The Mussorgsky Riddle

by Darin Kennedy

  I rest a hand on Tunny’s shoulder. “Tell me about this place. Everything you know about your Exhibition.”

  “What would you care to know, fair Scheherazade?”

  I smile at the compliment. “For starters, you stand day after day here amid this woodland scene. Down the hall, a musician plays a silver horn before a ruined castle. Another few steps away, a crowd of children plays among the French garden. Why these paintings? What’s the common thread?” I kneel, bringing myself eye to eye with the gnome. “Why does this place exist?”

  Tunny stares at his boot-clad feet as he contemplates my question. “I simply exist, like all the others. There is no why.”

  “The troubadour by the castle, the children playing in the garden. Are they free to roam like you? Do you ever speak to them?”

  “Oh no,” he stammers. “She doesn’t allow us to speak. We each stay in our spaces and leave the others alone. It’s the law.”

  “Her law?”

  Tunny lets out an impatient huff. “Who else’s law would it be?”

  “Who are you referring to? And why do you all live in such fear?”

  His eyes slide shut. “Once we trusted. Once we loved. Then came the betrayal and the pain that accompanied it. She keeps us from ever feeling that pain again.”

  “What do you mean? Betrayal?”

  “Stupid, stupid gnome.” The malevolent voice from my first trip to the Exhibition echoes through the forest. “What did I tell you about talking to her?”

  Tunny begins to shake in his mud-caked boots.

  He isn’t alone.

  “I’m s-s-sorry, Mistress. She returned despite your warning and it’s been so long since I had anyone to talk to and―”

  “Silence. I have been most generous, leaving you to your little woodland oasis, even giving you the run of the Exhibition when the others are quiet, and this is how you repay me. Deliberate disobedience. Have you forgotten what you are?”

  Tunny falls to his knees and stretches his stubby arms to the sky. “Forgive me, Mistress. I merely wished to―”

  “You, more than anyone, should know the penalty for such disobedience.”

  “Leave him alone,” I shout as the sky above the forest canopy grows dark. “He’s done nothing wrong.”

  “You were not given permission to speak, Scheherazade. Keep your tongue. I know full well the poison in your honeyed words.”

  The bile rises in my throat. “For an invisible voice in the sky, you seem awfully full of yourself. Are you afraid Tunny and others will discover the Wizard of Oz is just an old man hiding behind a curtain?”

  Tunny’s eyes grow wide. “By the Creator, don’t antagonize her.” His wooden teeth set to chattering. “You have no idea what lengths she’ll take to defend her honor. Take back what you said. Please, take it back.”

  “It’s too late for that, little gnome. Her words, be they brave or foolish, cannot be unspoken.” A pair of squinting yellow eyes appears in the clouds gathering above our heads. “You desire my presence, Lady Scheherazade? So be it.”

  From the pink and gray oils of the darkening sky shoots a streak of lightning, a long jagged fork of white and gold. A tongue of fire envelops a tree to our right in broad strokes of bright orange and gold. The unseen painter adds more and more color to Tunny’s home within the frame, and before I can say another word, the entire forest is ablaze.

  “God, Tunny. I’m so sorry.” Another lightning bolt strikes mere feet from where we’re standing. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  As I sprint for the hole in space leading back to the Exhibition, no footsteps follow me. I shoot a glance back and find Tunny curled into a fetal position at the base of a low shrub that has just begun to burn.

  “I disobeyed,” he whimpers. “I disobeyed and now I must pay the price.”

  “Don’t listen to her, Tunny. Listen to me. You did nothing wrong. Come with me and we’ll find somewhere safe.”

  Refusing to move, he mutters again, “I disobeyed.”

  The flames continue to build around us. The invisible painter erases every color but orange and black from the canvas. Though my pounding heart and panicked mind demand I run for the exit, I turn back. Crouching at Tunny’s side, I whisper in his ear. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do this without you. You’re coming with me.”

  Before he can argue, I scoop the gnome from the charred ground and sprint for the hall, dodging tree after dripping tree as the conflagration rages all around us. Thick smoke burns my nostrils and clogs whatever passes for lungs in this place. My arms grow weaker with every step and I nearly drop Tunny as I duck beneath a jet of flame that appears meant for my head.

  “Hang on, Tunny,” I get out between gasps. “We’re almost―” My words are cut off by the crack of splitting wood.

  An ancient oak, half the diameter of my car, snaps just above head level and falls across our path. Encircled in flames, the strange heat of the dream inferno scorches my skin. A different song invades my thoughts, an old favorite by Johnny Cash. It plays in my head as I cast about for any avenue of escape. Then, so quiet I barely hear it, Tunny mutters the last line, the ominous four words ironically chilling me to the core.

  “The ring of fire.”

  After five years of psychology studies, not to mention my fair share of extracurricular research, I’ve read multiple papers detailing what happens if you die in your own dream. Now, for the first time in thirty-one years, I entertain a different question.

  What happens if you die in someone else’s?

  eave me.” The gnome’s scream echoes in my ear. “Save yourself, fair Scheherazade.”

  “Not happening.” I pace like a caged animal as Tunny squirms in my fatigued arms. A blackened branch falls from high in one of the trees and bashes my shoulder, driving me to my knees and setting my sarong aflame. Holding back a howl of agony, I scramble for a clue to how to save us from the approaching inferno. The resounding thud as another tree falls a few feet to my rear jars loose a memory.

  Abnormal psych. My first and last year of grad school. Professor Frye’s thick Boston accent echoes through my thoughts.

  “Ms. Tejedor. You seem to be up on the reading for the day. Please define for the class a lucid dream.”

  This person I haven’t been in years blushes as she stands before the class. “A lucid dream is one where the dreamer is aware they’re dreaming.”

  “Go on.” I would have never guessed that nine years later the memory of Edwin Frye’s voice would bring such comfort.

  “Often the dreamer finds they can exert some control at least over their own participation in the dream environment. Research has shown people discovering answers to questions long sought, outrunning imagined pursuers, even flying.”

  “Precisely.” The voice shifts from memory to an audible, intimate whisper. “Now, unless you wish to burn in an imagined forest as you wander a mind not your own, perhaps some practical application of your hard-won knowledge is in order.”

  My eyes narrow as I back up the few steps remaining in the rapidly shrinking glade, mutter a short prayer, and make a run for the fallen tree. I wait till the last possible instant to leap, and…

  My foot catches on a crooked branch covered in orange coals, sending searing pain up my leg. How anything can feel so real in a place like this is beyond me, but the sheer agony erases any doubt about the capacity of Anthony’s psychotic art gallery to kill.

  The moment before impact, I grip Tunny’s small form and twist to one side. The pair of us hit the forest floor like the proverbial sack of potatoes and Tunny’s shoulder drives the air from my lungs. Our momentum sends us sprawling and we end up in a pile before the opening leading back to the Exhibition. I hurl Tunny through the hole in space and try to rise only to find my leg entangled in the gnarled roots of the forest floor.

  Like fingers of wood rather than bone and sinew, they grow tighter and tighter about my calf till my foot goes numb. I rip the jewel-encrusted dagger from its scabbard
and slash at the roots binding me, but to no avail. My vision clouds with pain and my battle to remain conscious begins to go badly. Just before the agony becomes greater than I can stand, a blob of brown slips the blade from my limp fingers and goes to work on my bonds. Flash after flash of silver lessens the crushing force surrounding my leg until it releases altogether.

  Coarse fingers encircle my wrists. These fingers, woody like the ones holding my leg before, possess a kindness the roots did not. Dragging my limp form across the forest floor, the roughened hands lift me and push me out of the painting and onto the parquet floor of the hall.

  I lie there for what feels an eternity, catching my breath. At a second thud, I use every ounce of will to raise my head from the floor. Beneath the painting, Tunny lies on one side, the dagger gleaming in his hand. His breathing, much like mine, is interrupted by fit after fit of coughing, the clean air of the Exhibition despoiled by the smoke wafting off our charred clothing. A glance at my leg reveals an open ankle wound framed with charred, blistered skin and denuded skin all along the calf. The burn throbs in time with the music as the haunting thirteen-note melody begins anew with mocking insistence.

  “Tunny.” I use my last ounce of strength to sit up. “You saved me.”

  The gnome rolls to a standing position, walks over to me, and returns the dagger. On his face, a sheepish grin. “You saved me first.”

  “Then I suppose we saved each other.”

  “You think you can escape me so easily, storyteller? Gnome?” The voice echoes down from above, the timbre like a cello played with a bow of barbed wire. “Do you forget who rules this place?”

  “Quickly.” Tunny leaps to his feet and runs out of the alcove into the hall proper. “Follow me, Lady Scheherazade.’

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “To a place she can’t find us.” Tunny sprints as fast as his short legs will take him toward the next alcove. He’s halfway across the hall before I can take my first painful step. The melody of the hall floods the room from every direction, the tempo accelerated to breakneck speed as I hobble after Tunny. I nearly fall twice crossing the wide hallway, catching myself in the alcove doorway as I join the gnome before the second painting.

  The Old Castle. Just as I remember it. Well, almost. The troubadour still stands before the castle of old stone with its cracked parapets and ruined drawbridge. He has ceased playing his silver horn and instead stands with his arms crossed, studying us with an impassive stare.

  “Run all you want, little gnome,” the voice from above booms. “There is nowhere here you can hide from me. You were warned not to trust the storyteller and your betrayal has already cost you your home. Continue on this path and I assure you that will be far from the biggest price you pay this day.”

  From the hallway without, a crash echoes as if from far away, closely followed by a reverberating thud. Another crash, another thud, back and forth, like the ticking of some impossibly huge clock.

  Crash. Thud.

  Louder and closer with every repetition.

  Crash. Thud.

  My heart threatens to burst from my chest.

  Crash. Thud.

  The tree-bark brown in Tunny’s cheeks blanches to a color more resembling sweet caramel as he whispers, “She is coming.”

  “Then what are you waiting for, gnome? An engraved invitation?” This new voice comes from the painting. The accent is vaguely British, the tone haughty and patronizing. By the castle entrance, the troubadour’s arm is lifted in a beckoning wave, his expression somewhere between bored and annoyed.

  I crouch next to Tunny and whisper in his ear. “Do you trust him?”

  Tunny glances across his shoulder and waggles his thumb back toward the hallway. “More than I trust her.”

  The gnome’s panicked gaze grows wider with each crescendoing crash. Whatever or whoever is after us is getting closer every second. But Tunny’s helpless stare is rooted in a much simpler issue. Unlike Gnomus, an oversized portrait that stretches nearly to the floor, The Old Castle is a landscape and the bottom extent of the frame rests just out of his diminutive grasp.

  “I’ll never be able to reach…”

  Before he can say another word, I clutch his coarse-fiber collar and one of the many buckles covering his brown coat and shove him through the canvas. He lands on the other side, rolls down a steep bank and disappears from view.

  “Tunny,” I shout. “Are you all right?”

  “Hurry, Scheherazade,” Tunny’s disjointed voice screams. “She is upon us.”

  I stare at the painting before me. Slightly wider than it is tall, the painting’s lower extent sits just above my navel. Given time, I could clamber across, but if I wasn’t all the way through when the keeper of the Exhibition arrived…

  Crash. Thud.

  Just outside the alcove.

  Another memory is jarred loose.

  Coach Douglas from my one ill-fated year of track in high school.

  “Make the jump,” she always said with that ever-present insistence in her voice. “The landing will take care of itself.”

  Though the thought of taking a running jump at a perfectly good wall somehow fails to excite me, I step back to the mouth of the alcove and sheathe my weapon. I rebel against an overwhelming compulsion to sneak a glance out into the hallway and instead make a mad dash at the painting. The distance is too short and my run is at best a hobble, but technique honed by hundreds of high bar jumps somehow prevails.

  One moment, I’m shivering in the cool air and muted light of the Exhibition and the next I’m rolling down a grassy embankment beneath a midday sun. Still picking up speed when I reach the bottom, I nearly flatten my nose against a dark piece of slate. A survey of the area reveals the rock is merely one of hundreds of oblong hunks of stone forming a walkway leading to the castle in the distance.

  There on the cool ground of a boy’s imagination, I allow myself a moment to gather my wits and survey this strange body I possess for injury. So quiet it fades into the background like the babbling of a brook or the chirping of crickets, a pleasant melody fills the air. A solemn tune, the melody wanders back and forth between woodwinds and strings. The music has nearly lulled me to sleep when the momentary interlude is interrupted by the crack of a branch above my head.

  I sit up and whip my head to the right. The troubadour is creeping toward me, sword drawn. He’s somehow familiar, though I can’t place where I’ve seen his face before. My hand drifts down to the dagger at my side, but before I can so much as utter a word of challenge, Tunny charges from the underbrush. Though the troubadour is three times his height, Tunny’s attack takes the gaily-clad stranger by surprise and brings the two of them to ground. Far more agile than my diminutive friend, however, the man in blue and white stripes rolls with the fall, springs to his feet, and levels his gleaming foil at Tunny’s brown throat.

  “You dare touch me, filthy gnome.” The disdain in the troubadour’s voice hits Tunny like a physical blow. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t split you for firewood.”

  “Stay away from him.” I rush to Tunny’s side. Instinct kicks in yet again and the dagger finds its way to my hand. “He means you no harm.”

  “Indeed? And who, may I ask, is imposing upon whose home?” He brings his foil up across his chest.

  “But you invited us in.” Tunny’s voice comes out as a high whine.

  “Better than having you stare at me from the hall. The very height of rudeness.”

  “Forgive us, troubadour.” I lean forward in a careful bow, not taking my eyes off the man in blue. “The gnome and I seek sanctuary from the mistress of the Exhibition.”

  His face pales at my words. “So, the gnome’s clumsy cavorting has finally angered the witch. Can’t say I’m surprised. But who are you, milady, to come to the assistance of such a creature?”

  “Don’t you recognize her?” Tunny squeaks from the ground, the sharp point at his throat forgotten for the moment.

  “Shou
ld I?”

  “This is the renowned Scheherazade.”

  A loose stone falls from one of the castle’s many parapets and is swallowed by the murky moat below.

  The troubadour eyes me with a crooked smile. “Really? Tell me, noble Scheherazade. What brings you to our Exhibition?”

  “She’s looking for someone,” Tunny says.

  “Aren’t we all?” The troubadour puts away his foil and helps Tunny to his feet. “Pathetic gnome.”

  Tunny hangs his head as the troubadour turns to face me.

  “Who do you seek that has so angered she who rules the hall?”

  “His name is Anthony.” I attempt a smile. “Perhaps you’ve heard of him.”

  “Can’t say I have. Very few visitors here at the castle.” He lets out a caustic laugh. “The last few didn’t fare so well.”

  “The last few? Who are they? What happened to them?”

  “Now, now, fair Scheherazade. Just because you are a teller of tales doesn’t mean I plan to flap my lips about everyone who has passed my way.”

  “Fair enough, troubadour, though I can’t imagine why you would bring them up if you had no intention of discussing them.”

  “Hm.” The troubadour glances over at Tunny and raises an eyebrow. “She’s clever, this one.”

  “You know my name.” I sheathe the dagger. “What should I call you, sir troubadour?”

  “I have entertained for many years under many names, milady, but you may call me Modesto.”

  “Funny. You don’t strike me as the modest type.”

  He laughs. “Ah, you wound me, fair Scheherazade, though I must admit you are even more beguiling than I was led to believe.”

  “And who has spoken to you of me?”

  “The Prince. When last we spoke, he said we might cross paths.”

  I glance at Tunny. He gives me only the subtlest of shrugs.

  Turning back to Modesto, I ask, “Does this prince have a name?”