Little Gods (12 page)

I once saw in Georgia, and I wondered how many dawns and journeys I had left.

The god departed, and I whispered my thanks to the punkette, pushed back from the table, stood up, and walked into the remaining hours and miles of my life.

Fable from a Cage

Let me tell you a little fable, a story I crafted while sitting inside this dangling cage, where the rooks shit on me and steal my bread all day, and the smoke from your town fires stings my eyes all night.

Did you know the owls feed me? They bring me rats, mice, squirrels, and I eat them. That's why I haven't died yet. I'll never die, not here, wait all you like.

My fable? Yes. Oh, yes. It will, most assuredly, have a moral. Hunker down and listen for it, boys.

Once there was a thief who wandered in this country, passing from valley to valley in the night, loosening the ropes on cows and leading them away to sell in another town. He lifted bags of fruit from wagons, he picked up things that others put down. He was not a brigand, understand—he did not knock down defenseless women, he did not swagger with a looted sword on his hip, he did not terrorize the roads; indeed, he traveled
between
the roads more than on them. His crimes were all crimes of opportunity, but for an observant man, there are many opportunities for crime.

Not a brigand, no, but also nothing so grand as a burglar or a master thief. For there are men who can be like artists of the criminal trades, and this thief had known such men, but he did not compare to them. His was a lonely life, always running from one village to another, and he wondered sometimes how he had come to live in such a way—he, who had been born in the city.

Oh, yes, the city, you greedy little shits, look how your eyes widen and the drool falls from your lips. This thief had been born in the city, son of a banker, and he might have had a nice life there if he hadn't dallied with the daughter of a ship's captain ... but that is a different story, and not a fable at all—not a moral tale, in any sense, my young ones.

So this thief—who had a fine black beard, his one vanity, a beard as fine as mine was before this month without trimming—had fallen on hard times. He was down to his last coins, and his fine clothes (lifted from a tailor's shop, and almost exactly the right size) were stained from trying to steal a pig the night before, an act below even his usual flexible standards.

He was musing on what to do next, for he had decided that three years traveling this way was more than enough, but he felt too old to apprentice himself to a trade. Indeed, he knew himself well enough to know that the moment his master smith or cooper turned his back, he would feel compelled to snatch up their tools and run away, as much from boredom as from habit.

Walking through the forest that day in a dour mood, he caught his foot on a root and went sprawling. The fall knocked the wind from him, and he lay gasping on the forest floor. Because he could not do otherwise, he stared at the dirt before him ... and noticed a large golden bracelet in the dirt.

The thief sat up, smiling, for here was the perfect crime of opportunity, a bit of jewelry dropped by some passerby, which would not be missed, and which would enrich him. He reached down, wrapped his fingers around the gold, and tried to pick it up.

It moved a little, but something held it fast. The thief brushed the dirt away around the ring and found half of it sealed in black metal. He brushed away more dirt, curious now, and cleared a square of metal three feet to a side. The ring was no bracelet, but a handle for this trapdoor. The handle wasn't really gold, either—just brass.

The thief hesitated. He'd heard the stories, of course, of brigands with secret treasure-troves in the forest, where they kept their choicest things. Had he found such a place? And if so, did someone keep guard and watch over it?

Ah, but the opportunity. How could he walk away from such a rich possibility?

The thief wrapped his fingers tight around the ring and pulled. The door moved with surprising ease, without so much as a squeal of hinges. A great cloud of dust rose up with the trapdoor, and the thief turned his face away and coughed, his eyes watering. He let the trapdoor fall back, revealing a black square of darkness.

The thief got down on his knees and peered in, wishing for a lantern. There was no ladder and no steps—did the brigand king lower himself down with ropes suspended from the treetops?

Something shoved him from behind. The thief screamed as he fell—the brigand king had come upon him, and now he would die, sealed in with the dusty old treasures!

He hit the ground quickly, far sooner than he'd expected—and it wasn't ground at all, but a pile of soft fabric, furs and silks. A bit dusty, but more than enough to break his fall. Should he pretend to be dead? He turned over slowly, reasoning that since he'd been unable to see the bottom of the shaft from above, whoever had pushed him would be similarly blind. He peered up at the square of sky and branches, and saw no one. He sat up gingerly, but found no injuries or pains.

He sat waiting for a few moments, expecting a face to appear above, or a voice to call out, or—worst of all—for the trapdoor to swing shut, sealing him in irrevocably, leaving his spirit to guard this pile of fabrics and whatever other treasures lay in the darkness.

Something hissed, like a spitting cat, and the thief shrieked.

Then he saw light. The hiss had been the sound of an oil-soaked wick igniting.

Someone was down here with him.

He could see the lantern, a glass-sided, intricate thing, fit for a rich man's house. It sat on a marble pedestal, like the hacked-off base of a column. He saw no one near the lantern.

“I saw the trapdoor,” he began. “I found it by accident, and, well—just natural curiosity, you understand—I wanted to see what was underneath. I mean no harm—"

“You're a thief,” a low, neutral voice said. It came from a place in the cavern far from the lamplight.

The thief turned his head that way, startled. “Oh, no, I'm just a journeyman carpenter and—"

“A thief, and a liar.” There was satisfaction in the voice now. The only ones who ever sounded satisfied about finding a thief were people who planned to kill or beat that thief very badly.

“I have need of a thief,” the voice said, and then a figure stepped into the lantern-light

It was a woman.

Stop your tittering, snot-noses. This isn't a bawdy tale, you'll have to lurk under the tavern windows to hear one of those. No, she wasn't a beautiful woman. She looked like all your mothers, I'd wager, gray in her hair, lines in her face, a good sturdy build. Not a beauty. Not like that ship captain's daughter who got our thief in so much trouble. Not at all.

The woman was dressed incongruously in a fine fur coat. “You must be hungry,” she said. “Would you like something to eat? I have some meat, roasting."

“I didn't mean to—to fall into your ... home,” the thief said. “If you'll show me a way out, I'll be going."

“It's not a home, thief. It's a burial chamber, like the men in the desert are reputed to build—that's the joke, I think. A cavern filled with all the things I'd need to live well, after death. Fine dishes, fine silks, lanterns, pots, tools. All I've lacked is servants.” She smiled. “At least, until you arrived. And you want to leave? If I'd wanted you to get out, thief, why would I have shoved you
in
?” Her eyes were no particular color, it seemed to him, perhaps the gray of dirty wash-water, but she stared at him, not smiling at all now.

“Ah,” he said. “You pushed me, you say."

“You opened the door to my prison, thief. I wanted to thank you properly, and I couldn't do that with you up there.” She held up her arms, her sleeves falling away to reveal her forearms, which were covered with scars. “I have hands of air and fire. I can touch things far away."

The thief's obsession with opportunity extended to his words as well. He never knew when to keep silent, and he said “It seems to me that if you could push me
into
the hole from down here, you could have lifted that trap door yourself, and there'd be no need for thanks. Not that I don't appreciate your hospitality."

“It seems to
me
that a prison with a door that opens from the inside is no prison at all."

“Prisons are usually more secure than that,” the thief agreed. He had some experience in such matters. “But they don't usually open for the casual passer-by, either."

“You are not a casual passer-by. You are the thief I've been waiting for. No one else would even have seen the door, but you ... you were meant to find me."

“I'm sure I don't—"

“Shut up,” she said sharply, and then took a deep breath. “I offered you food, before. You smell like pigshit, but not roast pork, so I assume you had a wrestling match with dinner and dinner won. Eat with me, thief."

As he was hungry, and trapped anyway, he nodded. “I'd be most pleased."

“You have odd manners for a thief.” She turned, reaching into the darkness, doing things with her hands that the thief could not see.

“I have not always claimed that occupation. There was a time when I supped at tables, not in caverns underground."

She shoved a platter toward him. Several large green leaves sat in the center, covering something. “What's this?” he said, lifting a leaf away.

The glassy eyes of a dead owl stared up at him, and the thief turned his head away in disgust. The bird's head was twisted completely around, its neck broken. “Good Lord, woman, are you mad?"

“You'd better hope I'm not mad,” she said, her voice low again, and serious. “Because if I'm mad, you're going to eat that owl—beak, feathers, and all—on a madwoman's whim, and have nothing to show for it but stomach cramps and shit that cuts you."

She was serious, the thief could tell. “And if you're not mad?"

“Then after you eat that owl we'll get out of this hole, thief, and we will steal something grand."

“I can't,” he said, looking at the dead bird. It was
huge
—even plucked and beheaded and cooked he couldn't have eaten it all. “I'm sorry, I don't know why you ask this of me, but I can't."

Something tightened around his throat, like blunt, flat fingers, cutting off his air. He choked and clawed at his throat, but his fingers touched only his own skin.

“Eat it, or die,” she said.

He gasped his agreement—he had little choice. The invisible fingers loosened, and the thief rubbed his throat. “Can I have a knife at least?” he asked, dismayed by the roughness of his voice.

“Of course,” she said, and tossed a blade onto the furs beside him. He'd expected a jeweled dagger, but this was a working-man's knife, serrated on one side, sharp on the other, with a stained leather grip. He looked at the owl, at the knife, at the woman. “Aren't you afraid I could kill you with this, faster than you could stop me, hands of air or not?"

“Not at all,” she said.

He winced, nodded, and looked at the owl.

“It's fresh,” she said, her voice surprisingly kind. “As fresh as it can be. I caught it before I was trapped here, a long time ago, intending to use it myself. I've spent considerable effort to preserve it. You don't have to eat the entrails. They'd make you sick, and anyway, I have other uses for them. And you can have lots of water, while you eat.” She passed him a fine porcelain pitcher, and he dipped his fingers in to feel cold water. “We're not barbarians here."

Yes, he ate the owl, the whole thing—eyes, claws, beak, feathers. She let him grind up the talons with a stone and mix them in with water because he feared they'd cut his throat going down, otherwise. He didn't vomit, because she told him that if he did, he would have to eat what he threw up, every foul speck.

Oh, you boys love this one, don't you? You'll be telling it to your friends for months. The more disgusting it becomes, the more horrible, the more you'll eat it up. You shits.

Be gladdened, then. It gets worse.

She refilled the pitcher from the spring twice, and he drank it all. His stomach clenched, and it took all his concentration not to vomit. He'd never tasted anything so foul, never endured anything so horrible.

The woman spread the owl's gray, flecked entrails on a square silver tray. She prodded them, smiling and nodding as the thief fought his urge to gag.

“Eat a dead owl for breakfast,” the woman said, laughing softly, “and nothing worse will happen to you all day."

“Now will you show me the way out?” the thief asked through clenched teeth, arms wrapped around his belly.

“No, dear. Now you'll sleep, and then
you'll
show
me
the way out."

The thief did not believe he'd ever be able sleep, not with that pain in his belly, but the woman offered him a cup, and he drank something sweet and heady from it, and fell into sleep.

He dreamed of flying, and swooping down from the night, and listening. The world was a teeming place of flitting movements, small sounds fraught with significance, strange odors. Eating was everything. Blood was everything. Flying was not the way humans imagined it, a consuming thrill of freedom, a transcendent experience.

Flying was just the fastest way to get to the blood.

The thief woke, opening his eyes to sunlight and trees. No furs beneath him—only soil, and a root digging into the small of his back. He would have believed it all a dream, if not for the rough, thick taste of feathers still on his tongue. Not even two pitchers of water had been enough to wash that away.

“You see, you
did
show me the way out,” the woman. “You flew, and took me with you."

He turned his head slowly. His stomach didn't hurt so much now, but his limbs felt stretched, and his head hurt. The woman sat cross-legged in the dirt, her sleeves pushed back, the scars on her arms horribly white in the sun.

“We're free,” he said.

“I'm free, my darling,” she said. “You belong to me for a while yet. But I'll make it worth your while. You used to be the lowest of the low, but soon you'll be a master thief.” She touched his forehead, and he flinched away at first, but her fingers seemed to soothe the pounding in his skull, so he let her go on.