The Hanged Man: Part 8: Lithia
Post #83: In which twelve princesses and galaxies ...
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CHAPTER 31
RADULF
Maggie had been as good as her word. Under the force of her inexorable will and gimlet eye, Juliana’s body was dug out of the mud, wrapped decently in a shroud, and laid in a proper grave. A headstone was being carved in the village out of a piece of marble. They had no date of birth or death or even a last name, but she wouldn’t lie nameless and forgotten. After some discussion, everyone agreed it was fitting she lie in her own orchard. Maggie herself had dug up clumps of violets and planted them over the grave.
Radulf and Dar bunched flowers and herbs and bound them to a woven ring of thick stems and thin wood, winding it with tough honeysuckle vine, and laid the wreath on the grave.
The place in the embrace of the river was to be given to a young couple, just starting out, who had no place of their own and no means with which to buy one. They’d come nearly every day, caring for the house, the shed, and the land, and privately were quite glad to move out of the village proper. Radulf could see they already loved the place and were not put off by the grave under the trees. They’d talked with Dar, interested in the woman who’d created such a home, and concluded her memory would only enrich both land and house.
Radulf and Dar stayed on, overseeing the work and lending a hand in the evenings after the day’s business. Trade was brisk; the villagers came to buy and to talk, and Dar gradually grew less surly.
One night, under the orchard boughs, clustered with new fruit, Dar and Radulf relaxed together and Radulf spoke of his plans to move on.
They’d found a lantern in the house and Dar had lit it and hung it carefully in a tree, away from tender growth that might be scorched. The frogs sang and moths and other night fliers danced around the glass-shielded flame. A few feet away lay the smooth, rounded hump of Juliana’s new grave.
“Where to?” asked Dar.
Radulf said, half irritated and half amused, “Well, unless someone appears to lead me by the hand--“
“Or paw, or antler, or tail feather,” put in Dar.
“--I think I’ll just start walking. My feet itch and I think I’ve done what I came here to do. What about you?”
“I’m not sure,” said Dar. “I have a feeling I’m not quite finished here. I’ve been talking to Gabriel. It appears there’s a group of people who might be interested in moving on and finding a new community. He thinks Heks would go, too. Perhaps they’ll need a guide.”
“Interesting,” said Radulf. “It’s a big undertaking, beginning a new community from nothing. I’d like to watch that unfold.”
“I think they’re prepared to do things differently now,” said Dar. “If I can be part of it, Juliana’s death doesn’t seem so needless, or Jenny’s or Artyom’s, either.”
Radulf lay on his back, arms crossed under his head, watching moths fly around the lantern’s flame. “The world is filled with strange stories,” he said. “For a long time, I didn’t know that. Life is like an unending book, each of us a character, each page a day of our lives, all of us coming together and parting and creating stories connecting with other stories.”
“That’s one of the differences between youth and maturity, I think,” said Dar. “Youth thinks the story is theirs. Maturity knows the story is everyone’s.”
“Some people think when they die the story is over, like that,” Radulf made a chopping motion with his hand. “But I don’t think so. We go out of the story, at least in the form we once had, but the stories we enter go on without us and I’m not convinced we don’t continue to circle in and out in some form. Look at Juliana. If they do begin something new it’s because of her—she’ll go with them and be there in that community, be a part of the stories to come.”
Dar sighed. “She will. But I’m angry at the waste. I want her alive and warm and with us the way she was, not her memory or her ghost or her reincarnation or whatever else you like to call it.”
Radulf grunted and for a time they remained silent together, listening to the soft fluttering sounds of night insects attracted by the light and the song of frogs and river.
“Do you like mysteries?” asked Dar.
“Mysteries? I suppose. It depends on whether they’re any good,” said Radulf, smiling. “Why, do you know of one?”
“I do. It’s a wonderful mystery about an unhappy king, his twelve beautiful, nubile daughters and the shoes each daughter wears out every single night while locked and presumably sleeping in their bedchamber.”
Radulf sat up. “You’re joking! Twelve?”
“I’m not. I call it ‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses.’ Catchy, don’t you think?”
“They wear their shoes out dancing? In their bedchamber?”
“Nobody knows, you dolt! That’s the mystery, see?”
They laughed together.
“Tell me,” said Radulf. He sat up and put his back against a tree, watching Dar’s expressive face in the lantern light as he talked.
“A young king and queen had twelve daughters. In the beginning, the king was bluff, good natured and hearty, well-liked by his subjects. His wife was fey, some said, but lovely. People whispered she was a witch and practiced magical rituals in secret, but she drew no attention to herself and gossip starved for want of material.
As the years passed, the birth of twelve daughters took their toll on the royal couple. The king’s disappointment at not gaining a single male heir eroded some of his love for his wife, whose youth and beauty trickled away under the strain of childbearing and motherhood.
The twelve princesses shared a single large room, and at some point, rumors began that every night the queen and those princesses old enough to be on their feet wore out a pair of slippers.
Although the older princesses were of marriageable age, the king and queen did not entertain suitors or attend social occasions in which they might meet eligible young men. Some said the king was possessive, but some blamed the queen for tainting the princesses with her own reputation for secrecy and magic.
Soon after the twelfth princess was born, the queen disappeared one night. Her body was never found and the princesses, clearly grief stricken, could provide no explanation for her absence.
The loss of the queen hit the king hard, and he became jealous and suspicious. The eldest of the princesses passed marriageable age and entered spinsterhood. The rumors about the worn-out slippers every morning became common talk, in spite of the king locking the princesses in their chamber each evening as though they were recalcitrant subjects instead of full-grown women.
The king became obsessed by the mystery, which the princesses could not or would not explain. He grew certain the queen’s unsolved disappearance was somehow connected with the worn-out slippers. The passing of years increased his obsession rather than softened it.
At last, the king made a proclamation. Any man who could solve the mystery of the worn-out slippers would be given his pick of the princesses as wife, as well as part of the kingdom. Failure to unravel the explanation of the worn-out slippers, however, would be punished with death.
This tempting offer offset the advanced age of some of the princesses, and at first many men took up the challenge, determined to win their fortune and a wife. But each of them failed to discover the reason for the twelve pairs of worn-out slippers the servants collected each day, and each forfeited his life. After a time, the story developed a sinister overtone. The matter of twelve princesses and their shoes no longer appeared so harmless and humorous. Fewer and fewer men came to try their luck.
To this day, the proclamation stands. The king refuses to consider any suitor who declines to attempt to solve the mystery. The queen’s disappearance has never been explained, and the king clings more stubbornly to his grief and resentment every year. The princesses, presumably, are growing old together in their chamber in the castle, unwed and ignorant of anything outside the castle walls, the only ones who know the truth of the worn-out slippers.
People say there must be powerful dark magic at work that stops the princess’s tongues and keeps them all imprisoned, the princesses in their chamber, the king in his obsession and loss, and perhaps even the queen in some inaccessible, invisible place.”
“Well,” said Radulf when the tale was told. “I’m intrigued. You didn’t present yourself to the king to solve the mystery and claim a wife?”
Not me! I’m rather too fond of my life to risk it. A princess and part of a kingdom to rule are nothing I want. I don’t see why I should add myself to the grim tally of failures. Many a promising young man has lost his life in that place. It’s a tale smelling strongly of futility, but, as you say, intriguing. Something is certainly going on, but it’s not a game.”
“No, indeed. It doesn’t sound like a game. One wonders if the young men are the only victims, though.”
HEKS
Heks opened the door and walked into the broken-down hut she’d called home for so long. It was empty. She, Joe, and Bruno had made no lasting impression on the place. If there had been ghosts, they’d been banished, either in the orgy of butchery, cooking and gorging, or in Heks’s subsequent furious scrubbing of cauldron, clothing, house, and body, all overseen by Baba Yaga.
Now it was evening. Baba Yaga was gone. Joe was dead. She felt quite certain the unnamed man who’d died with Jenny and Artyom was Bruno. She stood inside the door and had the disconcerting feeling she stood in a stranger’s house. She was in the wrong place. It didn’t want her and she didn’t want it. She remembered, with a wry twist of her mouth, what she’d said to Maggie.
If she was to find a way to live differently, it wouldn’t be here. There was nothing here she wanted. She was homeless. She was free.
She went out, leaving the door open. Kiln and grader stood where they’d always stood in the clearing behind the house. Any bloodstain was entirely obliterated by Baba Yaga’s unholy cooking fire. Faintly, she smelled cinder and bitter ash. Her eyes fell on the stump she’d been sitting on the day she’d killed Joe and Baba Yaga had appeared. It seemed a lifetime ago.
She reached with two fingers into a pocket concealed inside her clothes and brought out two small, hard spheres, black as charcoal but glossy. She laid them on her palm and each glittered with pinpricks of light, just visible. She hadn’t known the bits of light would actually glow. In the daylight, if one put the marble close to the eye, it was like looking at the night sky through a small lens.
“You bought and paid for that carcass. Don’t see why I should sweat over it,” Baba Yaga had said the afternoon she’d arrived, rummaging through the contents of the upended cauldron. Tossing aside odiferous clothes, bones, rags, what looked (and smelled) like a small, badly tanned hide, a bent fork, shards of sharp glass, a packet of musty smelling dried leaves, and an enormous bedraggled golden feather, she seized a couple of saws, a pair of heavy shears and a trio of sharp-looking knives. She tossed them on the ground at Heks’ feet. “Get busy,” she said curtly. “I’ll amuse myself — work up an appetite.”
In her hand, she held a bag made of some kind of thick, wrinkled skin. Coarse, curly dark hair adorned the bag. A drawstring cinched the top. Baba Yaga paced around the clearing, muttering to herself and looking at the ground. She smoothed a patch out with the side of her horny bare foot, drew a circle in the sooty dirt with a stick and upended the bag. A cascade of marbles spilled out. They were made of stones and glass, horn and ivory, gems and metal, all mixed together in every color and texture. Heks longed to stir through them, look at each one, roll them in her hands and against her skin, even taste them. They were enchanting.
Baba Yaga cackled, rubbing her hands together. “My pretties,” she said gloatingly. “My little poppets! Aren’t they precious? Aren’t they beautiful? And I’ve collected them all, or won them, fair and square! Fair and round! Catseyes and prits! Steelies and aggies! Corkscrews and ades! Peewees and dobbers! Ha!”
Heks stood looking down at the marbles, mesmerized. “Would you like one too, Heksie? Would you like a little toy, a sweetie? Would you roll it on your tongue — or some other moist pink place?” Baba Yaga leered and thrust out her pelvis.
Heks looked at her, speechless. She was horrible, this old hag. She filled Heks with loathing and fear. She saw too much, and said too much. She was like foul smoke choking the lungs and coating nose and mouth, impenetrable, unspeakably vile…but she was also like a breath of air taken at dawn on the top of a winter mountain.
Heks did want a marble. She nodded her head, wordless.
“Well, you may have one dearie,” said Baba Yaga caressingly. “You may have two, in fact.” She bent and stirred through the pile of tools, picking out a small metal scoop like a spoon edged with sharp iron teeth. She slapped the handle into Heks’ hand. “Dig out his eyes!” she commanded, and playfulness vanished.
Heks turned numbly to the body lying on the ground next to her, knowing she was incapable of doing this thing and staying sane — or even conscious. She watched the fingers of one hand spread the lids of Joe’s left eye apart and the vile tool in her right hand insert itself along the bony orbital rim. Then she closed her own eyes, pushed sharply down, making a scooping motion at the same time, and felt the eyeball pop out with surprising ease.
Another moment and both eyes rested in her hand, grotesquely large. She hadn’t realized how little of a human eye is normally visible. She looked at Baba Yaga, not wanting to move, breathe or think. Especially not think. The eyes felt unpleasantly heavy and sticky in her hand, but she resolutely turned away from the feeling.
“Hmmm,” said Baba Yaga, her own eyes narrowing. She tapped her lower lip with an iron-tipped finger, thinking. She stroked her whiskers. “Charcoal and burning, ash and ember, stench and rage and broken teeth! Yesss! Blood and iron! And other things, too, mmmm?” She leaned closer, her eyes penetrating as nails, and Heks smelled old fish and foul breath. “Hidden things, dark things, things that happen where no one sees. Oh, I know all the dirty secrets!”
She stepped back suddenly, standing straight, triumphant. “Galaxies, I think,” she crowed, and snapped her fingers. “Galaxies…because miracles happen in the dark!” She dropped to her knees on the ground next to the circle in the dirt and the shining heap of marbles within it and began to set them out in some kind of pattern, absorbed.
Heks felt released and took a breath. The feeling of imminent nausea retreated. She swallowed carefully. She had involuntarily closed her fingers over the eyes. Without looking, she would roll them onto the ground. She couldn’t bear to touch them any longer. She lowered her hand and tilted it, opening her fingers, her flesh shrinking.
The eyes rolled out of her palm. They clinked together.
They clinked together.
There on the scorched ground lay two glassy black marbles, about twice the size of the tip of her thumb. They felt quite dry, absolutely round, and hard. She picked one up between her thumb and forefinger. The marble contained dozens of pinpricks of light. It looked like the night sky.
“Galaxies,” she whispered. “Galaxies.”