Wyvern

by A. A. Attanasio

  Temples and shrines proliferated under the blue shadows of the great mountains to the north. Vedic missionaries, haggard men with rasorial faces, joined the caravan and preached their creed of sky gods, wind deities, and the powers of light. They demonstrated their comprehension of cosmic continuity by bloodlessly piercing their flesh with needles, walking on fire, contorting their bodies in knots as if their limbs were so much rope. Jaki engaged in long conversation with these sorcerers called fakirs. Dhup simply blessed them with his grin. When the caravan rested, Jaki ambled off to sit on the steps of dark temples and watch dragonflies flitting among dung heaps, while Lucinda traded with the long-eared abbots of the carved stone chapels in lush groves of banyan and pipal.

  Maud busied herself gathering hibiscus, frangipani, bougainvillea, mango blossoms, and every useful plant she could find. Jaki followed, intrigued by her European versions of remedies Jabalwan had taught him. Together they sought out local healers and learned the use of unfamiliar roots and herbs. They shared cures and taught each other by campfire and riverbank. Jaki even began carrying his medicine bag again, making room for the new plants among his personal relics — Pym's spyglass, the Wyvern banner and a flintlock.

  Lucinda, indifferent to their passion for plants, spent most of her time at the village marketplaces competing with the other merchants. Her blond hair offered an advantage since few villagers had ever seen anyone like her, and the opportunity to trade with her enchanted them. By now she had become adept at gauging the needs and desires of the local people, and she huckstered so well that by the time they reached the temple city of Sarnath, many more possessions burdened their pack animals.

  Sarnath dominated the river plain with two dark, ancient towers beneath which crowded ruins, the tents of pilgrims, stalls of merchants streaming with bright banners, and the mats of spiritual teachers who attracted students by demonstrating siddhis, supernatural powers. One loinclothed teacher threw a rope into the air and it fell back as a snake. Another threw a rope upward, and it went stiff as bamboo. He climbed it and sat perkily on top, pulling blossoms out of the empty air and casting them to the boisterous crowd. Diseased and destitute natives mingled among the shouting curious, desperate for miracles.

  The two great towers, empty for centuries, rose shrouded in vines and vetch. A tree sprouted near the crown of one of them. Closer to the ground, pilgrims had cleared away swatches of the overgrowth, revealing stone panels carved with lotus scrolls, human figures, and animals, all stained black with time, mutilated and broken.

  Dhup wandered into gusts of incense smoke from offerings the numerous pilgrims burned on exhumed bricks. After stumbling over the basket of a snake charmer and startling the crowd almost to a stampede, he found a perch on the steps of a pillar supporting a stone elephant, and from there he gazed out over the Deer Park with its noisy merchants, listless mendicants, shrunken sick, and gaunt dogs challenging carrion pigs for human excrement that lay everywhere among the ruins. His invincible smile blazed. Here, two thousand years earlier, the Wheel of the Law had come to expression — and still the Wheel ground on, whirling with the cries of babies, the loud importunities of traders, and the moans of the dying. Above vivid smells of the bazaar's spicy foods, incense, and offal, the sweet char of human flesh lilted on the breeze from the south, from the Ganga, the river, where burning ghats cremated corpses on the holy water and liberated souls from the welter of the world.

  Jaki and Maud strolled through the crowd, inspecting the fakirs and wonder-workers and purchasing elixirs and powders. In the shriek and stink of the crowded ruins, all of human life seemed jammed: an old woman squatted with her sari pulled up to her hips while she emptied her bowels beside a sculptured lion; a beggar boy with warped legs played a passionate dance ditty on a reed flute; mothers and babies with faces caved in from starvation gazed benignly from where they sat in the shadows of huge white cows.

  Jaki read the distress in Maud's face and tried to reassure her. "All of India is not this gruesome. Sarnath is the threshold to India's grave. Five miles south, Dhup says, is a holy river where the natives believe that if they are cremated they will not be reborn. The dying come here from every hamlet in the land."

  When they returned to the caravan, the cargo from the lead elephants scattered, carted off by skeletal porters. Lucinda stood smiling beside a Chinese merchant in a green, long-sleeved silk gown. The merchant bowed to Jaki.

  "Why is he taking our profits?" Jaki asked his wife.

  "I have traded them," she answered with a proud smile. "The load was large for the elephants — and now we have room to pick up and carry more."

  "Traded our profits for what? The elephants are going to have to carry whatever he's given us — unless it's gems."

  "Better," Lucinda said, reaching into the velvet pouch where she kept her jewels. She removed a handful of rice paper roweled with Chinese characters. "Flying money. That is what the Chinese call it. Trade bills."

  "That's paper," Jaki objected, seizing one of the bills and examining both sides. "It's worthless."

  Lucinda took back the bill and returned it with the others to her pouch. "When we get to western India, any of the Chinese factors there will exchange these bills for gold, silver, or goods."

  "He told you that?" Jaki asked, cocking a skeptical eye at the fragile, parchment-skinned merchant.

  "It is an ingenious idea," Lucinda said. "The Dutch have been doing the same thing in Europe for the last thirty years. That is why their empire is expanding so swiftly."

  Jaki moved to say, "You are the owner," but a swirl of activity distracted them.

  The mahout shouted at a clot of men, women, and children in rags who strove to approach the gold-haired people. Jaki walked over, and the Chinese merchant hurried his porters away.

  "Gypsies," the mahout said. "Drive them away. They evil."

  They looked evil, dwarfish, with bow legs and trollishly large hands. The men had long heads, ape-sloped brows, eyes like inky glass, and mangy beards curled over eel-gray skin. The three veiled women held their children tightly to their dark skirts. One of the two men broke free of the mahout's restraining grasp and shuffled swiftly past Jaki to Lucinda and Maud. He threw himself in the dust at their feet, and Lucinda bent and urged him to rise. She plucked a gold coin from her pouch and pressed it into his thick hand.

  The gypsy's loose, purple lips grinned a broken-toothed smile. "Thank you, lady," he said in droning Spanish. "You are generous to wanderers in need." He nodded, but the light in his eyes salted nasty darkness.

  Maud tugged at Lucinda's sleeve. "Come away, Lucinda."

  "Lucinda!" the gypsy brayed. "The name of light. You are a daybreak child. Let me award you with a glimpse of the supernal light of what is yet to be."

  Jaki stepped to Lucinda's side and watched the bedraggled beggar tug a green cloth from under his shirt. The cloth unknotted to reveal a sheaf of green-backed cards, each card colorfully illustrated, depicting regal figures and fabulous beasts.

  "Who are you?" Jaki asked in Spanish.

  "A beggar this lady has pitied," the man replied. "I will spread the cards for her, if she will allow."

  "Come away, lady," Maud urged again. "This man is evil. Truly. I smell it."

  Jaki agreed. The air around him had a sharp taint of ammonia that cut through the fetid smells of the bazaar and the musk of the caravan animals. "You've paid him. Let him be."

  Lucinda did not move. The mysteriously beautiful images of the cards held her rapt. Curious to see what he would do with them, she said, "Let me accept his offering. He will feel less a beggar that way." She gestured to a stool in front of her yellow canvas tent, walked over to it, and sat down. "Spread your cards for me."

  Maud and Jaki exchanged dark glances, and Jaki knelt at Lucinda's side. "Is this English?" He took her hand in his dry, hard grasp. "This smells of the sorcery I've left behind to be with you. We must not look back. Remember Lot's wife."

  "Don’t be superstitious, Jaki,
" Lucinda said quietly. "I will not eschew this man's magicking tricks, because I do not fear them. I am English. My fate is in God's hands. No sorcery can change that."

  Jaki stood up and stepped back. Maud took his arm, and together they watched over Lucinda's shoulder.

  The gypsy knelt in the dust and offered her the cards. "You must shuffle them."

  The greasy cards exuded an earthy, acrid fragrance, like coal dust, and her hands stopped abruptly, before she had expected. She handed the cards back.

  The gypsy fanned five cards on the ground: The Tower, A Pack of Hounds, Three Swords, Five Cups, and The Sun. He pressed a charred thumb to the first card, showing a stone minaret shattered by a jag of lightning and a white horse bolting from it. "The broken wall," he muttered. "You are free from the laborious steps of the stark tower, the high lonely tower where you were queen on the ancestral stair — and a prisoner. You are free now — free —"

  Lucinda stole a glance at Jaki scowling with alertness. Maud beside him bit her knuckle.

  The gypsy's thumb-stump pressed the second card — hunting dogs in full run, ears and tails streaming, eyes sparks of intent, sleek bodies honed to the wind. "You love what you love — and you run with your heart's desire. But there is no way you can own that loveliness." His thumb hopped to the next card, three swords stabbing a heart to a splintery post. "For you are the sacrifice, thrall to the tree of life, beauty's cruelty, the heart torn out and doomed — " The black thumb struck the fourth card, three cups spilled on a riverbank, two standing on eroded soil, a tar-bubbled toad between them, and across the river a willow of bellropes. "Doomed, another soul lost to God's fever. On the journey to your desire's home, you will die ..."

  Jaki swooped forward and grabbed the gypsy by his shirt so fiercely the garment tore and the man fell backward in the dust. His face twisted with fear, the gypsy went for his knife. Lucinda stood and restrained her husband, wrapping her arms about him. "Jaki! This is just a beggar's ploy for more money. Be calm, my love."

  Jaki let Lucinda pull him back but kept his angry gaze firmly on the gypsy. The man lifted the last card and turned it for them to see. "The Sun," he said. "Two hearts that beat as one bleed when they are torn apart but — look! — the Sun!" His hand shook, yet the image stayed clear: a naked child prancing on a flowery knoll under a languorous, lion-colored sun and the sky slick with sparks. "You will die, generous lady. You have tasted your freedom and you will die. But your seed will live. Where the sea eats the dunes, your seed is chained to the stars. What more can any of us among the damned expect?"

  Jaki shook off Lucinda's hold and kicked the cards into a dusty cloud. "Get away from us, devil!" The gypsy frantically gathered his cards, and Jaki seized him by the hair and dragged him several paces before heaving him away. The gypsy, lifted to his feet by his family, stared back at Jaki with rueful fervor, wagging his burnt thumb, before they hustled him away.

  Maud, who had watched aghast, dashed for her tent. Then she turned and, seeing Lucinda berating Jaki for his uncouth behavior, ran behind the elephants. She lifted her skirt and hurried after the gypsies.

  "Wait," she said in English, then summoning her halting Spanish, "I have something for you."

  The gypsies, angry and afraid, kept their hands close to their weapons. The beggar who had read Lucinda's fortune stepped forward. The ammonia stench widened as he removed his hands from inside his shirt and held them out. He expected another gold coin to lift the doomful weight of her mistress's future, and when she placed a rock in his hand, he almost dropped it. "What is this?" he asked in disgust.

  "It is a diamond," she answered, her face pale. She ransacked her brain for the Spanish she needed. "It is an uncut gem. Very valuable. Take it. But spare my lady your curse. Spare her."

  The gypsy moved the gray rock among his fingers, his bottom lip jutting. "You must love her truly."

  "She is my whole life. I am her maid and sister of her soul."

  The gypsy rubbed the rock against his sooty beard and then pocketed it. "It is done. She will find her own fate now."

  Maud sobbed a sigh. "Thank you."

  The gypsy family surrounded the fortuneteller, and Maud turned away and walked slowly back toward her tent. This moment felt right to her. Lucinda had not wanted her to have the gem anyway, and now it had been spent to spare her. She swept her gaze across the caravan, saw elephants powdering their backs with bright dust and scratching themselves on the banyan's strut branches, saw the lackeys gathering kindling for that night's cooking fires. Relief heightened everything, the montage of colorful tents, the spice wind from the bazaar, the yapping of monkeys from the blue haze of hill trees.

  Her open stare narrowed to one face among the workers — the broad, furtive visage of Kota. He had been watching her all along from the open flap of his tent, and he scampered across the camp to Jaki, his chemise open to the navel and his pants unbuckled and held by one hand. A pang of anxiety shot through her, and she lifted her skirt again and ran. By the time she reached Lucinda, Kota had already whispered in his master's ear.

  Jaki's face tightened. "You gave the gypsy your diamond?"

  Lucinda rose from her seat in disbelief. "Maud — "

  "It is true, my lady," Maud said to Lucinda's red boots. "The gypsy has lifted his curse. You are safe now."

  "You fool!" Lucinda snapped. "You squandered your fortune."

  "I did it for you." Maud's eyes flashed with tears. "I wanted him to spare you."

  Lucinda stared, outraged. "My fate is not touched by that grub's insignificant power." She took Maud's quivering face in her hand and lifted it so her brimming eyes met Lucinda's vehement gaze. "You will go to that gypsy and retrieve your diamond."

  Maud shook her head, and her eyebrows lifted pleadfully. "No, my lady!"

  "Do not defy me, Maud!"

  "Please, Luci, do not make me do this. I do not want the diamond."

  "You will get it," Lucinda demanded, "or you will stay here in Sarnath and beg your way to England."

  Maud cringed at that thought and turned away, weeping.

  "Get your flintlocks," Jaki told Kota before he ducked into his tent. He shouldered his medicine bag and unsheathed the sword he had purchased in Dagon. Lucinda's stare as he stalked past her reproached him for witlessly giving a servant girl a diamond. He did not stop to dispute her, though in his heart the admiration he had been feeling for Maud since they had begun to study together flared brighter. When he caught up with her, he took her by the arm. "Forgive me for showing you anger," he said. "You did right." She wiped away the tears from her cheeks. "But what you did, I should have done. Go back to your tent. I will attend to the gypsy."

  "No." She put her hand on his swordarm, amazed at the courage this man fired in her. "I will go with you. I must."

  Kota ran to their side, a flintlock in each hand. "Gypsies, lah!" He pointed a gun toward a rash of beggars scurrying among the toppled stones of a dark shrine. They disappeared in a vault shaggy with creepers.

  "Tuck your guns in your waistband," Jaki said. "I want no one killed over this — unless our lives depend on it." He motioned Maud behind him and handed her a flintlock. "Stay here. Use this if you must." He winked to allay the trepidation wrinkling her brow and sauntered across the sunny field.

  The shrine's broken archway gleamed, littered with bones, and human skulls leered from the worn facade of the temple walls. A death temple! Jaki balked, feeling the revulsion of the tribesman within him. The gypsies lived in a grave. No other tribe would molest them here, he knew, stepping willfully into the cold heat of the shrine. I am a European, he told himself. Father, be with me now.

  Eyeglints flared like fireflies in the shadows. A monkey shrieked, and the gypsies rushed from the dark and clustered around the intruders, palms up.

  Jaki raised his sword, and the beggars scattered. Across the dark vault and its silver rods of sunlight, he recognized the gypsy family who had confronted them at the caravan, and he strode toward them. The ve
iled women screamed, and the gypsies snatched their children and scattered into the black mouth of the inner temple. Jaki charged the fortuneteller, who confronted him with his cutlass drawn. The edge barbed a wire of sunlight. Jaki did not hesitate. He slammed the gypsy's cutlass from his grip, whirled deftly, parried with his forearm the smashing blow of the gypsy's fist, and slammed him against the pillar's twisted stone.

  "The diamond," Jaki demanded in Spanish, fitting his swordtip under the gypsy's jaw.

  The stunned man coughed breathlessly and began weeping. "It was given freely," he sobbed, his head lifted on the bladepoint. "Do not steal the first hope God has given the damned. Our children suffer."

  The sword twisted, and the gypsy jerked straighter. Tears squirted from his wincing eyes, and he yanked the gem from his sash. "Take the diamond and be cursed to a living death," the gypsy choked. "Take my life and my curse will corrupt your children."

  Jaki plucked the gem from his fingers and lowered his sword. "I want only the lady's diamond."

  Emboldened by the removal of the sword, the gypsy whined grievously: "The diamond is rightfully mine. I did not steal it. The lady gave it to me."

  "Wanting you to change a fate you have no power to curse." Jaki backed away and signed for Kota to move out, too.

  The pirate shuffled crabwise through the arch, keeping an eye on the gypsy, and as he stepped over the threshold, swords swung through the darkness. Kota blocked the blows with his guns, discharging both of them aimlessly. He bounded back through the door, shoving his gun muzzles into his sash and drawing his parang. Jaki stood in the middle of the vault, sword raised.

  The fortuneteller's wrung face lifted into a grinning snarl as he stooped and retrieved his sword, while gypsies with scimitars and axes advanced with slow intent from the dim alcoves.

  "Return the diamond," the fortuneteller commanded, "or we will cut your hearts from you and take it anyway."

  Jaki and Kota edged toward the exit, back to back, blades poised. "Run for the door," Jaki whispered in Malay. "Save Maud."