Marshsong

by Nato Thompson

  “Something about you finding that dried up old man interesting makes me love you all the more, dear brother. You are ever so full of surprises.”

  Fennel slammed his cane on the table again with a smile on his lips. He did love being a surprising person. He banged his cane a few more times.

  “Here ye, here ye! I pronounce that the allegiance of this cave has shifted away from the Houses. We have new allies here in Barrenwood—allies more lucrative and allies more wise. We are like Switzerland over here. Machiavellian and stealthy. Ready to take on the highest bidder. Come on over, Mr. Moneybags, our bosom awaits your embrace.”

  “That’s it!” Isabella interrupted. She was at her desk and had just finished drinking the fish sauce again. She danced around the room with a smile big and wide. She had cracked the code. “It was so easy. So very easy. I didn’t need my hair, Fennel. Not mine! But Marty’s! Of course! The balm is against Marty’s magic and I needed his hair and there, there it is. These grey hardy wires are going to help us get the heck out of Dodge. Come on, Fennel, take a sip. Taste my genius!”

  Isabella ran up to Fennel with her elixir in hand. She pushed it up toward him and he screwed up his face.

  “Get that away from me! Yuck!”

  Isabella laughed and tried again pushing the nasty wetness close to his lips.

  “I said get it away!" he screamed and turned with great hostility, whacking the elixir out of her hand with his cane. It flew across the room exploding against the cave wall. Isabella turned away and made her way back to her desk.

  “It doesn’t matter. I can make more. And you should control yourself. I am on your team,” she said.

  Isabella steadily worked on another batch, trying her best to control her sadness and rage. Her brother’s hostility did not bode well for the night to come, Now that she knew the formula, Isabella had a little arsenal to go. Her only concern was how many Marty hairs she could glean from the corners and crevices of the cave. So far she had nine and they should do fine for now. But if they ran out, which they just might, she would have to go to his shack. The prospect of that dirty hovel gave her the shivers. Marty wouldn’t be oblivious in any way to her going there. She whipped up her batch and placed it in her pocket. She looked over to see Fennel with a small telescope in his hand. He was staring up into the night.

  “What are you doing?”

  Fennel looked back with a smile on his lips. “Who? Me? Why, your brother is preparing to hunt of course. We are out to catch a wildebeest if I am not mistaken. I have gathered together all the proper tools for our safari. I suspect this Duke will be more slippery than we anticipate. Off to the hunt!”

  And with that Fennel hopped into the boat.

  He was a moody little beast, Isabella thought. She smiled at her brother’s inspired chatter and joined him in the boat. The marsh seemed louder than usual—the buzz filling the air with static most cacophonous. Perhaps it was applause from millions of insects moving their wings, or perhaps it was a million screams of warning. Isabella did her best to listen, but the marsh had been to her from the beginning, an inscrutable enigma. A madness of survival, wetness, and breeding.

  Isabella pulled on the oars while Fennel used his telescope to search the brush. He enjoyed his toy. He spotted alligators, painted turtles and chorus frogs. He took note of them in his safari guide. While Fennel searched, Isabella thought about the secrets that were soon to be revealed.

  They pulled up to the dock with Heinrich dutifully waiting for them. Lantern in one hand, he grabbed the rope as Fennel threw it and secured them to the dock.

  “Good evening.”

  “Good evening, Heinrich. Expecting us?”

  “It is your customary time, sir. I hope this evening is going well for the both of you?”

  “I believe it will, Heinrich. The world seems full of possibility,” Isabella replied still in a sort of daze of revelry.

  Fennel, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to break the good mood. “Indeed it does, Heinrich. If we never return again, don’t be worried. It only means I have locked my sister in a vault and decided to be a monk back at the cave. Ha-ha.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” said Isabella, annoyed.

  “I listen to Master Fennel with a degree of scrutiny,” replied Heinrich with a slight smile.

  “Yes, that’s it. Master Fennel. A man deserving of scrutiny and subtlety. You got me pegged, mah boy,” said Fennel, jumping onto the dock “I don’t want to break your heart, but circumstances would have it that we will not be dining here this evening.”

  “Oh dear. I hope you haven’t made a rival culinary pact,” said Heinrich, leading the twins toward the back of the restaurant.

  “No, no, business, Heinrich, business. Please secure the boat and we’ll see you once again tomorrow night.”

  It was true. They did have business, and like most nights where they had something pressing, the most important way to kick it off was a game of Battle Ball in Scarlet Square. The twins had their priorities quite understood and in order. The evening was its usual creaking self. The alley was dripping. Isabella’s boots were clomping. They scurried into the square and played for some time.

  Cathedral Ogre, it should be noted, was not part of the School of the Divine Line. Its gothic interior had been abandoned by any religious order long ago and was now an art gallery. The twins often ruminated dreamily on the exquisite possible religious orders that had once haunted its halls. Whoever they were, they belonged to the glorious age of shadows and misery that the twins respected so affectionately. Ah, the old religions. How times change. It was a time of heavy fading tapestries and pursed lips. A time where people found it difficult to walk cocky because they could see their pet's sardonic smiles. Yes, a time where priests investigated intestines and rugged journeys promised dragons and spices.

  They laughed and laughed—a ball bouncing along the cracks in the cement. After a good few rounds of perspiration and red rubber ball reindeer games, they headed toward the Miser’s Quarter.

  “Such a regal part of town for us,” Fennel laughed as they bounded from rooftop to rooftop.

  Fennel loved the Miser’s Quarter only because he felt most at home causing problems there. It was a neighborhood so full of tragic ironies that just setting foot in it made him laugh. He loved to agonize the affluent. However, on most occasions their feet would tread the Miser’s sprawling streets at a far later hour.

  They flew past the red light district with its hobbling whores, past the downtrodden pariah center where hobos disobeyed traffic laws, past the Penom Po, the Vietnamese hub that screamed hints of contraband and down into the Miser’s Quarter. They had been to de Vaca’s before. Most people had.

  Isabella was actually dressed up this evening. Her fur Russian hat and mink collar made her look like a mongoose. Well, at least Fennel thought so. She didn’t dress up often and when she did, Fennel tried to show his best appreciation. She had to be encouraged. Fennel pulled out a Congo safari hat. He placed it on his head in triumph.

  “You're not going to wear that hat inside are you?" she said to him.

  "No, I guess not," said Fennel, putting it away in his satchel of tools. They both looked down at De Vaca’s from the rooftop. “Down there those two love birds will dine.”

  They leapt down to join the rabble.

  The restaurant was crowded as was typical. The twins knew this place was excessively austere on the exterior and failed to live up to it on the interior. The cuisine was very good as the cook had actually left Sardines and come across town to start up this place about ten years ago. It was hardly Le Chevalier Noir in the twin’s opinion, but Le Chevalier Noir had faded in glory as it had been around for some time. It was a fading star chock-full of nostalgia and beef Bourgogne. De Vaca’s was the new hot spot with fusion meals so intricate the menu read as alchemy. The twins liked basics—the glory of chicken noodle, basic broccoli with Parmesan or a classic macaroni and cheese. No, this place was that annoying kind of lav
ish restaurant that went out of its way to demonstrate how superior it was—the most non-superior form of superiority.

  The twins were onto them even before they pulled on the rough iron door. They walked over to the host whose hair was slicked against his head and his eyes showed every nauseating glimmer of self-satisfied pretension. Isabella watched his strained posture displaying his physical effort at control. Some people are so painful to look at she thought.

  “The name is Arrogance, monsieur,” said Isabella, looking past him.

  “Excuse me, Madame?” said the host, a bit taken back.

  “Just look it up. Arrogance. I know it is there.”

  The gentleman tried to gather his wits without showing it. What were two children doing dining out so late at night? No parental supervision. It rankled him deeply to have anything happen at the restaurant that didn’t look au currant. But then again, his mind suddenly began to consider the matter in an entirely new fashion. Perhaps two well-dressed children dining alone lent a certain chic element to the room. He pondered the idea, lost for a brief second in his genius sense of taste, and made his mind up that in this instance these twins would be a phenomenal addition. Arrogant. Yes, he decided, he liked that name. He looked down on them to see the twins smiling knowingly. The smell of willow seed somewhat caught in his nostrils.

  He escorted them to their table suddenly head over heels at the gift of their presence. Isabella felt for the poor guy. He was really tortured. Not all unlike that guard at the asylum. Just people that wanted to love their jobs so much, they forgot who they were. Just because he waited on the rich, he somehow mistook himself for one of them. But that is the nature of one's life in the end. What one does often overtakes who one is. For better or worse such battles can wear on the soul. And for the pretentious host, such lessons were a battle long lost—forgot the fact that his mother was alone at home unable to care for herself, unwilling to think about his brother locked up in jail for the sixth time on some crime he once again swore he was framed for. His family was a mess. He blocked it out so deeply, he was a living shell of the now. It would be pathetic if it weren’t so tragically, humanly sad.

  Fennel sat in his seat and scanned the crowd for Savina and the Duke. Isabella was already well aware of where they were—in the back corner with the Duke’s chair practically facing them. His gasoline smell had been a popcorn trail to Isabella before they had hopped down from the rooftops.

  “Well, well,” said Fennel, “there is our most masculine brute. I really needed to appreciate what a Brahma bull of a man he is. I thought money made people small. Look at him. He must have grown up wrestling mules and wildebeests. Yes, he is not of this earth that is most certain. We have something truly magisterial on our hands here.”

  Isabella watched the Duke intensely out of the corner of her eye. Did he notice her? Could he smell her like before? No. At least she didn’t think so. He was probably already drunk enough to dull his acute senses. He was drinking his beer and Savina was sipping brandy. They looked happy together. Savina hardly showed any of the anxiety she seemed so consumed with last time. They were comfortable. Isabella noticed the way he intensely stared into Savina’s eyes. Savina felt no compulsion to hide anything. She was his—as much as was possible. There was a part in her coarse demeanor that verified part of her soul had been nibbled away, a sort of seductive night of the living dead. Isabella knew that feeling. She had always considered herself a creature from beyond the grave. While Fennel relished in it as though it was pure freedom, she felt a peculiar pit. She envied most human's capacity for amnesia. They could forget and thus get giddy at the most inane things.

  Watching Savina, her heart crept up in her. She thought of earlier in the evening, the sound of the marsh—the mad mystery—pollywogs swirling about her white ankles and mud squishing up, up between her toes, the delicate sounds below where the mud squished and oozed. Yes, she heard that. It was that that attracted her to Savina. That sound. The rich depth of swirling and mush that was so glimmering in her. The water.

  "Hear that? Hear that? That's their sound. Gish, I tell ya. Gish. And it ain't just gish. It's a jug of muddy give and more give. Now you listen to the Aliber. Just put your lil' perky ear right in the water. Get it wet. Get soppy, girl." Marty pushed her head into the water. Isabella didn't resist. She heard the sound. Swirls and slides. He pulled her out. Her hair splushed up against her face. "Now, ya get it? Listen to em. They're always sliding. You got to know that slide. Like ya feet on the floorboards to Granddaddy Fats. Just know where it's goin'. It's easy, but they'll never knowd it. Oh, but you knew that, didn't you? You knewd it maybe since ya born." She said nothing.

  The vision of Marty first telling her about the water caused a shiver in her spine. Yes, it was that swirling she heard in the left part of Savina's body. It played on light notes like woodwinds with the thundering sea wavering behind. Yes, deep below the sound of soft, low noted bells. Bells so soft and ominous with their felt progression. An unappreciated sound indeed. The old churches had known. The sentimentality of low bells, cadences most Canterbury, and this was the ominous foundation of Savina's symphony—an undeniable carousel of emotion in the part of her body still alive.

  Yes, it was that song that attracted the Duke. He was lapping her up like a kitten at a milk bowl. A deer at the glimmer pond. He sympathized with its strength and turned within his own drought. So dry. Isabella's lip quivered at his heavenly lack of moisture. He was thin for water like Fennel. Parched and very alive. His eyes played games of cat's cradle. Round and round he spun a nauseated delight. She knew his tortured mania. He was ill with strength. He shared his moments of weakness with Savina and this made so much sense. Yes, a hidden oasis. Isabella often felt the need for such a place and person. So inhuman. That was what bothered Isabella and invited her. Could he be different? Why must she and Fennel only share their disastrous birth with the soiled likes of Marty? There are others. Minasha knew it. Her mouth went dry. She drank some grape juice.

  And as much as the twins were eating in public, they had tricks that for all intents and purposes made them invisible to the masses. The twins ate inconspicuously through movement, poise and sound. They just blended into a manneristic camo. They were used to it. People's eyes would scan over them as though they weren't there. They moved the air around them. Fennel would even entertain himself by flinging his peas across the room and hitting someone on the head. He would laugh and then suffer under Isabella's disapproving eyes.

  It was not long before the Duke and Savina got up to go. The Duke helped Savina with her jacket. She was obviously pretty drunk. The twins maintained dining. The host said a few very gracious words with the Duke and they were out the door. There was no missing the smell of the Duke—gasoline.

  "It’s fuel?"

  “Yes. I’m surprised he doesn’t ignite."

  They heard the carriage arrive and wiped their mouths. Isabella threw some money on the table and they were out the door. The street was crowded with shoppers and hoity toities. Fennel put his hand on the street. His head perked up into the air and his nose quivered like a badger. He pulled out his telescope and scanned the road ahead.

  "Ahhhh, well, looks like he dropped Savina off at her house. We are following this Duke, right?" Fennel’s eyes were lost in the clouds above. He was still sensing.

  "Yes."

  "Well, we should get some horses. The Bull is headed way out of town. I have no idea where he resides, but he is leading us on a glorious journey."

  Fennel smiled. He was ready to hunt into the outskirts. The wildebeest had headed off into the brush. He positioned his hunting cap along his brow.

  "Bring the horses!" he barked as he let out a loud ear-piercing whistle. “The hunt is on.”

  Chapter 16

  Down the road, the horses came galloping. They often grazed in the tall grass wild lands that abutted the north end of the Pedigree District—out where even the hunters thought twice about setting foot. They were wil
d beasts with eyes of frantic delight. Fennel’s horse, Zarathustra, was a black Arabian that glimmered in the night light. Strong, sleek, and elegant in its every motion, Zarathustra flew through the streets with madness, as though he had escaped from a time when horses, not people, dominated the world. The horse’s arrogance and pride was a palpable energy as it flung Barrenwood muck off its hooves.

  Following on Zarathustra’s heels came galloping Isabella’s trusty pinto, Elia, whose dust and milk bone coat made a camouflage of coffee and cream. Elia reigned in calm and for all Zarathustra’s manic qualities; it had been Elia from day one so long ago that had kept order in their very open-ended horse lifestyle.

  The horses trotted up and the twins felt wonderful to have an opportunity to again ride their steeds. Fennel reached up barely able to touch Zarathustra’s mane.

  “Wow. You are absolutely incredible, Zarathustra. Hope you have been enjoying so many days out in the woods, mah boy.”

  Fennel loved that horse more than any human; perhaps even more than Isabella or himself, which seemed nigh on impossible. He found perfection in the creature that he found lacking in so much else.

  They leapt up on their horses and went galloping out toward the Duke’s retreat. They had to wind their way back across the District of Jed out along the southern edge of the Calliope and then take the main road toward the mountains, which turned abruptly straight up along what a small yellow sign indicated was the Parakeet Path. The brick homes drifted away toward factory ruins and then quite rapidly to the oaks and birches that sunk roots into the base of the Bomberly Mountain Range.

  Neither of the twins had actually gone this far and as they turned up the path, Isabella pulled up her horse to pause. The mountains were massive, stretching far up into the star-speckled sky, their haunted peaks an impenetrable wall for those outside, but also for those in the valley of Barrenwood below.

  “The chase, dear sister, the chase. We must continue before he gets too far,” said Fennel. His eyes were almost as wild as Zarathustra’s who's foaming lips and panting were hard to ignore.