Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales (7 page)

She fell silent then, her eyes downcast, her ancient hands trembling with the import of what she told.

“Go on,” I said. “You found
the crown … Did you put it on?”

“Pikgnil put it on,” whispered the old woman. “Even as she raised it to her head, I felt a presentiment of doom and the flash of a long-forgotten memory. I screamed at her to wait, but she would not wait.”

“It made her mortal?” I asked.

“Yes. It made her mortal, with the full weight of all our years,” said the woman who had been a god. “I saw her turn to flesh,
and smile in triumph, and then the smile twisted, fear shone in her eyes as that flesh sank upon her bones, the smile became a rictus grin, and then she decayed before my eyes, turned to charnel meat and thence to bare, fleshless bones, and I felt the magic flow from the crown, and I too became mortal and my shadowed shape took flesh, and I remembered that long ago, when we first burst out upon
this world, we were one, a single thing, and it was called Pikgnilyuddra, that only became two as the centuries passed and the priests wove stories that shaped us, the twins of day and night … and all of those thousands of years we had been upon this earth, all of them came pouring into me from the crown!

“I lunged forward and slapped the crown from the skull that
wore it … saving some scant
few years of life, but too late, for I am as you see me now. Mortal but ancient, too old for the simplest pleasures that I hoped to taste, too old even for those who guarded the crown to consider an enemy, so that they let me by, thinking me only a crazed old biddy of their own people. And so I came, in many weary steps and by weary ways, to Durlal. I remembered a scribbler, who I had some fondness
for, and so here I am and here I would rest, before I go on to Shrivet and my rightful place.”

So there you have it. I gave her some supper, a bed, a cloak. In the morning I added some money to her purse, enough for the fifth carriage on the Cartway to Orthaon, and from there she would have an easy way to Shrivet.

That is all I can tell you. I suppose you would catch her easily if you took the
next Cartway, she won’t have gotten far from Orthaon. I presume you do wish to catch her, that she must be … tidied up, the books made correct? Even if she is no longer a rogue goddess, but mortal, still your business, if as I presume your business is indeed the dispatch of such unhoused and irregular godlets?

Other business? What other business could we possibly have? I have told you everything.
Yuddra was here, she left, she is no longer a god. I am a busy man, I have much to write, look at this desk—

The bag? Her bag? Yes, I did mention a bag, boiled leather, with bronze clasps. I have no idea what was … Why are you putting on those armbands? What does the writing on them mean? It is no text that I recognize. I do not like this, though you are guests in my house I think I shall leave,
at once!

Ah, that hurt, and is quite unnecessary. Yes, I shall sit quietly,
though I do not like your mumbling, it smacks of priestly doings and, as you know, I am by reason of principle opposed to priests and gods.

Mister Fitz, you unnerve me, as a puppet you are alarming enough, but if that is what I think it is, sorcery is forbidden within this precinct, and there is no need for it, none
at all.

What are you doing, Sir Knight? That is a particularly ancient casket, most precious, where I store my old manuscripts, there is no occasion to open it and in any case I have lost the key. Though now I think of it, perhaps the key is in the pocket of my other coat, which I left at the Dawn-Greeter’s Club after some revels the other day. You know of the club, I’m sure, frequented by night
workers, particularly printers and the like. I shall just slip over there and fetch my coat, and the key—

How now! There’s no need, you might have merely asked me to take my seat again. I shall not get the key, then, and so your curiosity about my old parchments and scribblings will not be answered. Why should I shield my eyes? I shall do no—

I see, or rather, I see with some difficulty. That
was a most remarkably bright flash, Master Puppet. As I mentioned, that is … or was … a very ancient casket, and melting the lock off will have damaged its value considerably. I fear I must ask you to pay for it, a matter of at least ten, no a dozen, guilders of this city, none of your sham coin. And I must forbid you to ransack my papers … yes, I have laid an old cloak upon them to keep out the
damp. I must suppose that the smell is from some vellum that has grown a noxious mold, or an inadequately scraped calfskin, I write upon various materials. I am in the middle of an important piece now as it happens, and so must require solitude to continue, please …

A corpse? An old woman’s corpse? I have no conception how that might have gotten there. You are playing some complex joke upon
me, perhaps? I shall call for the Watch! Help! Help! Help! Heeeelp!

I presume from the lack of muffling, smothering, or other restraint that you have already paid off the Watch? Such foresight indicates men … a man and a puppet … attuned to pecuniary advantage. I have some wealth, and would happily pay a suitable sum so that this matter may remain confidential. Shall we say twenty guilders? No?
Fifty, then? A hundred guilders! It is all that I have, take it and leave me …

The bag under her feet? With bronze clasps? As you can see, untouched by me. I didn’t kill her, she just died in her sleep, she was old. I put her in the casket for now, to avoid trouble. Her bag likewise, see, the crown is there. I hid it so that it could not be used by others who might be tempted!

What? Of course
I didn’t wear the crown! How dare you make such a suggestion. I wear the compass, I am on the square. “Men before gods” is my creed. Such a crown is worthless to a true man. Take it, and go, and I shall not swear a complaint against you. It is against my beliefs, but I shall not stop another from becoming a god, clearly I cannot stop you in any case.

You do not want to become a god, Sir Knight?
And you, Master Puppet, with your sorcerous needle, what are you doing? Yes, yes, this time I shall shield my eyes, but that crown is valuable in itself …

I should not have believed it if I had not seen it myself. To destroy such a beautiful thing, even though it be tainted with … with evil magic. But I presume that completes your business here. Allow me to show you to the door, and I trust
that we shall not meet again.

Another needle, Master Puppet? What can you need with another needle? The crown is destroyed, the old goddess is dead, all is right with the world, or will be once I am finally left alone!

What? I told you I would never put on the crown. How can you see signs of … I don’t understand … energistic tendrils … unlawful protrusion of entities … it is all Khokidlian to
me, pure nonsense, so upsetting in fact that I need a drink. I will fetch a bottle and we might share it as a stirrup cup for your departure … ah … that really did hurt and was quite, quite unnecessary. We are all friends here, are we not?

Yes, I confess, I am a curious fellow. I collect oddments, ancient jewelry, that sort of thing. Perhaps I did just touch the crown to my forehead, but nothing
happened, nothing much, and anyway, how could you know? I tell you I am not a godlet, I am just a man, I will cause no trouble, I am just a—

A
UTHOR’S
N
OTE
…………………………………

Like a lot of people, I first encountered Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King” in its filmic form. I liked the John Huston–directed movie a lot. I suspect I would like anything that teamed Michael Caine and Sean Connery together, but having them in a really good film based on a great story was even better. When Tim and Melissa first suggested the
Rags &
Bones
concept to me, Kipling was one of the authors I immediately thought I might like to pay my respects to with an homage. Possibly because I worked in a bookstore when Kipling’s books first entered the public domain and thus they are inextricably linked in my mind: I still have nightmares about the sudden influx of dozens of new editions of
The Jungle Book
.

Once I had the idea of revisiting
“The Man Who Would Be King,” I thought about the two central characters. Who would my buddies be, my Peachy Carnehan and Daniel Dravot? It wasn’t a great leap from there to decide I would use my existing duo, Sir Hereward and his puppet companion, Mister Fitz. The other main character is, of course, Kipling himself, who in the original narrates the story in the first person. Possibly because I’d
recently been rereading a text from my university days (the story collection
Points of View
, edited by James Moffett and Kenneth R. McElheny), I decided to twist this somewhat and write the story as a dramatic monologue, with the writer character “overheard” as he tells the story of two wayward goddesses and we, the reader, also apprehend what is happening as he narrates both past and present.

N
EIL
G
AIMAN

It was the closest kingdom to the queen’s, as the crow flies, but not even the crows flew it. The high mountain range that served as the border between the two kingdoms discouraged crows as much as it discouraged people, and it was considered unpassable.

More than one enterprising merchant, on each side of the mountains, had commissioned folk to hunt for
the mountain pass that would, if it were there, have made a rich man or woman of anyone who controlled it. The silks of Dorimar could have been in Kanselaire in weeks, in months, not years. But there was no such pass to be found and so, although the two kingdoms shared a common border, no travelers crossed from one kingdom to the next.

Even the dwarfs, who were tough, and hardy, and composed
of magic as much as of flesh and blood, could not go over the mountain range.

This was not a problem for the dwarfs. They did not go over the mountain range. They went under it.

Three dwarfs were traveling as swiftly as one through the dark paths beneath the mountains.

“Hurry! Hurry!” said the dwarf in the rear. “We have to buy
her the finest silken cloth in Dorimar. If we do not hurry, perhaps
it will be sold, and we will be forced to buy her the second-finest cloth.”

“We know! We know!” said the dwarf in the front. “And we shall buy her a case to carry the cloth back in, so it will remain perfectly clean and untouched by dust.”

The dwarf in the middle said nothing. He was holding his stone tightly, not dropping it or losing it, and was concentrating on nothing else but this. The
stone was a ruby, rough-hewn from the rock and the size of a hen’s egg. It would be worth a kingdom when cut and set, and would be easily exchanged for the finest silks of Dorimar.

It had not occurred to the dwarfs to give the young queen anything they had dug themselves from beneath the earth. That would have been too easy, too routine. It’s the distance that makes a gift magical, so the dwarfs
believed.

The queen woke early that morning.

“A week from today,” she said aloud. “A week from today, I shall be married.”

She wondered how she would feel to be a married woman.

It seemed both unlikely and extremely final. It would be the end of her life, she decided, if life was a time of choices. In a week from now she would have no choices. She would reign over her people. She would have
children. Perhaps she would die in childbirth, perhaps she would die as an old woman, or in battle. But the path to her death, heartbeat by heartbeat, would be inevitable.

She could hear the carpenters in the meadows beneath the castle, building the seats that would allow her people to watch her marry. Each hammer blow sounded like a dull pounding of a huge heart.

The three dwarfs scrambled
out of a hole in the side of the riverbank, and clambered up into the meadow, one, two, three. They climbed to the top of a granite outcrop, stretched, kicked, jumped, and stretched themselves once more. Then they sprinted north, toward the cluster of low buildings that made the village of Giff, and in particular to the village inn.

The innkeeper was their friend: they had brought him a bottle
of Kanselaire wine—deep red, sweet and rich, and nothing like the sharp, pale wines of those parts—as they always did. He would feed them, and send them on their way, and advise them.

The innkeeper, chest as huge as his barrels, with a beard as bushy and as orange as a fox’s brush, was in the taproom. It was early in the morning, and on the dwarfs’ previous visits at that time of day the room
had been empty, but now there must have been thirty people in that place, and not a one of them looked happy.

The dwarfs, who had expected to sidle into an empty taproom, found all eyes upon them.

“Goodmaster Foxen,” said the tallest dwarf to the innkeeper.

“Lads,” said the innkeeper, who thought that the dwarfs were boys, for all that they were four, perhaps five times his age, “I know you
travel the mountain passes. We need to get out of here.”

“What’s happening?” said the smallest of the dwarfs.

“Sleep!” said the sot by the window.

“Plague!” said a finely dressed woman.

“Doom!” exclaimed a tinker, his saucepans rattling as he spoke. “Doom is coming!”

“We travel to the capital,” said the tallest dwarf, who was no bigger than a child, and had no beard. “Is there plague in the
capital?”

“It is not plague,” said the sot by the window, whose beard was long and gray, and stained yellow with beer and wine. “It is sleep, I tell you.”

“How can sleep be a plague?” asked the smallest dwarf, who was also beardless.

“A witch!” said the sot.

“A bad fairy,” corrected a fat-faced man.

“She was an enchantress, as I heard it,” interposed the pot-girl.

“Whatever she was,” said
the sot, “she was not invited to a birthing celebration.”

“That’s all tosh,” said the tinker. “She would have cursed the princess whether she’d been invited to the naming-day party or not. She was one of those forest witches, driven to the margins a thousand years ago, and a bad lot. She cursed the babe at birth, such that when the girl was eighteen she would prick her finger and sleep forever.”