A Lesson for the Cyclops (8 page)

“I was bound and gagged, and tossed into the back of a wagon like the cheap piece of meat I had become. The wagon took me to the outskirts of Bryanae. The sorcerer was waiting for me there at the abandoned cabin, isolated from the rest of the world by a forest on three sides and the ocean beating upon a rocky shore on the fourth.

“The sorcerer was very tall, very thin, and wore dark velvet robes and a dark hood over his dark face. When he spoke, it chilled my bones.

“‘You’ve been a very naughty child,’ he said in a voice laced with malevolent glee, ‘and I have been paid handsomely to see that you are appropriately punished.’

“At his command, the brigands ripped my clothes from me, but the sorcerer showed no signs of sexual interest. He grasped my face, and turned it this way and that, admiring it.

“‘You are beautiful,’ he said. ‘That is what you prize most, is it not? That is what gives you a sense of value, a sense of importance.’

“He took a step away from me and examined me like I was an insect.

“‘That is what I shall take from you.’

“He reached for me again, but now his hand seemed to be on fire. A lapping red corona surrounded it, and cast fearsome shadows onto his already fearsome black face. And those eyes! They burned!

“I screamed and screamed, but no one came to help me. No one took pity on me, not even when the sorcerer began to sear my flesh.”

“The worst was my eye,” the Cyclops said, shuddering. “After that, I barely even noticed when he burned the rest of my face and neck. No pain could compare to having your eye boil out of its socket. Nothing the sorcerer did after that could make me forget it. Nothing that has happened in my life since has made me forget that pain.”

The Cyclops held herself, shivering. D’Arbignal moved to hold her, but she shook her head and he withdrew. It was the first time she had ever spoken of her burning. She felt somehow liberated, but it also served to remind her further of her evil deeds. No matter how bad she felt, she knew she deserved it and more.

“The sorcerer and the brigands left me in the middle of nowhere, naked and hideous. I was awash in agony, barely able to think, let alone move, but I realized that I needed help or I would die.

“So I crawled back to the city. Horsemen and carriages passed, yet not one would stop to help me, no matter how much I begged. Only once did someone show me mercy; a priest, seeing me on my hands and knees by the side of the road, tossed the remains of his pheasant dinner from his carriage. The carriage didn’t slow the slightest as it passed.

“It took me days to get back to the City of Bryanae; I slept in ditches, on rocks, wherever my strength to crawl just gave out for the day. When I made it to the city, I was such a bloody, disgusting mess that the Guard refused me entrance, fearing that I carried plague.

“I skirted the city walls, and eventually regained my ability to walk. I staggered along the path to my new home, still agonized, and now wearing a discarded blanket as my only attire.

“I reached the Duke’s manor a couple of hours before dawn. I had convinced myself that when he saw what had been done to me, he’d care for me until I had recovered enough to have our wedding, and that he would exact cruel vengeance on those who had done this to me. Yes, I was that big of a fool.

“The night guard refused to admit me to the manor. I begged and pleaded with him, then his superior, and then
his
superior. At last, the Duke himself came to the castle gates. He glanced at me only once, averted his eyes in disgust, and told the guards he did not know me. They dragged me from the castle gates and set me back on the road to Bryanae.

“I walked for days, all the way back to my family’s home, but they, too denied knowing me; indeed, they denied ever
having
a daughter. I sobbed and begged them to forgive me, but there was no forgiveness in their hearts. I left my home, heading off without a direction. Where was I to go? How would I survive without any prospects for marriage, without any skills?

“While I stumbled through a field, starving and feverish—much as you were when you came to us—I was beset by thieves. They were dismayed to learn that I had nothing of value. I was too ugly even to bother raping. However, one of them knew a man who ran a freak show, and he brought me there for a finder’s fee. But the owner of the show had been cruel, and smashed everything I loved, down to the smallest teacup. When the Venucha Players passed by, I left the freak show and begged Marco for a job with the circus.

“He paid me almost nothing, but for the first time since I had been abducted, I was in a place that could pass for a home. I wasn’t respected, but I wasn’t treated any worse than the other freaks. And I even bought a pair of teacups. I’ll show them to you if you like…”

D’Arbignal eyes shone with moisture, and for a moment, he seemed stricken mute. When he tried to speak, his voice caught and he had to clear his throat.

“Sure,” he said, his voice gruff, his eyes full of sadness. “I’d love to see your teacups.”

The Cyclops stepped around the beautiful wig she had thrown to the floor and went to her trunk. She searched through it to find her teacups, only to find the shards at the bottom.

“Oh,” she said, tears dripping down her face. “I guess Alfredo must have smashed them when he was looking for your rapier.”

“What?”
D’Arbignal said, his eyes narrowing. The expression on his face was fierce.

The Cyclops shrugged and pointed at the gown she wore. “So you can see why I don’t deserve to have a nice dress like this, or a beautiful wig like that, or even to have you be my friend. I deserve to be the hideous freak that I am. I deserve to be alone and despised. I have no right to want or expect anything else.”

D’Arbignal stared at her for a few minutes, saying nothing. Then at length, he nodded in agreement.

“Right,” he said, standing up. “You’ve got a point. I’ll go and kill Conchinara now. Be back in a bit.”

He exited the tent, leaving the Cyclops gaping in astonishment.

The Cyclops stared at the tent flap, frozen in astonishment. Then the thought began to sink in: D’Arbignal was going to murder Conchinara!

At first, the Cyclops was paralyzed by confusion and indecision. Then the call to action screamed louder in her ears.

D’Arbignal was going to murder Conchinara!

The Cyclops sprinted from her tent, calling D’Arbignal’s name. It would be her fault if he killed Conchinara, and she needed no other crimes on her conscience.

“D’Arbig—!” she started to call again, but stopped abruptly no more than three steps from her tent. D’Arbignal was standing next to Pahula, gazing at her tattooed chest with intense interest.

“Yees,” Pahula said, pleased, but her voice tinted with suspicion, “it
deed
hurt a lot when they make this one.”

D’Arbignal clicked his tongue sympathetically. “I can imagine. Still, it’s more than beautiful: it’s a masterpiece!”

The Tattooed Lady blushed. “Thank you, Meester D’Arbignal.”

“No ‘Mister’,” he said. “Just D’Arbignal will suf—” He saw the Cyclops now. “Ah! You’ll have to excuse me; my date has arrived.”

Pahula’s eyes narrowed. “Your date?”

D’Arbignal winked and strode back to the Cyclops.

“I thought you were going to kill Conchinara,” the Cyclops whispered, herding D’Arbignal back into her tent.

“So what of it?” he said, as though discussing the weather. “You cheated on your fiancé when you were—what?—twenty?”

“Sixteen,” she said.

“Sixteen. You cheated on him when you were sixteen, and for that, you deserved to be tortured, humiliated, and scarred for the rest of your life. Conchinara was trying to cheat on her
husband;
I figure that if a sixteen-year-old girl deserved what you did, then an adult like her certainly deserves to die for her deeds. Do you disagree?”

“What?” the Cyclops said. “Yes. I mean no. I mean—”

“Well, which is it? Either you deserve what happened to you, in which case Conchinara deserves a good murdering, perhaps with a dash of torture thrown in for seasoning, or your punishment was far in excess of what you possibly could have deserved. Which is it?”

The Cyclops’s mind reeled. “It’s … it’s not that simple.”

“Sure it is. A sixteen-year-old girl makes a single mistake, and for that, she deserves to suffer every minute of the rest of her life, right?”

“But … Hernando killed him—”

“Oh right, I forgot about that. That was an impressive trick! How, exactly, did you take over his body from such a great distance and make him hang himself? That seems like a useful skill. Can you teach it to me?”

“It wasn’t like that,” she protested. “I mean, I made him do it, but—”

“For a woman with such poor self-esteem, you’re giving yourself an awful lot of credit,” he said. “You managed to strip the boy of his free will. You controlled his mind so thoroughly that you forced him to hang himself. That’s quite a boast! I mean, I’ve been known to tell a few tall tales in my time, but I’ve never bragged about something
that
ludicrous before!”

D’Arbignal laughed, and it was not a kind laughter. There was mockery in it.

Fury rose up in the Cyclops’s heart. She had revealed her deepest secret, and he was taunting her about it.

Without realizing it, she slapped him hard across the face. She gasped and looked at her hand as though it were alien to her.

“That’s more like it,” D’Arbignal said, his voice gentle again. He put his hand on her chest, and she gasped.

“There’s a human heart beating beneath this skin,” he said. “Humans make mistakes, especially young ones. And you know what? Hernando was human, too, and he also was young, and he, too, made mistakes. Ending his own life was the biggest mistake there is.

“You don’t get to take responsibility for what other people do. They make their own decisions. Alfredo may be an obnoxious boor, but that didn’t force Conchinara to come to my tent. You may have been a brainless girl, but that didn’t force the Duke to take your virginity. It didn’t force him to take you away from your home. It didn’t force your father to disown you. It didn’t force poor, stupid Hernando to commit suicide. And it didn’t force his parents to exact such a horrible vengeance on you.

“They made their own decisions,”
D’Arbignal said. “You made your mistake, and they made theirs. And by the Icy Inferno, you’ve paid more for your mistake than any woman ever should.”

“I’m not a woman,” she said. “I’m a thing.”

D’Arbignal leaned in and kissed her once, gently on the lips. She felt her legs turn to rubber.

“No,” he said, “you’re a woman. Trust me: I have plenty of experience with women.”

The Cyclops stared at him, open-mouthed.

D’Arbignal adjusted the lace on his shirt. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a show to put on.”

He moved to exit the tent.

“But …” the Cyclops said, her mind spinning.

“Yes?” He lingered at the exit.

She fumbled for words. She couldn’t think.

“You … you said you had another item for me in your bag?”

D’Arbignal grinned, and his smile lit up her heart.

“Meet me by the creek tonight after we shut down, and I’ll show you,” he said and left.

She put on the wig before leaving her tent. Astonished silence greeted her as she passed. The haulmen who had been busy carrying materials to the various attraction locations came to a halt to gawk. Pahula watched with wonder in her eyes.

“So bootiful …” she said. “How do you do this, Maria? Is it magic?”

The Cyclops did not know what to say. She supposed it was a
kind
of magic: that someone as handsome and larger than life as D’Arbignal had somehow noticed and taken an interest in her. If that was not a miracle, then she didn’t know what would qualify.

Pahula fell into step next to her, heading for the Freak Show. As they approached it, the midget twins joined in the gawking.

The last time the Cyclops had felt this many interested eyes on her, she had been sixteen and beautiful. She had gotten used to being invisible: worthy of a disgusted glance, perhaps, but not a good, long look. The similarity of the situation to those horrible days when she had ruined her life made her feel queasy, but she kept walking.

They made their own decisions.
She kept repeating the sentence in her head. She had done wrong, but it had been a mistake, and children make mistakes all the time. Everyone else had made their own decisions. She didn’t make them do it.

She probed inward, trying to figure out how guilty she should feel. How much of what happened was her fault? She obviously wasn’t innocent, but how much of the blame for Hernando’s death should she carry?

Her stomach roiled. In a way, it had been easier to blame everything on herself. It had simplified things. Now, reality seemed more fluid, more complex, more complicated.

A feminine gasp snapped her from her contemplation. Conchinara looked at her, eyes wide with astonishment. She started to point and laugh, but quickly noticed how everyone else was looking at the Cyclops and her face went blank for a moment.

Conchinara tossed her long black hair and looked at the Cyclops with her chin raised imperiously. She pursed her lips into a taunting pout, and waved a mockingly sad bye-bye to her.

The Cyclops suddenly felt ill. In the whirlwind of emotions and action, she had forgotten that Marco was kicking her out of the circus. She felt dizzy. There was no future for her. How would she live?

Conchinara’s pout turned into a vindictive smile, and the Cyclops knew that it had been she who had convinced Marco to abandon her. Why? How could someone be so cruel?

Conchinara smiled sweetly as the Cyclops entered the Freak Show tent.

The Cyclops met D’Arbignal by the creek, as promised. She walked carefully though the woods, holding up a lamp in one hand, and waving a stick before her with the other. Since she lost her eye, her depth perception had suffered and she always felt nervous walking among trees with their pointy branches. It was too easy to misjudge how close they were, and if she ran into one with her good eye…!