For a moment T’riss lost her footing and stumbled backwards. She righted herself, her brows crimped in puzzlement. ‘What nonsense is this?’
The Lady sighed once more, as if in empathy. But malice glittered in her black eyes. ‘Unrequited love is the cruellest, they say. And now he is gone.’
The Queen of Dreams’ brows rose as understanding came. ‘No …’
The Twins circled her now. ‘Do not throw your life away in some mad plan,’ the Lad urged.
‘You were as nothing to him, in any case,’ the Lady said with a flick of her hand.
Why do they seek to dissuade me? I wonder which of all the possible outcomes it is that they fear. And how could I ever know for certain? She offered an easy shrug. ‘You presume too much.’
The Lady stopped before her. Her mouth tightened into a cruel knowing slash. ‘She will destroy you.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘She has barred you from her lands,’ said the Lad.
‘So she has.’
‘She’s tried to kill you already,’ the Lady added.
T’riss stood deathly still for a time. When she spoke her voice was frigid: ‘You presume far too much … That is enough from you.’
The Twins bowed — yet mockingly. ‘No,’ said the Lady, ‘that is enough from you …’
‘… as there shall be no more from you,’ finished the Lad.
And the two faded from sight leaving the glistening black deck empty, rain-slashed and awash in spray.
T’riss sensed the approach of her Seguleh bodyguard, Ina. The woman stopped next to her. She was crouched, her bent legs leaning with the drunken yaw and pitch of the deck. In the tilt of her masked head T’riss read a question.
‘It was nothing, Ina. Just a chance encounter.’
CHAPTER VI
I am amused by the attitude of these people of Jakal Uku towards antiques and the possessions of any deceased person generally. Childishly, they absolutely do not wish to possess such objects and have no desire for them. I once noted a wonderful pugal (a carved low sitting table) left in an abandoned hut. ‘What a fine piece of the woodcarver’s art!’ I exclaimed to my local friend. ‘Why is it thrown aside?’
‘I would not touch it,’ he answered. ‘I would think of the persons who sat at it before me and whether their lives were happy and if they are happy now watching me sit where they once did.’
Old man moon made all the preparations. Through the heat of the day Saeng sat in the hut on its tall poles. She fanned Hanu, all the while feeling rather like a bird in a cage. She watched Moon coming and going from the surrounding jungle. In the clear light of day he appeared no more than a tattooed old man. A village elder, priest, or monk. He laid up a great pile of firewood, set the fire, then set to grinding various ingredients in a mortar: charcoal, some kind of red dirt or clay, and plant roots. The mortar was no more than a slab of basalt bearing a depression in its top that he pushed a stone across. He then set a number of pointed sticks on a slab of wood together with a row of grey earthenware pots. Last, he unrolled a long sheet of woven rattan matting.
The boy Ripan, meanwhile, had been tasked with watching the fire. This he pursued only in the most negligent manner, heaving loud aggrieved sighs, and raising a palm leaf fan over the fire in a desultory wave.
One time when Moon had gone off into the woods, the lad drew out his flute. He blew a series of descending hauntingly sad notes, and sang: ‘Woe to whoever would reach for the Moon … they fail to see the cliff before their feet …’ and he sent her a sharp-toothed grin.
Towards evening Old Man Moon’s wrinkled tattooed face appeared at the hut’s entrance. ‘Things are nearly ready.’
‘Perhaps,’ called Ripan from the fire, ‘you should wait for the Night of our Ancestors, or the Festival of Cleansing. Those would be far more propitious …’
‘You forget whom you speak to,’ the old man snapped in his first betrayal of any temper in front of Saeng. He smiled up reassuringly. ‘I am Old Man Moon! I decide what times are propitious, and which are not. Now come, we will begin.’
‘And my brother?’
He raised a placating hand. ‘Later. After your payment.’
Saeng did not move. ‘Payment usually follows services.’
‘I always receive my due first. But, if it makes you feel any better, I assure you that what you provide for me will not be binding or efficacious unless I pay for it. It’s all part of the exchange.’
Saeng was not completely convinced, but there appeared to be nothing she could hold the man to. Her mouth tight with misgiving, she climbed down the ladder, assisted by Moon.
‘Very good!’ he exclaimed. ‘Play for us, Ripan.’
The youth rolled his eyes to the purpling, half-overcast sky.
‘There, now.’ Moon stood next to the rattan matting. He set to rolling up his waistcloth wrap and exposed a loincloth that was no more than a strip running vertically between his flat wrinkled flanks.
Not only was Saeng horrified to be presented with the old man’s withered buttocks, but she saw that each was entirely pristine.
Oh, my ancestors, no! Not this.
He lay on his stomach and rested his head on his folded arms. He sighed contentedly. ‘Very good.’
Saeng cleared her throat. ‘So. I’m to tattoo your …’ She couldn’t think of any way to say it.
‘As you can see, I’m running out of options. I could turn over. Would you prefer that?’
‘No! No thank you. This is fine.’
‘I thought as much. Ripan — you’re not playing.’
‘It’s not time yet,’ the lad answered resentfully.
Moon raised his head to peer up at the trees and the gathering evening. ‘Ah! You are right. I’ve got ahead of myself, I am so eager.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘I apologize. I haven’t been myself since I had something of an accident recently. But tonight should go a long way to remedying that.’
Saeng frowned down at the old man. A recent accident? She remembered a night not so long ago. Her neighbours screaming, pointing up at the black sky. And on the moon: had she glimpsed a flash of light? Then darkness swirling across the scarred round face obscuring it for nights on end.
‘Are you the moon?’ she asked, unable to withhold all wonder from her voice.
He chuckled indulgently. ‘No, child. Not itself, of course. But I live its life and it mine. Long ago I chose to tie myself to it as intimately as if it were my twin. I can still remember when the vision of it first revealed itself to me all those ages ago.’ He laid his head back down on his folded arms. ‘At that time I moved through darkness without being aware what darkness was — it was all I knew. But then, unbidden, the vision came to me of the moon floating among the stars. Glorious, it seemed to me. A hanging pool of quicksilver. Its light was silvery cool. Magical. I swore then that I had found my essence and I took the moon as my patron. My inspiration. My source.’ He glanced back to her once again. ‘Do you know what I mean by that?’
‘I believe so,’ she answered, slowly. She recalled a few of the more ancient shades from her childhood speaking of the greatest of the entities that emerged from the vastness of the past. And how each had their Aspect, their province, or facet. Earth, Dark, Water, Light, and more. Why not the moon?
‘Of course you know what happened then, yes?’
She shook her head then realized he couldn’t see and so murmured, ‘No.’ Before her eyes the spinning glyphs and symbols continued their shimmering graceful arc across the old man’s back, as if mirroring the turning of the infinite night above.
‘The moon fades.’ Ripan spoke up, and he blew a long sad note that trailed down into silence.