Quest of the Five Clans

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The hero, the mad girl and the broom visit a Shoppe of Fine Art

I searched their pockets, gaining a knife and two shillings. I wiped familiar stains from my hands, sheathing the foil. I considered my return through the dark alley, drew foil again. I have walked battle-fields in twilight while dogs tear corpses, when crows dance and mate atop screaming horses. Fields where old women wander stooping, cutting, rising up again clutching rings and teeth.

I never felt as I did walking back through the empty alley. Shadows and ghosts traced fingers along my spine. Eyes watched from below the earth, spied down from the strip of gray sky. I approached the entrance of the alley as Orpheus the exit to Hell. Well, but I didn't look behind. Didn't want to. I looked ahead, to the figure of the beggar girl, humming, brushing the path again.

I studied her, foil at point. Rags of grey, tangles of blond. Stains of dirt, soot, soup. No splashes of fresh blood. She hummed and danced with the broom. Beyond her the city street buzzed and rattled the day's work-song.

I moved carefully around her. The ruins of the puppet-theatre remained, an offering for local fire-wood. The world-tapestry lay ripped and bloody; more a prophecy than an offering. Beyond the alley the charred table-top leaned against the lamp post, waiting for me to finish this entertainment and continue our business. I approached, watching for eyes watching me. No one in the street cared a fig for my existence or my table-top. Except the beggar-girl, who followed broom-dragging. We stood together in the sunlight, considering the charred square of wood.

A trampled bread-roll remained of the faux-baker. I speared it by foil-point, gave the girl the smaller half. Unheroic but heroes in stories don't collapse famished, gnawing their belts. She took the offering, consumed with a breath. Then bent to trace a finger along the carving. She considered, grave as a surgeon. Diagnosis complete, she turned the moon-glow of her gaze upon me. She whispered to herself, happy child in a field of flowers. I bent down to hear.

"So proud we were, to be us."

I sighed, nodded. "And now I've seen your play. But I still don't follow the lines." I picked up the table top. It weighed more than an hour past. I continued up the street. I did not hear her slight step, just her mad humming, the wisping of broom-straws on cobbles.

"What happened in the alley?" I asked. "Who killed those men?"

She made no answer. Perhaps she wasn't behind me. Perhaps just her broom followed, witch-like. I wondered what shape her ears showed beneath tangles. I considered the shadowed walls of the alley. Easy to miss some hidden door. Probably a trapdoor to some cellar.

Which might explain the disappearance of the puppet-show audience. But who slaughtered the attackers? And why were hired killers set upon a random collection of street-lunatics? The broom-straws went 'wisp, wisp'. I whirled about, almost striking a sailor with the table-top. He cursed me, measured my weight and scars to his own, and moved on. Wise of him. I stopped, put the burden down.

The girl swayed, staring at the world as though it were new to her. Perhaps it was. Fresh wonders must abound when your mind is cracked as a broken cup. Experience pours in and right out, leaving fresh astonishment at sky and dirt, a cat stalking a pigeon, a grocer hawking carrots, a cart-horse raising its tail to bugle a fart. I'd seen these things before.

I considered the street before me. A city mile, each half-point marked by blade, bolt or bullet, to be reached by successfully passing the previous half-way point of death. An infinite line to cross, until infinity ended with the bang of a gun, the jab of a knife. Zeno's paradox of Certain Termination. I could never reach the end, before I ended.