A Long Tango across a Canopy of Whispering Leaves

by Nin Harris

  Melur nodded, not daring to say more. Within her more secrets than the depth and breadth of the forests. Within her lay the scrolling vistas she had painted on murals and on ceilings. Of Minang and Javanese princesses and panjis. Of the weight and strength of their combined heritages. Of spell-work and of the sheer, desperate need for survival.

  Kenanga let out the air she had been holding in. Her exhalation sounded like a sob. She held her siblings’s hands in her large and capable hands.

  “I’ll be manning the weapons stall right next to the duel clearing. So, if you’re in need, I’ll be on standby,” said Raslan, clearly not able to give in.

  “Don’t do anything foolish, Lan. It’s probably not even necessary,” Kenanga said, clearly not able not to give intgo optimism.

  Kenanga had volunteered to be one of the officials at the ceremony, another gesture meant so a rescue could be made, Melur supposed. She stood up and stretched before taking her emptied bowl. She could not destroy whatever it was they needed to cope, to survive this day.

  “No, don’t worry, Melur. I’ll wash up, go and get ready,” said Kenanga.

  “What would I do without the two of you?” Melur said.

  Raslan laughed. “Now I know you’re not as nonchalant about this as you claim to be. Not like you to be sentimental.”

  Melur made a face at him for about a second before he engulfed her in a bear hug.

  She squeezed him back, her hands making awkward patting gestures.

  “Go put on that killer tux, Kak Melur. And try not to die,” said Raslan.

  Kenanga’s face was resolute. “Remember, Melur. Survive, don’t submit.”

  Melur said, “Thanks, my loves. And you two – remember the same.”

  #

  Melur made her way to the open-air arena where the duels were to be held. She had watched the duels more than once. It did not really require combatants to be proficient, as the switches they were given were magicked. The outcome was rarely dependent on ability, merely on luck. Once, those switches were fatal. And then for many decades, centuries even – they were only for show. Until the afternoon when Yorick had held a switch that turned a man into something eldritch, something irreversible.

  Melur walked through the crowd to the Contender’s Row and found her seat. She looked at the other Contenders. The Mykologosia was big but not densely populated so most people knew each other. She sat next to Kieran Lee, who looked morose as he considered the duelling arena.

  “Another candidate. I see Marip chose the more well-known amongst us, or the more infamous,” Kieran said, tacitly acknowledging that once upon a time he had been accused of the mass murders that had occurred around the same time that Yorick had disappeared. He had been exonerated by evidence and an iron-clad alibi, but that did nothing to stop the gossip and the speculative, fearful glances.

  Melur remembered Yorick telling her that Kieran’s grandfather and his father had been friends in Ipoh – but Kieran had found his own way into Yrejveree.

  “When we arrived on Yrejveree, we were often surprised at who else found their way here through one of the apertures from the world that we left,” he’d said one of those evenings after dance class, when they were still pretending they were just friends.

  “I suppose it was the same for my great grandparents when they arrived. So many friends and old lovers eventually turned up,” Melur said.

  “Perhaps that is a truth about this world we inhabit. Friends and old lovers always turn up,” said Kieran, his voice thoughtful as they sat side by side on a stone bench, watching the flickering lanterns reflect the trunks of the forest that lay just beyond the Mykologosia.

  Melur brushed back the memory that lurked at the edges of her consciousness. The candidates were all about the same age, except for Maryani who had been in the Protectorate for far longer than the rest of them. The Javanese businesswoman smoked a thick cheroot, her thickly lined eyes darting to the left and right in apprehension.

  “No telling why we’re here, or how the Steward will change the rules,” commented Larkin as he sat down next to her. He pushed back his turban and stretched out his jean-clad long legs, sighing in a despondent manner. Larkin Singh had been their neighbour for many years and had helped the family countless times after their parents had died. He was a poet when he wasn’t running a chai shop for the day-trippers who visited Yrejveree.

  (His name, he told people, was what his father had given him at birth, because Phillip Larkin had been a favourite poet, but Melur reckoned it was nobody’s business but his and his parents.)

  “I don’t think this is supposed to be an honor,” Melur said with doubt.

  “I know it’s not,” Kieran said, cursing under his breath. “This is all a huge bother. I have so much work to do up at Domus Exsuli now that Aila’s gone on one of her trips again.”

  Melur asked him curiously, “What’s it like, working for her?”

  Kieran grinned. “She’s pretty easy-going on her own estate, actually. And she’s been around less and less these days. I’ve pretty much taken over most of her duties.”

  “Is that why you’re here today?”

  “No, I have no idea why I was chosen, to be honest.”

  Around them flew banners for various stalls.

  The arena was bedecked with ribbons and flowers trailing up poles that held up a canopy of sparkling lights, leaves and flower chains. It resembled, or tried to emulate, the Steward’s Bower deep within Nemus Animae, one of the three forests that lay within his domain, Melur thought, remembering her one trip within the Nemus Animae, when she had been a teenager. Was this a compulsion or an attempt at conciliation? The crowd hushed, signifying the arrival of the Steward. Melur was almost afraid to look up, but a strong impulse drew her eyes.

  Everyone knew that the summons was a sign that the Steward was displeased with the Mykologosia, but in truth, the fairies, penunggu and other creatures of his domain were as unhappy with the folk of the Mykologosia -- nevermind that many of them were not human.

  The Steward himself entered the clearing, followed by a train of nonhuman creatures from more than one region of Terra Cognita. There were nymphs and apsaras, there were faeries from the British Isles and from Brittany. There were the more Persian peri. There were the owl-women of the Malay archipelagos, and the Khinnaree from Thailand and the North of Malaysia. A brightly painted palanquin, carried by six burly men arrested her attention. Yorick sat there. He no longer had his Cantonese pop-star looks, but his face had a leaner, hungrier slant to it. His skin was deeply tanned and his hair fell down to his back in a wild tangle of waves and braids that looked like tangled lianas.

  Melur met his startled eyes with an inward clench. She wondered what she looked like to him now, after twenty-five years.

  The Steward stopped in the middle of the arena and clapped his hands. His entourage gathered around him. Yorick’s palanquin was lowered to the ground.

  “Nearly a century ago today, your Guardian Aila da Silva decreed that no more deaths would be allowed in the duels for each new Festival King,” said Marip as he surveyed the crowd through his deep-set almond eyes, his lips pursed with mild disapproval on a smooth face of mahogany brown.

  “I acquiesced at the time because there was no sense in arguing with her. But,” he said as he beckoned to Yorick, “this is no mere crown, and was carved from no mere tree.”

  “It requires its rewards,” Marip continued, “and so I plucked the last Festival King from your midst so he could serve in the stead of the spirits who would have been made from those…deaths, as you called them.”

  “And were they not deaths indeed, Marip?” asked another voice. A firm, angry voice.

  Kieran laughed quietly next to Melur. “I knew it!” he said, “I knew Aila couldn’t keep away.”

  “It’s likely that he knew that as well. That is why he chose you. She’d not let anything happen to one she took in as a foster son,” said Maryani, her enunciated syllables as sour as pickle
d lime. By her side was her teenaged daughter, Vita, dressed in denim dungarees as she loomed over her mother in a gesture of protection.

  “So this was an act of provocation?” Melur asked softly, as her eyes met Yorick’s across the clearing. Recognition flashed across his face as he stared at her. Melur breathed slowly, willing herself not to run to him. Memories of all of their conversations, of the times when their tangled limbs mimicked the gestures of the dances that were a mere prelude to their union within the modest covers of his bed.

  “They were not deaths, Aila. And you would have known that if you truly understood about us folk of the forests. Look at my court!”

  Aila and the rest of the spectators stared at the various figures recognisable as previous Festival Kings, thought to be dead or deposed. The portraits of the Festival Kings lined the Museum of the Elders, and most of them were recognisable from other works of art that were sold on Artists Row. Some of them had wings now, and others had horns growing from their foreheads. All of them had changed. Even Yorick, with his gleaming eyes, and the vines that twirled themselves around his lean, tattooed body.

  “They have become something else, not human,” Aila said, her voice soft.

  “They were chosen because they wanted to cross over, Aila.”

  The Guardian stepped forward into the light, now visible to everyone. She pushed back the head of her cloak, the most solidly human presence in the whole Arena. Her kuning langsat skin gleamed with health while her muscled, stocky body betrayed the strength of someone who trained, and who was poised for action. It was no surprise why this woman was allowed to preside over an entire island, Melur mused. She also mused that most of the gossip in the Protectorate had to be wrong. Marip did not seem enraged at all by Aila.

  He seemed concerned, and wryly amused.

  “You do know that there was no way Aila would have been Guardian if the different Stewards had not agreed, right?” Kieran whispered in her ear.

  “Yes, that much is true. But why did they agree? She’s not even from here,” Melur whispered back to Kieran.

  “Most of us are not from here. This island has more exiles on it than indigenes. All of us. Even the…faeries, as they are known on Terra Cognita. Even the dragons. We all came here because we needed to run away from something. As did our parents.”

  “Or our great-grandparents,” Melur said softly.

  “Ah, I forgot that you’re fourth generation.”

  “Some days, even I forget, Kieran.”

  “What do you think will happen to us now?” whispered Larkin as he stood closer to them.

  “I think we’re about to find out,” said Maryani. “Vita, step back, `nak. I don’t want the Steward noticing you.”

  “Too late, ibu,” said Vita, as Marip ambled over to them. She saluted him smartly.

  “Good afternoon, sir!” Vita said, as he turned to her.

  “Hullo Vita, when are you coming over to my Grove again? I’ve got some repairs that need attending,” Marip said, giving her a lazy smile.

  “I can be there tomorrow if you like,” said Vita. Beside her, Maryani bristled.

  “Relax, Maryani. Your daughter’s safe from vying for Kingship. She’s far too useful as she is,” Marip said.

  “What do you want from us? What if we don’t want to be King?” Maryani said.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to be King, ibu?” Vita asked her mother in a sceptical voice.

  “Honey, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m plenty powerful in Mykologosia. I do not, however, have a death wish.”

  Melur wondered if her grandmother and Maryani had been friends. Her grandmother, who had been spared “death” as King, and who had died the natural way, surrounded by her grandchildren. That was probably best, Melur thought. She did not think her debonair grandmother would have liked becoming a nonhuman entity. She looked again at Yorick. He remained in the centre of the clearing.

  “Well, who would like to do the duel with Yorick, knowing full well what’s ahead?”

  “Not death, right?” asked Larkin.

  “Not death,” Aila said, her voice firm.

  Marip nodded at her. “Not death, but failure will lead to banishment from the Mykologosia. You will be claimed by one of my forests.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Melur suddenly.

  “Melur, no!” Raslan ran up to her.

  “Look, we always knew it was going to be me. I’ve been preparing for this since that night. And if it’s me who’s chosen to be King, the rest of them will be spared.”

  “And if it’s not you, Melur?” Marip asked, his eyes intent on her.

  “Then the rest get better odds of survival,” Melur said, meeting his intense, inhuman gaze with her calm eyes.

  Marip nodded. “Go then. He’s waiting for you. They are waiting for you.”

  Melur walked to the center of the clearing in her tuxedo and tails. Her ikal mayang hair was knotted neatly at the nape of her neck as she reached Yorick.

  His eyes gleamed at her as his hands claimed hers.

  “Dance or duel, my lover?” he asked her as their bodies moved together, poised for one or the other. Or…

  “Both,” Melur said.

  “Both,” Yorick agreed as they danced a duel that required neither the light armour that her brother had made for her to wear beneath her clothes, nor the eldritch crown that rested on his head. They continued what had been interrupted twenty-five years ago by a summons both of them could hear. All of the voices, all of the intersecting histories dimmed, as the duel was fought by the soon to be deposed Festival King, and the incumbent King. None of them mattered to Melur and Yorick. Not the members of the Steward’s court that clustered around them, not the ethereal heroines of Melur’s painted hikayats, who materialised as Melur pulled out her paintbrush, and threw a handful of paint powder into the air, shimmering with afterimages of her protective spells from her craft.

  The bidadaris, the bunian admirals, the panjis from various hikayats crammed the spaces between the couple and the forests, facing outwards with silver spears. The garudas multiplied into fractals of avian warriors poised for battle.

  All of the forests of Yrejveree, all of the sentient mushroom dwellings of the Mykologosia trembled in that moment, but all Melur could see was the question and the promise that was in Yorick’s gaze.

  “Are you ready for whatever this battle brings?” she asked her lover.

  “I trust you to do what is best for the both of us,” he said simply.

  The new King defeated the old King, and that was all the stories would tell. The rest of it could only be resolved deep within the groves of spirits and of souls who had strayed away from the confines of humanity. The truth of it was only this: two bodies entwined together, neither human, nor animal, nor plant, just an iridescent weave of souls forever twisting and twining within each other deep within the forests of dreams and nightmares.

  There were no more Festival Kings. There could be no more, once the forests had finally collected what was owed to them.

  But these trees that rooted themselves in the heart of the forests opened upwards to a firmament of stars, upwards where two shimmering forms tangoed across the tops of trees as though the canopy of leaves that kissed the night sky had been created to be their dance hall. In the world of their dance, that canopy spread from horizon to horizon while garudas and shimmering warriors chased shooting stars and comets above them.

  ___

  Copyright 2020 Nin Harris

  Nin Harris is an author, poet, and postcolonial Gothic scholar who exists in a perpetual state of unheimlich. Nin writes Gothic fiction, cyberpunk, nerdcore post-apocalyptic fiction, planetary romance, and various other forms of hyphenated weird fiction. Nin’s publishing credits include Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, and The Dark.

  Giganotosaurus is published monthly by Late Cretaceous and edited by LaShawn M. Wanak.

  http://giganotosaurus.org

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  Nin Harris, A Long Tango across a Canopy of Whispering Leaves