by Cat Rambo
“Thank you,” I said shakily. “Will you share our fire?”
“Yes,” she said, as though expecting the invitation. She was a small woman with a head of short, crown-curled hair—slight but with enough weight to give her substance. No jewelry was evident, only the simplicity of her robe and the worn leather pack on her back, which she tucked her light back into.
“That’s a useful thing,” I said. “Where did you get it?”
“I found it,” she said before changing the subject. “Are you unharmed? A bite from a curse creature can fester.”
I shook my head. “They didn’t get close enough,” I said. “Good timing on your part.”
Back at the fire, I tried to convey to Preddi that there was danger in the woods. I don’t know if it got through or not. We built the fire up, and stacked the extra wood nearby, settling down to toast bread and cheese on sticks over the fire. Bupus whined for cheese, but it makes him ill, so I gave him chunks of almost-burned toasted bread instead. Coal’s good for his digestion. He looked reproachful, but crunched them down.
The Palmer, whose name turned out to be Lupe, and I talked, Preddi’s gaze moving between us as though he were listening, although when I tried to include him in the conversation, he gave me a blank look. I learned she was traveling from Port Wasp to Piperville, although she did not reveal the purpose of her pilgrimage. Well, that’s a personal thing, and not one everyone shares, so I didn’t push the question.
“You’re a Beast trainer,” she said, eying me.
“I am—and my father before him, and his mother before him.”
“A tradition in your family.” Her eyes glittered in the firelight, malicious jet beads.
“Yes.”
“Do you pass down lists of what are Beasts and what are people?”
I sighed. One of those. “Look,” I said. “We know which are beasts and which people. Beasts cannot overcome their natures and are not responsible for their actions. People can and are. There are four races of people: human, the Snake folk, the Dead beneath Tabat, and Angels, although no one has seen the last in centuries.”
“But although beasts are helpless before their natures, should one kill a person, they are killed in turn.”
“Of course,” I said. “Any farmer knows that a dog that bites once will bite again. They cannot help it. People can learn, so they can be punished and learn from the experience.”
She snorted and spat something fat and wet into the fire. “It’s no use talking to you,” she said. She turned to Preddi. “And what about you?” she said.
He looked at her blankly.
“He’s a little deaf,” I said.
“Ah.” She leaned forward and shouted into his ear, putting a hand on his arm to steady herself.
It surprised him. Few of us talked to Preddi—too difficult to stand there loudly repeating a phrase until it penetrated the muffling of his hearing.
I stood up and went to see to Bupus.
He was lying on his back, sprawled out like a tomcat in hot weather. Spittle roped from his gaping mouth and his knobby, chitinous tail twitched in his sleep, its tip glistening with green ichor.
I checked him over for ticks, parasites, thorns and the like. He grumbled in his sleep, turning over when I thumped him, great flanks shivering as though bitten by invisible flies.
“Gnaw your bones,” he muttered.
When I turned back to the fireside, I froze as deeply as I had with the rabbits. Off in the shadows beneath a sheltering pair of cedars, Preddi and the pilgrim woman were huddled together in his bedroll, moving in rhythm.
I was appalled on several levels. For one, you don’t want to think about your husband’s father like that. You know what I mean. Plus this woman didn’t seem very pleasant. And this was awfully sudden, so I felt as though I should make sure she didn’t chew off his face or turn out to be some sort of shifter. But above it all, I was irritated at their lack of manners. Was I supposed to act as though they weren’t there on the other side of the fire? I could understand why they hadn’t gone further, worried about the rabbits. But still. Still.
After they settled down, Preddi emerged and signaled he was ready to take his watch. He didn’t look me in the face, nor was I sure what to say. I looked him over and if he’d been enchanted in some way, I couldn’t tell, nor was I sure what the signs of such enchantment might be. So I tried to sleep, but mainly lay awake, wondering what Rik would say when he found out.
In the morning, Steel was there.
“Where’s Rik?” I said, before any other business.
“There’s been a little trouble,” Steel said.
“What trouble?”
He flapped an irritated hand at me. “Get your manticore ready while I fix the axle.” He gave Preddi and the pilgrim a glance.
“That’s Lupe, a pilgrim,” I said. “She saved my life last night.”
He grunted and turned to the axle. I roused Bupus to get him into harness, grumbling under my breath.
Preddi and Lupe walked on one side of the wagon while Steel rode on the other. I drove. Lupe leaned on Preddi as they walked, and I noticed the slight hitch to her gait, as though one leg were shorter than the other.
“You can ride with me,” I said, wondering if she’d be able to keep up otherwise. She shook her head, smiling at Preddi. It was a gesture that warmed me to her, despite my fears.
“What happened was this,” Steel said. “Lily got two farmers all riled up and throwing insults at each other. They started swinging and then we got fined for disturbing the peace.”
“Fined? How much?”
He winced.
“That much?” I said. “We don’t have any cash to spare.” Rik keeps the books for the circus, and I knew just how thin the financial razor’s edge we danced on was.
“Yes,” Steel said. “They let me out but kept the others in there. I’m supposed to raise the money. How, I don’t know. Meanwhile, they’re all sitting in jail eating their heads off and adding each day’s room and board to the total.”
“We have no extra money,” I said.
“I know.”
“I do,” Lupe said from somewhere behind us. “I could help you.”
We both turned to look at her, but Steel said the obvious thing first. “And what would you want in return?”
“A friend’s wagon went into a gorge, two miles ahead. I need someone to go into it and bring out a box of tools that he needs. He’ll come back later to retrieve the wagon itself, but he’s gone ahead to Piperville. I stayed behind to see if I could get help in getting the wagon out, but had no luck. Now I just want to bring him his tools, but I am forbidden to go within walls during my journey.”
It was flimsy, it was suspicious. But Palmers are on pilgrimage, and sometimes they act according to their geas. Steel and I exchanged glances, saying the same thing. Not much choice here.”
“Very well,” he said.
We trudged along in silence for the next mile, except for Lupe, who chattered away to Preddi. She had a trick of touching his arm to let him know she was speaking, to look at her, and he seemed happier than his usual self. I felt guilty—had Preddi been waiting all this time for someone just to talk to? I knew Rik’s mother had died birthing him—that would have been over a quarter of a century ago.
I kept hearing her voice as we rode, high-pitched inconsequentialities, the rush of words that comes from someone who has wanted to speak for a long time.
It was easy enough to see where the wagon had gone into the gorge. It was a bad place where the road narrowed—Lupe said her friend had been trying to make room for a larger wagon to pass. The blackberries were torn with its passage down the sloping, rocky side.
And when I climbed down through the brambles, since it was clear Steel had no intention of it, I saw a familiar sight: Sparky’s little wagon, tilted askew.
He was not in sight, but I found blood and tracks near the front, confused and scattered, as though being pursued.
&nb
sp; How to play this hand? What was Lupe’s game? I opened the back door of the wagon and peered inside.
Sparky had collected scrap. Iron chains draped the walls, along with lengths of iron and lesser metals: soft copper tubing, a tarnished piece of silver netting. And in the center, his tools in their box. I opened it, trying to figure out why Lupe wanted them. Ordinary tools: screwdrivers, picks, hammers. His father had made them and carved the wooden handles himself, Sparky had told me once.
Wooden handles. I looked down at the tools again, and then at the chain draped walls. Finally I understood. I imagined Sparky being driven from his wagon seat in a cloud of elf-shot, wicked stings that burned, wicked stings that drove him in a mad rush to where he could be safely killed.
Taking a length of chain from the wall and draping it around my neck, I took the box and clambered up the side of the gorge with its awkward weight below my arm.
Lupe’s fingers twitched with eagerness as she saw it. She and Preddi stood side by side, while Steel watched the road, ready to lead Bupus on a little further if some wagon should need to pass. I went over to him and laid the box between Bupus’ front paws. Touching the manticore’s shoulder, I leaned to whisper in his ear. He looked at me, his eyes unreadable, while Steel glanced sideways, eyebrows forming a puzzled wrinkle.
“Give it to me,” Lupe said. Her voice had an odd, droning quality.
“Not until we have the money,” I said.
She laughed harshly and I knew deep in my bones I’d been right. I stepped aside, putting my hand on Bupus’s mane. Steel looked between us, bewildered.
“It’s Sparky’s wagon,” I said. “Looks like he was driven away to be killed.”
“You must be confused,” she said. “That wagon belongs to my friend. I don’t know who this Sparky is.”
I continued, “And then she found she couldn’t go in his wagon because of the iron, and yet there they were, wooden handled tools that she could use. You’re some sort of Fay, aren’t you, Lupe?”
Her black eyes glittered with rage as she stared at me, searching for reply. Preddi looked between us, his face confused. I had no idea what he was making of the conversation, or if he’d actually caught any of it.
Steel stepped forward, hand on his knife.
“Stay away!” she spat. Her form quivered as she shrank in on herself, her skin wrinkling, folding, until she resembled nothing so much as an immense, papery wasp’s nest, tiny wicked fairies glittering around her in a swarm. A desiccated tuft of brown curls behatted her and she rushed at me and the box in a cloud of fairies.
Bupus’s tail batted her out of the air, neat and quick, and I laid the chain across her throat.
It immobilized her. The tiny fairies still darted in and out of her papery form, but they made no move to harm me. Cold iron is deadly to the Fays, even beyond its hampering of their powers.
I had my own tools in the wagon.
Another traveling show paid well for Lupe, enough to get all of our members out of jail. She huddled in the iron cage, quenched and calmed, and the malicious spark had vanished from her eyes. I hoped the dulling had left her with some language. I had not performed the operation in a long time.
Suprisingly, Preddi chose to go with her. All he said was “She’s a good companion” but there was no reproach in the words. Rik did not entirely understand why his father was leaving, but he took it well enough.
In the evening, I took Bupus down to the stream near our camp for a drink. The full moon rolled overhead like a tipsy yellow balloon. He paced beside me, slow steady footfalls, and as he drank, I combed out his hair with a wooden-toothed comb, removing the road dust from it. When he had drunk his fill, I wiped his face for him.
There in the moonlight, he took my wrist in his mouth, pinned between enormous molars as big as pill-bottles. I froze, imagining the teeth crushing down, the bones splintering as he ground at them. Sweat soured my armpits but I stood stock still.
His lips released my wrist and he nosed at my side, snuggling his head in under my arm. I let go of the breath I had been holding. Tears sprang to my ears.
He rumbled something interrogative, muffled against the skin of my hip. I wound my fingers through his lank, greasy hair.
“No,” I said. “You didn’t hurt me.”
“Good,” he said.
I stood for a long time, looking up at the moon. Its face was washed clean by clouds, and stars came out to play around it. After a while, Bupus began to snore.
This story was written in late 2007, and it began entirely with the title, which cam to me in an idle moment and which I loved from moment one. I knew I had to create a narrative that justified it and I knew it involved a traveling circus and a Manticore, but it took a while to figure out the whats and hows. Several family members appear in disguised form in this story, but I'm not saying more than that.
My favorite moment of the story is the attack of the zombie rabbits, mainly because I have no idea where that image came from. A close second is the final moment. I don’t know why it works so satisfyingly for me, but it does, perhaps because it sheds some light on the relationship between Tara and Bumpus, which I intend to explore further, somewhere down the line.
Originally the piece had been accepted for Fantasy Magazine, before I became an editor there. Sean Wallace ended up moving it to Clarkesworld because he had a slot he wanted to fill, and it appeared there in March, 2008.
Heart in a Box
Trevor, Ivory, and I were sitting by the river, the grass awning that had shaded us from the fierce Thai sunlight now blocking out the clustered evening stars. The bug screen was working overtime. You’d hear the almost subsonic whine whenever an insect hit it, making a shrill counterpoint to the jungle noises: birds squawking, the trees’ hollow rattle, the drip and drop of moisture from the leaves.
Trevor had scored a lump of hash as big as my thumb; a curl of gold leaf marked its side, and we were working on making it smaller. A hookah sat on the rattan table, and we used my pocket knife to shave bits from the surface and pack the bowl. The smoke was sweet and rich as homemade cake batter, and I had a solid buzz going.
Trevor’s lighter sparked in the evening darkness. The candle lamp on the table was nearly dead. We were killing time, all three of us. The waning moon was high and misshapen, and its blaze danced like the guttering candle on the cups of the waves, a foamy gleam barely visible.
We were still and stoned. Hash, good hash, doesn’t make you feel stupid or sleepy. Just remote. Remote from the world, deaf to the cries of the vendors, the blare and growl of traffic, and the distant thump-a-thump of the Banana Disco.
From the river came a sound of splashing as though something enormous were thrashing in the water.
“What’s that?” Ivory said.
We stared down through the darkness. There was no one else around; it was off-season and our waiter had deserted us before the sun had set.
Trevor stood, glancing at me. “I’m going to check it out.”
“Could be a crocodile. You never know what you’ll find in Thailand.” Ivory didn’t move but her voice was unalarmed. “Feel free, boys. I’ll be right here.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” He grinned at her, flashing perfect white teeth.
“Left behind in an LA hotel room,” she said.
So Trevor and I went together with cautious steps. There was a steep grade to the side of the river and thorny vines tore at us as we half-fell down it before encountering the sticky grasp of red clay mud threatening to pull our Tevas off.
She lay naked on the river bank like a fallen swan. Her skin white as snow, her hair midnight black. Her feet were thin and fragile as newly pedicured mourning doves, not a smudge or callous except for the mud that covered her.
As we slid towards her, she opened her eyes. Gray-blue, like the sea at evening, looking at us with a feverish terror. Another expression overtook the fear, unclenching the muscles, as she regarded me, a little startled but as though by an
old friend.
We stopped a few feet away. I held out my hands and felt an absurd desire to say, “We come in peace.” Instead I said, low and reassuring, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Trevor shrugged his way out of his lemon rayon shirt and draped it over her as she sat up. She fingered the material uneasily and leaned to sniff it, her nose wrinkling.
“Not this year’s style, but a classic is a classic, my mother says,” he told her with a nervous little grin. She didn’t smile, just cocked her head interrogatively, glancing between us.
Every time she looked at me, it was like a drink of water, or better, some intoxicating spirit. I found I could not look away and I know Ivory noticed that when we brought the girl back towards our table. I caught her cool speculative stare.
“Do you speak English?” Trevor said, and the girl gave him an inquisitive look.
She wasn’t one of the natives, though slim and small as one. At first I thought her an albino Thai with dyed hair. But her eyes were gray and blue against the inhuman fairness of her skin.
Phuket Enclave was stylish a few summers ago, but now was just evidence of the aftermath of being stylish. All the little shops were starting to dwindle and consolidate. The vendors, once insistent, had grown dispirited and lackluster, no longer offering polished gemstones, statues carved of opal or mahogany, wonders worthy of an Arabian treasure cave. Instead they carried the detritus of tourism: cut-rate t-shirts, video clips of dancing elephants, rayon costumery—“Genuine Thai kick boxer suit, very cheap, very nice.”
I’d been to see one of the painting elephants, Khwaam, the day before we found the girl. Standing in its clearing, I watched its keeper fill buckets of paint before the elephant curled its trunk around the brush and stepped up to the paper. He painted a picture of blue and green water, an intimation of a face below the surface. I paid the keeper 500 bhat and pinned the picture to my hotel room wall. My maternal grandmother invests heavily in animal art; I’d give her this one and see if she could help the elephant make a name for itself.
