‘She is divine,’ he answered, blinking.
I presumed the condition would evaporate by day, but it didn’t. Dendria, I think, was aware immediately of Jericho’s sudden and intense obsession. She flirted cruelly, forever wafting by the stage when we were performing, or else just standing to one side, in prominent view, biting into hunks of barbecued meat that dripped with spiced grease, or else sucking long fruits. Me, she ignored, all her attention being riveted on wretched Jericho. To his credit, my partner never fouled the act, even when the paramour was present. I know that, at least on one occasion, she let him have sex with her, because I happened to stumble across them while they were doing it. Perhaps that was intentional. I believe Dendria knew all about the way I felt for Jericho, and enjoyed pricking my feelings as much as tweaking Jericho’s strings. I remember finding them in the wickyup, she on all fours, he taking her from behind. She was making a sound like a donkey, some kind of bray, which I supposed was of pleasure. Her buttocks were turquoise, as if bruised. When Jericho saw me, he could not stop, merely closed his eyes. Out of pique, I went in and made myself a sandwich while they finished. She cleaned herself up without modesty afterwards, even using some of my tissues, which I employed for removing stage makeup. I couldn’t help but sneak glances. Her genitals were swollen, and dark blue, nothing like mine in shape or size. As if for my benefit, she spread her legs and twitched her muscles, and the lips of her vulva moved like a mouth. No wonder cidaris’ are so popular with men. Still, she had very little breast.
Poor Jericho. His torment lasted a mere four days. One morning, the Excoriasts had left the site, with no message from Dendria left behind. At first, I was glad, but when it became obvious that Jericho wasn’t going to get over his obsession, I relented and gave him what comfort I could. Intempera had told me we would be able to get together again at Jasper’s Fayre. Jericho’s joy at this news made me miserable: it was feverish, a cacoethes of passion. I felt it could kill him.
Now, he sat in the dust before me, shredding a dried grass stalk, his eyes watering with anticipation and longing. ‘I won’t be denied, Saralan,’ he said, not really seeing me. ‘At Jasper’s, I will have her.’ He paused then, as if becoming aware of my existence, and the fact that I could hear, and make deductions for myself. ‘Of course, this will not affect our partnership. Maybe we could work Dendria into the routine.’
I smiled thinly, hoping he could see it was thin, but knowing he would see only the upward curve of a mouth and read it as approbation.
‘What can you do?’ I asked perfunctorily. ‘A cidaris is a flighty creature. What if she does not want to come with us?’
Jericho was clearly annoyed with these remarks. ‘I will make her my wife,’ he said. As if that solved everything.
Part of me hoped he would make a fool of himself, but then I remembered I’d have to deal with the emotional debris. ‘What if she doesn’t want to be a wife?’
Jericho shook his head abruptly, as if assailed by insects. ‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve thought of that.’ His body language did not align with his words.
‘So what are you going to do?’
He rested his chin on his clenched fists, staring at the flames. ‘Obstacles will have to be removed. Namely, her ignorance. With clear sight, she will know for herself that we are meant to be as a pair.’ He fixed me with a frightening glare. ‘I shall call upon the powers of hate to aid me.’
I couldn’t help sniggering a little. ‘So, you are a worker of magic now!’
He bridled. ‘You know hardly anything about me.’
Something snapped inside me and let a feeling of defeat slide in. Jericho and I had never argued before, or sniped at one another. How things had changed. How cruel the powers of passion, ruled by the lords of love. I glanced at the sky of their direction, where still the sinking sun stained the threads of clouds, and thought how pitiless they were. As some were moved to deeper feeling, others were swamped and drowned.
While some might call upon the lords of ecstasy, with their weapons of fire to charge the will, and others invoke the mighty lords of fear to subdue the object of desire with their shrouds of midnight darkness, and yet more still would obviously, and dreamily, petition the lords of love, with their flowing vases of desire and harmony, Jericho went for hate. He had a very logical mind most of the time, which might explain his choice. Hate for clear sight, for sharp things, the sky of the rising sun, the morning, potential there but unfulfilled. He would call upon Amaritude, the Angel of Hate, Lord of the Swords, Prince of the Morning, White Eagle of the Dawn, Rider of the Hate Wind. Still, as we all know, Hate has its other side, that of the bloodied weapon, of breakings and endings, of discord and cruelty. I would not have made that choice.
There was a ridge on the other side of the road. During the day, it looked yellow, at night was black. It was here that Jericho decided his ritual would be performed. I had no wish to participate, but Jericho asked stiffly for my assistance; he needed someone to operate the perfume-squeezers. ‘I have to speak my mind,’ I told him. ‘This is folly.’ I wished I hadn’t mentioned that the Excoriasts would be present at Jasper’s Fayre. It had been a moment of weakness to reveal that. Now what would happen?
‘I know what you think,’ he answered. ‘But I’m asking you as a friend, to help me.’ Behind his words, but in his eyes, were the unspoken reminders of times when he’d give me support over emotional dilemmas.
‘Oh all right,’ I said. ‘But don’t blame me if things go wrong.’
The sun was merely a slit-eyed sliver of red on the hateward horizon as we built a spiral fire of skinned sticks. The sky above us was black, unpricked by stars, yet it looked so clear, so translucent. There were greedy fogs around us, unseen, but sucking up the light.
Jericho’s long toes gripped the dirt as he wove the shape of the fire. His hands shook. Occasionally, he cursed as a fumbling movement spoiled the pattern. The twig spiral wove outwards, deosil. I hid within it some shells I had picked up from the gape of a vanished sea, back lovewards. This I did for tenderness, as a protection. The Lords of Love drank salt liquors from shells, the tears of the infatuated. Their faint influence might temper the passions of the Angel of Hate.
Then it was time, and I was squatting outside the circle that Jericho had marked with small white stones. He walked deosil within it, sprinkling self-igniting Grains of Cloud upon the unlit fire, a powder we had bought from another fayre, far distant in time and space, when there had been a clear road between us, and no fog. I held a perfume squeezer in my hand, my toes ready on the foot-pump. Amaritude, as with all angels, was a cantankerous, capricious spirit. His requirements were precise. If I squeezed too much, he would not come, if I squeezed too little, he would not come, or worse, he might decide to put in an appearance anyway, and then do something dreadful. He might crack our bones and suck the marrow, or make us die of desire. I’d heard it could happen.
The Grains of Cloud began to smoke, exuding their own aroma of seas and rain and wet grass. Presently, the fire was crackling, and I risked a hesitant puff on the perfume squeezer. The essence vapoured forth in a couple of restrained coughs, little puffs upon the night air, round and friendly. Jericho stood with legs apart, his arms thrown high, his head thrown back, long, tangled hair falling down his back. My heart ached, and tears blurred my eyes. It was the fumes. Perhaps the squeezer was leaking. Jericho faced the direction of hate, his back to me. He began an invocation, a heart-felt plea to Amaritude’s brethren, who preened and guarded him. ‘Brothers of Hate, of the Blue Morning, bring forth to me, your Father and Lover, Amaritude!’
A breeze stole furtively past me, shivered across the circle, influencing the flames, so that they leaned in the direction of hate. I applied my feet and fingers to the squeezing of perfume; careful exudations. The scent slapped my head before it flowed towards the circle; the smell of dawn, of fresh light and grass, but with the suggestion burning faint within it of the embers of someone’s home.
It is the fumes that bring the visions to us. We are familiar with the archetypal forms of the angels, because we have lived with them since we were children, when we were told about such things. We know what they should look like, so when we invoke them, we see what we expect to see. That is what I believe. I know there is power in the universe, and that it can be wrought into forms. Intention fashions our desires into shapes that we can see, and will-power charges them with intelligence. We can control these forms if we can control our desires, but hectic passion engenders hectic forms, and that can be troublesome. That night, as I sat hunched upon the dry dirt outside Jericho’s circle, I pushed, with all my will, some kind of temperance towards my friend. If he was frenzied, I would be tranquil. I was not afraid for myself, but for him.
They came, the shivering reeds of radiance; seven of them. The Lesser Angels of Hate. They twisted like smoke, made of smoke, some feet above the lungeing tongues of the fire. My eyes were stinging. I could see the smudge of their faces, the smoking blue luminance of their eyes. Jericho was a black silhouette before them, frozen in position, with his arms thrown up. Sparks swirled around him in a circling, dervish dance. ‘Bring forth to me, Amaritude!’
Slowly, the forms drew apart and there was a stair of light leading up to the infinite dark of our imagination, the sky. Amaritude came down this stair, robed in ferocious rays of blue-white effulgence. His hair was a smoulder of stars. I wondered if he had captured them all that night, to wear. Was that why the sky was so black? I squeezed out some more perfume, trembling. I had seen angels before, naturally. Everyone did. But in the past, they had been invoked, in my presence, for gentler purposes; a healing, a plea for security, a lessening of anguish. Never had I witnessed an invocation of this Lord of Hate to bend the will of another. It was frowned upon, and for that reason, I believed the essence of Amaritude, a creature formed from the dreams and desires of generations of people, would hunger for it.
Jericho looked so small and fragile, with the immense shape of the angel hanging over him. His words seemed like tiny, dry leaves falling to the ground. ‘Mighty Lord of the Morning, I entreat thee to hear my petition. Ignite the passion of the cidaris, Dendria, that she might adore me. Open her eyes to me, open her heart, open her mind to me, open her body.’
The angel-form seemed to listen. Jericho versed his request in several different ways, over several minutes, presumably so that Amaritude would be in no doubt as to what he required. When Jericho had finished speaking, the angel raised his hands, each the size of a small tree, and shook his fingers so that grains of light fell down. Something occurred to me as I performed another discrete squeeze on the perfume. What was Jericho offering to the angel? Angels disliked doing things for nothing, and some small sacrifice was required, if only a pinch of incense. Surely Jericho could not have forgotten this important obligation? As I thought this, it seemed to me that Amaritude’s giant hands swooped down and cupped Jericho in their blinding radiance. Jericho uttered a distressing sound, as if he was being crushed. His back arched. I heard him gasp, ‘I thank you Lord of the Hate Wind, for your presence, for your benevolence. Please accept my humble gratitude.’
Would that be enough? I laid off the perfume-squeezing, thinking it was about time that Amaritude took objection to the taste of the air and departed. He had deigned to take notice of Jericho’s invocation, so I had to believe my friend’s petition would be granted. The giant hands lifted, the burning countenance grew dimmer, and Amaritude retreated swiftly up his heavenly stair. As he diminished, his brethren closed ranks, until the smoke of their essence expanded into a roiling cloud and abruptly evaporated with a sound like someone opening a hundred air-tight lids all at once.
Jericho sank to the ground, half kneeling, half squatting, his head hanging forward.
I kicked aside the white stones and went to him, took him in my arms. His skin was cold, crackling with frost. The fire burned blue, an effect of the Grains of Cloud. Hurriedly, I dragged Jericho from the circle and took him back to our homely fire down the ridge, on the other side of the road. Here, I wrapped him in a blanket, and gave him a tin cup of liquor, from which he sipped in silence, staring at the flames. There were spots of blue on his face. I feared frost-bite. ‘It is done,’ he said.
I shuddered. Above us, stars had begun to blink on and off, a binary language. Amaritude had released them.
It took us another two days to reach Jasper’s Fayre. Poor Jericho. He was so ill, yet fired by a manic fever of emotion. I myself found it hard to keep warm. I dreamed of the Angel of Hate, the enormity of him hanging over me, his grains of burning cold light raining down on my face, freezing out my eyes, scorching my tongue. What had we done? I asked myself that question too many times a day, hoping that as my memory of that night receded, so would my unease. I thought that the impact of the Lord of Hate upon my mind was too great, too surreal, and that was what caused the nightmares and the physical discomfort. Jericho and I were doing these things to ourselves, because we believed we had seen something beyond belief.
We could see the flimsy pagodas of Jasper’s Fayre several clicks down the road, as we approached at sundown. The tiers of the pagodas were spangled with winking lights; green and gold and white. Jericho seemed preoccupied, which did not surprise me, and we spoke little as the dinghy coasted easily towards the sinking sun. Soon, we heard music; a sad melancholy sound, as thin as the memories of childhood. The only other noise was the creak of the dinghy and then the hum of a dirigible hanging overhead, its gondola packed, no doubt, with the children of the rich, high on the rites of ecstasy performed in clear air. A pale silk ribbon came twisting down and landed on our mast, a trophy from someone’s hair. I looked at it clinging there, so limply, and felt the spider hands of anguish flex within me, squeeze my guts.
Jericho left me securing the dinghy with hexes, while he went in search of the Excoriasts, or more precisely, Dendria. Furiously, I beat back the desire to follow him. I adored him as he walked away from me; the pain was total, almost as if Amaritude had inflicted me with the cankers of baleful desire. I refused to think about Dendria, how she might be waiting with fluttering heart and eyes, her blue-palmed hands scored with persistent itches to wrap themselves around Jericho. If he succeeded in his advances, I would leave him. There was no way I could stand putting up with Dendria’s sly eyes sliding off me all day, every day. I knew she would be lazy and cruel, and that I would never like her.
To ease my heart, I wandered off alone among the stalls and carousels, the houses of death, the tunnels of enchantment, in search of liquor or philtres of forgetfulness. Every time I caught sight of someone vaguely cidarissy, I flung myself into the hectic crowds, drawing bodies around me like a cloak of invisibility. At an apothecary’s booth, I bought a small, dark fruit that tasted of carrion meat: I was assured by the vendor that swift oblivion would follow its ingestion. Shortly, staggering from blaring sound to blaring sound, I bumped into a man I knew vaguely and elected to spend the night with him. We found a Folly of Dreams, built from stick-like bones of spun sugar and polymers, paid our entrance to the masked admerveyelle at the portal and threw ourselves into the marshmallow clouds of the dreams. When I woke up the folly had evaporated into the dawn mist, and had apparently taken my transient lover with it. I did not care. Today I must taste the most bitter of reality’s liquors.
Jericho was sitting on the edge of the dinghy, with his back to me, as I approached through the mist. All around me, unseen, the entertainers of Jasper’s Fayre, and the sodden revellers who had fallen asleep or unconscious in the muddy sawdust between the booths, were making faint noises of wakefulness. Sounds were muted but forlorn. I stepped over a slim, discarded arm which lay, half-submerged in the mud. The fingers were curled, beckoning. I hoped it had come from an automaton or a doll, and did not look too closely at its ragged stump. As the dinghy loomed nearer, my heart began to panic. The silk ribbon still hung, damp, from the dinghy’s mast. Jericho’s posture was unreadable, bu
t it did not speak to me in loud tones of success and euphoria.
He has failed, I thought, emotions of different types swelling within me. He forgot to make sacrifice to Amaritude, and the petition failed.
Jericho’s grief would be terrible, but I felt I could cope with it. Eventually, his sad obsession must fade and we could coast on to new roads until his grief became melancholy, and finally a wistful memory to be discussed over camp-fires and liquor, late at night. Already, optimism was blooming within me, and I increased my pace. I said, ‘Jericho,’ expecting him to ignore me, but he turned at once.
I stopped walking, almost falling, as the huge headache carried in my brain sluggishly failed to respond to the change in pace. His face! Even now, I cannot find words to describe his expression. It was as if the history of the world, with all its atrocities and tragedies, had been etched into his features. His skin looked colourless, all the muscles beneath it dragged downwards. Was this the face of loss, of passion unrequited?
‘Saralan,’ he said, in a flat tone. ‘I wondered where you were.’
I laughed uneasily, pressing with numb fingers the throbbing node of pain in my left temple. ‘Oh, I’ve been around... How did your night go?’
He grimaced. ‘I wish I could say it was indescribable, but it wasn’t.’
At that, I hastened forward, arms outstretched to embrace. ‘Oh Jericho, I’m so sorry! Still, we should have known! What sacrifice did you give to Amaritude? None! And now he has spurned your petition!’
Jericho flinched away from me, forcing me to clutch the painted sides of the dinghy instead. ‘Sacrifice? Oh, the sacrifice was taken, and the petition was granted.’
‘I don’t understand.’ After climbing up over the slick boards, I sat down beside him. Now, I was shaking, and my teeth had begun to chatter.
‘How foolish we are!’ said Jericho, staring darkly into the mists. ‘We can’t understand their ways, no matter how we delude ourselves into thinking otherwise!’
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