hand of Doctor Capricus, and behind them stands the Virgo with the blonde hair, and The Gor. All of them, even The Gor, have tears sparkling on their cheeks. The Virgo puts her hand over her heart and then to her mouth; she blows a kiss at Ophelia, lips trembling.

  “Didn’t know everyone here was such a Johnny Cash fan,” Ophelia manages to say.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Gathers His Courage

  Rowan hurtles toward the sea.

  A terrible wind. Waves. The cliff.

  A hissing from the crowd, a woman spitting, the awful tumble of the fight. Ari’s face, the light in his eyes when he sees the sword. The volcano, staining the whole sky red. The ground, shaking like a giant black dog that has them all in its jaws.

  Coming back to consciousness hurts. Burning across top of skull—parched throat—tongue sticking in mouth. And when he tries to sit up, his body is so sore he almost groans aloud.

  Opening his eyes doesn’t do much good. They feel like they’re full of sand, and besides, wherever he is, it is almost entirely dark.

  The place smells musty, a bit sweet, damp. Wood, rock, maybe grass?

  He should be home. But somehow he knows with every fibre of his being that he is not.

  He reaches into his pocket for his phone. He can use it for light, and find out where he is . . .

  Oh. His phone is dead. . . . Rowan forces down an hysterical laugh.

  “Ari?” Speaking makes him cough. It hurts, puts a taste of metallic salt in his throat. Rowan manages to roll over onto his side. Whatever he’s lying on rustles, feels maybe like straw or rushes under a blanket.

  It’s tempting to just close his eyes again, drift back into sleep, pretend none of this has happened. Hope to wake up in his own bed at home, where the problems are of the magnitude of self-absorbed parents, homework to avoid, and, oh yes, conscription.

  Runaway girls to find.

  The thought of Ophelia cuts into him. The shy way she has of lowering her eyes; that little dimple on one cheek—only one—he’s never told her how cute that was. The flush of pride he feels when he says something that makes her laugh. The one time they kissed—the sweetness of that. Touching her feels like coming home.

  How can you fall for someone so, so fast?

  Nothing to do about it. Not now, not here.

  “Ari.” He doesn’t cough this time.

  Muffled voices come from overhead, and creaking footsteps, the hollow sound of wood.

  Is he in a cellar, then?

  Has he been imprisoned by the people who tried to kill him?

  His heart begins to pound, making every gash on his skin throb, every bruise. Rowan forces himself to sit up. The mattress or whatever he’s lying on is right on the floor, on bare, packed earth, cool to the touch. He feels the top of his head: a bandage there, a bit stiff with blood, covering what feels like a long, shallow gash. That might be a good sign: they wouldn’t have bandaged him if they meant to kill him, would they?

  He sweeps his arms around, trying to find walls: nothing but dark, damp air. But he finds, out in front of him on the floor, a long, thin bundle of cloth, running parallel to the mattress.

  He feels carefully along it. Something hard to the touch, wrapped up, and one end feels weighted. His suspicion hardens: yes, it’s the sword, the sword he pulled from the stone.

  Rowan sits cross-legged, picking at the rags, unwrapping them, until the weapon comes clear. He sucks his breath in; the blade is sharp. It’s not like the model swords he did kung fu forms with. This one is like a claymore, and somehow, despite being lodged in a rock, the edges are sharp as a good kitchen knife. The hilt has some kind of pattern on it, a spiral perhaps, and a guard runs perpendicular to the hilt and blade. The flat of the blade also appears to have a pattern, too complicated to make out with fingertips. The pommel is a round, heavy ball. He wraps his hands around the hilt and picks the sword up.

  It feels good in his hands. It fits.

  He thrusts it forward into the dark. He describes an arc, left to ri
ght and back again. Nothing.

  The sword is surprisingly light, maybe three pounds, he thinks. The balance of the weight is beautiful. It makes him want to stand up and swing. The soreness in his shoulders, his whole body, doesn’t matter as much when he has this beautiful thing in his hands.

  He could defend himself with this. But dear God, he hopes he doesn’t have to.

  He remembers again the faces coming at him, distorted, ready to kill. Blows falling on him, not even feeling them. Ari, defending his worthless hide. The sensation of this hilt in Rowan’s hands when he was hanging from his arms, the tearing sensation as the sword tore free from the huge slab of white rock.

  And now here he is, alone in a cellar with a dirty bandage around his head and no idea what is going on. If this is some version of Arthur, it’s a pretty shabby one. Monty Python jabbers in his head: You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you. . . .

  He has to find out if Ari is all right.

  And in the meantime, he would step over his own mother for a cup of water.

  Again, voices. Yes, definitely overhead; and is there faint light coming around a door at the top of a staircase? Alright, he’s in a cellar then.

  Rowan gathers his courage, grips the sword, and stands in one fluid movement.

  Something strikes him, hard.

  “Goddamn!” He drops to a crouch, the bandaged cut on his head burning like fire. He’s bashed his head on an overhead beam.

  The voices above stop. Rustling, creaking, a rush of air and light from above. The door has been opened.

  He will seize the day: carpe diem, as his almost wholly ineffectual father likes to say. He fills his lungs, points the sword at the light, and runs in a crouch toward the dimly lit staircase. “Carpe dieeeee!” he yells. Might as well go out saying something epic.

  He charges up the staircase and bursts into a warm, bright light. “Iiiiieeeeeeeeee!” Rowan stops, blinking in the light. A fireplace, a long wooden table with benches on either side. A shuttered window.

  Two men.

  Big men.