by Tori Truslow
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 house 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 ice-syrupy 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 o
ld 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 growth. 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?
“Your street tried to stop me coming,” she said to Wyrisa. “It’s not like any street I’ve seen before.”
“What are other streets like, then?”
“Haven’t you seen them?”
The other laugh, the unpretty one, came again, but this time sour and thin.
“My room has no door,” she said. “There’s a song about it.” And she told Bue all she had to call a tale:
* * *
Door unborn, waits in the walls, blooms when love calls....
Why do they sing, these shining shadows? Why make the shapes they do? Ladies with bird-faces and velvety lizards, crawling toads with heads upon heads upon heads; instruments strung with star-white water, strummed by bone-fish with their spines—my only companions! They sing all night, lullabies left by my mother and father.
I heard the city’s big as a world, and full of things to chew you from the spirit out. The songs won’t tell me what gnawed up my family—if I had a family. Sad girls always do, in songs, but not the things that tempt and snare poor wanderers-by—which do I seem, to you?
Oh, but these walls sometimes sing of a man and woman who were slowly swallowed by something, who loved their girl so much that they wouldn’t leave her in human hands—who can you trust? I think it’s me they mean, so a girl I must be. Maybe I’ve some desire to snare, certainly to sing, never to gnaw on souls. But if the songs are true, who can live in the city without a spare face or two?
So they left me with shadows, and such a clever house to dwell, to keep me tight and safe and well! Wood from the boughs of a hundred trees; walls with a hundred haunt-gifts.
I used to think they’d come back—like one of the songs says:
Mother’s gone to the forest
Hush-oh sleep,
Or the crow will eat your eyes
The snake your insides
Hush-oh sleep!
She will bring back lychees
From the demon’s tree
To keep your cursed days sweet.
Hush-oh, sleep.
She never came. The lychees did, and other plump fruit to eat, every dawn on my table as if they grow in the night. Jewels, come like damp with the rains, and they rot if I don’t scoop them up. My ceiling puts out new lamps in summer, and the window lets me show my lovely face. I’ve all I need in my little room, till the day love comes boating by and it buds me a door—oh, it must be nearly now—
* * *
She whispered so, Bue had to half-climb the ragged walls to hear, tip-toe on the boat’s railings. Flakes fell from the house like ash; gold light shone through the cracks.
There was only the sound of houses clucking softly together under the heavy black breeze, as Wyrisa leaned out. The shadows in the carven window-frame came with her, as if unwilling to let her face go; catching at her tumbling sky-black hair, blotching her taut cheeks.
Her lips tasted just like her songs—sweet and dark, cinnamon and plum.
“Do you know, you’re the only one who’s ever come back,” she whispered against Bue’s face. “The door’s a summer fruit, I’m sure.”
The shade shifted on her cheek, something with splaying toes and a twitch of a tail.
Bue tumbled to the boat-deck, stammered something about needing to get back.
“To your master?” Wyrisa said, looking down, window-framed once more, flawless and cold. “A fine mask to wear.”
“I’m not he!” Bue said, and slapped the boat, and fled.
Shadows thicker than the night stayed sticky on her skin.
* * *
Next day—one more day until Crossing—Jerrin found Bue sleeping on the deck. “Up, Bue! You should be cleaning the boat by now, but I won’t tell. Did you see her? What did she say?”
Bue stared at him, with the look of one who has woken from a deep, devouring dream and gulped down too much dawnlight.
“She didn’t say yes, she didn’t say no, spoke in riddles. Her room’s doorless; her people chewed up by the town long ago.”
This was wonderful news to Jerrin. “No door? Then she’s waiting for a brave lover to cut the way! Oh, perfection, we’ll go at once and free her!”
“Beauty so perfect is a sure sign of ghosts,” said Bue. “That house is rotten with death—what if she’s dead too? I won’t go back there.”
Now to Jerrin the day seemed to be turning sweet as a story—but ah, this is not his story. His father appeared then, commanding Bue to ready the shop; Jerrin to call at the docks. And so both lads spent the bright hours working, both hearts whirling. How tired their hands and heads were when night came, and they met again.
“Tomorrow, at first light,” promised Jerrin, and crawled to his rest.
Bue lay down on the shop floor, adrift on instant sleep despite the boat’s dark prickling. It spiked into Bue’s dreaming, Bue who walked as a prince through trees of snapping shadow, with the boat’s knotted ghosts for companions; all seeking release. They tugged him forwards, and Bue woke to feel the night sliding over his cheek.
Had he forgotten to secure the boat, or had it slipped away of its own accord? It went slow, predator-quiet. Bue went to look over the bow. Late wanderers went by in needle-boats or drifted over bridges. Lights floated in the water, living pearls imported from the Night Isles, and centipedes from the same land twinkled over the knotty banks. The d
ouble-god Kam’s faithful were out, lighting shrines by the high water or creeping with clay-filled hands to change the sex of any deity-figure they found. The streets and houses murmured all around, hazed by white smoldering trees, glowing branch-tips that trailed throat-burning fragrant smoke. They dropped ash on the boat as it swam below. Between the trees were shining plants, branches laden low, offering bottle-glossy fruit to pluck.
The humming air shaped itself into words: away, away, come away....
And Bue was awake and hungry. He pulled down fruits and opened them, and found oily pastes instead of pulp. Gold, white, green, red. He gazed into the black water and painted himself: eyes and cheeks of a proud queen, jaunty moustache of a questing prince.
The boat went on under the ashy air to a window adorned with sleeping birds. The house flickered, paper-thin against the lamplight beating within, shadows licking up the walls like a flowing tide. No face shone from the window; no song fell.
“Wyrisa?”
“You, again.” She came to the window, golden face almost translucent. “And with a new mask—what new games have you come here to play?”
“It’s nearly Crossing-day! My master’s coming in the morning, to cut a doorway and rescue you. You want to come with me, come see the city putting on its lights, or wait around for him?”
“If he’s not your invention, perhaps he’s my true love,” she sighed. “And the walls wear themselves thin to welcome him.”
“You truly think?”
She seemed almost transparent now, eyes huge in their sockets—Bue almost expected to see veins and the creases in her skull. “I think the door could be another monster’s maw, to gulp me down to my fate. I think I’d be a fool to wait dreaming for that. But then is my choice to be rescued by you instead? And who are you, with your smiling boat?”
“I’m not asking you to come away forever,” said Bue. “Just for the festival. But it’s true enough: you’ve no call to trust me.” Then he told her all: his girlhood, her boyhood, the boat’s bargain, Jerrin’s bet. “Last night I half-convinced myself that you’re a dead thing hungry for my soul, but that’s not it. Seems we’re both in a net—”
