CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness (18 page)

For long moments I don’t speak. If I don’t speak this nightmare will end. I will wake in Baghdad, or Beit Zujaaj. But I don’t wake.

She speaks again, and I cover my ears, though the sound is beauty itself.

The words you hear come not from my mouth, and you
do not hear them with your ears. I ask you to listen with your
mind and your heart. We will die, my husband and I, if you will
not lend us your skill. Have you, learned one, never needed to be
something other that what you are?

Cinnamon scent and the sound of an oasis wind come to me. I cannot speak to this demon. My heart will stop if I do, I am certain. I want to run, but fear has fixed my feet. I turn to Abdel Jameela, who stands there wringing his hands.

“Why am I here, Uncle? God damn you, why did you call me here? There is no sick woman here! God protect me, I know nothing of . . . of ghouls, or—” A horrible thought comes to me. “You . . . you are not hoping to make her into a woman? Only God can . . . ”

The old hermit casts his eyes downward. “Please . . . you must listen to my wife. I beg you.” He falls silent and his wife, behind the screen again, goes on.

My husband and I have been on this hilltop too long,
learned one. My body cannot stand so much time away from my
people.
I smell yellow roses and hear bumblebees droning beneath her voice.
If we stay in this place one more season, I will die. And without me to care for him and keep age’s scourge from him,
my sweet Abdel Jameela will die too. But across the desert there
is a life for us. My father was a prince among our people. Long
ago I left. For many reasons. But I never forsook my birthright.
My father is dying now, I have word. He has left no sons and so
his lands are mine. Mine, and my handsome husband’s.

In her voice is a chorus of wind-chimes. Despite myself, I lift my eyes. She steps from behind the screen, clad now in a black abaya and a mask. Behind the mask’s mesh is the glint of wolf-teeth. I look again to the floor, focusing on a faded blue spiral in the carpet and the kindness in that voice.

But my people do not love men. I cannot claim my lands
unless things change. Unless my husband shows my people that
he can change.

Somehow I force myself to speak. “What . . . what do you mean, change?”

There is a cymbal-shimmer in her voice and sandalwood incense fills my nostrils.
O learned one, you will help me to
make these my Abdel Jameela’s.

She extends her slender brown hands, ablaze with henna. In each she holds a length of golden sculpture—goat-like legs ending in shining, cloven hooves. A thick braid of gold thread dances at the end of each statue-leg, alive.

Madness, and I must say so though this creature may kill me for it. “I have not the skill to do this! No man alive does!”

You will not do this through your skill alone. Just as I
cannot do it through my sorcery alone. My art will guide yours
as your hands work.
She takes a step toward me and my shoulders clench at the sound of her hooves hitting the earth.

“No! No . . . I cannot do this thing.”

“Please!” I jump at Abdel Jameela’s voice, nearly having forgotten him. There are tears in the old man’s eyes as he pulls at my galabeya, and his stink gets in my nostrils. “Please listen! We need your help. And we know what has brought you to Beit Zujaaj.” The old man falls to his knees before me. “Please! Would not your Shireen aid us?”

With those words he knocks the wind from my lungs. How can he know that name? The Shaykh hadn’t lied—there
is
witchcraft at work here, and I should run from it.

But, Almighty God help me, Abdel Jameela is right. Fierce as she is, Shireen still has her dreamy Persian notions—that love is more important than money or duty or religion. If I turn this old man away . . .

My throat is dry and cracked. “How do you know of Shireen?” Each word burns.

His eyes dart away. “She has . . . ways, my wife.”

“All protection comes from God.” I feel foul even as I steel myself with the old words. Is this forbidden? Am I walking the path of those who displease the Almighty? God forgive me, it is hard to know or to care when my beloved is gone. “If I were a good Muslim I would run down to the village now and . . . and . . . ”

And what, learned one? Spread word of what you have
seen? Bring men with spears and arrows? Why would you do
this?
Vanilla beans and the sound of rain give way to something else. Clanging steel and clean-burning fire.
I will
not let you harm my husband. What we ask is not disallowed
to you. Can you tell me, learned one, that
it is in your book of
what
is blessed and what
is forbidden not
to give
a man
golden legs?

It is not. Not in so many words. But this thing can’t be acceptable in God’s eyes. Can it? “Has this ever been done before?”

There are old stories. But it has been centuries.
Each of her words spreads perfume and music and she asks
Please,
learned one, will you help us?
And then one scent rises above the others.

Almighty God protect me, it is the sweat-and-ambergris smell of my beloved. Shireen of the ribbing remark, who in quiet moments confessed her love of my learning. She
would
help them.

Have I any choice after that? This, then, the fruit of my study. And this my reward for wishing to be more than what I am. A twisted, unnatural path.

“Very well.” I reach for my small saw and try not to hear Abdel Jameela’s weird whimpers as I sharpen it.

I give him poppy and hemlock, but as I work Abdel Jameela still screams, nearly loud enough to make my heart cease beating. His old body is going through things it should not be surviving. And I am the one putting him through these things, with knives and fire and bone-breaking clamps. I wad cotton and stuff it in my ears to block out the hermit’s screams.

But I feel half-asleep as I do so, hardly aware of my own hands. Somehow the demon’s magic is keeping Abdel Jameela alive and guiding me through this grisly task. It is painful, like having two minds crammed inside my skull and shadow-puppet poles lashed to my arms. I am burning up, and I can barely trace my thoughts. Slowly I become aware of the she-ghoul’s voice in my head and the scent of apricots.

Cut there. Now the mercury powder. The cautering iron
is hot. Put a rag in his mouth so he does not bite his tongue.
I flay and cauterize and lose track of time. A fever cooks my mind away. I work through the evening prayer, then the night prayer. I feel withered inside.

In each step Abdel Jameela’s wife guides me. With her magic she rifles my mind for the knowledge she needs and steers my skilled fingers. For a long while there is only her voice in my head and the feeling of bloody instruments in my hands, which move with a life of their own.

Then I am holding a man’s loose tendons in my right hand and thick golden threads in my left. There are shameful smells in the air and Abdel Jameela shouts and begs me to stop even though he is half-asleep with the great pot of drugs I have forced down his throat.

Something is wrong!
The she-ghoul screams in my skull and Abdel Jameela passes out. My hands no longer dance magically. The shining threads shrivel in my fist. We have failed, though I know not exactly how.

No! No! Our skill! Our sorcery! But his body refuses!
There are funeral wails in the air and the smell of houses burning.
My husband! Do something, physicker!

The golden legs turn to dust in my hands. With my ears I hear Abdel Jameela’s wife growl a wordless death-threat.

I deserve death! Almighty God, what have I done? An old man lies dying on my blanket. I have sawed off his legs at a she-ghoul’s bidding. There is no strength save in God! I bow my head.

Then I see them. Just above where I’ve amputated Abdel Jameela’s legs are the swollen bulges that I’d thought came from gout. But it is not gout that has made these. There is something buried beneath the skin of each leg. I take hold of my scalpel and flay each thin thigh. The old man moans with what little life he has left.

What are you doing?
Abdel Jameela’s wife asks the walls of my skull. I ignore her, pulling at a flap of the old man’s thigh-flesh, revealing a corrupted sort of miracle.

Beneath Abdel Jameela’s skin, tucked between muscles, are tiny legs. Thin as spindles and hairless. Each folded little leg ends in a minuscule hoof.

Unbidden, a memory comes to me—Shireen and I in the Caliph’s orchards. A baby bird had fallen from its nest. I’d sighed and bit my lip and my Shireen—a dreamer, but not a soft one—had laughed and clapped at my tender-heartedness.

I slide each wet gray leg out from under the flayed skin and gently unbend them. As I flex the little joints, the she-ghoul’s voice returns.

What . . . what is this, learned one? Tell me!

For a long moment I am mute. Then I force words out, my throat still cracked. “I . . . I do not know. They are—they look like—the legs of a kid or a ewe still in the womb.”

It is as if she nods inside my mind.
Or the legs of one of
my people. I have long wondered how a mere man could
captivate me so.

“All knowledge and understanding lies with God,” I say. “Perhaps your husband always had these within him. The villagers say he is of uncertain parentage. Or perhaps . . . Perhaps his love for you . . . The crippled beggars of Cairo are the most grotesque—and the best—in the world. It is said that they wish so fiercely to make money begging that their souls reshape their bodies from the inside out. Yesterday I saw such stories as nonsense. But yesterday I’d have named
you
a villager’s fantasy, too.” As I speak I continue to work the little legs carefully, to help their circulation. The she-ghoul’s sorcery no longer guides my hands, but a physicker’s nurturing routines are nearly as compelling. There is weakness here and I do what I can to help it find strength.

The tiny legs twitch and kick in my hands.

Abdel Jameela’s wife howls in my head.
They are
drawing on my magic. Something pulls at—
The voice falls silent.

I let go of the legs and, before my eyes, they begin to grow. As they grow, they fill with color, as if blood flowed into them. Then fur starts to sprout upon them.

“There is no strength or safety but in God!” I try to close my eyes and focus on the words I speak but I can’t. My head swims and my body swoons.

The spell that I cast on my poor husband to preserve him
—these hidden hooves of his nurse on it! O, my surprising,
wonderful husband!
I hear loud lute music and smell lemongrass and then everything around me goes black.

When I wake I am on my back, looking up at a purple sky. An early morning sky. I am lying on a blanket outside the hovel. I sit up and Abdel Jameela hunches over me with his sour smell. Further away, near the hill-path, I see the black shape of his wife.

“Professor, you are awake! Good!” the hermit says. “We were about to leave.”

But we are glad to have the chance to thank you.

My heart skips and my stomach clenches as I hear that voice in my head again. Kitten purrs and a crushed cardamom scent linger beneath the demon’s words. I look at Abdel Jameela’s legs.

They are sleek and covered in fur the color of almonds. And each leg ends in a perfect cloven hoof. He walks on them with a surprising grace.

Yes, learned one, my beloved husband lives and stands
on two hooves. It would not be so if we hadn’t had your help.
You have our gratitude.

Dazedly clambering to my feet, I nod in the she-ghoul’s direction. Abdel Jameela claps me on the back wordlessly and takes a few goat-strides toward the hill-path. His wife makes a slight bow to me.
With my people, learned one, gratitude is
more than a word. Look toward the hovel.

I turn and look. And my breath catches.

A hoard right out of the stories. Gold and spices. Jewels and musks. Silver and silks. Porcelain and punks of aloe.

It is probably ten times the dowry Shireen’s father seeks.

We leave you this and wish you well. I have purged the
signs of our work in the hovel. And in the language of the
donkeys, I have called two wild asses to carry your goods. No
troubles left to bother our brave friend!

I manage to smile gratefully with my head high for one long moment. Blood and bits of the old man’s bone still stain my hands. But as I look on Abdel Jameela and his wife in the light of the sunrise, all my thoughts are not grim or grisly.

As they set off on the hill-path the she-ghoul takes Abdel Jameela’s arm, and the hooves of husband and wife scrabble against the pebbles of Beit Zujaaj hill. I stand stock-still, watching them walk toward the land of the ghouls.

They cross a bend in the path and disappear behind the hill. And a faint voice, full of mischievous laughter and smelling of early morning love in perfumed sheets, whispers in my head.
No troubles at all, learned one. For last night your
Shireen’s husband-to-be lost his battle with the destroyer of
delights.

Can it really be so? The old vulture dead? And me a rich man? I should laugh and dance. Instead I am brought to my knees by the heavy memory of blood-spattered golden hooves. I wonder whether Shireen’s suitor died from his illness, or from malicious magic meant to reward me. I fear for my soul. For a long while I kneel there and cry.

But after a while I can cry no longer. Tears give way to hopes I’d thought dead. I stand and thank Beneficent God, hoping it is not wrong to do so. Then I begin to put together an acceptable story about a secretly-wealthy hermit who has rewarded me for saving his wife’s life. And I wonder what Shireen and her father will think of the man I have become.