Archive for November, 2009
Visiting a House Below
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
Although Freya had grown up in one of the deep cities, she hadn’t been inside a dwarf’s house since she was little. She hoped she remembered the etiquette.
Always refuse food or drink twice, but then take more than you want, because that compliments your host’s generosity. It’s OK to stare, but then you have to stare at everything equally. Always answer a question with a question, and never be surprised by the answer.
The green-cake was excellent, loaded with raisins, the way she liked it, so piling a second and third piece on her plate was no trouble.
“Is it good?” said her host, who had said his name was Hjelmer.
“What could be better?” she said.
He’d offered her a chair in the corner, and she couldn’t remember if that meant anything. On the wall was a flat chip of gray stone, about the length and width of her thumb, set in a gilt frame. A cross-hatching of fine lines covered the stone.
“That’s a fragment of the Khozoghoaqil,” said Hjelmer, “an epic rune-poem. Very famous.”
“One of the nine sagas?” Freya blushed, realizing she’d preempted his host’s right to ask questions.
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” said Hjelmer, which didn’t sound any more like a proper half-riddle than her question-answering question had.
“The runes are all packed together like that?” She tried to phrase it as a statement, but couldn’t quite keep the question from her voice.
“It’s actually part of a cave floor that’s about a few standard leagues square,” said Hjelmer. “Couple thousand years ago, scribes untangled and deciphered thousands of lines written in a style that was already ancient back then.”
“Supposed?”
“Recent research suggests the marks are tracks left by a certain species of sightless cave centipede scuttling around in the silt at the bottom of a shallow pool that dried up millennia ago.”
Freya wasn’t sure if she should laugh. Hjelmer seemed unlike what she expected dwarves to be, but still, her grandmother had always said how sensitive they were about anything historical. Seeing the glint in his eye, she risked another question.
“So what’s it about — supposedly?” she said.
“The origin of the sun, the fate of the moon,” he said. “The usual. But there’s one ironic thing.”
Freya stayed silent, but thought her expression was probably question enough.
“Ghoaqil, the hero, is described as armored, many-armed, and blind.”
Beauty and the Beast
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
He dreams of a seduction of the flesh, of the muscle and the bone. He dreams of claws tenderly peeling the skin from him, reducing him to nothing. Just a heart.
*
He wakes to the cry of his own name. Fans are legion outside his hotel. They dog his shoot. They break onto his sets and caress him. He has retreated. He has locked himself away from the world. Perry, his PA, makes urgent calls. His agent is on line one.
“Get out there and pimp it, baby.”
“No.”
“Breach of contract, darling.”
He swears at Perry. It is easier to curse Perry than to curse himself, his own face. He doesn’t deserve this, he knows. His beauty is skin deep. No one else knows.
*
She comes to him in his dreams. Monstrous. Hideous. Beloved. She takes his beauty from him. His face. His famous pectorals. He is nothing before her. That is everything.
*
They call his name louder. He is the epicenter of the world. Perry brings him advil and prozac. Perry squeezes his shoulders. He shakes Perry off. Why is Perry even here? Perry is better looking than he is. He tells Perry this. Perry doesn’t understand.
He has already rejected suicide. That way lies martyrdom, and then even his memory would be lost to the fable of his fame.
*
She comes to him again that night, bestial and low. She buries her face in his abdomen. Sweetly she eviscerates him.
*
He wakes sweating. He is not alone. Perry is there. Perry has him bound. Even Perry has failed him, has succumbed to the power of the myth. Perry wants his pound flesh.
He closes his eyes. And in this invasion of nightmare into reality, he calls to her, his monster, his lover, his beast.
Somehow she hears him. Somehow she unfurls from dreams and hotel furniture. Bathroom tiles are her spine, bed posts are her ribs, shattered glass is her claws and teeth.
She takes Perry. Takes him apart. She leaps from the window down to the baying crowds, and she rids him of them. She defiles his myth in viscera and blood. She is slaughter in his name.
She leaps back up to his room, swollen with the limbs of her victims. And he feels free, finally free of it all. And she advances while he dances. And he smiles as she opens her jaws.