She barely glanced at the baby.
“It’s a beastly thing,” she said.
“It is your daughter.”
“It has no grace. It is awkward-footed, it’s bald and toothless and—”
“All true, but it’s still your daughter now. Time to feed it. Give it milk.”
“It will drain me. It will drink my blood.”
“It will drink your milk, which is what these things do. Feed it. Teach it. Love it.”
“I will never love it.”
“It’s what you must do, Livia. It’s what we all must do, when it is time for us to do what we must do.”
“You talk like a damn fool.”
She took the baby in her arms and gave it her breast, and the human infant gagged for a moment as they all gag on something so sweet, but after a minute settled down. Livia’s eyes burned with hatred. It was astonishing to watch.
“Perhaps it will smother itself upon my breast,” she said.
“Livia—”
“One hopes. One still has hope.”
She turned away and scurried back into the house with the child, who immediately began to wail. The sirens also cried.
I sat reclined in my library before the fire, thinking of my mother, who had said, “You buried your father where?”
Harella entered with a vase of fresh-cut roses and placed it on the table I had whittled for her from a great redwood as a show of my love before we were married. I was young then and wondered if such talent had abandoned me by now.
She sat in her chair and took my hand in hers. She sensed my dark backward mood. I sensed her sensing and realized there was something else on her mind as well. I kissed her palm and turned fully toward her.
She told me, “The annual fencing trials are tomorrow.”
“Already?” I huffed air. Time is playful when traveling through the wall. It stretches, contracts, curves, the tempo changes. I have met myself twice on the cobblestone roads so far. I didn’t nod or wave. I said nothing, but I peered at myself angrily. I was beautiful, but not as beautiful as I’d always thought before meeting myself twice on the road.
“Don’t go,” she said, “this year. Stay with me.”
“I will look like a coward.”
“You will look like you are above their matters.”
But I wasn’t above their matters. I wasn’t of them, but I wasn’t above them. I never missed the fencing trials. I was the best fencer. I had always been the best fencer. But I’m excluded from the trials because my duty is to sneak beyond the wall. Their argument is that while I am out of sight from the referees, the masters, the other swordsmen, I might be partaking of secret instructions given by savage humans. I argue that no human can fence worth a dead lumpfish, but this argument falls on deaf, though graceful, ears. The human world is a mystery to them, even more than it is a mystery to me.
As such, they fear I have an unfair advantage, and so I am excluded from trials. But not from sparring. I have sparred with them all and beaten them all, probably because they hate me, which causes them to become distracted easily. I have a title where they have none. They have names but no designation, no station. They have jobs where I have duty. They have families where I have lineage. They perpetuate while I save the races.
My Da had said, “Your capabilities will be questioned. The only answer is to refrain from action. To be confident in your capacity.”
“My capacity as quantified by what parameters?” I asked.
“By the parameters of your moral code,” my Da said. “By your capacity to help our people. It’s all that matters.”
I thought then as I thought now. My Da, and his Da, and all the Das before them, were much stronger than I was, more altruistic, filled with greater humility.
Harella stood then and asked me to bed, possibly for love and possibly for sleep, but I wanted neither. She sighed her great sighs and drifted up the staircase alone, her gown flaring around her hips, the light of her beauty carrying her like soaring wings.
I sat in my chair mulling over my matters, full of mull, my mull full of dull, until the dawn broke and I heard, in the distance, the first flutes, trumpets, and squeezeboxes welcoming the fencing masters.
I kept still another minute trying hard to be above such matters, but soon found that I was not only not above them, or even of them, but probably well below them in the strictest sense. I was soon at the back of my closet and halfway dressed in my finest fencing garb.
Harella, two floors above, could hear me buckling my belts and snapping shut my buckles. She sighed so deeply that the frill on my jacket wafted to and fro. I retrieved my sword from above the fireplace, fit it within its sheath, and on horseback rode to the trials just as the bassoons and tubas and harpsichord announced Reedle.
Reedle was the reigning champion of fencing, and had been since I was driven from the trials. His coat was adorned with countless medals that shone not quite as shinily as the shine of his gleaming white teeth and brilliant black eyes. He arrived in a six-horse-drawn carriage. Himself, and his blade, and his epaulets, and his purple sash. He stepped from the carriage to the cheers of our people as I climbed off my horse.
He gave me his finest smile. “Ah, Cruel Thief of Rosy Infants, how are you this day?”
I did my best to smile my finest smile, which wasn’t nearly as fine as his finest smile.
“Fine,” I said.
“Has there been some revoking of the revoking of your privilege to enter our tournament?”
“Not to my knowledge,” I said.
“And yet you wear your fencing finery?”
“My wife waxed the boots and polished the buttons recently, so out of respect for her sweat and efforts I thought I should wear the finery this day, while I sat in the stands and applauded your genius with a sword.”
“Your boots are covered in horse shit,” he told me.
Like all of us, Reedle is full of great grace, but his grace is less than the grace of everyone else.
So Reedle won the tournament in straight matches, as he always did since my expurgation. Each time he vanquished an opponent he would turn to the stands and find my bright buckles and buttons and slash the air as if he were cutting into my heart. I felt each slash through my grins and salutes. I was not confident in my capacity or the pa ram e ters of my moral code.
I made my way down to the dueling field and waited until most of the crowd and carriages had withdrawn from the area. I gave the proper encouraging murmurs and displays of respect and veneration to those who’d lost, shook hands, tapped sword points, and clapped shoulders as the moment called for. When I approached Reedle he turned from me in an ample and obvious showing of contempt, then climbed into his carriage along with his purple sash, sword, and epaulets, and left the games.
My fist tightened on my weapon. My eyes narrowed. I thought to follow. I thought to lunge, lance, riposte, gore, gouge, stab, pierce, plunge, and clean the horse shit from my boots with his finest finery. I was glad that I was not traveling beyond the wall. I did not want to meet myself on the road and look at my face as it might appear at this instant.
I alighted upon my horse’s back and rode toward home.
Harella met me outside in the garden, which she was tending to full bloom. I leaped from the horse and unbuckled my buckles and belts and took off the coat and garb and thought about chucking it all in the mud. Instead I folded it and laid it across the marble garden bench I had crafted for her our first year of marriage. I placed my palm upon its smoothness, shut my eyes, and tried to recall my earlier skills, but could only think of rough human hands and the beating of my own unpredictable heart.
I fed and watered the horse as my wife touched me upon the shoulder.
“You must get Livia’s child back,” Harella said.
“What’s happened?”
She tucked her chin in and gave me a look that was both wise and harsh, much more harsh than wise, I thought. “I saw her strike the child this afternoon.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Only if I was dreaming, and I assure you I was awake.”
“We do not do—”
“Oh, stop with the ‘things we do because we must do them’ nonsense. Livia is a mother whose child was stolen. She’s capable of anything. You must know that’s the truth.”
I knew it was the truth.
“Travel again, and return her own flesh to her.”
“I can’t do that. No one must ask, not even her.”
“She’s not asking,” my wife said. “I am.”
“It’s not something you can ask. It’s not something I can do.”
“You swap children. That is your calling. That is what you do. So simply go back and do it again. Swap again.”
“That isn’t what we do.”
“Perhaps you should have considered it more often, instead of blindly performing your duty. Exercising your imperatives. Go get her child or a baby’s blood will be on your hands. Can you stand that? Sniff your fists. Do you smell blood yet?”
I did.
Traveling across the wall now, the wall had become a wall of people, huddled in the town square, gathered to watch a hanging.
I drew my slouch hat lower across my brow.
A woman was brought out in the center of the square, riding in the back of a hay cart drawn by two mules. The crowd threw rotted fruit and vegetables and eggs at her while shouting vile and varied insults.
She was matronly, heavyset, soft of features but with a righteous tilt of her chin, a dark gleam in her eye that made me take note. They hadn’t tortured her the way they do with some. She wasn’t marred at all, except for the eggshells, which meant she had signed a confession without any coercion. She looked as wholesome as humans can, with her hair still set under a milking cap, still wearing an apron.
I saw motherhood in her, nursing, bandaging, healing, life-giving and life-saving. The town crier unfurled his parchment scroll and read off a list of her crimes. They seemed to focus, more or less, around the fact that she had helped other women during difficult pregnancies, healed the sick with herbs and poultices, and once shouted down the queen’s taxman who was kicking urchins in an alley.
When they sought to drop the red velvet bag over her head she stiffly refused. She had courage and sought to garner a touch of vengeance upon the crowd by showing them her dead and awful face rather than merely her complacent corpse. The hangman adjusted the knot, and the minister said a lengthy and not altogether appropriate prayer, and the dancers came out and performed their ritual dance, throwing their flowers and veils, and the choir sang two lackluster hymns, and the queen’s guard performed a well-choreographed military promenade, then fired the requisite thirty-seven shots at the sky, and the fainters fainted, and the swooners swooned, and panters panted. More than one man drooled. There was a good deal of spitting.
At last the woman was asked to say her last words, but she simply shook her head. Her eyes searched the square, perhaps for family or friends, lovers, a kind expression, a forlorn face. I raised the brim of my hat. Her gaze found mine. She gave me a slight nod and I returned the gesture.
At the moment of death, her grace met my grace. They would carry on together elsewhere, wherever else there is to go afterward.
I returned to the house where I had swapped away Livia’s child. I climbed down the chimney and peered about the place, moving through room after empty room. There was no activity. In the bedchambers, no snarls or mewls or murder or love-making, no action. In the den, no practicing of the tuba. On the fire, no stew.
Out the front door I skirted and moved about the stables. In the pigpen, the hogs rolled about happily in the mud. Sadly, they all had their heads. My stomach tumbled. Again I wondered, how could oregano possibly be a malfeasance upon one’s innards?
A well-trod path led into the woods. I followed for a quarter mile until I heard laughter and music. The pan pipes, the piccolo, the drumming, the triangle. I hid in the brush and looked upon a clearing full of revelers.
Several farming families shared food and wine and played and danced together. It seemed to be one of those farmer celebrations. They were always feasting and frolicking for some agrarian reason or another. A bountiful harvest or the end of a drought or the girth of the maypole. There was always something to excite and extol.
Liva’s child of light stood out among them, breathtaking, exquisite, lithesome, and diaphanous amidst the craggy faces and plodding feet of human neighbors.
She was now a nearly grown woman. Time had become mischievous again, and had stretched and sped while I’d been home buckled in my buckles. I guessed seventeen years had unfurled and whirled past. She was blithe with laughter, which bubbled from her and buoyed the mood of the world.
I heard her parents calling to her. Her name was Eva.
Young men lined up for a chance to cavort with her. The music rolled on, the bards and minstrels singing songs named for her. She jigged and jagged and swung in the heavy arms of the farmer men, who whispered in her ear. One proposal after another, no doubt. She held them tightly and planted kisses on their hairy faces, and it was enough for them for the time being, for a while. Eventually she would choose one of them, and the rest would love her from afar and watch while she raised a passel of golden children who would blaze like sunlight.
This world needed her. This world full of hangings. This world could use all the happiness and fairness it could possibly wrangle. They needed our blood as much as we needed theirs.
It was wrong to think I could change the course of my duty. Or steal back a girl who was obviously so happy here. You can’t unswap.
I turned to go, and Eva sang a note that only my ears could hear. It was directed at me, I realized. I could hide from the humans but not from her. She called to me, to feast and prance with her.
Sometimes our kind forgot they were not human and went on to lead the average lives they must lead. But Eva clearly had not forgotten. She recognized me from when she was a baby.
Despite Livia’s pain, it wasn’t fair that I ask Eva to return beyond the wall and give up her parents and siblings and inamoratos. I had known better than to come here again. It wasn’t the way to fulfill my obligations. Livia would have to learn to accept her human child. She would have to do as she must do. She would have to love as humanity loved. If not, then I supposed Harella and I could raise the swapling.
How much more just could justice be than for me to be Da to a blunt awkward-footed common beastly girl?
For the return trip I had to journey to the human town of Limwelt, where another hanging was occurring in another square. This time there were five women and two goats being hanged. The women were all quite beautiful by human standards, still wearing corsets and flimsy short skirts that showed ample amounts of muscular leg. I moved among the crowd, watching eager faces as the charges were read.
Apparently the women were being executed for entrenching many impure thoughts into the minds of several pubescent boys. The crowd jeered and shook fists. The two goats appeared complacent and content with chewing their last mouthfuls of curd. Then the goats’ crimes were read off. They were very similar to the women’s crimes. I turned and met the eye of a goat and its grace met my grace. I lifted my hand in farewell. The goat chewed. I spun toward a wall of miscreant, drunken revelers crying for death. The hangman pulled a lever and the crowd gasped in shock and joy, and I was beyond the wall and home again.
Harella was in the garden, fiery and glowing with sweat streaming upon her lovely face. I spread my arms to hug my wife and she barked, “Where’s the child? What took you so long? Where’s Livia’s girl?”
“I couldn’t steal her away,” I admitted.
“What?”
“She was too happy. She’s a child of light in a grossly dark world.”
Harella said nothing, and the volume of the nothing rang in my ears until I had to raise my palms and press them to the sides of my head to drown out the silence.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“She never took to the human child. She … was abusive.”
“Abusive?”
“Yes. With the lash.”
“The lash?”
“And her elbows. And sometimes her feet, I suspect.”
“Elbows? And—”
“Stop repeating what it is I tell you.”
I swallowed. My hands were fists. My fists were red.
“We … we are not abusive to children,” I said, “not even swapling children, no matter how upset it might make us when we do the thing we must do.”
“You sound so naive, my love.” She looked at me with eyes that were full of sorrow. A sadness not for abused rosy infants, but for the cruel thieves of such.
“I must see the human girl,” I said. “I must visit them. Has she named it yet?”
“Of course. Its name is Grot.”
“Grot?” The word was sour on the tongue. “That’s quite unpleasant.”
“Exactly the purpose of such a name. Livia called the girl that as a curse. And it’s what she is. Cursed. She lives alone in the caves down by the beach.”
“But—”
“She’s seventeen. History has a memory here, too. Don’t you know how long it is you’ve been gone? Aren’t you aware?”
I wasn’t. This was the first occurrence of time becoming merry with me on this side of the wall. I wondered whether if I looked around too quickly I would see myself glaring and performing evil gestures in my direction.
“The caves?” I repeated. It seemed I could not quit this repetition. My whole life was comprised of recurrence now, like an echo of an echo. Doing the same thing over and again in order to somehow undo it. “Our people allow her to live alone in the caves?”
“They want her there. If she didn’t live there by choice, the elders might have forced her there.”
“That’s not the thing—”
“Stop saying that!”
“Where is Livia?”
“She’s left. She’s gone. No one knows where. Personally I suspect she has become a siren. It seems to fit with her character, all the crying and lying about on sandbars. All the remoteness, the standing and looking indifferent in the shallows. When the architect goes on journeys to other lands to study foreign buildings, she can swim alongside his vessel and sing to him.”
The Monster's Corner Page 20
