It became a nightmare of flowers, and I was alone in it, my filth dammed up inside me and a pure world outside offering only innocents’ faces, pale, fresh, unknowing of drunkenness and body dirt, for a man to piss on—which, had he any manners in him at all, he could not do.
But don’t these flowers grow from dirt themselves? I thought desperately. Aren’t they rooted in all kinds of rot and excrements, of worm and bird and deer, hedgehog and who knows what else? I scrabbled to unbutton my trousers, my mind holding to this scrap of sense, but fear also clutched in me, and flowers crowded my eyes, and breathed sweetness up my nose. I could have wept.
It is all the drink, I told myself, that makes me bother this way, makes me mind. Have another swig, Manny! Roste shouted in my memory, thumping me in the back, thrusting the pot at me with such vigor, two drops of ale flew out, catching my cheek and my lip two cool tiny blows. I gasped and flailed among the thickening trees. They wanted to fight me, to wrestle me down, I was sure.
I made myself stop; I made myself laugh at myself. “Who do you think you are, Manny Foyer,” I said, “to take on the whole forest? There, that oak. That’s clear enough, the base of it. Stop this foolishness, now. Do you want to piss yourself? Do you want to go back to the fire piss-panted? And spend tomorrow’s hunt in the smell of yourself?”
I propped myself against the oak trunk with one hand. I relieved myself most carefully against the wood. And a good long wash and lacquering I gave it—aah, is there any better feeling? I stood and stood, and the piss poured and poured. Where I had been keeping it all? Had it pressed all my organs out to the sides of me while it was in there? I had not been much more than a piss-flask—no wonder I could scarce think straight! Without all this in me, I would be so light, so shrunken, so comfortable, it might only require a breath of the evening breeze to blow me like a leaf back to my fellows.
As I shook the very last droplets into the night, I saw that the moon was rising beyond the oak, low, in quite the wrong place. Had I wandered farther than I thought, as far as Artor’s Outlook? I looked over my shoulder. No, there still was firelight back there, as if a house-door stood open a crack, showing the hearth within.
The moon was not the moon, I saw. It gave a nicker; it moved. I sidled round the tree very quietly, and there in the clearing beyond, the creature glowed in the starlight.
Imagine a pure white stallion, the finest conformed you have ever seen, so balanced, so smooth, so long-necked, you could picture how he would gallop, easy-curved and rippling as water, with the main and tail foaming on him. He was muscled for swiftness, he was big around the heart, and his legs were straight and sound, firm and fine. He’d a grand head, a king’s among horses, such as is stitched upon banners, or painted on shields in a baron’s banquet hall. The finest pale velvet upholstered it, with the veins tracing their paths beneath, running his good blood about, warming and enlivening every neat-made corner of him.
Now imagine that out of that fine forehead, just as on a shield, spears a battle-spike—of narwhal-horn, say, spiraling like that. Then take away the spike’s straps and buckles, so that the tusk grows straight from the horse’s brow—grows, yes, from the skull, sprouts from the velvet brow as if naturally, like a stag-antler, like the horn of a rhinockerous.
Then . . .
Then add magic. I don’t know how you will do this if you have not seen it; I myself only saw it the once and bugger me if I can describe it, the quality that tells you a thing is bespelled, or sorcerous itself. It is luminosity of a kind, cool but strong. All-encompassing and yet very delicate, it trickles in your bones; slowly it lifts the hairs on your legs, your arms, your chest, in waves like fields of high-grown grass under a gentle wind. And it thins and hollows the sounds of the world, owl hoots and rabbit scutters, and beyond them it rumors of vast rustlings and seethings, the tangling and untangling of the workings of the universe, this giant nest of interminable snakes.
When something like this appears before you, let me tell you, you must look at it; you must look at nothing else; your eyes are pulled to it like a falcon to the lure. Twinned to that compulsion is a terror, swimming with the magic up and down your bones, of being seen yourself, of having the creature turn and lock you to its slavery forever, or freeze you with its gaze; whatever it wishes, it might do. It has the power, and you yourself have nothing, and are nothing.
It did not look at me. It turned its fine white head just a touch my way, then tossed its mane, as if to say, How foolish of me, even to notice such a drab being! And then it moved off, into the trees at the far side of the clearing.
The rhythm of its walking beat in my muscles, and I followed; the sight of it drew me like pennants and tent-tops on a tourney-field, and I could not but go after. Its tail, at times, braided flowers into itself, then plaited silver threads down its strands, then lost those also and streamed out like weed in brook-water. Its haunches were pearly and moony and muscular. I wanted to catch up to its head and ask it, ask it . . . What impossible thing could I ask? And what if it should turn and answer—how terrible would that be? So all confusion I stumbled after, between the flowers of the forest, across their carpet and among their curtains and beneath their ribbons and festoons.
We came to a streamside; the creature led me into the water, stirring the stars on the surface. And while I watched a trail of them spin around a dimple left by his passing, he vanished—whether by walking away, or by leaping up and becoming stars himself, or by melting into the air, I could not say, but I was standing alone, in only starlight, my feet numb and my ankles aching with the water’s snow-melt cold.
I stepped out onto the muddy bank; it was churned with many hoofprints, all unshod that I could distinguish. There was no magic anywhere, only the smell of the mud and of wet rock, and behind that, like a tapestry behind a table, of the forest and its flowers.
Something lay higher up the bank, which the horse had fetched me to see. It was a person’s body; I thought it must be dead, so still did it lie.
Another smell warned me as I walked closer on my un-numbing feet, on the warm-seeming mud, where the trampled grass lay bruised and tangled. It was not the smell of death, though. It was a wild smell, exciting, something like the sea and something like . . . I don’t know, the first breath of spring, perhaps, of new-grown greenness somewhere, beckoning you across snow.
It was a woman—no more than a girl—and indecent. Lace, she wore, lace under-things only, and the lace was torn so badly about her throat that it draggled, muddily, aside and showed me her breast, that gleamed white as that horse’s flank, with the bud upon it a soft round stain, a dim round eye.
Where do I begin with the rest of her? I stood there stupidly and stared and stared. Her storm-tossed petticoats were the finest weavings, broiderings, laces I had seen so close. Her muddied feet were the finest formed, softest, whitest, pitifullest feet I had laid eyes on in my life. The skirts of the underclothes were wrenched aside from her legs, but not from her thatch and privates, only as far as the thigh, and there was blood up there, at the highest place I could see, some dried and some shining fresher.
Her hair, my God! A great pillow of it, a great swag like cloth, torn at the edges, ran its shreds and frayings out into the mud. It was dark, but not black; I thought in proper light it might show reddish lights. Her face, white as milk, the features delicate as a faery’s, was cheek-pillowed on this hair, the open lips resting against the knuckle and nail of one thumb; in her other hand, as if she were in the act of flinging it away, a coronet shone gold, and with it were snarled a few strands of the hair, that had come away when she tore the crown from her head.
I crouched a little way from this princess, hissing to myself in awe and fright. I could not see whether she breathed; I could not feel from here whether she was warm.
I stood and tiptoed around her, and crouched again, next to the crown. What a creation! I had never seen such smithing or such gems. You could not have paid me enough to touch the thing, it gave off
such an atmosphere of power.
I was agitated to make the girl decent. I have sisters; I have a mother. They would not want such fellows as those back at the fire to happen on them in such a state. I reached across the body and lifted the lace, and the breast’s small weight fell obedient into the pocket and hid itself. Then, being crouched, I waddled most carefully down and tried to make sense of the lace and linen there, not wanting to expose the poor girl further with any mistaken movement of the wrong hem or tatter. I decided which petticoat-piece would restore her modesty. I reached out to take it up with the very tips of my fingers.
A faint step sounded on the mudded grass behind me. I had not time to turn. Four hands, strong hands, the strongest I had ever felt, caught me by my upper arms, and lifted me as you lift a kitten, so that its paws stiffen out into the air searching for something to grasp.
“We have you.” They were soldiers, with helmets, with those sinister clipped beards. They threw me hard to the ground away from the princess, and the fence they formed around me bristled with blades. Horror and hatred of me bent every back, deformed every face.
“You will die, and slowly,” said one, in deepest disgust, “for what you done to our Lady.”
They took me to the queen’s castle, and put me in a dungeon there. Several days, they kept me, on water-soup and rock-bread, and I was near despair, for they would not tell me my fate nor allow me to send word to any family, and I could well imagine I was to spend the rest of my days pacing the rough cell, my brief time in the colorful out-world replaying itself to madness in my head.
Guards came for me, though, the third day. “Where are you taking me?” I said.
“To the block, man,” said one.
My knees went to lily-stalks. The other guard hauled me up and swore. “Don’t make trouble, Kettle,” he told his fellow. “We don’t want to bring him before them having shitted himself.”
The other chuckled high, and slapped my face in what he doubtless thought a friendly way. “Oh no, lad, ’tis only a little conference with Her Majesty for you. A little confabulation regarding your misadventures.” Which was scarcely less frightening than the block.
From the stony under-rooms of the castle, up we went. The floor flattened and the walls dried out and we passed the occasional terrifying thing: a suit of armor from the Elder Days; a portrait of a royal personage in silks bright as sunlit water, in lace collars like insect wings; a servant with a tray with goblets and decanter so knobbed and bejeweled you could scarce tell what they were.
“Here’s the place,” said the humorous guard, as we arrived at a doorway where people were waiting, gentlemen hosed and ruffed and cloaked, with shining-dressed hair, and two abject men about to collapse off that bench, they leaned so spineless and humiliated.
The guards let us straight in, to a room so splendid, I came very close to filling my pants. It was all hushed with the richest tapis, and ablaze with candles, and God help me, there was a throne, and the queen sat upon it, and at the pinnacle of all her clothing, all her posture, above her bright, severe eyes and her high forehead filled with brains, a fearsome crown nestled so close in her silvering reddish hair, it might have grown into place there. Under her gaze, my very bones froze within me.
“Give your name and origins,” said the guard, nudging me.
“My name is Manny Foyer, of Piggott’s Leap, Your Majesty.”
“Now bow,” the guard muttered.
I bowed. Oh, my filthy boots were sad on that bright carpet! But I would rather look on them than on that royal face.
“Daughter?” The queen did not take her attention from my face.
I gaped. Was she were asking me if I had a daughter? Why would she care? Had she confused me with some other offender?
But a voice came from the shadows, beside, behind the throne. “I have never seen him in my life. I don’t know why he has been brought here.”
The queen spoke very slowly and bitterly. “Take a close look, daughter.”
Out of the shadows walked the princess, tall and splendidly attired, her magnificent hair taken up into braids and knots and paddings so elaborate, they almost overwhelmed her little crown. Her every movement, and her white, fine-modelled face, spoke disdain—for me, for her mother, for the dignitaries and notables grouped about in their bright or sober costumes, in their medals and accoutrements or the plainer cloaks of their own authority.
She circled me. Her gown’s heavy fabrics rustled and swung and shushed across the carpet. Then she looked to her mother, and shrugged. “He is entirely a stranger to me, Madam.”
“Is it possible he rendered you insensible with a blow to your head, so that you did not see his face?”
The princess regarded me, over her shoulder. She was the taller of us, but I was built stockier than her, though almost transparent with hunger at this moment.
“Where is my constable? Where is Constable Barry?” said the queen impatiently, and when he was rattled forth behind me, “Tell me the circumstances of this man’s arrest.”
Which he did. I had my chance to protest, when he traduced me, that I had not touched the lady, that I had only been adjusting her clothing so that my fellows would not see her so exposed. I thought I sounded most breathless and feeble, but while the constable continued with his story I caught a glance from the princess, that was very considering of me, and contained some amusement, I thought.
There was a silence when he finished. The queen dandled my life in her hands. I was near to fainting; a thickness filled my ears and spots of light danced at the edges of my sight.
“He does not alter your story, daughter?” said the queen.
“I maintain,” said the magnificent girl, “that I am pure. That no man has ever touched me, and certainly not this man.”
The two of them glared at each other, the coldest, most rigid-faced, civilized glare that ever passed between two people.
“Free him,” said the queen, with a tiny movement of her finger.
Constable Barry clicked his tongue, and there was a general movement and clank of arms and breastplates. They removed me from that room—I dare say I walked, but truly it was more that they wafted me, like a cloud of smoke that you fan and persuade towards a chimney.
They put me out the front of the castle, with half a pound-loaf of hard bread to see me home. It was raining, and cold, and I did not know my way, so I had quite a time of it, but eventually I did find my road home to Piggott’s, and into the village I tottered late next day.
My mam welcomed me with relief. My dad wanted my word I had done no wrong before he would let me in the house. My fellows, farm men and hunters both, greeted me with such ribaldry I scarce knew where to look. “I never touched her!” I protested, but however hard I did, still they drank to me and clapped my back and winked at me and made unwholesome reference. “White as princess-skin, eh, Manny?” they would say, or, “Oh, he’s not up for cherry-picking with us, this one as has wooed royalty!”
“Take no notice, son,” Mam advised. “The more you fuss, the longer they will plague you.”
And so I tried only to endure it, though I would not smile and join in their jesting. They had not seen her, that fine girl in her a-mussment; they had not been led to her through the flowering forest by a magical horse with a horn in its head; they had not quailed under her disdain, or plumped up again with hope when she had looked more kindly on them. They had not been in that dungeon facing their death, nor higher in the palace watching the queen’s finger restore them to life. They did not know what they spoke of, so lightly.
I thought it all had ended. I was begun to relax and think life might return to being more comfortable, the night Johnny Blackbird took it into his head to goad me. He was a man of the lowest type; I knew even as I swung at him that Mam would be disgusted—Dad also—by my having let such an earwig annoy me with his crawlings. But he had gone on and on, pursuing me and insisting, full of rude questions and implications, and I was worn out with being so
fecking noble about the whole business, when I had never asked to be led away and put beside a princess; I had never wanted picking up by queen-people and bringing into royal presences; most of all I had not wanted, not for a moment, to touch even as much of her clothing as I touched, of that young lady, let alone her flesh. I had never thought a smutty thought about her, for though she were a beauty she were much too imposing for a man like me to do more than bow down before, to slink away from.
Anyway, once I had landed my first thump, to the side of Blackbird’s head, the relief of it was so great, I began to deliver on him all the blows and curses I had stored up till that moment. And hard blows they were, and well calculated, and curses that surged like vomit from my depths, so sincere I hardly recognized my own voice. He called pax almost straight away, the little dung-piece, but I kept into him until the Pershron twins pulled me off, by which time his face was well colored and pushed out of shape, the punishment I’d given him.
After that night people left me alone, and rather more than I wanted. They respected me, though there was the smell of fear, or maybe embarrassment—bad feeling, anyhow—in their respect. And I could not jolly them out of it, having never been that specimen of a jolly fellow. So I tended then to gloom off by myself, to work when asked and well, but less often to join the lads at the spring for a swim, or at the Brindle for a pot or two.
We were stooking early hay when the soldiers came again. One moment I was easy in the sunshine, watching how each forkful propped and fell; the next I came aware of a crowding down on the road like ants at jam, and someone running up the field—Cal Devonish it was, his shirt frantic around him. As soon as he was within the distance of me he cried, “They are come for you, Manny!” And I saw my death in his face, and I ran too.
The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror Page 22
