It is said that love has the strength to erase life’s differences; those of status, of riches, or high birth. But what of the difference between death and life itself?
• • •
HE WAS A CONJUROR, they say—not a Necromancer, a trafficker with ghouls—but one who begged by performing tricks in the squares of the New City when evening fell, and the lights sparkled on like blazing fireflies. But he did not perform his feats in the best-lighted plazas, but rather sought shadowed ones, dim and obscure in the city’s poorest parts, because, even if good in his heart, Angar had never been overly clever. His tricks were all old ones, well-worn in archaicness, ones that too great an illumination could all too readily make known the secrets of, and so he shunned the city’s bright, glowing globes, rich in their colors of sapphire and emerald, of topaz and ruby, seeking instead obscure corners and alleys where he could perform to the flicker of torchlight.
Thus Angar was always poor, because a beggar who offered his wonders to only those themselves impoverished could never become rich.
But beauty, sometimes, might not gain wealth either, even in New City where such was valued. This Angar discovered when, walking one twilight with his assistant, the gimp-legged Barak who still looked well enough in her silvered tights and spangles to strut on a stage, to climb suddenly-stiffened ropes to Angar’s flute-play, to float on the air, to be sawn and dismembered within a basket only to re-emerge whole, if still limping, he saw such a vision.
He and his assistant, laden with props, the ropes and instruments, baskets and toothed saws, were still in their chadors, the thick-clothed day-garments protecting them from an over-hot, swollen sun even beneath the New City’s awnings—those shading the streets in its wealthier sectors—seeking a place to set up for their night-show when they passed a small park they had not been to before, one in a poor section, but where two roads crossed that led to shops that sold playthings for the rich and, hence, well-lighted. Thus it was not for them, but, Barak suffering a stone in her shoe, they paused for a moment. They watched as another, chadored as they were beneath the just setting sun, placed an alms basket before a small stage, and then, on its top, a mechanical construct for playing music, a thing that could be wound and offer back tinkling tunes, such as the impecunious danced to on nights of festival. Angar for one moment, curious now, thought to reach for his flute that he might perform with it, whatever it might play, until he remembered his own skills were feeble, that he had once thought he might be a musician except that his fingers were too stiff for such work, his breath too shallow, and so all he could do was play the tune that caused ropes to stiffen, that others might climb them.
And Barak plucked at his sleeve—“Angar,” she whispered, “we should be going. My shoe is all right now”—but curiosity made him still linger. And then more than just that.
The music had started. The sun was completely down. People were gathering, not many to be sure as most on the roads were hurrying to other assignations, but men of some wealth by the style of their chadors, some even with masks of ivory or silver. Some, by their jewelry, of even more wealth than that.
So Angar whispered back, “One moment more, Barak. I wish to see what will happen next.”
And what did happen then some even now dispute: Whether love seized Angar’s heart all at once, or, as love will sometimes, it wormed its way slowly in, building in strength as the heat of that spring, as night followed night, gave way to summer’s searing. But even at that first glimpse, no one will deny that Angar stood transfixed, despite Barak’s sleeve-plucking, as the dancer, mounted upon the stage, slowly let drop the folds of her chador.
Thus Angar watched as shoulders as pale as the full moon revealed themselves, peeking, as sometimes the moon itself will through clouds, out of a tangle of wild, midnight hair, crowning a head of unspeakable beauty. And, as the robe slipped down, then breasts, themselves as moons, pearls strained against a translucency of sheer silk let themselves now be known—yet not entirely known—shadowing under the rounds of their fullness the yielding-yet-firmness of a dancer’s belly, its subtle-curved flat now swelling to perfect hips, as the robe sank farther, now sliding over the triangled dark that peeped between as hips merged to soft-fleshed thighs. Throbbing somewhat now as the music started.
And as Angar still stared.
Twisting now—buttocks in sudden profile, strong, yet soft-curved too—as, beneath, an ankle now freed of the heavy chador kicked it to one side. Calves and thighs flexing. Then first step, second step, flowing transparent silk, as the dancer turned, revealing then her back, once again perfect, the curve of her slim waist—hair swinging above it. Hips flowing in counterpoint.
And yet, at last pulled away by Barak, there was one other thing Angar saw too: That the dancer’s alms basket still remained empty.
• • •
Starting late, Angar and Barak gained few coppers that night, not even when a friend of theirs, Centar, passing by later, joined to regale the crowd with gossip, to keep them attentive while setting up new tricks. Then, finally, it being almost the pre-dawn, re-donning their chadors for the trip back to their various sleep-places, Angar asked Centar: “Do you know of a dancer we saw this night, in a small park not far from here? Near the Road of the Half-Moon? One who dances well—yet in her alms basket had gained no offerings?”
“Few enough we gained ourselves,” Barak broke in. “She is not for you, Angar.”
Angar nodded. “Yet I would know of her. That is, if you know, Centar.”
Centar nodded too. “I have heard of her. She is the one who is flawless of figure, yes? The one all who pass notice.”
Barak plucked Angar’s sleeve, as she had done at the night’s beginning. “And so, let them notice. Angar, we struggle just for our existence, we who are poor people. We, who have been born so. She is not for one like you.”
Angar nodded. “Yes. Yet I am curious … ”
“She,” Centar said, “is as poor as we three are, and even more so. Her name is Tashik, I have heard it gossiped, and her dance is not for the receiving of coppers, but rather the scribbled note-offerings of wealthy men. She is a courtesan.”
“Ah!” Barak whispered.
“Then she sells herself?” Angar persisted. “Like Mara, in Ghouls’ Lane? Or old Barbelan at the crossing of Tombs’ Row—that leads to the causeway—and Ratmongers Alley. What is her asking?”
Centar smiled ruefully. “This and that,” he said. “She brings money home to support her sisters, from those who are generous. Yet it is not that she seeks from her dancing, she the most exquisite of her parents’ spawn—and that is their greatest shame as well—but rather what all alluring daughters of poor parents must seek: A wealthy husband.”
“Ah,” Angar said now, but now Barak questioned:
“Yet she still dances, and yet she is beautiful. I, a woman, and one not uncomely myself in spite of this”—she tapped her game leg, beneath her chador’s folds—“this failing of my birth, I, as I say, may know this more than men do. That beauty such as hers surely by now would have gained many suitors.”
“It would,” Centar said, “except this is the New City. You know its customs, those of its high born, perhaps not so well as I who am a tale-teller, but you hear rumors. That one who is beautiful should have a husband. Except that one as seductive as she may have only the most wealthy of them all—for any lesser to own such a jewel would be quite unacceptable!—and yet, because of that very family that bore her in indigence, within that rarefied stratum of wealth where she must move freely to seek such a husband she is not allowed.”
Then, turning to Angar: “And so, there you have it.”
“Yes,” Angar said. “And so there one has it. I, who would love her, may not possess her. That is the law—because she is beautiful. Yet, of those who might desire such beauty, the few who deserve it may not have her either, except perhaps for the rental-fee of a day, a quick sojourning, and then only in disguise. Then only gifting her with a whore’s offering because her low birth forbids anything else.”
“It is her tragedy,” Centar answered.
• • •
Yet as the nights went on, creeping their way from the Moon of First Budding to that of Wilting, then the Moon of Tempests—the rains of the late spring now hissing acidic against the city’s towers, boiling the river with its causeway crossing, the Tombs on its western side, beyond the Tombs and south as well the blue-lighted haunts of ghouls in what had once been a part of the city too—then to the Lovers’ Moon and, beyond that, the sweltering heat of the Ratcatchers’ Moon, Angar, in spite of Barak’s protestings, made frequent excuses to pass by the park where Tashik set her stage, seeking in vain for the husband she lived to win. Until, one evening just at first rise of the Moon of Goldsmelters, they found the stage empty. And it was then that Angar realized perhaps for the first time what Barak already knew—that she had tried for so long to dissuade him from—that he did love the dancer Tashik, never mind that he had never approached her. Had never spoken or even applauded her—had never dared to—though so many others did. Had never once even sighed her name since that first seeing of her.
Yet now he screamed it. “Where is she?” he shouted. “Where is Tashik? Has she finally found the rich suitor she danced to obtain—one who would love her and not be afraid to show her off among his compatriots? One whose heart could forgive her impoverished birth, her family’s indigence, and love her truly for what she is? For the joy that she brings, both to him and others?”
Barak plucked his sleeve. “She is not here, Angar—who knows where she might be? But we must go now.”
But others did know. He heard them gossiping even as he shook his assistant’s hand from his garment. Snippets of idle talk.
“Died yesterday morning,” one said. “Of a sickness, they believe.”
“Yes, some kind of sickness. You know how these poor are with their diseases.”
“She shouldn’t have danced then—she might have infected us!”
“What of her family, though?”
“What of her burial?”
Yes. What of her burial? Angar strained to hear. Would her family have money enough—he had found out a little of them from Centar with his nose for rumors—or might he and Barak perhaps donate something, anonymously if that was what was needed, to help her across the causeway to the Tombs? To buy her safety from ghouls who might ravage her, and, once arrived, perhaps an honored plot, even a headstone, among the artists who came to rest in that city of marble beyond the river? Or, if the offering were lacking for that much, at least for the passage—the ride on the corpse train—to beg the Tombs’ charity.
There was no dishonor in begging charity—not in the Tombs for respect of the dead.
But others still gossiped, and Angar strained to hear:
“Even now her family still sets the ghoul-watch. But they have not sought out a corpse-train master.”
And Angar screamed again. Screaming, then fainting he fell to the ground, as others backed away. As Barak bent to him.
How many hours it was he did not know when, finally, he woke again, the park deserted save for Barak’s form, softly weeping.
“I have heard more gossip,” she whispered when he awoke. “Centar came by. I sent him off to try to find Tashik’s family—to argue with them. But they say she shamed them. Her lack of success in attaining a husband, it brought them dishonor. Her sisters—her parents—how could they hope to find worthy spouses for their other daughters if this one, who all could see was beautiful, could not find one herself? And for what reason? Because she was poor, which only underscored their own impoverishment. Their own successlessness.”
“But it was not her fault,” Angar said. “That she was too beautiful … ”
“Yes,” Barak said, “because that was how she was born. Just as she was born poor. But we impoverished have our customs too—you know that, Angar. We have our own pride as well, just as the rich do. And that is our tragedy.”
“But then, what of Tashik’s corpse? Do they seek to bury it themselves—to hide it, perhaps, in some dim cellar as some who cannot afford corpse-passage do? Or to keep it within their rooms, as if it were not dead, still speaking to it in bleak pretense until times become better? Which is, in itself, a pretense as well. All these things are our customs.”
Barak shook her head, once again weeping: “They take it south,” she said.
• • •
Once again Angar screamed! Once more he fainted. South—to the Old City. To where its tendrils crossed the great river to defile its eastern bank. Its ghoul-infested ruins separated only from New City by a small, mud-choked stream, easily crossed, and where some brought their dead, yes. Hoping, perhaps, to buy the ghouls’ favor with such grisly offerings so that, when more greatly loved family members should come to their own passage, these ones might be left undesecrated. Or sometimes criminals, too, were left for the ghouls, to take their pleasure from. Or to be used by the ghouls’ Necromancers.
But surely not Tashik!
And Barak stroked his hand when Angar wakened. “It is what Centar told me,” she whispered. “I know—it is cruel. But is not life cruel as well, here in a land where death pervades everything? When, year by year, even the sun itself grows more poisoned, blasting the world with its ever increasing heat?”
“But death, for that reason, must be respected all the more,” Angar said. “For what else is there? And Tashik—her beauty to be left out for the ghouls … ?”
“Shhh,” Barak whispered. “It is nearly dawn, Angar. And I … I love you, despite the fact that I cannot have you—can have no husband. My bad leg precludes it. And yet I would see you safe … ”
Angar shook his head. “No,” he whispered, “not Tashik for the ghouls!” Then, regaining his feet, he turned to Barak:
“Then you will help me?”
She, standing too, nodded.
“Then give me your pack,” he said. “Its props and its stage cloth. And give me your sunhat—the one you wear when you climb the stiffened rope. With it, and my chador, keeping to shade as much as I am able, perhaps I might walk by day, safely, as you suggest.”
“Then … ?”
“I go south too. South to find Tashik, where they have laid her corpse. Tell Centar if you can. In sunlight, the ghouls will not leave their caverns, their shattered shelters of brick and stone, but when next night comes I may need my friends’ help.”
“Then you plan to take it? To steal Tashik’s corpse and carry it yourself across the causeway? That is, if Tashik’s parents will let you. Or the corpse-train masters who guard their profits—who will lie in wait to bar you from its road. Angar, what you will do will be no secret … ”
“Shhh,” Angar said now. He kissed Barak once, for the first and the last time. “I know not what I will do,” he whispered. “Only that I love her.”
• • •
Angar indeed had no plan as he trudged south, burdened as he was, trailing what he thought might be Tashik’s corpse’s path. For he was not clever. He was not learned, as those of the schools were, the scions of rich patrons who could afford study. Yet, as a poor man must, he would do what he could.
He had never been outside by day before, not as some wealthy went, chadored and day-masked to taste its dangers for pure pleasure of the thrill, scurrying back to the awninged shade of the city’s main streets, its wealthier quarters, before the sun rose too high. Before the mists that swept from the river dissolved in the morning wind, blowing from north at first, then from the west as the day grew hotter. Nor were there even awnings where he progressed, through the poor sectors where city amenities grew ever more thin. Where buildings grew smaller and shabby-exteriored until, in some parts, it was hard to distinguish these from the Old City’s ruins themselves.
Yet he did not pass alone through these poor sectors, for there were some there worse off than even he. Or even those members of Tashik’s family who, after all, did the thing that they did, taking her carcass south, because they had to—because of their poverty, the things they had not—and now were bereft even of their daughter despite their shame of her.
For these were the homeless, the ones Angar passed now, the ones with no day-quarters—not even ruins as ghouls cowered beneath, nor even basements as were used by corpses of some of the poorest in Angar’s own sector, for these were all taken. But rather, in some cases, only a narrow straw in recompense for a lifetime of service within the New City, and with it permission to use it to breathe through beneath the water of some public fountain, thus using its coolness to survive through the day until, at twilight, they must rise again so that others might use it for washing or cooking.
And yet other cases as Angar proceeded south, worse off than even these, shuffling, bent-over men decked in sunhats accreted with trash, with cardboard and wastepaper, shards and cast-off cloths dangling about them as portable house-garments that they wore with them, to sleep and eat in. And always shuffling, always in some motion lest they fall over, or be taken in the wind, leaving them thus naked.
To bake as corpses might, within the cruel sun’s glare.
And from this, Angar formed somewhat of a plan. To use the stage cloth in Barak’s pack to build a tent from, with ropes and prop-poles to keep it erect, to thus at least keep Tashik’s body cool until the day drew closed. And, finding at last that selfsame corpse dropped as if it were trash itself on the cracked stone of a small, weed-choked plaza that overlooked the stream, facing the ghoul-ruins, more of his plan formed.
But not all at once yet.
Because first things came first. Erecting his tent, he removed his chador and made of it a cushion for Tashik, laying her naked flesh comfortably on it, as if she were sleeping. Her face to the heavens beneath the tent’s shade, her arms, the stiffness of first-death already half melted by the heat, crossed beneath full, soft breasts. Doing thus, he kissed her, gently, on still-red lips, then, reaching further within Barak’s pack, found a brush to help better arrange her long, black hair.
And, kissing her once more, he sat and waited, cataloging the contents of both Barak’s pack and his, arranging the props, the slippery unguents that helped in escape tricks, the saws and the pit-irons—these latter to use as picks to rake the rats off when they came later—and, taking his flute, he improvised tunes to her beauty.
And, as the sun sank over the Tombs to west, the lights of New City to north flickering on to reflect in the river that flowed between, he saw she was beautiful. More even now, perhaps, than when she still lived—when she had danced, her flesh under its sheer chemise peeping forth only in bits and promises—now bereft even of that for his eyes alone. His hands alone to touch, feeling its suppleness.
Her dead flesh glowing now, soft, beneath the moon. The moon just rising. Except–
To south—lights too!
Blue, sparking pin-pricks—the first of the ghoul-lights began to be seen as well, those that would take the corpse.
Those Angar begged might somehow be delayed in crossing the stream, at least until Centar—if Barak had even been able to find him, to tell him where he had gone—came bringing friends to help ward off the death-eaters. The corpse-despoilers, regardless of beauty.
Regardless of Angar’s love.
And it was then, as the first ghouls approached him, rising up out of the mud of the steam-bed that they had just clambered through, that Angar realized the action his love must take.
• • •
It was a moment—a moment’s time only—to spread the corpse’s legs. To kiss what lay between, moistening it with his tongue. Stripping the clothes from his own heated body, to slip himself inside, lifting its legs to cross over his buttocks. Kissing its mouth now, pressing the soft, red lips gently apart, spitting out insects that already squirmed inside to give more room for his own tongue’s probings.
Holding its hands, until crossing them also over his back as if she embraced him.
While all the time hearing the ghouls’ puzzled murmuring as they drew nearer, surrounding him and the dead flesh of Tashik. And yet … hesitating.
“What do you want?” he breathed, once, looking up. A moment only, before lips rejoined to lips. “Why do you hover so—do you think she is dead? Do you think dead women love as Tashik does, and as I love her too?”
And in that moment Angar also saw that his friend, Centar, had arrived at the square, still at its far side, but with others with him. With ratpicks and weapons—stout, iron-bound staffs. And Centar, a gossip, whose trade was cleverness, seeing at once what this new trick of Angar’s was, readily took the cue.
“Back with you, ghouls!” he cried. “Have you no eyes to see what they are doing? I know not why she is here, but she is not for you. How could she make love if she were not living?”
The ghouls still pressed forward, too many for Centar’s small party to combat, yet still hesitated. “We smell the stink of death,” their leader answered. “If so, she is ours to have. Why they do what they do, she trembling with him, rising and bouncing with him in his motion, I cannot answer, but, if dead, she is ours. That is what the law says!”
Centar nodded. “If dead,” he answered. “But dead flesh does not love. And as for what you smell, have there not been corpses enough in this square before, soaking its very stones with their odor? Is it not natural that some should remain then, even if, as now, it has been taken back by the living? Been taken for love’s sake?”
The ghoul stepped back, but one step only. “The boundary,” he said, “is sometimes tenuous between what we may lawfully take and what we may not. We will respect the law. But, when they finish, then we shall look closer—because death’s stench is here.”
• • •
Thus as the moon rose, the ghouls held back, skulking now in the ruins at the square’s sides, while Angar continued in his love for Tashik. A conjurer, he knew tricks—just as he knew the ghouls’ leader was right, that the boundary is tenuous between death and living—and so, conjurer-trained, he controlled his body just as he might in certain escape tricks, slowing its processes. Lessening his heartbeat. His breathing, his need for food. Concentrating his being alone in what he was doing, and drawing that out too. Holding himself from its natural conclusion.
And others gathered as well as that night progressed, Barak among them, who understood also. Who shouted to others to make the tent larger that sheltered the lovers, knowing that, if need be, Angar would continue what he did throughout the next day.
But that he would need help.
And so she ordered, she cajoled, she persuaded the newcomers to bring more friends, to donate chadors and hoods and eating cloths to make a shelter that, by the time day came, gave ample protection to her and Centar and others who helped as well. Some of them now wielding rakes and ratpicks to pluck off the vermin that came with morning, others with oils and perfumes to give Angar to anoint their bodies with, his and dead Tashik’s, to keep them both supple. When, during the day, Angar sometimes took brief rests—as any lovers might pause to take breath, but surreptitiously, rubbing the oils in to keep her flesh moist and smooth, turning her over at times to brush off the grubs gathering now in the cleft of her buttocks, in the small of her back. Turning himself, too, to rest his cramped muscles, continuing loving her but she now on the top, arching and bobbing to his thrusts as he mouthed her nipples, tonguing the globes they tipped as day became new night.
Yet the ghouls watched on, crouching within their caves within the crumbled ruins as even more of Angar’s friends gathered. But even more ghouls, too. And other people, some of them wealthy as rumors spread to their parts of the city, now gathered also. Because the rich, as well, knew something of love’s strength, and so, that second night—and more nights after—what once was a tent having since accreted new materials, rubbish and cast-off blocks, sticks and timbers, becoming itself a house just as the homeless wore in lieu of garments, but larger, more permanent, Barak arranged a cloth screen at its entrance, and lanterns behind it. Thus those who gathered now could see projected, in form of a shadow-play, Angar’s and Tashik’s love within the chamber. Angar again on top. And outside, also, Barak set baskets so that the wealthy—especially the wealthy—might offer donations.
Thus, as nights went on, a full week by now or more, as larger crowds gathered—even ghouls joining now, rubbing elbows with New City people as if there were never an ill will between them because even death-eaters had a respect for love—Barak, understanding full well what would come of this lovemaking, crept one more time inside.
There she saw: Still the form of Angar, but he and Tashik now joined completely, flesh melted in flesh as, despite Angar’s love, decay, as it must, had claimed her body. Spreading itself through flesh once lush and pliable to Angar’s own on top, rotting his flesh as well. Even then spreading as, still, he made love to hers.
“Angar?” Barak whispered.
“I still live,” he answered. “But I will soon join her—my soul to Tashik’s. As well as my body.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “But will her soul love you?”
• • •
And that was the question that some still ask, who bore witness to Angar’s love for Tashik: Was his love a true love?
And, just as important, did she, in her soul, in due time respond to it?
It was in the third week, after yet one more day of the sun’s searing heat, one more attending to what was within to drive back the rats and the sharp-clawed grave lizards, that motion finally ceased. By then both corpses were so far liquefied that not even the ghouls had reason left to disturb them, but, rather, scuttled back over the stream to their natural haunts, to await new corpses. For new corpses would come, if not here to the south, then at least to the Tombs, traveling the causeway west on the corpse trains, torch-lit and guarded. Wealthy and poor alike.
While here a new tomb rose out of the piled debris that at first was a tent, now, with the offerings from Barak’s baskets, become an accretion of cast-away marble—some from the Tombs itself!—of slate and granite, shale and sandstone. Such grave-goods as could be bought, if not real jewels, at least glass and trinkets. Flowers that may have been already wilted, but bought in profusion to lay on the lovers, Angar’s flesh still topping Tashik’s beneath it.
And so this tomb was sealed, a tomb for paupers, but more than that also: A monument to love. For, to the first question, was Angar’s love true, who else but a lover would sacrifice so much for so small a part of her? For her flesh only—alive or unliving. And as for the second, did she at last love him, this much at least is known. That Tashik’s corpse in some way responded, holding itself back from total corruption until the body of Angar, as well, was prepared to follow. The animus, that is, the most surface part of the soul that gives motion, that holds flesh together, awaited him that long.
And, if through such love their bodies were so conjoined, is it not likely that, within their true depths, both souls must have loved too?