by Rhys Hughes
Cressida soothed the tensions by stepping in front of the sculptor. She smiled and her bare bosom was no less encouraging. “I have a tip for you. Why not hang onto the trousers?”
“Very kind of you, lady! That’s more like it. My job is continually exciting. And they’re a perfect fit.”
“My pleasure,” she replied, “but explain to me in more detail about this subsidy scheme for artists.”
“Not just artists. All creative types.”
“Why do so few citizens know about it?”
His jaw dropped in amazement. “The council doesn’t court publicity. That would be disastrous. Every idiot with a paint-brush sprouting out of his unwashed left ear would apply for a grant. The entire treasury would be bankrupt within a few weeks. Don’t you know how much suede boots cost these days? And in such a crowded city, with so many people rushing here and there, stepping on them accidentally, they would have to be replaced regularly. Your proposal is vile!”
“I’m not actually suggesting anything.”
He sucked his lip. “Keep it like that.”
“So people have to already be aware of the fund before applying? It seems a little bit unfair to me.”
He shrugged. “Well you knew what to do. You called us on the web. I don’t see what you are grumbling about.”
She touched his arm. “You’re a sensible fellow.”
“Yes I am. And you’re naked, if you don’t mind me saying. Without a copper mirror I guess you didn’t know? You have one now, so there’s less excuse for such massive allure. . . .”
“I’m modelling for my maestro. It’s acceptable.”
“He’s nude too, so that complicates your explanation. But it’s none of my business. I’ll take my tip and leave. Enjoy your life. Nice piece, by the way. Your statue, I mean.”
“Yes, the look of horrified fascination on its face is superlative. Rodin Guignol sculpted it. Remember that name!”
“I don’t need to. We know many things. I am a council agent. We all sleep, but not at the same time.”
“Very scary!” Cressida waved him farewell.
He departed with a wink. For an instant it seemed he might reach up to pat her bottom, but his official policy was one of detached passions. They listened to him descending the stairwell. When his shoes clanged on the harder tiles of the ground level, Rodin and Cressida heaved sighs of relief and lured the confusion inside their imaginations to the surfaces of their skulls with scratchings.
“So we applied for a council grant on the web? But I thought we had only ordered eggs for breakfast!”
Cressida smirked. “No, it happened when you climbed outside. It was because you hit the wires with your elbow. You sent an accidental signal to the council. The undulations reached their secret address. He said we made our request last evening. . . .”
“Quite a lucky coincidence!”
“Hardly that. When we were poor and struggling, these objects might have come in useful. But now we’re destined for fame and will be able to afford thousands of suede boots!”
Rodin gulped. The unhappy words in his throat came out anyway: “But what if that really had been the police?”
“Plead innocence as before. This is no time to lose your nerve. You have lost it, haven’t you? Well?”
He nodded dumbly and lowered his head, waiting for the slap and the forfeit of another tooth. But the first never arrived and without it the second rarely came, for his gums had long since been filled with ceramic molars and incisors. Indeed, she was nodding too, and then he glanced up and saw she shared his unease. She had been relying on his unquestioning loyalty and obedience to bolster her own resolve. Power over him in this regard would amplify her belief in the desirability and exquisiteness of a life of artistic crime. But his small act of doubt had ruined that. In essence, neither really craved gross deception and mass murder. It was a bohemian idea, that was all, as lascivious in its way as pierced nipples and pet toads on leashes of silk.
“We might have been arrested. . . .”
“You’ve chickened—or should I say cockatriced—out? That’s it? All our dreams are already dead!”
“Forgive me, Cressida. No European tour.”
“And no collection of representational statues at the academy. What about that ethnographic project?”
“Cancelled. Peasants saved from destruction.”
She sighed. “No, from sudden evolution. From the alchemy of art! Do you realise what you are saying?”
He trembled in totality. “No renown. I know that. But things change for the best when you least expect it. The council isn’t staffed just by brutes now. They want to help artists. We have their website address. It is a saunter on the outer ledge.”
“You’re despicable!” she cried with relief. “How many grants do you think we’re eligible for? Probably one package per creative household at most! Listen carefully: why don’t we carry this statue to the market and barter it for food? Then we can reconsider our situation. I’ll go to see what our neighbour looks like. Depending on his expression when he froze we may be able to sell him as a cherub for a fountain or else a gargoyle for a chapel. Give me a moment.”
She went out into the passage and he waited for her aimlessly. Then he dressed himself quickly in a smock, as if this might protect her from gleeful eyes by association, for she had made the short trip still nude. He realised she was punishing him for the countless years he had ignored her beauty. She needed to make him jealous. He turned his watery eyes on the origin of their hopes and troubles. But the monster was entertaining itself, striding in ellipses in the centre of the studio. Soon his agent returned and she was rather pale.
“Bad news. He locked his door from the inside.”
“What do you mean?” twitched Rodin.
“Don’t you understand anything first time? There is a statue inside our neighbour’s apartment. The occupant himself is not at home. The door and windows have been bolted from within. Think of it from the viewpoint of the police detectives. How did the sculpture get there? A sealed room mystery. Few things they prefer.”
They exchanged frowns and some spark in the friction ignited panic. They flustered for long instants.
Rodin blurted: “We must kill the cockatrice!”
He raised his mallet and rushed forward, crouching down by the side of the blindfolded monster. Then he struck a powerful blow on its crown. The bird lurched but did not fall. And it remained silent. Then he stood aside and surveyed it helplessly.
“What a tough skull! It’s indestructible!”
“Stop that! What are you doing?”
“Destroying the murder weapon. It’s the main evidence against us. A bleeding dagger. A smoking musket. . . .”
She pulled him away from a second attempt. “I have a superior plan. Why not position the creature in front of the copper mirror? Then we can snatch away its blindfold. . . .”
“The mirror will turn to stone!”
“Don’t talk nonsense. Only animate objects are ever affected by its stare. It will petrify itself.”
“Brilliant! Another statue to sell.”
“That is the idea. Hurry, we must waste no time. When our neighbour doesn’t turn up for work, his boss will be sure to summon the police. We have an hour at the very most.”
They leaned the copper mirror which had just been delivered against the furthest wall and then Rodin picked up the cockatrice and positioned it in front of its own reflection.
“Close your eyes!” warned Cressida.
The sculptor and his agent squeezed their lids tight. Rodin fumbled with the blindfold. There was an abrupt squawk. Then the room went cold. Even though they were not looking, they felt that the light had vanished outside. Thick shadows were heavy on both faces. A sudden wind howled in the obsolete chimney, behind the bricks and plaster. Other hidden spaces in the walls throbbed and boomed.
“I feel dizzy. Weightless. I’m going to be sick.”
Cressida said: “Did it turn
to stone?”
“I don’t know,” muttered Rodin. “I lost my grip.”
“Well, open your eyes and find out. It’s safe to do that now. If it has petrified itself, its gaze will also be blank: solid stone. What are you waiting for, sweet coward?”
“My eyes are open, Cressida. I can’t see anything.”
“So are mine! What has happened?”
“We haven’t turned to stone, have we?”
“No, because we’re still alive. Are we blind?”
“How did that occur? Malnutrition?”
The room was ablaze again. The sun was rising over strange rooftops beyond the window, huge structures, solid and unknown, and yet curiously familiar. The walls of houses at wrong angles, towers and domes, streets in the sky, chunks of another city, an intruding metropolis locked quite absurdly into this one. Warped and stressed along its whole design. Most disturbing was the fact that it seemed to spout from this room, a rock forest with a single root, the rupture of a pressurised container full of quick drying cement. An architect’s nightmare. It originated behind the mirror and exploded out through the wall.
Rodin demanded: “What is going on?”
Cressida shivered and groped for a blanket from the divan. “I think the blow you struck the bird jangled its paranormal powers. Knocked them out of phase. Altered their properties.”
“It’s my fault? But I still don’t understand.”
“The gaze of the cockatrice now turns inanimate objects into stone. Can you imagine anything more unlikely?”
“So it petrified the mirror?”
She shook her head. “No, the reflection inside it. The double image of the studio. But not just that.”
“Not the rest of the house as well?”
“Yes and plenty more. In fact it has petrified the entire potential of the reflection. This studio and everything it is connected to. House, street, city, continent, world . . .”
“Spell it out for me, Cressida, if you would.”
She turned to face him and for the first time she seemed small. “We have created another globe, a twin planet, made of cold stone and joined to the old one at this point. This new Earth has no geological activity, life or atmosphere. It’s a dead ball, but one stuck fast to ours. To the stars, we must look like a dumbbell.”
Outside, the sun vanished again, below rock gables. They waited for a minute and it reappeared on the other horizon, speeding across the sky and testing all sundials to destruction. Pieces of this higher city were falling off into both networks of roads, for structural features such as streetlamps, guttering, washing-lines and ivy are supposed to be made of lighter materials. Under this abominable rain, umbrellas of screams were opened and crumpled and silenced.
“Is it just my imagination or does the sun look bigger each time it comes round? How can this be so?”
“The instantaneous creation of so much rock has disrupted the orbit of the Earth. Our planet is now lopsided, fused to an unwanted twin. The sudden increase in mass slowed the world down. There is no longer enough angular momentum to keep it on its regular course. At the same time, the overbalancing effect has speeded up axial rotation. The two changes have mostly cancelled each other out, and gravity has lessened only slightly. Otherwise we would now be dashed on the ceiling. As it is, we’re doomed. The Earth is falling into the sun!”
“Are you sure? That sounds like bad science to me!”
“I doubt I may be doubted, dear.”
Rodin wept. “My prospects of fame shall be cooked!”
“In company with everything else. . . .”
They sat down and kissed, but the shifting sunbeams were too noisy, heating up the air and objects in separate parts of the studio too fast, causing them to snap and creak. So passion was fatally interrupted. They disengaged with a mutual sigh, falling back. As they lay prone and damp, they heard the cockatrice scratching.
“It has entered the kitchen,” said Cressida.
“Searching for food, doubtless.”
“But there isn’t any. The silly bird!”
Rodin jumped up. He raced to the threshold of the kitchen, his brow connecting with a solid barrier. Then he began striking at the rock with his chisel. Splinters flew into his cheeks, but he ignored them, working furiously, gouging the shallow mouth of a cave into a granite wall which had only just come into existence.
“What are you doing?” she spluttered.
“Trying to get the creature out before it suffocates. It has opened one of the cupboards and upset the tub of sherbet I kept hidden there. I wanted it all for myself, darling! I didn’t want to share it! The powder must have flown up in a thick cloud and the cockatrice must have glanced at it, sealing itself inside a solid block of stone. Seems that even the sweetest things can be petrified!”
“You betrayed me? I understand that. You are a greedy liar. But why bother with rescuing the monster?”
“We are going to burn up in the sun. But if I hold the beast to the window and persuade it to look out, then it will turn the sun into rock, converting it from star to world.”
“That won’t help. We’re still going to collide.”
“At this moment we are heading into an unimaginable furnace. But if we are merely going to crash into a giant stone sphere, some of us might be able to jump off our planet and land safely on its surface before the crash. We could escape from earth with gliders, parachutes or catapults. Mass exodus to a greater mass. . . .”
“The sun won’t turn into a smooth sphere, you fool! The flames that leap from it will become spikes!”
“Some of us must accept the risk of impalement.”
“Even if you land successfully, how will you keep warm?”
“Our bodies, darling. Pressed together in the act of love. It’s our only hope. Now help me. I must save humanity!”
She said nothing. She span away, leaving him to it. Megalomania had finally digested his complete mind. Artists who claim that their work is vital to the world are common. He had become bourgeois. She realised she no longer desired him. She crossed the floor of the studio. Her plan was to step into the corridor, descend the steps and walk out onto the road. Perhaps she would find a better man among the desperate masses? No, that was unlikely. Only the mineral men of the twin city had the strength she adored. She would walk across from one reality to another, from the soft option to the firm. And then up the steps to that parallel apartment. To win him from her other stone self!
But now she realised that another exit had become available to her. A quicker way to a better lover. She approached the mirror, picking up a mallet from the floor. With slow deliberate strokes, she chipped away at the surface of the reflection. It led directly to the studio of rock and the stiffer of the two Rodins. When she had knocked a hole large enough, she would enter to claim him, in the same way that a monumental pedestal steals the glory of a modest statue.
Robin Hood’s New Mother
Nina, the Queen of the Amazons, wants to go somewhere different this year. She is bored with Lake Karatis, despite its giant snakes. She has wrestled most of them anyway. She uncorks her little god and whispers into the jar: “Any suggestions for a holiday?”
The shape inside heaves like a bosom. “The Forest of Sherwood.”
“Where in all Scythia is that?”
“Beyond its western horizon. Cross the Caucasus and follow the Black Sea coast with the Pontine Mountains on your left. Turn sharp right at Byzantium. I don’t know the way from there. You’ll have to ask. Perhaps the Emperor can help you.”
She frowns and rattles the jar. “Not in Scythia, you say? Well that’s original. But what’s so special about this Sherwood Forest?”
“It’s the home of an outlaw.”
“But I’m always catching those and poking them with spears!”
The shape within seems to chuckle. “This one is different. He is the Prince of Thieves. He steals from the rich and gives to the poor. You are very rich and so he will try his luck with you.
He is fearless and has the luck of a legend. A good match.”
“You are right, little god! It has to be better sport than monstrous serpents. I shall pack my things at once. But how do you get to learn of such strange people and events? After all, you’re stuck in there all day.”
“I dream about them, mistress. I was the Khazar god of dreaming before you captured me. Now my people never dream. And they are too tired to sleep.”
Nina replaces the cork. She is almost excited.
The Sheriff of Nottingham is a villain, but he just follows orders, so it isn’t his fault. Following orders is much harder than following a road. You have to leap from one instruction to the next, never knowing where they are taking you, like stepping stones over a river of scorpions, either marching packed tight down a dry channel, or else floating on broad leaves, depending on the season, but a difficult feature to cross all the same, and always a suspicion that the next stone will tip up and throw you greaves over helm into the torrent of sting. And the poison forming little tributaries.
“Guy of Gisborne! Come in here at once!”
“Yes, your Sheriffness?”
“Can you guess what I’m doing now? Three Guesses!”
“Um, being a villain?”
“Damn it! How do you keep winning this game? Take a draught of mead as your reward. Now then, I have a problem. I can’t follow these orders.”
“King John asked you to dress in lingerie again?”
“Would to heaven he had! No, Guy, this is far more awkward than that. See this letter I’m holding? No, not in that hand, which is under the table. This hand! That’s right, in front of your face. I know these Norman helmets make you cross-eyed with their nose-guards. Anyway, it was delivered a few minutes ago, don’t ask how: all right, carrier pigeon if you must know, and it has come all the way from the Emperor of Byzantium, Isaac II Angelos.”
“Oh him. We don’t owe him any allegiance, do we?”
“I wish we didn’t, because he has asked me to expect an honoured guest, the Queen of the Amazons. I’m supposed to put her up here in my castle and introduce her to the outlaw Robin Hood. She wants to challenge him to a fight.”
