Five Love Stories

Damsel. 
Once upon a time, when I was Catholic…

Chapter Three: Five Love Stories

Baron Braximus, for all his reforms, and bread-Sundays, free bath-houses and baby kissing every-days, is an evil man.  I know because my father sold me to him.  It was not a trade, actually, I’m passionate about this you see, when we had no other choice.  But there was an agreement, a contract, an expectation.  I was to marry Baron Braximus at the end of the month, and then my poor father could keep his shop.  But when it was all said and done, Braximus was a fool.  He was an idiot because he gave me time to think it over.  And where he allowed me free will, I saw a way…

It was the first time I felt truly ‘cleaned up’ as they say.  Ironic, I know, because it was so indecent to stay unmarried in a strange man’s house, especially with a man your father sold you to, but evenso, I felt lovely with the ribbons in my hair, the gold shells on my ears, and the yellow dress.  Well, no, it was not that happy with Braximus.  Let’s say that the dress was muted…burnt orange, like the rude backside of your horse who insists on grazing so near to me, ugh!

Well then, now that I’ve moved over here and got a new handful of berries, I would like you to imagine what it is like to be a girl of that age.  My true age?  Then, or do you mean now, and why, Sir, are you so insistent?  Well, I’m not telling.  But, I will reveal that I was between the birthday where you get your first set of heeled slippers, and then the other one where you hand over a white herd of goats to your new mother-in-law.  That is where I was, dreamy, free, and I also felt lucky. I used to smile back then.  Baron Braximus wanted me to eat apples at his table and put on the weight of a wife.  He called me a Lady already, though I hadn’t earned it.  He showed me all the precious things in his home and asked which of them I would like to touch.  I feared that he would ask to touch me, in return…I felt sure that he would, one day.  So, I waited.  But back then, I thought that fear was love, and that my hesitation was a woman’s modest humility for those sorts of things.  All of that I was meant to forget in time, when I agreed to marry before a monk, and in the eyes of the Chapel, god, and all the angels, that stuff.  Because Baron Braximus couldn’t force a holy hand, you see, especially with every religious miner in the Mountainlands watching, but it is far easier to warp a child’s mind.

Sylvestre was the name of the Baron’s pet stallion.  Not a mount, mind you.  There is a difference between the functional brute you rode in on, and the petted and preening oily black thing Braximus sang to like a lover and fretted over like a daughter, though technically Sylvestre would have been a son.  I had never before seen such an amazing creature.  It was like a piece of a dream, or the vortex of a nightmare, I didn’t know which.  But I wanted to ride Sylvestre.  I wanted to own that strength, I wanted to… Well, I wasn’t entirely sure until I stole him.  When the two of us were alone in the woods together, he grazing, and I unable to do anything but stare, I suddenly found myself gone philly—truly.  I mean truly turned into something like that, Cymen Ruecross, do you follow?  I was madly in love with a creature that was not my make, and so I made myself into kin of that creature.  Fool I was, thinking that it would be enough.  No, Sylvestre wanted his master, not a mare.

And perhaps now I have alarmed you.  Well, rest assured that I paid the crime for falling in love with a most majestic creature, more noble and winning in spirit than my affianced.  I brought back the horse—dressed and as myself again, of course—but also heartbroken and sorry.  Braximus took a whip to my backside—all of the back of me—like the thief he said I was.  And I was also a whore.  And a witch, and a waste of his money.  I tell you, the sun did not set on me in that land.  I fled with tears in my eyes, the moment Lord Braximus set me loose. Down to the foothills and then the coast.  Oh, poor father…

My second love was a more accessible spirit, thank goodness.  He was tattooed in the arms, and a little round in the gut, but that was from being merry and impressed with life.  He was a sailor, one of the best.  Commodore Jarshaun could travel as far as the edge of the world and back.  He promised to take me with him one day, when I wasn’t filling drinks at the tavern.  I, of course, being some ways past the age of giving goats to some mother-person believed him.  Only, he took far too long to get at it.  So, I went to get passage on his grand ship next tide.  Would he resist me if I was the only lovely thing on board?  Yes, actually.  But before even that, he missed me because I missed the boat.  And all that happened because I’d been up the night before worrying whether or not I should run off again with a man.  But Jarshaun was not a horse, and so I came a bit late… an obvious conclusion that took its time coming.  I waded into the water, then swam at the lessening vessel… and finally decided my legs were not good enough to swim so I gained a fish tail.  And I wound in circles like an eel for leagues and leagues trying to catch them. 

A storm found them before I could.  It was nasty and spanned every inch of the firmament.  Lightning sparked at the corners of its mouth, and it salivated over everything on its palate.  The boat was well on its way to the throat of it, and as a fish I knew this, but did the men realize where they were headed?  No.  Below the water, it looked and felt awful, but above the soft crash and whirlpools which drowned fish, there was only a stretch of gray cloud on the horizon.  It horrified me to think of flopping on deck, and making bubbles at the Commodore Jarshaun in an effort to explain what I knew, so I made a plan to turn the ship around myself.  I would be a kitten of a storm, enough to send them away, but not harm them.  The warning they would never get, otherwise.

It was a bad idea.  The tentacles were a bit much, it turned out.  I ripped the ship apart in an effort to guide them properly.  And my one whorling eye could not make out Jarshaun from the rest.  He dove overboard, I found out later.  Well that was horribly done, and I raged, oh!  I felt so awful.  Still, I pulled the ship from the brink of the storm and set it to rest in two pieces on a deserted island where no one could see it.  Afterward, I found Jarshaun floating on the return trip.   Sea monster was no good, it caused him to make the water around us to go instantly warm and… amber.  A fish had no arms with which to carry her love.  In the end, I became both.  When we reached shore, I let him rest against me.  I wished we would never leave that beach.  But he woke when we were trespassed against.  Fishermen with a net and spear intent on me.  Again, rather than explain, I went off to be a kicked creature, rather than a whipped and burdened one.

And now for the fourth man.  Perhaps you think I went through all of this ordeal without feeling, but that is not true.  First I was hopeful, and then second, enchanted.  With Jarshaun, yes the Lord counts as two, lift up another finger Cymen, and Jarshaun was lewd while I was a half-fish—oh!  I hadn’t explained so much to you, forgive me.  But the next man I came across was clever.  Even today, I wish I could think his thoughts.

At that time, a few years ago, it was not yet clear whether Axes Valley had taken its name from the caverns on the southern edge, or if the dragon had taken his name from the people he dined on who lived just north of him, fighting in the valley.  Either way, I was something of a show-off by then, as a trade.  These people in the Valley across the Sea liked my guile and sought me out for tellings and fertility dances.  And, of course the Commodore Jarshaun story.  For some reason they finally believed that I could win against the dragon, named Axz.  So they dressed me in white and dragged me into the deepest dankest cavern with torches.  They said to exorcise him and left to guard the entrance until it was done.  Well, I didn’t believe in dragons.  I was busy trying to feel around in the dark for a way back out when I found out how wrong I was about the minor and major Scriptural manifestations in this world.

I knew at once that Axz was male because he smiled at me.  Sideways, sort of, and polite too.  No teeth, just the strong muscle of his jaw stretching tight.  And then his crystal iris expanded until I could see myself as he did me.  A living, breathing bauble among his collection.  I am sure I said something to him like,

“Oh.  So you are a dragon?”

And he responded, I remember, “And you are definitely a woman.”

Then Axz lay down on his back and showed his belly to me.  I don’t know why I felt the need to, or even believed it would matter, but I went over and scratched it.  My hands were tiny in comparison and they did little good, but he relaxed and purred as if it was the kindest touch of his life.

“No, I don’t think I will eat you afterall.  Shall I lick you then?”

Oh, I was frightened again.  Charmed, and frightened.  But this was in a different way than with Baron Braximus.  So I let myself laugh and hurried backwards to wait against the wall.  We were silent for a long time, and then we suddenly found something in common to talk about, and could hardly part with that topic.  Fire.  I wished that I knew how to conjure it, and he breathed it like nothing.  Axz lit up the sky of the cave for me… well, only a little while, he said he wouldn’t be able to breathe if he made too much smoke, and he worried about me as well, being so small.  Then, I went and put a tiara on my head, from his horde, and Axz threatened to lick me again.

“Suppose I enjoy it, and I’m not offended at all?”

And then he… well.  I’ll leave that part out.  But that was the finest evening I ever spent with a gentleman.  And I never felt more safe, either, than with a kind dragon.  In time, the villagers wanted a dead dragon and shouted as much into Axz’s home.  And he wanted, badly to eat them, but asked if any were my kinfolk first.  How kindly!  I said no, but then I begged him not to eat my customers.  He really liked that response for some reason.  Axz wanted to make a deal, in that case.  He promised not to eat my patrons if only I agreed to stay with him for all time.

That was…you would disagree, and look at you, you’re already shaking your head—but it was sweet, somehow.  It was not a fair arrangement at all, but that caused me to believe that he wanted me with him more than he could admit or measure, or ever hope to put a value to.  But I told him about Baron Braximus then, and how his people still wanted to whip me some more, because of the contract, and Axz set his snout at my feet and shut his eyes.  The dragon man said that he understood and so could never ask me to stay against my will.  There was another tunnel out, I could escape the fury of the mob that way.  And to lessen my shame, he promised not to attack Axes valley again.  And, until this day, I hear the gold dragon will burn and rake every place else with his claws, but never the valley.  What a romantic.  Sadly, I don’t think I shall ever see him again.  Not just because of our arrangement, and the impossibility of him being a monster.  His greatest dream is to burn the world to ash, and I’d like very much to continue living in it… so there was that.

Oh me.  Now I’m finally to my last unhappy and distressful situation.  There is a rogue here, who steals from the rich and gives all of it—really, most of it—to the poor.  All because the King’s brother was left in charge and he taxes the people as if they were pigs and wallowing mud weren’t free.  A righteous man, but also a scoundrel.  A dragon in manageable miniature.  I certainly liked him, and I was wild so I joined with him.  But the monk with them—a necessary sort who offered the unofficial sanction of the Chapels, named Tucker—did not like my stories of being a mermaid and running off with stallions to graze.  I warned Robin—well, I wasn’t supposed to reveal his name, oh well—about a plot against him, archery contest, I think it was, and Tucker threw a bag over my head, dragged me off in the night, and when I woke up, I was tied above those sticks a little ways off.  The stupid holy man was dancing about with his torch and cackling that Robin had chosen a respectable woman of the faith with connections and good breeding—gold, that is—that would better suit Robin’s cause.  Well, I was angry to have been jilted.  When did he even have time to meet such a fine lady?  And then some other fellows I recognized came along and screamed about a rigged archery contest and Robin being thrown into prison, and wouldn’t he come help them rouse the parishioners or at least raise back some money for Robin’s bail? And take the torch, we can’t see without it, la la la, do you see?  Then they left.  And that is when you found me, a few days later.

Now Eve rubbed her stained hands on grass at either side of her dirty gray skirt.  “There you have it.  I am not someone to be saved, but someone from whom others need saving.  That is not my choice, for others to come to calamity when I am around, but it is fate nonetheless.  I am running, still from Baron Braximus.  I have a more than understandable fear of horses, I can’t eat fish either, and I might be a friend to dragons if I’m not watched attentively.  Most recently, I am wanted by Robin and his merry idiots and their intercessor with the faceless god.  And if you think you can save me in some less decent fashion when this spell wears off, I warn you, Cymen Ruecross, that I have sworn off men, male creatures, and minerals and vegetables for that matter.  I’m completely through.  And if you don’t believe my stories then fine.  You’ll be happy to learn that my greatest wish these days is to be left completely alone, so that doesn’t trouble me in the least!” she stood.

Cymen tugged his reluctant horse along, “… but evenso, Eve, why should you be alone?”

“You can’t fix me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No, but I can comfort you… as a friend if that is what you wish.  I hardly know you, Eve but I worry for you.  If I were to assure you that, come what may, I could protect you once and for all, would you travel East with me?”

“That’s impossible, when no man can absolutely guarantee another’s safety if you truly think about it.  I am so very exhausted with Barons, Dragons, Commodores and Kings all offering me the same.  What do you intend to do, Cymen Ruecross, marry me?  I won’t have it, just because you saved me.”

Cymen clapped a fist to his breast. “I vow here and now that I will not hurt you, Lady Eve.  I will be a friend and a gentleman to you all the days of your life, if only you will come with me and let me protect you on the journey East.  For, where I am going, near to the Fringe, there is a one and true King over Kings who offers rest to all men, women, and creatures who find themselves lost.  His comfort is a joyful peace that I carry in my heart with me always.  He wishes his followers to share this spirit of welcome, simply because it is so perfect.  That is all I want to do for you, Eve.”

“I don’t believe in the Chapels or anything like that, I don’t care if they’re in the East or the West, on the godless Fringe or whatever.  Nor am I going to buy your Chapel’s holy book.  Does it look like I have money?”

“Yes, I know it sounds a bit prescribed, but that is what the King taught us to say.  Poetry aside, Eve, I am a man sworn to honesty, justice, chastity, and to seek and save rare things for my savior and King.  You are such a treasure.”

Eve let a breeze pass by her while she narrowed eyes painted with smeared khol and stared.  “Chastity?  As in… abstinence.”

Cymen coughed a little, then mounted his horse and offered her a hand up.

“Oh no, I want this explained, Sir.” A flicker of smile, “There is a difference between the two, namely that a man—or woman—who practices the first could only reasonably do so after having never deviated from the latter in his entire life.  Am I correct?  Cymen Ruecross, are you trying to tell me that you are a virgin, and that is why you are able to make this grand vow of pure friendship?  I don’t believe you.”

Cymen replaced his helmet, a winged corona with sweeping silken white cowl beneath.  And then after all this preening, he frowned at her.  “It’s a requirement of the Order.”

She laughed.  Oh, how Eve laughed in his face, and stuffed her hands in the pockets of her apron to control herself.  Failing there, the chapped knuckles went beneath Eve’s arms, her long tangled hair slipped loose from its braid (is her hair braided? It was out before), she bent over with it.  She blushed, breathless, while Cymen flushed with shame.  Eve laughed so loud and horrid that she didn’t recognize the fateful sound of horse’s hooves at first, and so squealed and fled behind Cymen when six riders were almost directly upon her.

Six knights, all in gold, saluted Cymen, whom they hailed as ‘Captain’ and then immediately removed crowned helmets when Eve crept from her hiding place.  Each, in near unison, offered protection, salvation, and assured his virtue to the damsel in distress, on that very spot.

“I am either a fool… for believing in you, Cymen Ruecross, or for refusing to pass up such vile entertainment at the risk of my health, I’m not sure which.”  Then Eve took Cymen’s hand, pulled back when he tried to lift her into the saddle, and shook it instead.  The result was a woman squatting indecently for a moment, and nearly falling over.  But then she walked out in front of the seven gold horses and they followed without question through slashes of pale sunshine, or even a loose chuckle behind black naked backs of the bright-moss trees.

That Knights of the Harmonic Gold Order allowed Eve the dignity of being a singular person moved her onward.  She walked stiff as a scarecrow with wide-painted on eyes at the shock of it, true, but that she continued going ahead, at her own pace felt like some kind of reward.

Captain Cymen Ruecross noticed his men making silent and desperate gestures in every cardinal direction, from head to heart to shoulder and shoulder as they rode gently for the woman’s sake and watched her sway from behind. 

“And we all thought finding the Grail was difficult enough…”

---

Chapters
1 Tie Me to the Tree :: 2 But First, a Snack of Strawberries :: 3 Five Love Stories :: 4 Robin in the Hood :: 5 Even Crispy Children :: 6 A Good GAFE  :: 7 Last Chance through the Flames :: 8 On the Rogue, Damascus :: 9 White Wall :: 10 Saint-Makers and Uniform Wearers :: 11 Tempering the Ruecross 12 Miccolangiolo's David :: 13 Dragon's Den :: 14 Away to Arusalem, part I :: 15 Away to Arusalem, part II :: 16 Sorry—several sad turns of the hour glass you can't ever get back :: 17 Adam and Eve :: 18 The Mist Maven, part I :: 19 Mist Maven II - Of Flirting, Folly, and Fairies :: 20 Mist Maven III - Revenge of Prince Poas

12, Last Vortextual Process

Mi'Raah

By J. Ingram

Twelve:  Last Vortextual Process

Part One, of the conclusion

The Trystian Channel was a long stretch of treacherous shoals.  To prevent trade ships rending their hulls or choking the passage, two sandbars on either side of the blue stretch had been built up with white stone to create one bright aisle connecting both isles of Jyst and Tryst.  The crystalline shallows also gifted both kingdoms a view of eachother’s best monuments.  The Trystians welcomed holiday merchants towing light-ferried boats and travelers wading up to their ankles with a gargantuan statue of goddess Opiphia.  She opened one palm to the sun overhead, as if carrying it.  Opiphia was a powerful fertility deity, The One Whom Through All Good Things Must Pass, and so this was an ancient monument to the opposite of whatever we might know--to silly dreamers, rather than a memory of sacrifice, and also to multiplicity and bilateral successes, rather than any singular patriotism when Opiphia was worshipped all through the Known Seas.   Because of its natural shoals and a powerful current successful at putting exploration off for millenia, the sister-isle of Tryst was both the portal to Jyst, and also Jyst's one portal to all those lesser islands far beyond.  And this was politically true for Tryst’s placement as well.  Other than the Jystians themselves, no one served the High Horse God better than its sister Tryst, regardless of season or trepidation.  She had always been there. 

On the Jystian side, a black statue of the horse god Odeon also captured the ages-old role of the twin kingdom.  The obsidian horse stood with muscular conformation in profile, a thick neck straight out and nostrils flared in stone.  Odeon snuffed the female immortal far on the other side of the channel as if she were in heat, like he owned her.  And nobody had ever moved the goddess-statue, built up a screen, started a war, or anything else to oppose Jyst's opinion of the rest of the world, at its heel.

Not until this very day.

Merchants and pilgrims once skilled at finding threads of silt on which to stroll easily through the channel, were now wading shin-deep in blackened water raised by blasted joints of white rock and gore.  Bright blue light-ferries were upturned, smashed or stolen to be filled with the belongings of shouting emigrants.  Women with babies tied across their backs swatted arms to fight over what their families needed.   Men had their swords or knives drawn constantly.  No child raced ahead to buy saltwater candies from vendors today.  Boys and girls tugged on the ragged garments of their parents and ducked heads every time a cannon on one side or the other of them made skulls, air, sea, and sandy earth below, shake with doomsday vehemence. 

Odeon either stretched neck to lash teeth and snatch them back like errant yearlings on the south end, or goddess Opiphia waved in to have them run by her and faster, while the muscles in her other arm shuddered at each cannon-quake.  She could have dropped the north-sun at any moment.   Every turn in the gunfight between ships made Opiphia's wild hair rock wicked and frazzle worse and so embarrassingly--mortal--for her above those glistening marble shoulders. 

A gilded red ship ached as it leaned around at her side, breaking needle-bow against her hip, cracked the stone.  The crew was desperate to maneuver away from enemy fire.  This was the royal Jystian pleasure barge begging mercy a final time, turning so hard and taking water fast on her port side through a black wound.  A proud white Trystian Navy ship appeared next, moving fast from directly behind Opiphia's one crumbling hip.  It dropped full sails and turned armored side to face the threat and aid its little red kin.  Across the channel, Mi'Raah's Virtue was forced to move and fix aim again, but Egg of the Goddess was hungry to take advantage of the pause, and the crew yelled back and forth in anticipation of one of its cannons bursting fire-sparked smoke suddenly over the heads of terrified refugees.  Stone Opiphia shook hardest, pursed lips, stretched arm higher and must have held on with her toes.  It was a dead-hit at King Arudelle's jewel ship, but suddenly the blue water itself began to raise, as if on an angry wave, and lifted Mi'Raah's Virtue free of the goddess' screaming-hot defense.  That cannonball rolled, pitched, but passed directly beneath its target in the final moment, through the very arch of the wave's crest.  Mi'Raah's Virtue, a black ship roaring laughter as it coasted easily down from the brink of impossible, fired three neat peals back.  One to smash through the mast of the red royal barge, another to pierce the hull of this white Egg of the Goddess with every advantage from that terrible height, and the explosion dismembereds Opiphia herself.  She lost grip of the sun, bent over, and burst her perfect face, first into the shoals. 

Shards of stone careened in every direction.  So many blue boats upturned.  People pulling animals and ferrying livelihoods out to the safety of Tryst, cried and fought one another to return to Jyst again.  Towers of Jystian lower cities were already burning, and from here it was also possible to see the remainder of the Black Armada swarmed on the other shores.  Cannons were going so hard in tandem as to suggest their masters had no souls whatever.  The sea walls were being obliterated.  Deep within, penned-up horses of the wealthy could be heard whinnying screams that certain death would finally come. Out here, all the horses of the poor or unlucky were already in the water without the Trystian Channel and its bright stone aisles.  Swollen, drowned bellies with bloodied stick legs laid flat out, to bob and wash ashore. 

Syramon was with Thom by then.  They held each other in the crash and rage of Mi'Raah's Virtue in black-wood and its ivory rival.  The crimson ship which carried the remainder of the Jystian royal family was going down in flames and doomed screaming.  Practically scuttled.  More ships done in Trystian white were coming in from the East, all with silvery metal-lined hulls to cut up the rock shoals.

"We should keep going..." Syramon found he couldn’t even hear his own voice.  Or had he not dared speak hope aloud at all?

Thom was shaken enough already.  A beautiful young man who smiled too much.  Even now, when he slipped down to his knees and had to be yanked back up by the scruff of his neck, water slipped round the edges of clenched teeth. 

"Come on."  Said Syramon, "I didn't scheme so hard to get you all to myself, for us to lose now."

"You robbed from Bonnis, once." Thom coughed, and didn't finish as well as he hoped, "... cradle-robber."

They braced themselves, when three women ferrying their children together on a cracked blue barge turned wild bloodshot eyes on them.  Syramon and his lover were standing on top of an old rock, and people were constantly surprised to find their belongings tethered on it.  Thom immediately bent down to reach and help undo so many ropes caught beneath the overhang, but Syramon yelled and prevented him.  One of the children had scrambled down from the raft, seemingly out of nowhere, to put a dinner knife between this stranger and his mother.

"People are no better than animals now, Thom."

Syramon drew his sword and made it clear they were not easy prey, not here, not ever.  The mothers were eager to sort it out and move on with their babes.  The women soon made it to Jystian shore behind the two men with the rest of the hollering, harried, desperate sea-soaked masses.   

"I still think, Thom, that Jyst is safest.  King Arudelle wants this place razed, and so we have to get over there."

Thom sat down.  Smiled hard, laughed, cried.  "There is no horse god.  There is no fertility goddess with womb round enough to keep us all--Arudelle himself had them blast it apart!"

"No, you don't understand... Mi'Raah is good.  She knows we're going there, and so they're not really attacking Tryst.  The statue was in the way of their navy.  Its the ships they want."

"Ahaha... I love you.  I knew that I loved you for a reason.  So adorably stupid.  And trusting.  I thank you for coming back for me.  So, we‘re spending this last day together..."

"No, you're the one--"

"I'm still bleeding, Syra!  Let's go dig a hole and wait this out.  Let's tan our skins and join the Beach People!  Standing here, while wanting to be over there, we’re like talking corpses.  Let’s do anything else but trust some vain, silver-headed witch of a woman to keep our souls safe!  King Baeltheon was right to throw Mi’Raah in prison.  In fact, he should have made her worse off than us slaves."

"If she'd not changed our lives, we would have been on that smoldering red boat, out there.  Do you see it?  Wine at noon in the Trystian High District, remember?  Thom?  Thom, stay on for that!"

Thom shook his head and turned up his smiling gaze, to grant Syramon a kiss.  It lingered in the face of people tearing one another apart, and felt final.  Then a blast nearby, and their satchel blew apart.  Putrid water rolled over that spot then came crashing back.  Syramon was able to lift himself from the water and clamber back on.  But Thom?  He called wild for him.  So many other people were there too, crying, fighting, swimming, drowning.

Then came the yawn of water raising up.  Syramon saw aquamarine foam whorling and standing as if it always had legs beneath its blue skirt.  He cleared water from his eyes and recognized black death herself, Mi'Raah's Virtue riding that very wave.  Her masthead was a woman he also knew, silver hair painted on and flowing down on either side of the hull.  The ship's bow parted her hair, even as she was used to wearing it.

"Blow it up.  I know that you can reach it from here."  Syramon heard when the thing was leaning dangerously over his own head, and there was nowhere he could go and not be beneath it.  Was this Arudelle, himself, speaking?

"The Trystian Navy has engaged us, as you desired.  My King, it is enough."

"Don't the gods punish hubris?  Baeltheon wouldn't send out the women and children from the city, it's his loss." Arudelle seized her jaw.  Syramon could see the split in her lip.  Nothing, compared to Thom's stab-wound.  "Who do you love more, Mi'Raah?  Me?  The comfort of a real, warm, breathing man, or the stinking unwashed masses?"

"There are innocents--some are my friends, as well as with the Beach People, you know that."

"Innocents?  Who is innocent here, not you.  Is lying and scheming what a person does, with their friends?  You're mad and then some, to think you've been above all this, for all this bloodied time!  You're as vile as me, you made yourself that way--stop simpering!  There isn't a choice to make here, you condemned yourself long ago.  So go on, indulge!"

Mi'Raah raised hands over her head.  Syramon flattened against his rock, feeling as slimy and pathetic as a bug, on the verge of being crushed.  Had a smile flickered there, at the edge of her lip?  On the cheek Arudelle kissed?  The boat raised higher on its column of water, they were harder to see.  But two delicate fists definitely raised overhead to cover the white sun.  Mi’Raah could have been mocking all the empty promises of stone Opiphia herself.

It was necessary for Mi'Raah to gaze down, as she worked her conjuring.  And so, she did see Syramon, as the ship continued to ascend.  His life did pass before her eyes.

That she would trade one love for another all this time, think herself better. Syramon breathed, "But I believed you..."  Then the weight and proof of ten thousand chill needles speared through Syramon, and washed away all survivors on that wailing, grimy beach. 

In that final explosion of water, Odeon's black statue broke at the legs and the remainder of the Jystian sea-wall blew apart.  Then, the roiling column of water twisted, to face Mi’Raah’s Virtue and its cannons toward the remainder of the Trystian navy.  These were white specks.

...

That night, while the real pirates of the Black Armada relieved their hungry, lusty, and greedy passions all over Jyst's southern-end, all the while ringing bells and bidding any repentant converts to Mi'Raah and her Sea-worship to show their faith by presenting free silver, the Palace on the northernmost reach of the island could only wait, arm itself and watch.  The remainder of Arudelle's crew went down to the beach for a final redemptive act.

When Mi'Raah walked into the cave with Commodore Arudelle the Conqueror, she was greeted with bells and the children ran to her.  Arudelle looked over the tired men, and pulled Mi'Raah's hand into his grasp.  His personal crew of tamed-pirates began to pass out bread, fish and wine.

"What do you expect, Arudelle?  They've been waiting three days for us, and when you finally did arrive with that divine black-flag of wrath raised high up in the crow's nest, it was heedless destruction brought onto their doorstep.  Exactly what the skull and crossbones has always promised no matter how you dress it up in silver hair, sweet words, and prophecy."

"But still, I'm playing the savior.  You're my High Priestess.  We told them to stay in the caves and be safe from it until I properly arrived.  Even if they did have a scout watching, they would have seen you raise sea waves to make our ships like winged raptors against the royal navies of two kingdoms.  The sea wall all round the island was finally obliterated, here in the south, by the dragon fury of our swift cannons.  All those high-class people who oppressed them are living under a salty flood now, heh, in Davey Jones's own locker!  Why are they so low and hungry-looking, then?  Are they ungrateful?  You didn't do as good a job of converting them to my cause, maybe."

Mi'Raah put her other free hand on a hip and glared.

"What in three-infernos does that look mean?"

"It means you've been around pirates for too long Arudelle.  Because, clearly, there is a difference between pirates and the nobility of mortals.  Death is death.  It's awful to look at, no matter what side you're on."

"And there's bound to be another great difference between immortals and mortals, if you really do believe you can keep defying me like this, in public." was his harsh whisper back.

"Fine then.  The pecking order goes, Immortals first, then mortals, animals and fish, then monsters and the slimy nightmare-demons of a guilty conscience, and lastly of all, pirates."

"As for Kings?  What dare you say about your King Arudelle?"

"Now you’re no longer a pirate?  Fine then.  When Kings can force people to believe...  Oh, well someone like you is lower than all of that.  My hands are only bloodied because you forced them into the wound."

Arudelle half-laughed and licked tongue against his molars.  "There is something I've never told you before, about your own self.  Mi'Raah, your conceit also suits to grip the vice I've put round your neck.  Immortals are just as prone to tragedy, wrongdoing, desperation--and therefore, faith, as mortals are.  No, listen to me closely.  Someday you will see it, how I never gambled to lose you in the first place.  When you fervently believe your hands will always be clean, then of course I can get you to do whatever I want.  Immortals can do great, good things, even sweep away their own evil works, correct?  That is what you see.  But I am the rider, I am the one guiding this thing, free of blinders.  Woman, you are just as cruel as you are compassionate.  Yes, certainly, you have guilt too.  I've been working it on both ends.  I'll be glad when you finally let out all that hot air, dear, and meet me on my level--and yes, it is a rank shared with pirates, slithering liars, and the adulterers.  None of us is better than any of us.  Suffering will always be suffering.  Penetrable, sharp." She looked away, and he yanked her closer, by the arm. "Don't you dare disagree.  I am getting completely irritated with you these days.  Suffering cannot be escaped, only dealt with.  We both chose to be predators, doling out what we can‘t take.  I saw the old man on that rock you were making eyes at before the final blast.  How could I have ever missed it?  Some friend of yours?  Somebody you needed to romance behind my back?  Well you were glad to murder him in cold blood."

She shut her eyes.  "You are the biggest idiot of this age, Arudelle, if you think so little of it.  Of course that hurts me--"

"I need you, Mi'Raah.  Accept that we are alike and meant to be together in this last way.  Terrible things are going to happen.  You will help me, you can't shirk from it.  You've done it before anyways.  I know you remember.  To the Wild Tribes, back on my island.  And to my own men.  Trying to convince us that you were a goddess so that we'd be blindsighted while you took aim.   But one of us, just one precious mortal man could see what you really are."

"You are just using my guilt against me."

"I do not have to, when this is a fact--she cannot be saved who can never be redeemed.  You killed and you lied and you stole and you liked it, as much as I ever have.  Now, I am the one in control of that monstrous fury, all finely woman-shaped.  So, do as I have said, and deal with these..."  That would be Arudelle's whispered point, for now, when he could not be seen striking her.  And they’d gone on long enough.  He then announced, "Children of the Sea!  You have done well, and proven your faith.  Look how pleased and free your goddess is."

Mi'Raah brought forth a little smile for their exhausted adulations, but it departed just as quickly.

"And the High Priestess also has a final message for you, before we battle the evil King Baeltheon himself tomorrow."

Mi'Raah said, "As High Priestess, my virtue can never come into question.  The touch of any mortal would lessen my profound appearance as someone above and intangible." here, she threw off Arudelle's hand.  "Now then, as for the morning and what it will bring to those who believe..."

It was a lyrical translation of Arudelle's battle plan.  They were to engage any resistance--most likely from their heretic neighbors--in the streets, before sunrise.  Arudelle's pirates would help arm them, but the truest believers, the native footsoldiers would swell the ranks.  Before the coming of Mi'Raah, any Jystian could have mounted up at a moment's notice on his horse to form a natural cavalry against them.  But, that had all been dismantled.

Arudelle interrupted, smiling, "And now, I give especial thanks to the faithful, for seeing to the animals being drowned."

"Were they?  Arudelle, That's hideous!  What kind of toothy ingrate predator would indulge such savage cruelty--"

"From where you were, you didn't notice that it wasn't all human or carcass-blood in the water?  Some scientist.  Heh.  High Priestess scientist, let's finish up, please."

Mi'Raah pressed palms to her hairline, took one breath and then another.  Hard to look over them now, these happy followers now turned into butchers.  And they had come to this, having been raised to think of their horses as children of the black stallion god.

She told them next, that Baeltheon would most likely put up the most resistance at the palace itself.  His army would bolster what was left of the sea-wall and make it as best a fortress they could, until reinforcements from the other kingdoms came.  "But no soul here should hold any fear, that King Baeltheon will be helped by accomplices from across the sea.  The sister kingdom of Tryst has had its navy defeated today on the shoals, a very sword-arm of theirs ripped off then carterized as fast, as if by steam." she'd lost them,  "...And that was in Arudelle’s plan as well.  So the remainder of the islands in the Known Seas will stay far and away.  Baeltheon will fail tomorrow, or starve."

They bowed and prayed to her.  Mi'Raah turned to go, and found that Arudelle had already left.  A small relief passed over her, that it seemed he had never been there in the first place.  And, if they really were her own people, she might bring them into a circle now and conspire against all this red-foam crashing down...

Until Arudelle yelled her name, and the lead between them tightened fast.  Mi'Raah took one final sniff at the Beach Dancers in their plight, then moved on.

...

The peytral is a horse's breastplate.  That of the black stallion god was broad and windswept, ignited with the red power of the Flesh Forge.  The Flesh Forge was that sacred pact between man and the power of what a horse could do, its heat, its fast, its way of being loud, angry and ferocious but sure, envied of all the other animals for being loved most by man and crafted by him. 

This morning, gsirls threw leis of blooms torn up from their gardens, praised the Odeon-thing for its beauty.  And when boys grew up to catch women one day, then of course their horses were bred for beauty too and the feminine violently responded.  As for the Holy Riders, they kept backs erect turned heads swiftly from the innocents screaming in the crowd, to face bleak sunrise in a clotted file.  Capes billowed and flushed over the backs of so many pure-bred.  Militial shouts were made, calling and recalling like lonely birds coming back home hungry.  Screams that King Baeltheon's life be blessed, that the angry soul of Prince Bonnis even rise, to serve him in battle, that the god Odeon do what he had made himself for, and crush the skulls of pirates beneath black thundering hooves.

Champron was also edged in something like a dragon's horns.  Black iron ridges burnished and stylized so well by artisans that wherever the helmet crested, it glowed like real coal.  Horses around him breathed, shook out their necks when they felt the courage of the crowd give way to hysteria.  As the army descended south beyond Jyr Equus and those temples to pass over high ground by the first set of flooded districts, the multitude was more impoverished.  Odeon's criniere stayed an arch, like the knight-piece ever in the nightmares of the victim and the penitent, dragged into Baeltheon’s palace to beg mercy. 

Covering the horse god's back was his sweating King of Jyst afraid to look away from the immortal animal's sharpened spade ears that never flitted in all the cacophony.  King Baeltheon's bended knees rode the swell of Odeon's flanchard on both sides of his flank.  Tied off, clipped tail swept easy and straight, like the bow of a ship backing out from shore into the cruel, unknown beyond of a sea-voyage.  Croupiere was flanged in red horns and shards like burning shark's teeth.  When Odeon kicked hindlegs--and he would be breaking bones, exactly according to legend--it was as if the monster had two heads.  There, was the wisened spear, leading.  Here, was the maw of the animal, so many red tongues coiled and two black fangs ready to lash, puncture and take you.

The Holy Riders and the royal army finished their march to the fortress wall.  Echelons of gray, sunbleached castle towers rose behind them.  Every tiny flag they had, was flying today.  King Baeltheon cleared throat, and lowered rattling lance.  His animal, Odeon, did not blink.  It would cause the horse to miss precious moments of destruction, and so the stallion was crafted so that he did not have to.

Ahead of them was a field pocked by ruins of the kingdom.  Odeon snorted and tossed his head-in-horns once.  He and the mounts of the Holy Riders were the last living horses of the god-made breed.  Across the first row of ruined houses, Arudelle was sure to be on a white stallion done in silver Sirenian wings.  A frightening jester's mask was his helmet.  The ruddy cheeks blushed in painful caricature of what comedy really was.  He was able to fit an eyepatch over one of the wet, glass eyeballs in his crown.  Big flat painted teeth shaded silver eyebrows.

Mi'Raah was not beside Arudelle.  She was far down the line, in bright chariot with driver, and a cluster of guard.  Pirate King Arudelle the Conqueror might have loved laughter as he did faith and its ability to dismantle and intimidate, but he wasn‘t beholden to it.  He was no true romantic.  Arudelle intended to win this, and kept his sorceress away from himself, where she could be best protected while fighting.  Next, this mad foreign Pirate King opened his mouth to speech for a long dramatic while.  Odeon lifted tail and shat through the whole thing.

Jystian soldiers screamed and laughed.  Arudelle grit real, tiny teeth.  He gave up the performance and cussed his charge.  Whatever raggedy animals belonging to the Beach People charged up the hill with him, frightened over upturned rocks and at the enemy.  Odeon whinnied and all his children reared up with him, flashing golden hooves in time.  Then earth-break as they brought back down at once, to gallop directly into it.

Who fights harder?  The ones who truly believe, or the ones who don't belong?  This was the test.  Arudelle had detached himself.  He wielded and slit blade with a cold eye to see whether the throats of those who loved a living, breathing horse god tore faster.  He wondered if the prayers he knew they were uttering, but could not allow himself to feel, would actually mend the bone?  Odeon was only a horse, he decided, but suffering would always be suffering. 

The horses on his side weren't any good, but that was what Arudelle wanted, for the ragged Jystians and the rapscallions from his fleet to break that first charge, and safely let his real fighters in.  As he took in the scene and shouted direction, Arudelle eventually saw a woman-rider in red enemy armor.  Now, if this was the very bald-headed one... an outcast and a believer... how would she die?  What a deft killer she was.  The moment Arudelle got his curiosity quelled, was the same instant his white stallion decided to break free of fighting and draw near her mare.

"Dumb, damned animal..."

Arudelle was forced to clash swords.  She was a Holy Rider, he saw, and then he guessed their unique skills just as quickly.  Her horse, the fragrant mare, was doing most of the work, pushing the rider hard through her lunges, making up for the power she didn't have over the enemy.  No bridle was used.  Her mouth opened to make gentle commands as she kept the war-mare's pace.  Arudelle found himself smiling.  What fun play, to see the superiority of the god-breed, up close.  When he was done admiring it, Arudelle stood in the saddle, raised both hands on sword, and came down across the back of her neck as she passed alongside him through another failed joust.  Her armor took the best of it.  "And you somehow survived even that, as well as my Mi’Raah and the prisons.  You would be Rider Koriandra?"

She lay there, dazed.  Her horse attempted to stand over her, and whatever was terribly wrong with the Sirenian horse breed that Arudelle longed to correct, motivated his own white mount to try and raise up over the mare, right on the battlefield.

"Damn, you again, animal!"

It was enough for her to regain her senses.  The woman gasped for air, and threw off her dented helmet.  She had a set of earrings, and lots of ebon hair.  This was not their inside woman after all, whatever that might mean to Mi'Raah and himself now.

The woman rider tried to re-mount when, without her horse, there was no advantage.  Arudelle struggled to get in close--but not that very close as his idiot stallion wanted.  She forced her mare around, and sent mighty clash of sword up to unseat Arudelle.  He brought down a hard parry that, this time, forced her in the midst of getting back on the horse, and to her knees.  He could not swing and hit again, for his crazed horse.  Arudelle’s chill unconcern turned to heat, the real hurt of all he was lacking and why Jyst and its better steeds were needed so badly.  Fool to come over here across the battlefield, from a place of reckless temptation to get the woman, or was it because of her?  Fool to cross the Sea, to leave his home and his real wife.  Fool to have believed in getting strong enough, to murder belief.  Being a badder king than pirates, even.  Striking their hornets' nest at its heart after living under their greedy regime, daring to even take their ships and cross those waters, go into Jyst herself, into the stronger, better empire, and destroy her.  You'll lose your life over one damned woman!

Arudelle yelled, wrestled his stallion's neck back as far as he dared--wanting to break it with all his might--and with a vision of his own burning city and, yes, forgotten Euginnia now before his eyes... Together, he and his horse trampled the woman warrior.  Her bereft mare, determined to guard the rider's body even past instinct and to the last, was forced over the edge of the ruined sea wall, and off the cliff.

Arudelle sweated and breathed, then moved his horse back round late to have three more mounted Jystians suddenly coming down on him, with lances raised.  The impact was enough to force the silver-headed man from his saddle and rend through his plate armor, thrice.

They raised Arudelle up on three poles, thus.  Stabbed in clear air, lifted above his stupid-bred white stallion. 

The pirate in plumed helmet driving Mi'Raah's fancy war-machine yelled out and drove hard to meet the scene.  He squeezed her wrist, when she failed to stir, begged some saving action.  But Mi’Raah could only hear the ripped-wild whinnying of the black horse god raise up above the noise of fighting.  It pierced worst.  It was laughter.

"Mi'Raah..." Arudelle smiled and said, as he lost control of himself and twisted, "You know, that I cannot die."

Could he not?  Or, did he dare her to try and help it?  Mi'Raah stepped down from the chariot, as a fourth Jystian ran in and began to hack at the legs of Arudelle's white steed.  She looked into Arudelle’s eyes and knew that he was dead.  She saw the bow of his head finally, the charm of his sneer give out.  The bloodied hands released their fists.  The soldiers relaxed their hold and began to bring him down.  His corpse waved like a flag in diminishing wind.

She startled backward, believing him alive, even now.  Mi'Raah cupped a hand over her mouth, turned from the sight of gored Arudelle and fell to her knees, shocked beyond time and place.  Perhaps also, beyond reason?  A final vortextual process coming on... No, impossible.  He was gone just now, but she believed him living and that was enough to effect her.  And then also, that he would never tell her again that it was her fault, that she had no choice.  Not because he was so powerful, when he could have always just died.  But it was because Arudelle always held the leash and she would just sit and sit and wear the collar... Or, what if he was right, and she was only now seeing?  If that were only always the way then--No, worse.  More terrible than that... The enslavement was but a kernel, and here was the proof of so many things being different.  Life was not a chaos, or some riddle.  It had always been mathematical.

"If she cannot be saved,
unless she is first redeemed,
And belief may be belief
But suffering will always be suffering,
If mortals are equal to immortals,
In all the evil and good they choose to do..."

Mi'Raah did see the Jystian soldiers now encroaching upon her as well.   She felt less terrified, for her life, than never reaching what that answer might be.  She was aware, somewhere beyond herself, that her dazzling chariot had gone, long ago.  But the problem of belief itself was finally presented and clearly.  And its proof so near, the answer just here, that great big secret almost resolved.  Ahead was the keyhole.  In her hand, was that key.  If a is equal to b and b equal to c... then?

What was the damned answer?  How does the prose end? 

...

Part Two, the final (I swear, it will be the last) chapter, to be posted this week.

Randitty-O-Meter: 8,  It rhymes (sometimes)!

 

Mi'Raah,12

Mi'Raah
by J. Ingram

Twelve:  A Choice Between Two Lovers

When Arudelle received word of Mi'Raah's demise, he was at cards with the only two Captains still wealthy enough to stand the Pirate King's cheating.

"Come now, woman.  Calm down and you're dripping on my good hand."

Mi'Raah, soaking wet from head to toe in her once silver priestess robes, waggled the gold message bottle in Arudelle's face.

"'Dear Sir,' it reads, 'I am bound to meet my doom, down here,' I wrote days ago, '...imprisoned as I am.  Desperate for reprieve.  My only comfort is a Trystian slave who pities me and tells me stories about all the wonders of falling in love with his shackle-mate so near to the end of his miserable life.  I'm not bitter, I am truly glad for Syramon.  But what about me?  All I can contemplate while Syramon divulges the aching of his heart, is that the man I need schemed to put me here on purpose, and is probably laughing his lily-white, never-pirated-a-real-day-under-the-sea-sun arse off--while PLAYING AT CARDS!"

Arudelle then replied to her, without raising his eyes from red and black sets of conch shells, mermaids and north-stars painted next to numbers, "I so love when you read to me..."

Mi'Raah pursed lips and snatched a second message from her golden bottle.  "Dear Unsupportable Sir.  Now I learn that the Queen of Jyst, herself, has been executed.  Is this some lesson for me?  Syramon says he overheard that it started when the Queen shouted at the King, because he planned all along to take me from the dungeon as his mistress. Then, he erupted at her on the following night, with fresh knowledge of all her secret extra-maritals... How did you know that was my secondary plan?  Even I believed it couldn't work between Baeltheon and myself--"

"I told you we had got back together, Mi'Raah.  I wasn't going to let someone else take you.  King Baeltheon held out for as long as he could, but nobody can resist you, sweet, I know that.  It's why you weren't executed right away for treason, if you were wondering.  So, I paid a few people to ensure the Queen would hear about Baeltheon's scheme to keep you alive first, and then, second, incense Baeltheon to take it too far.  But the whole rumor about the fight being over the Queen's silver hair color--well that was news.  I didn't start that.  Aha!  Here's a High Tide everyone, my hand winds."

Mi'Raah almost ripped a final letter from the bottle and then slammed it on the table, in the middle of candle-lit treasures Arudelle was presently raking with hands over to his side.

"Dear Sir.  It depresses me that this bottle still finds its way via shuttled chamberpots and I am forced to retrieve, read and write back as is your enforced proscription against the deaths of my sisters, but after days of struggling for you with no response, I am at my mind's end.  HOW DARE YOU FORCE ME TO WRITE YOU AS THIS FETID KINGDOM FALLS APART.  I MAY NOT BE ABLE TO KILL YOU, ARUDELLE, BUT I DO HOPE YOU DIE, I DREAM OF YOU DYING, AND I WISH VERY HARD FOR SOME MORTAL ACCIDENT TO BEFALL YOU AT EVERY OTHER BREATH.  Kindest Regards..."

Arudelle raised up from the table and tugged Mi'Raah into a kiss.  Captains Jherpolis and Minthene were clearly holding their breaths.

"Mi'Raah," Arudelle said gently, "You're here now, safe, and that's all that matters."

"Bastard.  You set me up.  I was helping you, I was converting mortals to our cause just fine, and then you ordered me to directly involve Rider Koriandra.  Why?  Why did you do that, when you must have known she assassinated Prince Bonnis, and craved killing Odentalis too?  You knew that Odentalis was the god-horse Odeon already, didn't you!  Why didn't you warn me first, that she was due to learn the truth about Odeon and become homicidal--say anything about everyone, even turn against me, to do as she pleased?"

Arudelle smoothed a hand down her wet hair, and ended bringing a loose end close to his gaze, inspecting it.  "This is split I think... And you're not as heavy as I like you, either."

"Can you really be serious, Arudelle!  I threw myself off a cliff only hours ago, to escape Odeon himself.  Though, I don't really know what I hoped would happen whenever and wherever I landed.  Damned tide..."

"I found out that Odeon and the man Odentalis were the same, after hearing too many strange stories about the High Priest from these two." He nodded at Jherpolis and red-bearded Minthene.

Mi'Raah turned to glare at them, but Arudelle seized her back around.  "Mi'Raah, their two names were even similar--"

"But Odentalis was a holy name to match a holy animal, Odeon.  The High Priest took rites to change it, which made sense."

"And that was so with every High Priest before him... High Priest Odeno, High Priest Nodeon, and there-forth... It was always the same creature.  Odentalis was his best effort at manhood yet.  I was startled to learn a horse could ever figure how to turn into a person, but then I doubly realized that, here you are--an impossible, beautiful woman--and also so tangible.  An angel in colors."

Mi'Raah swatted Arudelle's roving arms away.  He grabbed her.   She yelled and put both hands around his throat.  The veins in his neck all turned blue, with her powers.  "Sir!  I am done, playing with you.  My life is not a game."

Captains Jherpolis and Minthene stood, drew their swords.

Arudelle looked only at Mi'Raah.  He managed angrily, "It follows... that I don't trust you."

"You own me, you do whatever you want with me, and expect everything in turn from me, but you don't trust me?  If that is so, then, I am a slave.  I am not your wife.  And certainly not when, you already have a wife.  I remember, clearly, that her constant name is Euginnia, always in my guilty head."

"You don't wish me... to be kind to my slave?"

Mi'Raah wanted to squeeze and crack his spine, or make ice-crystals of the whites of Arudelle's eyes.  If his henchmen did get to her sisters... perhaps it would be a mercy.  For her sisters, and for the world.  To prevent anyone being used like this.  Belief was just belief.  Suffering would always be suffering.  Like choosing between two miserable lovers.

And then, something made Mi'Raah let Arudelle go.  She turned gaze just over her shoulder, licked silvery blood as it came to the edge of her mouth, and observed the same steely glint cut through her back and rend through her stomach, on the other side.  A man's hand gripped the sword that stabbed her by its elegant, wire-coiled pommel.

Red-bearded Minthene had done it.  He then gently set Mi'Raah down while withdrawing sword, as if there was a kindly way to un-stab a lady.  Jherpolis helped to get her by the arms and place her dress neatly while she lay bleeding.

When it was done, Arudelle stood over her.  "I put you away in that dungeon because I did not want you to get hurt when I knew what was coming, on their streets, and in their palace with the Queen fated for beheading.  But, it seems I wasted my time with you, Mi'Raah.  When it came to this anyway."  then, Arudelle stepped heavy boots by her ear and down the wooden floorboards, to call directions for the ships to be put this way and that before the morning's attack, as if she no longer existed.

Mi'Raah had not been mortally cut before.  For so long, she and her sisters had always been too clever for it.  Made themselves into goddesses with guarded temples before any one wild person might dare try it.  Now, as she waited for death to come--that it had been her second time helping it along amused Mi'Raah a cruel little--she learned that her fear of it was worse than a what a sword-wound actually could do to her immortal body.  Curious. 

Or, was it like so many games mortals liked to play?  Three of a kind, or worse, a third strike, and her long life would finally snuff out.  The First Ones were mortals, after all.  Noble people with a grand, vast vision for their world.  Suppose they were still fallible, for making people who could only live as toys?

So then, what was her real purpose?  To go on being used, then hide from use on a glittering shelf, only to re-emerge and offer herself to users like this again, forever? 

Arudelle returned in the night, mewing in worse distress than she recalled doing earlier, for her own wounds.  Her silvery blood had gone.  He was able to put a blanket around both their warm bodies, and apologize.  "It's just that, you made me look weak in front of the men.  And they are all real pirates, do you understand?"

Mi'Raah curled fingers into a fist, then gave it up and swallowed.

"Tomorrow will be better, sweet.  Tomorrow, we take Jyst for ourselves.  After, you can pick out the very Queen's bed and sleep in it.  I'll hold you again and say sweeter things to you, when we have more time.  Better than this salty old floor.  I know you must agree with me.  Say anything, love, please."

"Goodbye, Arudelle." Mi'Raah closed her eyes and wished she could mean it for more than one night.  The toy-woman pretended to die, if only she might enjoy hearing Arudelle panic and believe in it.  Then, he might give up on torturing her, for a moment.

But then, just as the golden bottle never ceased coming back, her damned heart beat one more time.

...

Next:  The Conclusion.

(Randitty-O-Meter:  I would have rathered he play some fantasy version of Uno--but it was tricky to figure.  I so love Uno.)

Mi'Raah,5

by J. Ingram
Five: Bottled Message

Arudelle was pleased with himself for finally dyeing his hair in just the way he imagined Mi'Raah did. 

"You'll all go blind!" He laughed, and pointed at each of his sailors.  One by one, Arudelle informed them that he was the High Priest of the Sea, and all the seals and whats-its obeyed him--and Jarshaun, up in the Crow's Nest, was going to die of the searing-welts one day soon, because the High Priest's power was of the water and any creature of that element, even men, came under his domain.

They were disturbed at first, but their young King struck boot-heel on deck and suddenly the hilarity of it occurred to them.

"All you men are disgusting, whore-mongering wretches.  I love it.  Searing-welts for all!"

"Rah!  Huzzah!" they roared and cheered back.

"Mi'Raah." Arudelle minded them, with a lifted finger.  "In fact, actually, here she is.  Right on time." this King of the Siren, wearing light silver hair, fly-away in the sea's breeze, he leaned over the gangway.  Far below the wood railing and directly beneath himself, a curious glass bottle ebbed in the water.  It should have been easily missed, by the ship's almost sensual swollen black hull, but sunlight (which Mi'Raah often nagged in Arudelle's ear, should be called star-light no matter the hour) glittered the yellow glass and helped it to show through clots of fish-blood and strings of pink sinew and flesh refuse that wafted to the ink, watery surface. 

Arudelle instructed the fisherman, Tom, to get it out.  The poor man couldn't quite catch it with silver hook--and so Arudelle sucked his pearl teeth and threw the kerchiefed sea-dog Tommy overboard, by his britches. 

"I am Arudelle the Conqueror, a pirate captain!  If I want something done then you all should be fearing for your lives.  You should be pissing down into your black boots over whether or not the task'll get done fast enough.  Arrr... And, you scurvy, bleedin' wretches, didn't we already establish that it would be a searing, injurious piss?"

The other pirates stopped their work and laughed forcefully again.

"Do you see?" Arudelle told the little green parrot who'd frightened away from his shoulder some time ago.  It peered down at him from a tangle of nets below view of  lowered white sails and wide, hot sky.  "They are loyal, they get it..."

The fisherman came back covered in guts and slime.  But the fine message-bottle, she was gold and etched on the inside with large sloping words.  The letters were accented with tinier, dazzling symbols and the entire gem of a thing might've appear like artwork at first, but Arudelle had learned better over the years.  He watched the delicate design sharpen where he quarter-turned it, and then traced a finger along the glass. 

"Are you blowin' on it?  Making that sound?" Tom came near, wiping his hands of the day's gutted catch.

Arudelle chuckled, behind his teeth.  "No.  She does this pretty little song, just for me."

Beyond the thick, runed glass were several tightly wound papers, and these began to rise as the low whistle swelled.  It was almost as dark and breathy as Mi'Raah could sound when she breathed against his neck in the nights.  But, Arudelle also now supposed that both lovers should decide what, for a man, may be a sultry voice when the woman means a murderous tone.

Arudelle licked a finger then hurried to fish the letter fully out, and read.

A dogged pout, eyes shut, momentarily.  And he had very brown lashes, by the way.  Not a natural silver-head at all, the liar.

"Tether up the fleet and send for my officers." 

Where was the joke?  Where was the clamorous praise for The Sea and all her free mercy?  Arudelle became so quickly dejected and silent in that moment, it was possible to feel--through the space between so many other prone, mortal bodies--that, for the true tone of his woman's message, he could have easily cried.

Many hours later, the word had been received, and the Black Armada could manage being lashed together, to dwindle aimlessly over floating moonlight.

"Can you believe that is what they are calling us?  She writes that King Baeltheon himself has said, 'the Black Armada.'" Arudelle smiled very hard, and shifted to the next page of letter, "...Which is mightily good.  Perfect poison--position--for us." cleared throat, "The sea-walls are also so many hooves' thick.  Charming, it's like our cubits, them naming everything for those horses..."

Light laughter from Arudelle's officers, around the table, who'd worn their best pirate regalia for the occasion.  Many of them tried to wrap jeweled fingers round heavy metal goblets from more pilfered kingdoms with names most Sirenians of the New Kingdom could scarcely pronounce.

"...and then she writes that everybody in Jyst is perfectly happy to worship whatever they like.  There isn't a united religion at all.  Only the High Priest really cares what people believe or not.  Taxes are replaced with tithes, and could be gotten any other way, since that particular custom only goes back a few years and the people resent it... But this is good news.  Mi'Raah is excellent at what she does.  I am sure she will find some other way to stir them into riot, and dismantle the kingdom.  Mortals have been maneuvered around by religion before, haven't they?  Divide and conquer.  That is our scheme, and soon, it's going to be our brand."

One of Arudelle's captains flipped up his eye patch.  Everyone recoiled momentarily at this Captain Jherpolis, forgetting the actual purpose the enforced costume.

He blinked clear and hale brown eyes.  "My King, I wish that you had consulted us.  Isn't it what we've been paid for?"

Arudelle went back to being dour and pensive.  He folded hands before his mouth.  "But you all haven't been Jystians for years.  Didn't some of you tell me, before we set sail, that the horse religion should have gone secular by now?  Some scheme by King Baeltheon's younger brother to divert attention from the immortal bloodline?"

Minthene had a clipped red beard, and was seated by Jherpolis.  "Yes, Prince Bonnis' idea was to make a yearling, a horse heir, into the next divine avatar, and so pasture the old sire-god Odeon?  All of High Priest Odentalis' paid-politicians would have money from the tithes diverted away from their games and to a new order, therefore, and those stifling strictures would then be ended."

Jherpolis insisted, "We might still make something of it, Arudelle--"

"No.  Between word sailing so slow from Jyst and to our Siren, setting us backward a thousand leagues before we even set off... and then all the culling I did before coming here that they're still on the verge of learning, if any of my embargo failed... the last thing the Jystians know about is the fall of the Wild Tribes and the banishment I enacted once I returned to the capital--in word and law--against any more Jystian trade in Sirenian ports."

The other once Jystian seamen nodded, when they certainly remembered, having been hand-picked to profit and support King Arudelle in his efforts to end piracy years ago.  Men like Minthene and Jherpolis now had the robust, comfortable air of aristocrats in Arudelle's presence, which was right, because he'd gifted them land and titles.  These were the sort of men who'd learned through struggle that, regardless of a man's heritage, if he was smart and powerful, then he was priceless.  And if Arudelle was also eccentric, having wanted to secretly play at pirates since boyhood, then let him put jewels from lands his own people couldn't fathom the wealth of, gods-bless-him!  Arudelle could put such rings on their fingers and force such goblets into their tired palms to bless their lips at the end of each day, why not?  And one only had to spy the woman-treasure he'd pilfered from the depths of his own country--he was going to be king of the world, why not?

Arudelle went on, "I hoped to use the temptation of more Sirenian black-wood, after so long, to buy time to line their waters and wait.  Tempting eyesore, you know?  All the while, we'd decline talk with any merchants, then King Bonnis' ships--because Baeltheon should have been deposed according to our spy work, and along with his sheep-head take to enterprise not yet christened into their Known Seas, all that likewise executed... Somebody over there with military ships in need of a beating would eventually engage us with armistice quit and money-bags ready--and then, really, gentlemen, we'd engage them.  Take their own vessels and hold the island of Jyst hostage.  Perhaps we might have got support, a ransom, or at least a reaction as far out as Fahrwandur, who knows?  Then, suddenly, the pompous Known Seas would become properly afraid of Sirenian Pirates, for once."

They drank, smiled at Arudelle's budding guile and nodded. 

"But, as we journeyed here over months, and Mi'Raah helped move us as fast as she could manage with her tricks and devices, the plot with Prince Bonnis was deconstructed somehow in the meantime.  It's too late to rely on that tack, Mi'Raah has found out.  And give her still more credit if you will:  Mi'Raah warned me before we set sail from the Siren, that the time of the world is more cyclical, people are more inclined to repeat themselves than make progress at every generation.  She also insisted on doing it from the inside, learning their religion by living it, going in and feeling it firsthand.  For both, she was right.  Damn her, she is so good to me."

Arudelle sipped more wine, though there were tapped barrels of old Jystian grog everywhere.  From back when the Jystians sailed to the Siren saying that they had 'discovered it' and called themselves 'explorers' and 'privateers.'  So many cities ravaged along the Sirenian coastline generations later, and little Prince Arudelle was born into a kingdom that could no longer offer a throne to him.  And so he had fled south, cut down the beloved Black Trees, made war.  Earned respect.  Arudelle became a man in the most violent way possible. 

The Jystians were willing to yield to the Siren already, Arudelle knew himself and so he knew their fate.  It was just that King Baeltheon did not see that yet.  Arudelle could only wait and fix his teeth on it, during his worst blank moments away from home and all that he'd risked by daring to come.  He wouldn't call it despair.  Well, once, Arudelle confided in Mi'Raah, and she wanted him to call it a 'vortextual process.'  In that sea-storms whorled around such gaping voids?  In that it was a beast's toothed maw that opened, blank, gaping, deep, black, surrounded by all the raging fury of fur and claws, in order to attack?  In that power could erupt from a deep well of pain--that suffering itself was an amazing kind of kindling, as it had been in his own life?

The answer still wasn't clear.  Mi'Raah had been laughing through all his fierce attempt to figure it.  Then Arudelle must have slapped her, because he remembered promising over and over, never to hit Mi'Raah again.  But couldn't she just speak straight to him sometimes?  Be kind and honest, not cruel, when they were two people sharing a bed?

Arudelle rubbed at his eyes.  "Excuse me, but I was having another vortextual process..." brief smile, for her, "Even if religion can be used as a tool, faith is primarily a thing of the human heart.  This cannot be counted or measured, blah blah blah... but I still believe we can barter in it.  That is where Mi'Raah is wrong and when I learn that the time is ripe, I am going to force this.  Gentlemen, my captains..."

"To the Commodore!" they toasted drinks another time.

"Oh?  I keep forgetting that, a captain over captains.  How good of you, Jystians, to remind me."

Jherpolis grinned and a large hoop earring dangled over one shoulder, "Soon, we'll be rich Jystians free of an inane horse god, before.  Then, everyone can dance stark nekkid on the beaches, without a care, without any hurt at all.  For freedom!"

A resounding, 'Aye,' then a long, practiced 'Arrrrrrr' when Arudelle lifted finger and solicited it.  Finally, they went, 'Hurrah!' and had another cask of wine broken out.

"Allies, you humble sons of the bell-feeted women, we will, altogether, have our revenge.  Then the pure-breds, that corn-fed, hot-blooded upper class of the Known Sea, will finally be shown the door.  How will we get there?  We're going to drink and get fat--though sail on handsomely--until Mi'Raah inspires another coup that all the people of the island can mount their natural cavalry and get behind.  A thunder that can fall in, directly behind this man, as with the Wild Tribes.  I am your Arudelle.  A conqueror in one sea, and a liberator, in another."

Then, the King of the Siren let his hired men cheer for him.  He did not read the final three pages of Mi'Raah's letter, where she harangued him, and threatened to leave him as soon as a good chance presented itself, and wished that the Sea might rage, swell and crash upon all those black ships, Mi'Raah's Virtue being the blackest.  Every disease and hex upon the fiend's head, if not for that same damnable bottle, container of her shackles!

And so, Arudelle decided he must send a nice note to her sisters, saying that Mi'Raah was doing well.  Therefore, he hoped they were still behaving according to their eldest sister's instructions.  If not, then the enchanted gold bottle, which always found its mark lightning-quick and spoke a true message--would conjure orders for the remaining Naah Maah Raah to be destroyed.  Arudelle deeply regretted that he hadn't a ship made of the same swift, crystalline stuff.

Arudelle hated to think of finishing his meal now, though the cod was well filleted he was still hungry.  This had to be just a lover's spat.  Mi'Raah was beautiful and smart-mouthed, smart-made, a compliant, darling doll of a woman--of any sort of woman he'd ever before known, useful, somehow still frightening, but a thrill to keep, perfect...

"Will Queen Euginnia appreciate what you've done to the mane she so adores, Arudelle?" wondered others of the turned and fawning Jystian Captains.

Arudelle had to think for another long time, a whole other vortextual process, before he could honestly remember who that was.

...

More Mi'Raah, perhaps as soon as tomorrow.  Avast!

 

(Randitty-O-Meter:  5, Because I can't think of a reason for the rating... having my usual Saturday vortextual processes.)