Deep Sweet Ineffable

6:15 PM PST, November 22, 2008

Peace happens in the most impossible places. This past summer, at a crowded downtown Kyoto shopping arcade between a reggae-themed clothes stall and a hyper-hip music store blaring a conjoined brain-shred of Burning Spear and Infected Mushroom, I discovered a Buddhist temple tucked away down a little path, its presence indicated by a marble pedestal supporting a sutra-incised granite prayer wheel that spun effortlessly beneath my reverent fingers, summoning the Unseen. At the temple fountain I performed the ritual hand-washing, then slipped off my shoes and ascended the smooth wooden steps to the sanctuary. As was often the case at the dozens of shrines and temples I visited in my two weeks in Japan, I had the place to myself. The tatami matting comforted my weary tourist feet, grounding me to serenity. Only a few yards away music still thudded from the teeming mall, but I no longer heard it. I was far elsewhere, in a place I cannot describe, but which was far more immediate to me than the world I returned to, refreshed and at rest, a little while later.

I put together a butsudan once I got back to the States, to commemorate and re-live that rescuing tranquility. Japanese butsudan are exquisite objects, but they can seem too much like dollhouses for gods--a profusion of gilded lacquer and ornamentation as costly as the owner can afford, with expensive ritual food offerings and rare flowers and images meant to be worshipped. I'm not sure the Buddha would have approved, prince though he was. So I took a little yard-sale table and spray-painted it black, and placed it in the southwest corner of my reading room--that direction is special to me, since it evokes the Four Corners--and above the table I hung a batik picture of Kwannon, the goddess of mercy. On the table I arranged the following objects:

A dish full of mostly blue-and-white porcelain shards collected during my trip. It's very common to find bits of broken offering bowls and cups around shrines and Shinto graves; earthquake tremors or misadventure are most likely to blame for the breakage, since vandalism seems virtually nonexistent in Japan (with the exception of Western-style graffiti around Tokyo's Shinjuku ward, where Lost in Translation was filmed--why is it that the rest of the world seems to choose the worst things about America to emulate?). I grouped the shards around a simple holder enclosing a stick of the kind of incense sold only at shrines, thick, slow-burning and divinely fragrant.

A wooden statuette of the type called the Weeping Buddha, face buried in and hidden by agonized hands, knees bent in fetal angst instead of the customary crosslegged attitude.

A little brass handbell from India, thrillingly sweet and clear at even the slightest ring, that my grandmother borrowed from me for my great-grandmother's use during her final illness; one of the very few things I possess from my past.

Pebbles collected over many years from many countries, and a 27-bead mala of rose quartz and jade that I made myself.

A vase to contain fresh sprigs of the evergreen cherry laurel that grows around the house, reminding me that winter can't kill everything.

Every morning I stand at my butsudan and ring the bell, and drape my mala over my hands and make the sign of the wai, and bow my head in reflection. I don't pray because I can't, but my hopes tend to take the following shape:

May I be grateful for this day, and live it as well as I can.

May I perform some action that makes a good difference.

May my creative energies be focused to their sharpest, and find their best expression.

May I always cherish others for their kindness, and remember that harboring ill will weakens the soul.

May I be mindful that of all qualities, arrogance is the most injurious, and the ability to forgive the noblest.

May I always recognize delusion and avoid it, and may those now in error do the same.
May I never forget that only the end of the world is the end of the world.

I then think of people and situations I'm especially concerned about, hoping the best for them; and then I bow twice and proceed with the rest of my day, wishing it might be tinged by the ritual. To my grateful surprise, it very often is.

Namaste,

CK

For a related post, see https://carolynkephart.blogspot.com/2011/03/remembered-beauty.html.)

The Scribbling Itch

12:21 PM PST, November 15, 2008

November is, and has been since 1998, National Novel Writing Month. According to recent studies, many more Americans are writing instead of reading, and no wonder.

One of Paul Simon's songs begins with the feeling observation "When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school/It's a wonder I can think at all." By the same token, when I consider the fiction I was forced to read far too soon in that ill-remembered milieu, I can't blame anyone for not cracking a book after graduation. Wuthering Heights and The Scarlet Letter I especially recall as sheer torment, inflicted by the overworked bored on the restless apathetic, taught in a total vacuum with no attention paid to the utterly foreign worlds in which they were set, or the life and times of the authors who created them. What astounds me most is that these books and others of their dour ilk are still being forced upon luckless high schoolers in the same sullen, context-free manner decades later, in a landscape that has changed so much that the name Miranda no longer evokes a brave new world or even Huxley (another author I read far too soon), but instead a cop-uttered formula. Incredibly, it's still a self-perpetuating given that no one voluntarily reads a novel after high school, and since this sole brush with literature will be the last, it needs must be forcibly administered like bitter medicine. For all too many the loathing engendered lasts a lifetime...a stunted, light-deprived lifetime. Some disturbing information can be found at this site, beginning with "1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives." I won't go into the 1/3 of the population that doesn't graduate at all.

Still, there's hope. Lots of people survive high school with their love of reading intact, as I did. Like many others, I look forward to at least a minor renaissance with the upcoming presidency. A holistic approach to literature might come into fashion, thanks to the Internet's invaluable ease of access and wealth of resources that make learning an at least physically effortless pleasure, and galvanize independent spirit of inquiry. Miranda just might rediscover that dream she believed in -- I re-read Brave New World recently online, and it was terrific. I only hope that a Google search someday finds her Shakespeare version in less than the few hundred entries it currently entails.


A wealth of sites offer the entire world's best reading at no cost, and here are three of my favorites:
The Digital Book Index

Internet Archive

Project Gutenberg

CK

Bestness

1:11 AM PDT, September 30, 2008

Now and again I'm asked if I use specific people as templates for the characters I write about. I always reply that I prefer to create people that I wish existed.

The closest I've ever come to basing fiction on reality happened some years ago, when I participated in a collaborative fantasy tale on a now-defunct forum. The other writers were so incredibly good--I've never seen such varied talent assembled in such quantity before or since -- that it was a privilege to join them. I contributed a storybook princess who embodied the most predictable features of the quintessential Mary Sue. Stunning good looks, a quick way with a sword, a deft hand with Rachmaninoff...she could have easily been insufferable, had it not been for her constant run of abysmally bad luck. I remember it being said that people felt too sorry for her to hate her.

What I most liked about my princess was getting the chance to be her. She was not demonstrative, but she felt deeply. She loved beauty. She was gentle and generous and brave. She could no more betray a confidence than she could lay bare the secrets of her heart -- an obstinacy not conducive to happy endings.


CK

Namaste

12:35 PM PDT, September 28, 2008

I've been following the presidential race this year as impartially as I can. For a keen and compassionate understanding of the crucial importance of this kind of detachment, I offer Father Joseph S. O'Leary's gentle essay, which compares two great belief systems in a political context.

Instead of the loaded language of a handshake, perhaps the contenders in the struggle might consider this gesture, which respects both one's person and one's privacy.

"The first duty of love is to listen." ~Paul Tillich

CK

Russia With Relish

5:07 PM PDT, July 4, 2008

While browsing about in the local Blockbuster last week in search of surprises, I chanced upon Russian Ark, set entirely in the Winter Palace of Catherine the Great, now the Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg, and "filmed using a single 90-minute Steadicam sequence shot," according to Wikipedia, which I consulted immediately after viewing. The camera meanders and gyrates far too quickly through many splendid chambers and several periods of expensively costumed history, guided by an oft-flummoxed and frequently exasperating old man dressed in circa 1830s garb. Thanks to Wiki, I learned that the gentleman was the Marquis de Custine, and that Russian Ark had portrayed him with an injustice that, now that I'm better informed, seems almost criminal.

You can find anything on the Internet, and I soon located Astolphe de Custine's two-volume travel journal, La Russie en 1839. Since I've visited St. Petersburg and the Hermitage, love most things French and relish well-told anecdotes, I found de Custine unputdownable. Far from being the clueless buffoon of Russian Ark, the Marquis comes across as a man of great cultivation, discretion and ironic charm. Many of his observations struck me as having particular relevance for our own time, like this one that describes France during the Revolution, yet seems only too well suited to the current state of arts and letters:

"La lutte entre le bien et le mal soutient l'intérêt du drame de la vie; mais quand le triomphe du crime est assuré, la monotonie rend l'existence accablante, et l'ennui ouvre la porte de l'enfer."

("The battle between good and evil sustains interest in the drama of life; but when the triumph of crime is assured, monotony renders existence unbearable, and boredom opens the gates of Hell.")

CK

Idling with Edith

6:14 PM PDT, March 25, 2008

Now that ABNA's laid to rest I've been clearing my palate via Project Gutenberg, reading whatever strikes my airy fancy. In the past few days I've read Sheridan LeFanu's Carmilla, a vampire tale contemporary with Bram Stoker's Dracula; the unsparingly frank memoirs of the Countess Palatine Elizabeth, who was sister-in-law to Louis XIV; some of Robert E. Howard's endearingly overwrought Conan yarns; French accounts (all approving) of life in harems; and Lady Betty Across the Water, a formulaic but delightfully fizzy romance involving a young English aristocrat coping with us Yankee barbarians at the turn of the 20th century.

The last story led me to Eliot Gregory's Worldly Ways and Byways, a collection of American essays written for the Idler, a magazine similar to our own Vanity Fair, during the year 1897. Gregory's observations combine upper-crust anecdotery with Puritanical carpings in an oddly charming way, and I was much diverted by descriptions of life in the last throes of the Gilded Age; but what struck me most was a passage from the essay "Living on Your Friends," describing the idle young men of good family who spend their lives cadging free dinners, yacht cruises, opera tickets and other necessities of life:

"So far, I have spoken of this class in the masculine, which is an error, as the art is successfully practised by the weaker sex, with this shade of difference. As an unmarried woman is in less general demand, she is apt to attach herself to one dear friend, always sure to be a lady in possession of fine country and city houses and other appurtenances of wealth, often of inferior social standing; so that there is give and take, the guest rendering real service to an ambitious hostess. The feminine aspirant need not be handsome. On the contrary, an agreeable plainness is much more acceptable, serving as a foil. But she must be excellent in all games, from golf to piquet, and willing to play as often and as long as required. She must also cheerfully go in to dinner with the blue ribbon bore of the evening, only asked on account of his pretty wife (by the bye, why is it that Beauty is so often flanked by the Beast?), and sit between him and the “second prize” bore. These two worthies would have been the portion of the hostess fifteen years ago; she would have considered it her duty to absorb them and prevent her other guests suffering. Mais nous avons changé tout cela. The lady of the house now thinks first of amusing herself, and arranges to sit between two favorites."

This paragraph so perfectly describes Lily Bart from Edith Wharton's House of Mirth that I can't help but think it inspired the novel, which came out in 1905. All the smart set read the Idler back then, and Wharton was so much a part of that heirarchy that its social complexities finally drove her to a nervous breakdown.

Lily's problem was, of course, being far too handsome.

CK

Sweetness

10:31 AM PST, January 11, 2008

(Click here for short fiction and book chapters.)

I've always loved those black and white movies from the 30s and 40s where men wear hats and women wear gloves, and where dead bodies, if they're around at all, are never shown.

One of my favorite moments in It's A Wonderful Life happens early on, when Mary (Donna Reed) receives a letter at the prom, then instantly turns to the people at her table and asks, in the most winningly natural tone, "May I?" before opening the envelope.

James M. Barrie best defined the essence of this compelling quality, charm: "It's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have."

When I think of charm in a man, I remember Humphrey Bogart's rare, boyish, dazzling smile.

CK

This Sense Most Essential

4:58 PM PST, January 5, 2008

(For more of my writing, visit here.)

Alfred Stevens (1823-1906), The Myopic Woman (1903)

For sheer utter torment that teaches a lesson, a speck of grit under a contact lens can really be an eye-opener.

I have extreme congenital myopia, near-sightedness so bad that without glasses and contact lenses life’s one big blur. If you sat three feet away from me and grinned your widest, I wouldn’t be able to gauge your facial expression with my naked eyes. It amazes me that people can wake up in the morning and actually see the world around them clearly from the get-go.

Back in the days when my condition wasn’t correctable, history suffered—the emperor Nero, whose well-documented affliction made him paranoid to the point of insanity, is a notable example. Even when remedies came along, rulers didn’t use them since use implied weakness, and thus Louis XVI, though expert at the meticulous craft of locksmithing (he could focus to a couple of inches, as I can), had no way of judging the expressions on the faces of his courtiers or the citoyens, with disastrous results; it didn’t help that his wife Marie Antoinette was blind to all save her flatterers. Robert B. Edgerton, writing about the Crimean War in his book Death or Glory, notes that “Eyeglasses were worn by a few officers at this time, but many hopelessly near-sighted officers were so vain that they chose to do without them”—certainly an enhancement to calamity. In the present day it’s by no means unusual, so I hear, for near-sighted members of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) to forego their wonted eyewear during re-enactments no matter what; I can only imagine how many tent-ropes get tripped over.

I’d probably have been a very different, no doubt happier person had I been born with perfect vision, but time has made me a counter of blessings. Bad sight beats none at all, and a childhood as Four Eyes made me fulfill the stereotype to the hilt, giving me the infinite world of books in return. As the old song has it, wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now.

CK

If Beauty Is Difficult, Then...

5:36 PM PST, January 3, 2008

One of the first phrases I learned long ago when taking classical Greek was Plato's Χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά, beauty is difficult. Those words mean more to me the longer I live, and I considered them yet again on this first day of yet another new year.

If beauty -- meaning the search for it, and the understanding of it, and the love for it -- is indeed difficult, does that mean that the reverse is true as well, and that ugly is easy?

Absolutely. 

If you write, as I do, try writing something really disgusting sometime. Plumb your seamiest depths and just have at it. You'll be astonished, perhaps frightened, at how effortless it is, how the words gush like a burst sewer onto the page. Your gorge will be rising in no time, and you'll turn away shuddering at the wrong you did to your soul. If you don't, I pity you with all my heart.

CK

Breathless

9:04 PM PST, December 7, 2007

The hammer fell at Sotheby's New York and the tiny Guennol Lioness (see my previous entry) sold for a whopping 57.2 million USD, the highest price ever paid for a sculpture in recorded history. Given her diminutive size, that's about 16.3 million an inch, and worth every nickel. The buyer's name is not yet disclosed, but I'm looking forward to finding out the identity of that modern-day Sardanapalus.

On to something less staggering, but just as breathtaking in its way.

Sir William Russell Flint seems to have spent his working life surrounded by beautiful women in pronounced states of undress. Even if watercolor was a less recent medium than it is, Flint would still be considered one of its greatest exponents today. His pictures shimmer, and no effect seems beyond his powers. I love the man. Here's just one reason out of hundreds why:

During the Italian Renaissance that this picture evokes with such cool deliberation, no artist would have thought of doing a portrait of his model. Models impersonated goddesses, the Virgin Mary or allegories, and the portrait, especially in profile, was reserved for ladies of social position who would never have dreamed of revealing so much flesh, nor probably could have possessed it to such a luscious degree. Flint did his best work after World War II, and this picture captures all the chic, slightly reticent elegance of Fifties England.

Flint seldom ever painted portraits, or men for that matter; he seems to have been an artistic pasha, serenely enjoying and depicting the lush carnality that filled his studio. Watercolor perfectly captures the evanescent, floating-world quality of the subject shown here -- the provoking contrast of flawless skin barely yet sumptuously clad, luminous blues and ivories, the regal pose and the delicately rendered, ironically ordinary face. Flint specialized in such offhand bravura, and all of his works never fail to temper the sensuous with just the right amount of distance. Lots of them can be found at this site.

 CK

Wonder, Going Once...

11:25 PM PST, November 28, 2007

Ladies and gentlemen, define 'priceless.' I present the Guennol Lioness, to be auctioned at Sotheby's very soon (December 8) in what promises to be a paddle-waving frenzy of heavy hitters in the art world.

The Lioness has haunted my imagination ever since I first encountered her many years ago in a book about the art of the ancient Near East. I'll never forget how stunned I felt at the sight of those merciless elegant contours and juts, feral with a terrible touch of humanity; I know my gasp was audible. I'd thought her bigger--Ozymandian proportions would have worked perfectly--but even at three and a half inches tall she's massive. I'm almost glad she doesn't have legs, since they might have diminished her breathtaking force (historians have theorized that the limbs were made of precious metal and therefore stolen, leaving the remains intact and unvalued--yet another of fate's piquant ironies). Drilled into the back of her exquisitely savage skull are holes by which she could hang around the neck of some lucky purple-robed satrap.

Despite her admittedly cool resemblance to a video-game anthromonster, the Lioness had her birth in Babylonia at about the time the wheel was invented, five thousand years ago. The crown jewel of a dazzling private collection, she's expected to realize anywhere from 14 to 18 million dollars, which seems more than reasonable to me considering what too much junk fetches nowadays, and the proceeds will be donated to charity.

Is it any wonder I have hope for mankind, when it creates things like this? 

CK 

The Unicorn and the Cash Cow: A Fable

9:13 AM PDT, October 5, 2007

Since these comments of mine were received favorably on the Amazon.com fantasy discussion thread "CAPPING OFF THE LONG-RUNNING, UNREMITTING, OVERWORKED SERIES" (caps NOT mine), I will include them here, for diversion's sake. No particular author is singled out, my observations are strictly general, etc.:

Writer creates unicorn, who has many interesting adventures. Readers flock to marvel at this new and fascinating creature.

Unicorn, fattened by adulation, morphs into cash cow.

Cash cow begins meandering aimlessly, tolerated by the faithful but an irritation to those who believe the purpose of the cow is to be eaten, digested and done with, next unicorn please.

Cash cow continues to meander and becomes an irritation to the faithful, some of whom consider seeking another unicorn.

Unicorn is ultimately remembered only as a cash cow, save by a few of the remaining faithful who recall its glorious early days with a nostalgic sigh.

CK

Short Fiction: EVERAFTER ACRES

One of my early short stories, first published in Luna Station Quarterly. 
Information about my other writing can be found here as well as at the bottom of the page. 
Happy reading! 

Everafter Acres

Happily ever after isn't always perfect, 

but dark knights can be illuminating.

Sir Peregrin was always good-humored, and even dour mornings with grudging dawns made him cheery. It was very trying.

As always, much too shortly after daybreak he strode to the window, flung aside the draperies, threw wide the casement and leaned out beaming as he drew a deep breath, thoroughly satisfied. “Zounds, verily ‘tis caliginous this day. Right lowering. What think you, my heart’s divinity?”

Lady Calantha stifled a groan as she sat up in the great four-poster bed, blearily regarded the gray world outside the diamond-patterned panes, and replied curtly in the vernacular.

“For heaven’s sake, Grin, do close that.”

Her lord lapsed into the vernacular as well, but left the window open as he reveled in the view, blithely oblivious to his lady’s tone. “Dirtiest weather we’ve had for a while. Think I'll take a gallop around the north woods to check for griffins―they love this sort of murk. Wear that purple velvet thing of yours, won't you, m'dear?”

Calantha tried not to whimper as she huddled in the covers. “I’d really rather not ride all the way to the north woods on a day like this. And besides, my purple gown doesn't fit just now.” It hadn't fit for ages, but she wasn't about to let her lord know.

Peregrin laughed in his tryingly hearty way. “Blame the sweet wine and suckling pig at everyone’s feasts, m'dear. A good stirring rescue will give you some exercise."

Calantha shuddered as much at the notion of yet another rescue as she did at the misty chill invading the chamber, and somehow managed not to give the Reply Querulous, which would have reminded her lord that his armor had very recently been altered with roomy gussets to accommodate his expanding paunch. Instead, she regarded the back of Peregrin’s head, remembering the golden mane that had fallen just past his broad shoulders in days gone by. Now the shoulders stooped, and what little hair he had left was becoming as gray as…well, as her own. “Suckling pig’s such a fad lately. And feasting’s getting as tiresome as…” She almost said ‘tournaments,’ but managed to stop herself in time.

Peregrin didn’t notice. “Speaking of feasts, that reminds me―it’s our turn to give the next one.”

“Wonderful.” Resignedly Calantha wrapped a shawl over her shift and joined her lord at the window, shutting the casement with a jerk that rattled the glass. With no enthusiasm she surveyed the view of bumpy little hills each with its own little castle, each castle neatly framed by the window’s diamond panes. Her listless gaze narrowed on one in the near distance, that was very showy in a sinister way, with attenuated towers pointed sharp as arrows, and black swans in its moat. “Sir Bors' accursed mastiff bayed me awake all night.”

“Probably smelled a troll lurking around the walls. They’re pungent.” Peregrin seemed to muse, an unusual thing for him. “He’s a good fellow, is Bors. Bit of a standoffish loner, but he’ll never let you down in a fight.””

Calantha noted the pennons on the black castle’s towers―black pennons, each emblazoned with a red heart stuck full of arrows, all of them now hanging limply in the drizzle, to her admittedly snide satisfaction. “And he’s sworn champion to the fairest maiden in the land…who certainly puts him through his paces.”

Peregrin chuckled. “Can’t say I envy Bors his lot. I’ve heard Blanchefleur needs to be rescued at least three times a day or there’s no putting up with her. Speaking of which, we should get ready, don’t you think?”

Calantha sighed. “Grin, this is hardly the ideal weather for a lady of my years to be tied to a tree and fought over. Besides, you'll only rust your armor and catch a cold."

Her lord sighed too, but very briefly. “You never want to be rescued these days.” He suddenly looked perplexed, and contrite. “Am I doing anything wrong, my love? Would you like more excitement when it’s going on? More activity?”

“No, no.” Calantha felt a twinge of guilt. “Your rescues are always perfect. I mean that.”

He actually believed her. “Good!” His still-brawny arm half-wrapped Calantha’s waist, giving rather too firm a squeeze. “Perhaps more girth there than in days of yore, but what of it? You’ll always be my queen. If you don't feel like being rescued, maybe you should write one of those ballad things, or get out your harp. You never play your harp anymore."

Calantha disliked her lord's fingers assessing her superfluity, and moved away. “I’m not in the mood, Grin. That accursed dog's barking again. Perhaps I'll take up archery."

“Ah well, I'll ask Ubald and Knute to join me for a bit of hunting. Three knights against a griffin is decent odds.” Peregrin brightened, and beamed. “I'll bring you back its head. What do you say to that?”

Calantha suppressed a wince. “I never know what to do with griffin heads. They just sit around until I have to throw them out.” Realizing what she’d said, she felt a stab of regret. “I’m sorry, Grin. I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately.”

Peregrin had indeed looked disappointed, but as usual only momentarily. “You just need a visit to the wise woman, m’love. She'll give you a potion, or a philtre, or something that'll set you right.”

It took all of Calantha’s self-control to keep her expression sweet, and she only partially succeeded. “Elspeth is annoying lately, and won’t mind her manners. And I never like riding about in the woods. There’s always a monstrosity lurking.”

“Well, but one of the lads will show up to save you. That you can count on.”

“Oh, yes. That I can.”

Oblivious to his lady’s tired tone, Peregrin kissed her with his usual blend of gallantry and relish, and hastened off to set about his day. That most of his days were exactly the same never seemed to bother him.

Sir Bors' dog howled anew, making Calantha yearningly remember the lake-moated keep she had called home for so many contented years before it became too big to look after, and too isolated, and too damp. The attractions of Everafter Acres were, at the outset, obvious: new construction with modern conveniences, less dust-gathering square footage, no annoying apparitions, and safe walls that made private armies unnecessary. All of their friends had moved there. It was only later, as more years passed, that Calantha realized that castles were never meant to be built so close together, and these weren't very well made compared to the strongholds of yore. Moreover, far too many of them were garishly designed, with overdone crockets and crenellations and innumerable ornamental gargoyles.

But the real problem was that Everafter didn't include much Happily.

Later in the morning Calantha gifted her purple velvet to her maid, donned a new and blessedly roomy green replacement, pinned on a wimple, and gave order to have her palfrey brought round.Tying a bag to the saddle-horn, she set off to visit the wise woman.

As she rode through the woods that led to Dame Elspeth's cottage, Calantha kept a sharp eye on the the world around her. Stepping outside Everafter’s walls always meant adventure in all its life-threatening variety. A flash of golden light amid the mists accompanied by a slightly bawdy bit of song only put Calantha more on her guard.

In another moment Lady Blanchefleur rounded a bend, caroling the latest love-ditty as she cantered up on her smart little palfrey of dappled grey with trailing pastel ribbons in its mane. Calantha’s apprehension vanished, but her gloom darkened. Only an extreme effort produced the requisite appearance of glad welcome.

The two ladies reined in and greeted one another courteously in approved Everafter fashion, bending from the saddle to almost-kiss one another’s cheek, then inquiring as to the state of each other’s health with the requisite thees, thous, and forsooths, then lauding the beauty of the not especially praiseworthy day as a matter of form. Those prerequisites done, Blanchefleur dropped into the vernacular with evident relief.

“There’s a troll lurking about,” she said, indicating the thickest part of the woods with a delicate diamonded forefinger. “Just thought I’d warn you.”

“Thanks awfully,” Calantha replied. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

“You’re on your way to Elspeth, I daresay. I just left her. That hag’s prices are absolutely criminal, but still…” Blanchefleur held up a little vial. “It'll keep the milk and roses in my hue or my money back. Care to try a drop? That shade of green is such a trying color, even for youthful years. Not to mention that wimples look so nunnish.”

Elspeth’s potions, Calantha had learned from long experience, were at their best insipid, and at their worst pernicious―rather like Blanchefleur. Declining with thanks a little strained, Calantha would have changed the subject, but Blanche beat her to it.

“You’re giving the next feast, aren’t you? I hope you’ll have suckling pig. I adore it.”

As Blanche launched into a rapturous litany of favorite dishes, Calantha inwardly bristled. It was bad enough that Blanche considered herself invited as a matter of course, but even worse that since she was single, with little more than a tower for a dwelling, she never had to endure the bother of providing food, drink, and minstrelsy for several score lords and ladies exceedingly fond of good cheer. As if that weren’t enough, Blanche gloried in the type of figure that always stayed a damsel’s no matter how much she ate, and hair that made gold seem detritus. Her blinding tresses fell in silken profusion to a waist almost impossibly slender, set off by a gown of watchet samite so perfectly fitting and obviously costly that it took one’s breath away. Although she was of fully the same years as Calantha, she was as beautiful as an angel in a missal.

“I’m thinking of bringing hennins back in style,” she was saying.

Calantha, who had been too rapt with her own thoughts to pay much attention to whatever Blanche was saying, started at the mention of that hideous headgear, and reflected that Blanchefleur would look divinely fair even with her glorious locks scraped under a cone. The thought was infuriating. “It's quite a chilly day,” she all but snapped. “I fear you'll catch cold in that gown, my dear, although it is a shame to veil so faultless a bosom.”

Blanchefleur glanced down with complacent admiration at her snowy decollete, which was extreme almost to indecency. “Oh, I never feel the weather; no worries.” Contemplation of her temptingly rippable bodice seemed to inspire a change of thought. “By the way, there’s a new romance going the rounds. I’m next in line to read it, and you can have it after me if you like.”

There was always a love-manuscript written by some bard or other being passed about among the Everafter ladies. The stories could be relied upon to provide lubricious and horrific thrills right up to the inevitable happy ending, and were decorated with illuminations that spared the imagination any undue effort. By the time the book reached the last lady’s hands, it could be counted upon to be dog-eared, underlined, margin-scrawled and creatively stained, with most of the illustrations missing. Blanche was suspected to be a frequent offender in that regard.

Before Calantha could refuse her friend’s offer with the observation that romances were tedious and predictable and she hoped to never read another again in her life, Blanchefleur’s cerulean orbs gazed past her and became animated for the first time since the mention of food. “Why, there’s Bors!” And dealing Calantha a perfunctory wave of farewell, she dug an exquisitely spurred heel into her palfrey’s side, sending the horse prancing away into the deep woods, exactly in the opposite direction of the dark-armored knight just coming into sight down the path.

Calantha distinctly heard the knight grumble an oath and heave a resigned sigh, waiting a minute or so to give Blanche a good start before urging his war-horse into a gallop. As he thundered past Calantha he bowed from the saddle, and his eyes met hers an instant before giving a significant upward roll.

Having no time to react to Sir Bors’ atypical show of emotion, Calantha watched him crash through the woods until he was lost to sight. It was well known, or at least generally supposed, that Bors and Blanchefleur were paramours. Both were unmarried, which was far from usual in Everafter Acres, and although Blanche often alluded to her maiden status, people noticed that she always made herself scarce during unicorn sightings.

Moodily Calantha continued her ride, and soon reached the crazy little cottage that was Elspeth’s abode. As always, smoke spiraled from the crooked chimney of the thatched roof, and rumpled chickens scratched about the open door, from which issued a mildly revolting blend of odors and the high faint whine of senile crooning.

Lifting her skirts to clear it from the bare bird-fouled dirt of the cottage’s yard, Calantha lowered her head to enter the cramped little doorway, and greeted Elspeth with the civility due a seeress, making sure to keep her skirts elevated since the cottage floor was no cleaner than the trampled earth outside.

The blear-eyed crone barely looked up from the mess she was stirring at the hob of the hearth. “Bring me anything?”

The bag around the palfrey’s saddle-horn held not only a flask of wine, but rich delicacies. Elspeth had a sweet tooth―it was one of the few in her head―and she at once began munching marzipan between sips of malmsey. By now used to such wordless intervals interrupted only by stifled gulps and belches, Calantha examined the arcane oddments and pickled horrors on the room’s tables and shelves.

Elspeth wiped her mouth on the back of her veiny mottled hand and took a breather. “That Blanchefleur baggage was just here, craving a new potion for that pretty phiz of hers. Will ye be wanting the same, m’lady? I’ll have to brew it stronger and charge more, I warn ye.”

Calantha flinched. “No, thanks.”

“A dye then, to get the gray out of your hair? You’d not need to hide it under a rag, then.”

Calantha pretended to ignore this allusion both to her faded tresses and her spotless, intricately-pleated headdress of finest lawn. “I’m past those sorts of things, Elspeth.” She set down the gnarled bit of dried mushroom, or perhaps mummy, that she’d been idly scrutinizing. “I just want something to…” She hesitated. To what? Give her the zest of her young days? Alleviate the tedium? Allow her to just…vanish? Tears began to gather in her eyes, and her sinuses became troublesome.

Elspeth regarded her with a piercing squint. “So. In the doleful dumps again, are we?”

Calantha sniffled agreement.

“Life seems a bit tiresome, eh?”

“More than a bit.” Calantha looked down at her waistline with renewed dismay. “I used to be as lissom as Blanchefleur.”

“Lissomer. I remember.”

“I thought I’d be young forever. How’d this happen, Elspeth?”

“People forgot about you.”

That stung. “Clearly they didn’t forget about Blanche.”

“That’s because she stayed single. It kept her interestin’. Well, there’s always drink to keep your wits addled and happy. If not, I’ve got this herb…”

“No.” Calantha wiped her eyes with her flowing sleeve. “Maybe I’ll just wander into the woods and let a griffin eat me.”

Elspeth snorted at her client’s sullen tone, and helped herself to more of the rare malmsey with irritating liberality. “Go see how far it gets you.”

At those words, Calantha felt a strange jolt that took her away from herself a moment. “What?”

“You heard me. I said try it.”

“You want me to be eaten by a griffin?”

“Can’t say as I care, but it won’t happen no matter how hard you try.” As Calantha stood astounded, Elspeth shook the marzipan-crumbs from her apron, which were instantly intercepted by some of the chickens. “And don’t stare so gormless. Do you honestly think being a wise woman is any fun around here?”

Calantha ignored the question. “Are you saying the monsters aren’t…real?”

Elspeth shrugged. “Oh, they’re real enough. But they won’t harm you. They can’t. They’re stocked like carp in a pond, and have about as much bite to ‘em.”

Calantha remembered the loud and violent but consistently harmless griffins of the north woods, and contrasted them with those of her long-past days as a damsel. The latter had been absolutely, universally lethal. In comparison, the former were little more deadly than Elspeth’s chickens. Her heart sank. “You always knew this?”

“Yep.”

“Who…stocks them?”

“The management, I s’pose. Does it matter?”

“But what made you tell me?” Calantha put a sharp emphasis on the last word.

“Because no one ever complains, ‘cept for you. Reckon I got tired of it.”

“You’re lying about the monsters, you…you hag.”

Elspeth only cackled. “Go back out to the woods and try to get yourself killed. Try your hardest. If you live, you owe me.”

“For what?”

“You’ll see.” Stretching in a gaping yawn, Elspeth dropped back in her frowsy cushioned chair, raising a faint cloud of dust. “Malmsey always makes me nappish.” In another moment she was snoring.

There was no point in waking her. Calantha stared down at the cryptic hag’s ravined wrinkles, sickle nose, and lipless mouth. Had Elspeth ever been young? Ever been lovely? No amount of imagination could envision her as other than she was. She had always been a part of Everafter, always the way she looked now, except at the present moment she was even uglier than usual.

“Liar,” Calantha whispered. Resisting the urge to drop a nearby black beetle into the crone’s now wide-open snaggly jowls fully as revolting as an orc’s, she left the house, scattering chickens with the skirts of her gown as she made for her horse.

Riding homeward, Calantha thought with small joy of her maid now probably glorying in her mistress’ purple velvet; of how Blanchefleur’s eyes had gleamed avidly at the sight of Sir Bors; of her own lord Peregrin, and how handsome he had once been, and how delightful life had once been, full of love and peril. What was left, now that youth and beauty had fled? If the knights had nothing to conquer, and the ladies had no need to be rescued…what then? What would fill up the endless hours between now and forever, if nothing meant anything?

Dismally pensive, she let her mare find its way back to the castle, which it soon failed to do. After a time Calantha halted, looking around her. She was in the depths of a forest primeval, where rags of mist wraithed among the huge trunks and caught in the massive low-hanging boughs like cobwebs. No birds sang, but winds sighed through the boughs like resentful ghosts. It was the kind of place where something dreadful could occur at any instant.

Reliably, it did. A horrific creature slithered out of a narrow cave with a sinister rattling of scales, coiled itself on the path, reared its ghastly head, and showed all its teeth, of which it had several rows, in a ravenous grin.

Calantha’s horse promptly threw her, and galloped away. The monster seemed thrilled, and swayed its serpentine neck as its slit shimmering eyes stared its prey up and down.

Palfreys weren’t much larger than ponies, and the fall had been soft, onto a bank of moss. As Calantha picked herself up, her first instinct was to scream, but she remembered Elspeth’s revelation. Now would be the time to test it. Accordingly she stood her ground, trying not to tremble.

The wyrm―it was a wyrm―threw back its head, opened its maw to the maximum, and shrieked. The noise was truly blood-curdling, and normally Calantha would have screamed in her turn, running away as fast as her flowing skirts would allow. But she remembered what Elspeth had told her. Drawing a deep breath, she turned her back on the horror, closed her eyes and stood perfectly still, speaking between clenched teeth.

“Go ahead. I dare you.”

She waited, her heart battering, for foul hot breath, then fleshy slime-tongued damp enveloping her head, and a neck-severing crunch. An interval of a dozen or so seconds elapsed, every one of them a drop of boiling oil, until Calantha heard the wyrm make a noise that sounded exactly like a confused and petulant whine before giving her a hard headbutt in the back. Furious, Calantha spun around and smacked its face, or rather the one spot that wasn’t either teeth, eye, or snout.

The wyrm’s glittering eyes blinked in what could only be amazement, and its spiny crest wilted as it turned about and slithered back to its den in a manner clearly nonplussed, without a backward glance.

Calantha looked on absolutely astounded, and then uttered an oath that no lady would use under any circumstances.

“My sentiments more or less precisely.”

Turning toward that dry vernacular uttered not a stone's throw away, Calantha stared at the last person she expected to see. “Sir Bors, what are you doing here?”

The dark knight shrugged with a slight creaking of half-armor. “Thought you might need rescuing. Quite apparently you don’t.”

As always, Bors looked magnificent with an arresting touch of the sinister. His broad shoulders showed no signs of even beginning to bow, just as his waist had stayed as slim as a squire’s. His hair was long, still abundant, and raven, framing his swarthy hard features in an arresting way. He was so perfect that Calantha just stared at him for some moments, and of course he let her; and she couldn’t help but think, even in her jangled mental state, that dark knights seemed to have all the luck.

“How long have you been watching?” she finally asked.

“Just arrived,” Bors said. “Thought I heard a lady shrieking, but it turned out to be the wyrm.”

“Shouldn’t you be rescuing Blanchefleur?”

“Did that half an hour ago, from a troll.”

“And was it terribly exciting?”

Bors' mouth quirked. “Not too.”

“I believe you. It looks as if it didn’t put up much of a fight.”

“You knew it wouldn’t.” He hesitated. “How’d you find out?”

“Elspeth.” Calantha hesitated, too. “How'd you find out?””

“I just felt it. Had for a long time.”

A long deep silence fell, and it was a relief when Bors looked away and spoke again. “Shall we be off? Nag’s getting restive.”

Bors’ horse was nearby, pawing the ground and snorting. As they approached the animal, Calantha noted a charming wreath of autumn leaves around its saddlebow.

“How lovely. A gift from Blanchefleur?”

Bors shook his head in his moody way. “I made it for her to wear, but she didn’t want it. Said something about bugs and scratchiness and it not being her colors.”

Calantha took the wreath in her hands. Around a circlet of ivy, thickly-clustered leaves of red and orange and gold seemed to glow with inner fire in the dim light of the deep woods. The wreath was very skilfully wrought, and Calantha tried to imagine Bors creating it, selecting just the right mixture of colors and shapes set off so well by the vine’s deep green, his tough fingers bending the ivy with just enough force, careful not to break it. “Blanchefleur indeed seems best suited to roses and lilies,” she said, as graciously as possible; but she suddenly disliked that lady more than ever. “Here.” And she handed the circlet back.

“I don’t want the thing. Keep it if you like.”

“Oh, but I couldn’t…”

“Bah.” Bors plucked the wreath from her hands, and in another moment Calantha was wearing it over her wimple.

“Hold still,” Bors said, settling the circlet with care upon the fine white linen, then critically adjusting the leaves before moving back to inspect his work. “Hm. Very fine. You look like a prophetess.”

Calantha had never before received so much of Bors’ attention, and hardly knew what to do with it. “Too bad I don’t have a mirror.”

“Here’s one,” Bors said, tapping his gleaming steel breastplate.

Calantha contemplated her reflection only a little distorted by the metal’s curve. “Bors, I can’t tell Peregrin about…what happened. It would kill him.”

“Actually, it wouldn’t, which is worse.”

That thought made Calantha flinch within. “He really is perfect.”

Bors nodded. “A bit over-jovial perhaps, but no harm done.”

“He’d probably think me very odd-looking just now.” Calantha watched the image in the breastplate give a wry reminiscent smile. “Wreaths are meant to be worn over tresses flowing loose, by slim young damsels. Not by―”

“Oh, nonsense.” Bors frowned, then. “Blanche really should put her hair up.”

“Now that you mention it, she’s thinking of bringing hennins back into style.”

Bors growled an underbreath imprecation against that conical mode, and reached for his horse’s halter. “How would you like to ride? Withers, crupper, or led?”

Calantha did a swift mental rejection of all three. “I’d rather we both walk.”

“Hm. That’s different. Do you have the shoes for it?”

“Flat and comfy. And you?”

“The same. Well, let’s be off.”

It turned out to be a very enjoyable stroll, despite the dank gloom of the woods. Calantha had feared she and Bors would have little in common, but such wasn’t the case at all. Unlike any other knight Calantha had ever known, Bors wasn’t his own favorite subject of conversation, and the talk didn’t once stray to the good old days, which were usually just about the only topic in Everafter. No monstrosity whatsoever appeared to make itself troublesome, although now and then Calantha noticed an ogre stealing sheepishly behind a rock, or a chimera scuttling away abashed, or a spectre discreetly dissipating once sighted. Clearly word had gotten around.

The horse soon wandered off, taking its way back to Everafter. Relaxed in the quiet, Calantha and Bors stopped often to examine the mushrooms growing on fallen trunks and in shaded earth, and together they admired the symmetry of the delicate gills, and tried to give names to the indeterminate colors. They halted at a bend of a stream and watched a bullfrog swelling its croak, and further on gazed up at a great owl nearby on a branch staring back at them with its huge yellow eyes, and they both made hooting noises to get it to hoot back, which it did. At one point in their progress Bors tapped Calantha’s arm, alerting her to a little troop of deer crossing the path. And the more they walked together, and the more they saw and enjoyed, the more the sun came out, until all the leaves on the trees gleamed bright against the deep blue sky.

“This is the first time I’ve ever really enjoyed the woods,” Calantha said as they passed through an especially radiant grove. “I was always too busy worrying about being attacked, or carried off, or both.”

“I never really minded for a long time,” Bors replied. “It kept me busy. But now…”

Rounding an outcropping of rock, they found themselves looking out over the little castled hills of the community, and they sighed at the same time. At that very instant Bors’ mastiff began baying.

“What a barker that beast is,” the dark knight said. “I never noticed before.”

Calantha stared. “Surely you jest. He’s the terror of the neighborhood.”

“I’ll feed him to the manticore. How does that sound?”

“You know the manticore won’t touch him.”

“I suppose not. Well, I’ll find a muzzle.” Bors finally broke a longish silence. “Odd, life with no monsters.”

“Good riddance.” Calantha gazed from one predictable set of towers to another. “It’s my turn to give the next feast. Everyone will expect suckling pig. Such a bother.”

“I’ll show up uninvited, and we can dance.”

“You’re always invited everywhere, but you never show up. And I didn’t know you danced.”

“I do, and not sedately. Expect to be whirled.”

“No easy task, I warn you.”

“Bah. They don’t call me redoubtable for nothing.”

“People will be shocked.”

“Good.” Bors’ thoughts seemed to stray elsewhere. “I like mushrooms.”

“With suckling pig?”

“No, no. Those ones in the woods. I think I’ll try to draw them.”

“I didn’t know you could draw.”

“I can, rather tolerably. But monsters were never very inspiring.”

Calantha felt the warmth of the bright leaves wreathing her brow. “I might ask you to illustrate the epic I’m planning to write. The notion just occurred to me as we were walking.”

Bors’ eyes widened a fraction. “Will it be about mushrooms?”

“Well, they’ll figure in the plot.”

“As heroes, or villains?”

Calantha laughed, and realized it’d been quite a long time since she’d really and truly done so. As they started on the little path through the field to Everafter’s gate, she couldn’t help a question of her own.

“Speaking of drawing…why your sword?”

Bors swung his weapon’s gleaming blade in a martial salute. “For the look of the thing, as we make our entrance. Everyone will think I rescued you.”

“They’ll be right. Which reminds me―I owe Elspeth a keg of malmsey.”

Bors smiled, something he seldom did; it was always a bit startling. “I can’t imagine mushrooms ever getting dull, can you?”

Calantha took his offered arm. “Even if they do, there’s always owls.”

“Excellent.”

And they lived…well, you know.

End

Carolyn Kephart's publications:

Wysard  and  Lord Brother, Parts One and Two of the Ryel Saga duology, acclaimed  epic fantasy (available at Amazon)

The Ryel Saga: A Tale of Love and Magic, combining the duology in a single volume (available at Amazon)

Queen of Time, contemporary magic realism that takes the Faust legend in new  directions (available at Amazon)

At the Core of the Happy Apple: A Mystery Solved, an essay on the inner workings  of the popular 1970s Fisher Price wobble toy  (available at Amazon)

PenTangle: Five Pointed Fables, a collection of short stories previously published in  ezines (available at Smashwords and its associate vendors)

Short Fiction: REGENERATED

One of my early short stories, first published in Quantum Muse. Information about my other writing can be found here. Happy reading!

Cela always hoped she’d find Jorgen again someday…but was this really Jorgen?

Regenerated

No one ever really got to know a rashak, and Cela had never made an attempt. She patched them up and they paid her if they had money, giving exactly what her services were worth, neither more nor less. However much agony they might be in, they never showed it. Their flat wide-mouthed saurian faces remained stonily impassive even when the pain ebbed, and their gratitude was equally effusive.

Irksome though the rashaka were, Cela could not help being impressed by at least some their traits. True, they were almost pathologically inscrutable. Vowed to stern and unforgiving gods, they lived in continual self-denial. They had no written language, little if any spirit of inquiry, and more than a few disgusting habits. But none were better fighters, formed for war and the hunt, tireless in strength and highly resistant to wounds thanks to their massive, manlike physiques and scaly hide; their uncannily keen senses and formidable stamina were legendary. Their loyalty, when they chose to bestow it, was beyond question or reproach. They were also never violent unless goaded, a trait which was not generally known nor entirely believed by humankind, most of whom made every effort to avoid them. Cela's lack of prejudice was atypical, and thus she and Koth had met.

She had been out in the far hills one day, foraging for rare herbs and enjoying the last of hot high summer, when she discovered a rashak male finishing up a battle with a rout of drabbs, the vicious near-men who roamed that lawless part of the land. Stupid and weak, drabbs never hunted save in packs; yet for even four of them to consider themselves the match for a rashak was a foolish, fatal error. Still, by the time the last drabb fell, the rashak was covered in blood―the almost black blood of his race. As Cela watched, he dropped to his knees without a sound save a slight hiss, and shut his eyes, his head bent, his great shoulders drooping, his thick tapering tail motionlessly curled behind him. Cela realized that he was either calling on his gods for strength, or resigning himself to death. When she approached, he barely seemed to notice her, save for a momentary flaring of his nostril-slits that in a single breath determined that she was human and female―and a healer, from the aromatic herbs she carried. But then he drew another breath and caught it, and his shoulders straightened and his eyes opened very fast, fixing on hers. Startled by the stare, Cela controlled her dislike of his reptilian features, looking away as she reached for her satchel's clasp.

"I intend no harm. Permit me to aid you," she said to him, speaking the formal tongue that united all the rashak tribes. She knew only a few phrases, and spoke them badly―there were gutturals and clicks that she would never get right―but still he understood, and shook his head as he looked away.

"You should leave. Just go." He had replied in the common tongue, rasping and hoarse but almost without accent, quite as if that were his native language―unusual, since rashaka usually bothered to learn only the rudiments, and let gestures and grunts fill in for the rest.

"Payment isn't necessary," Cela said with a touch of impatience, knowing it could only be lack of money that made him refuse her help. Warriors of his kind spent every copper they had on their gear, and his was, she noted, of the highest quality, and rather more showy than rashaka tended to favor. She did not say more, since it would be a waste of words.

He hesitated yet again. "I need water. And food."

Cela was provided with both, and gave him what she had. As she set about healing him, he ate and drank with undisguised greed that made clear how long he had gone without, and why the drabbs had managed to inflict such damage. Taking a little jar of salve from her satchel, Cela anointed the rashak's lacerated skin―or rather his scaly hard hide, rough and cold under her fingers. Soon he was close to whole again, and his powers of regrowth would do the rest.

"Good work," he said, glancing at his arm, that had been cut to the bone. "I've seen few better."

"I thank my teachers," Cela replied, a little startled by the extravagance of the compliment.

His opaque eyes scanned her with an attention that rashaka seldom deigned to confer upon a mere human. "It hasn't made you rich."

Cela glanced down at her mannish near-rags with a shrug. It had been a very long time since she had cared about her looks, but to hear a rashak comment on them was...strange. "That salve costs a fortune to make," she said, staring at the now-empty little jar.

The information didn't seem to impress him. "I'm called Koth."

Rashaka never gave their names away lightly either, and at least initially used the first four of them. "Greetings, Koth," Cela replied, looking hard at him now.

"Greetings, Lady Celandra. And thank you." At her wide-eyed shock he gave the closest thing a rashak had to a smile. "You don't recognize me." Standing with only a little difficulty now, moving from corpse to corpse, with practiced brutality he wrenched off their long greasy scalps, which were worth money. One of the drabbs wore a jewel that had probably cost its original owner her life; this Koth appropriated with a hard tug, snapping the chain. For some time the rashak stared at the sunlit blue spark in his hard razor-nailed palm. "Take it," he finally rasped, holding the gem out to Cela. "You always said these were your favorites."

Cela's fingers closed around the jewel as her attention fixed on Koth's flat face, and its stare so widely spaced that it seemed to look clear past her.

"You used to tell me that my eyes were brighter," she replied, fighting to keep her voice calm.

He inclined his head in a way she remembered from someplace far, someplace deep in the past. "Yes. I said that."

She felt her grip on the gem loosen. "But―I had thought Transformation was a fraud."

"It exists." His opaque gaze flicked. "Hard to find, costly to buy, and not easy to survive."

Cela remembered the rest of the hearsay, and spoke it dry-mouthed. "Nor is there any going back. It cannot be reversed."

His broad, thick-muscled shoulders barely shrugged, and he made no answer.

For a long time she could only stare at him, stunned by the change, trying and failing to find the man she had loved. "But Jorgen ... why?"

"The name is Koth." His thick-lidded eyes flashed coldly. "Human flesh is weak in too many ways. I knew I could be stronger. Much stronger."

Ah, but he was ugly―that toad's head with its recessive planes and mottled scales and wide, lipless mouth. Unable to make any form of reply, Cela turned her full attention to putting her healing items away, and finding a bit of leather lacing to hang the gem around her neck. After a very long silence Koth spoke again.

"This place isn't safe for you." Another hesitation. "You are alone."

Cela wanted to say that she had been alone since he had left her, that she never dreamed they would meet again; that she was overjoyed, furious, and appalled to the depths of her soul. But far too much had changed, and she merely nodded a reply. For Koth, it was enough.

Since that time on they had been together, and from a strictly survival viewpoint it worked very well. Koth put himself in continual danger, and Cela coped with the consequences, across endless reaches of lucrative terrain. Cela's memories merged into the present and momentarily fixed on Koth, who continued to sit in the meditative trance that prefaced every fight, communing with his adopted gods. She sighed, inwardly as always. Over the month they had spent together, she had realized hour by hour that whatever she once loved in Jorgen had burned to dust. The present moment found them in yet another breathtaking landscape they would only hunt in and hurry through, where in another time they would have lain down in the sweet grass and...she bit her lip lest the sigh escape her as she turned away again, locking her attention elsewhere until the murmur of Koth's reptilian blur startled her more than a scream.

"I'm sorry."

Her attention never wavered from the mists now hovering up from the meadow beneath their safe spur of rock. She was required to keep watch, sitting absolutely immobile, during Koth's period of meditation. Silence was also expected, but this time she had to reply, whispering through frozen lips.

"Sorry for what, Koth?"

She fought to keep her voice calm, and to quiet her heart that was beating all but audibly. What she had waited so long to hear might be on the point of being said.

He hissed faint irritated regret. "That dagger was a bargain. I should have bought it."

Cela's emotions silently collapsed within her. Focusing again on the lovely curling tendrils of opalescent mist in the gold-grassed, pond-dotted valley below them, she noted those spirals that were most likely to jet suddenly upward and twist themselves into translucent, delicate, appallingly murderous gloamrippers. Night was coming on and several of the monsters were now taking shape, elegantly slim and feral, seeking to feed on whatever they might find, with a ravenous preference for flesh. Once they were killed, which would take some time and considerable risk, their hearts would fetch a high price. Automatically Cela forgot how beautiful the creatures were.

"There," she whispered, barely indicating the now fully-formed 'rippers as she spoke. Koth stared where she pointed, blinked acknowledgment, then rose and made his soundless half-slithering way down the hill to the ponds without a single word or backward look.

***

Life was all about death, anymore.

"Seven hearts. Not bad."

To Koth's flat sibilant observation Cela nodded. Koth had been badly damaged during the fight―wounded almost to death, something Cela never really got used to despite its frequency. Nevertheless, she had yet again managed with all her skill to heal him, save this time for a missing part of his tail; but it would grow back within a few days and look the same as ever. The two were now camped and finishing the evening meal. Koth was feeding on some fish that might have been fresh a few days before, a chance find on the lake's margin. As Cela sat across from him prudently upwind, washing her dried rations down with lukewarm pond water and celebratory last swigs of sour wine, she once again reflected, too tired for rancor, on the luxury that used to be a regular part of her life, and how sweet that life had been once Jorgen had found his way into it. But all fires died eventually. They blazed, they devoured, they were satisfied and they died. What was left never looked anything close to what it had been in life.

"Cold?"

Koth was actually looking at her. He seldom did, unless it was to express the only emotion he seemed to possess in any degree, irritation. Usually they sat well apart from each other, and Koth's gaze focused someplace too distant for Cela to ever hope to find. His flat hooded eyes in his lizard face were unreadable, as always, but he threw a handful of branches on the fire and the flames leapt to warmer life.

"You were shivering. Can't have you catching a chill."

No, they could definitely not have that. If Cela fell sick, it would decrease her effectiveness. With a half-shrug of thanks she finished her meal, and then reassessed the days earnings with greater, less gain-related attention. Gloamripper hearts were like jewels; once taken from the body, they hardened and shone. Crowded in the palm of Cela's hand they shimmered within, changing color from green to dawn-orange to gold. She would have liked to keep one for its beauty, but that was out of the question; they were simply too valuable. Koth would insist on an even split of the proceeds of the sale, but Cela's wants were few and she would inevitably give Koth most of her share, which he would accept without protest, thanking her with his usual word or two.

Cela felt a small ironic smile lift her mouth-corners as she studied the shimmering little lumps, dead flesh animated by a semblance of life. Fires might blaze and die, but the light of the gems would never go out; they were in their own way immortal.

She heard Koth's voice, a warning rasp. "Don't lose them."

Without replying, she returned the hearts to the pouch, and the pouch to her inner pocket, and looked over to her companion, now re-settling into meditation. Watching him, knowing she could do so completely unnoticed, she permitted herself the futile indulgence of recalling the past.

It had been a very short time to her, that single year with Jorgen, so sweet it had seemed as if all of existence was light caught in a prism and refined to its purest. It had begun in the dead of winter, a spark floating amid the snowflakes. The wars had just ended, and he was a wounded hero; out of charity she had taken him into her house and made him well again. Everything about them seemed to balance: a lord's untimely widow, and the younger son of nobody; she studious and retiring, he brash and heedless, brimming with charm. It was only natural that she should fall deeply in love with him, and to her amazement he had seemed to reciprocate in full. Never during their seeming infinity of bliss had it ever occurred to Cela that she was part of Jorgen's life only as an hour is to a day, and that she might be for the moment noontide in all its warmth, but there had been a dawn before her, and sunset was to come, and then another day, with fresh pleasures and adventures. For her, time had stalled at a brilliant height, and the only things that changed were her emotions, that shifted from shock, to rage, to agony as Jorgen gradually sought fresh distractions, both carnal and combative. When he had suddenly become fascinated with the sternly ascetic way of the rashaka, Cela had almost been relieved. Never could she have envisaged how far he would take that admiration.

He at last left entirely, and time for Cela became a long weary walk down a blank corridor filled with fog. She had not been rich despite her rank, and the gifts she had heaped on Jorgen, garnering the less thanks the more she gave, had impoverished her. Forsaking the home that now seemed unbearably empty, she wandered as an itinerant healer, aiding and learning as she sought word of Jorgen. Although often in need, she never asked payment, accepting whatever was given no matter how small the amount; and unlike many healers she willingly helped all races, from human as she was, to rashak, which was far from that. Thus she and Jorgen had met again, only he wasn't Jorgen anymore. He was Koth, whose blood would run cold until the day he died.

Perhaps the thing she missed most was the laughter. During the time of fire, she and Jorgen had always joked, teased, traded wits, and so often their play had led to passion. Made bold by the drink, she decided to coax a spark. Reaching as his back was turned, she put her hand on Koth's shoulder, lightly moving up his neck. He no longer had ears, but she tickled the place one of them would have been, and called him a few of the hundred little names she had once used with him.

He shook her off instantly, his voice a snapped hiss. "Stop it."

The shock amazed her. The suddenness of it, the clear implication that if she ever tried anything like that again, all would be over between them...she moved back to her place, staring into the faltering fire, feeling her features stiffening to a mask as if she had thrust her face into the flames. Rashaka only mated in a once-yearly obedience to instinct, vent to vent. She'd been stupid yet again.

Wordlessly turning away, she began her usual preparations for sleep. She knew that as she undressed and washed and performed her other necessary tasks, Koth would be looking on with complete indifference if he bothered to look at all. Her beauty, which she had taken pains to revive for his sake, made no more impression on him than the sight of a corpse many days dead. "Good night," she said once she had lain down, her face to the stars, feeling the little sparks torment her eyes until they blurred.

Usually Koth replied more or less at once, with no particular interest, to Cela's words that always ended the day, but this time he was silent awhile before his voice hissed in its hoarse undertone.

"Celandra. Just because I do not choose to remember never means that I forget."

Had he struck her or said something tender, Cela could not have been more shocked; yet as almost always, Koth's flat black eyes held no emotion that she could read. The reflection of the campfire gleamed in them, but they had no light of their own. Once again, he was merely making a statement, and clearly neither wished nor expected an answer; and he got none.

Sleepless, Cela at last looked across the waning flames at the immobile form outlined by the darkness. Koth lay with his back to her, asleep on the bare stone, his rasping breath slow and regular. His big manlike body was perfectly muscled, its symmetries striking, and it would stay that way long past the limit of a human lifetime, its vigor undiminished. But what did Koth live for? The hunt and the kill and the loot; money and weaponry and the honing of his fighting skills. He had allies, but no friends, and no real kinship with his foster race. No beauty moved him, nor horror. He ate the most loathsome refuse and the rarest delicacies with equal indifference. It was not a life for a being fully human, with warm deep feelings and gifts to give the world, capacities for joy and wonder, and few years left to savor them. Since their reunion, she had followed Koth wherever he led, trying to find any trace of Jorgen; tonight she had given up the search. The night air's chill seemed to emanate from her soul, and she trembled in her meager blanket.

Finally, she had told herself the truth. Tomorrow, after she and Koth returned to the settlement and sold the gloamripper hearts, she would quietly depart and find her way back to the city she had called her home. He would perhaps search for her a day or so, maybe even make inquiries, but that would be the extent of his concern. They would never see each other again.

Reaching for the pouch that held the gloamripper hearts, Cela once again poured them into her palm and watched their shifting exquisite glow. Returning the hearts to the pouch all save one, she leaned to the fire and dropped it into the center of the blaze, as a sacrifice to several gods who so far had ignored her. Never before had she been so rash and wasteful, but she was at last beyond caring. Then she quietly got up and circled the waning flames that separated her from Koth, lying down next to him as close as she dared, studying the rise and fall of his broad muscle-laden shoulders and back in the last of the light.

"Goodbye, Jorgen," she whispered soundlessly. Emotions of every kind mixed within her, canceling each other out, forming a flat, numb weariness. Lightly she ran her hand over his unconscious outline, tracing but not daring to touch...

With a movement too fast to even startle her, Koth rolled over and caught her in his arms. He was still asleep, his eyes shut, but his breath came fast. He clutched her body to his, grinding her tender flesh against his stone-sharp scales.

All he wanted was her warmth. She knew that, and she gave him what she had, fighting not to shiver as he drained her heat and made it his. The only thing that mattered was that she was in his embrace for the first time since he had left her as a human. Jorgen may have become Koth, but when Cela shut her eyes and willed away the pain she felt herself transmogrified, returned to a joy thought forever lost; and as she thrilled with the heat of remembrance, Koth wrapped her ever closer, exactly as Jorgen had once done with his goddess, his adored, his diamond star.

I will leave you, she thought. But not yet, for reasons he chose not to remember. Turning her head, she took a last look at the ashes of the fire where the gloamripper heart gleamed and shimmered like the miracle it was, and fell asleep.

END

Copyright © 2010 by Carolyn Kephart

First published in Quantum Muse

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Other stories on this blog:

The Kind Gods https://carolynkephart.blogspot.com/2022/01/short-fiction-kind-gods.html
Last Laughter   https://carolynkephart.blogspot.com/2022/01/short-fiction-last-laughter.html
Everafter Acres  https://carolynkephart.blogspot.com/2022/01/short-fiction-everafter-acres.html
Regenerated  https://carolynkephart.blogspot.com/2022/01/short-fiction-regenerated.html

Visit the author's website at carolynkephart.com 
for first chapters of her books and more.

Carolyn Kephart's publications:

Wysard and Lord Brother, Parts One and Two of the Ryel Saga duology, acclaimed epic fantasy
The Ryel Saga: A Tale of Love and Magic, combining the duology in a single volume
Queen of Time, contemporary magic realism that takes the Faust legend in new directions
At the Core of the Happy Apple: A Mystery Solved, an essay on the inner workings of the popular 1970s Fisher Price wobble toy
PenTangle: Five Pointed Fables, a collection of short stories previously published in ezines