The World Above the Sky (10 page)

“Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk,” said Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk, laughing. “My name is Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk—how many times do I have to tell you?” he repeated, purposefully running the words together in one breath, smiling broadly.

“What's he saying?” Antonio repeated.

“That enormously long, half-whispered, extremely sibilant word appears to be his name. What a time we had! I say, what a time! Sang and danced the nights away. I introduced the bagpipes. They became great admirers of my skill, I say, great admirers, clearly much moved by the blessed pipe's music, all my stirring chants and mournful laments. Oh my. Aye. We walked delightful beaches—mile after mile of pinkish, golden sands, which they stroll for no apparent reason other than to chat among themselves, and walk off the excesses of the previous night, which are considerable and varied. There were dozens there. Not only the folk from around this bay, but their clans, and clan-friends who appeared to have come from great distances out of the northwest. They chat, laugh, take serious council, play at games of strength. Games of skill and courage. And they bathe! Daily! Some several times a day. Apparently for the pleasure of it! What madness. I can comprehend a bath after a long sea voyage. Or bloody great good battle. If absolutely, I say, if absolutely, necessary. They're forever hopping out of their leather clothes—scant though they be—and leaping into the salty sea. The men on one side of an outcropping; the women, secluded from prying eyes, on the other. I myself waded one day—not above my ankles, mind. The water on the red isle's northern shore is unnaturally warm. The beach slopes gently, stretching far offshore. The young lads dive from the sandstone rocks into shallow bays, three or four fathom, clear as crystal, swim like otters to the bottom and return to the surface, a lobster in either hand! Lobster, gentlemen, I say, lobster as big as cats and in great number. Bays and tidal rivers, rich beyond description, creep with all manner of crustacea. I gorged on clams, mussels, enormous oysters succulent and abundant. Near their main encampment luxuriant meadows abound, ripe with vine and berry. And, my! The vistas across the numerous bays and rivers. And the colours! Red-earth cliffs, blue sea and sky—the sky is vast—and the rolling landscape shows more shades of green then old Hibernia herself. Aye. The red island. It is a pretty place this Apekwit.”

“Yes, A'thol! Apekwit.” Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk pointed to the island, and then to the map. “Good for you. Means the-side-of-a-boat-when-you-see-it-a-long-way-off-and-it-is-low-in-the-
water. We call it cradle-on-the-waves for short.”

They looked at Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk, each blank as though they'd been struck on the back of the head with a stout plank.

“Apekwit,” he repeated kindly, pointing again to the island.

“A-peg-weit?” Henry ventured.

“Yes. More or less,” Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk replied. “No one lives there year-round. The winters are abysmal. No moose or caribou. No bear. We use A-pek-weit,” he said, again with careful, exaggerated emphasis, “as a summer place of feasting and repose.”

Henry smiled at Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk and nodded his thanks. “The sooner we master their gentle tongue, the better,” he said.

Antonio was less willing to accommodate. “Pander at you peril, Sinclair. Let them come to us if they wish to know what we have to offer. Which is nothing less than ease full toil and life eternal.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk liked nothing about this man, in particular his high-pitched, tuneless, crudely whittled flute-stick voice. He returned to the fire.

Sir Athol cocked his head, first left, then to the right. “Rotate, I say, rotate your parchments. Like this. The segments integrate...just so.”

Henry examined the edge of the Vatican quadrant closely. Had it been torn, the rip altered to mimic antique degradation?

“Antonio. I believe we're missing a fragment…here, the lower left.”

“It's all I was given.” Antonio drew his finger under two lines of elaborate script. “This seems familiar but makes no sense; it's neither Latin nor Persian, nor is it ancient Greek.”

Henry studied the script. “Elements of all three, but something else. Something more ancient, perhaps. The illustration offers a clue. Steam or smoke rising from what appears to be a hollowed-out stump....It is at this point we are to base our explorations. So I was told.”

“By whom?” Antonio enquired.

“The highest possible authority.”

“Some senile
éminence grise
of your defunct temple directed you to establish your base camp at a stump? A burning stump?”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk re-approached. He studied the map. “The Place of Boiling Waters. Under the Cape which the setting sun turns to gold.”

“Sorry. What?” Henry asked.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk glanced at the map, raised his arm, held it straight and steady.

“He points westward and slightly to the south,” Athol noted. “What's there?”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk fluttered the fingers of his upturned hands rapidly, the hands rising and falling slightly to suggest liquid turbulence. “The Place of Boiling Waters.” He repeated the gesture cycle.

“Something about a bird, perhaps? Or birds?” Henry speculated.

“Far across the waters from the cliffs of Kluscap,” he said.

He searched their faces: nothing.

“Across from Kluscap's Cliffs.”

“What?” Henry said.

“Come again?” said Athol.

“What's he pointing at?” Antonio wondered.

“I don't understand.” Henry turned back to the maps.

Back at the fire, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk dipped the slings in their buckets, spread them on the ground, rolled a second stone into each. He loped gingerly back to the sweat lodge, maintaining a gap between the steaming rocks and his naked calves. As he stooped to enter, laughter rushed up the trail behind him.

Keswalqw and Eugainia burst into the clearing at a full run, Keswalqw chased by Eugainia. It was Eugainia's hands Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk first noticed. They were covered in black, sticky goo. Glistening sludge covered her from head to foot. Little natural skin colour remained, only two white circles where she'd squinted to save her eyes. They seemed to pop out of her head—the startled enthusiasm lending a bizarre infantile authority. Nothing of the sea green linen dress, or its crystal embellishments, remained visible. The curtain of tar it had become clung to Eugainia's every curve, concave, convex and otherwise.

“
E'e
!” exclaimed Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk, then laughed with delight.

“My Lady,” Henry rubbed finger and thumb at the hem of her sleeve. “You're covered in pitch!”

“Below the Smoking Mountain, just there, is a hot, tranquil spring. A plume of tar rises through its waters, Henry—very like St. Katherine's healing well at Castle Rosslyn, where skin troubles vanish and a riotous stomach becomes sweet and refreshed.” She massaged tar through her scalp, twisting matted hair into long black ropes. “Not that I drank the gruesome stuff.” Her voluptuous red lips, where the tar had been licked away, amplified the wildly exaggerated eyes. “I floated among the little islands of tar, relieved for a time of my sorrows. I had the Goddess urge to cover myself entirely in it. And so I did. Watch this!”

She strode to the centre of the meadow.

“
Alors, mes amis. Un concours!
A little contest!
Tableau vivant.
Guess who I am!”

She angled her feet, the left foot at ninety degrees to her body, the right foot at ninety degrees to the left. She swivelled, aligning hips, shoulder and leading leg. She drew herself to her full height, lengthening upward through the spine. She raised her left arm. With her right hand, she removed an imaginary arrow from its quiver, threaded its notch and sighted along the invisible shaft.

“Well...come, gentlemen. Who am I?”

Silence. She looked toward Henry. Then Athol. Her eyes slid past Antonio, past Keswalqw and rested on Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk.

“I am Diana the huntress, bow drawn, arrow about to be loosed.”

Eugainia knew the illusion depended upon artifice and impeccable detail. She drew the arrow back beyond her right shoulder, careful the imagined string would avoid her very real right breast when the string, were it real, was released. She paused, elongated, elegant, eternal; still as black marble.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk smiled.

A pulse of energy rose from Eugainia's feet to her torso. She let the imagined arrow, carefully set in the mind's eyes of her audience, fly. Her strategy worked. All eyes watched the invisible arrow soar, followed its imagined trajectory...all eyes but Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk's. Eugainia looked the young man straight in the eye, unobserved for one brief moment by Henry, Athol or Keswalqw. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk held her gaze. Delight pulsed between them, hung in the air like perfume, and stirred their loins.

“Now who am I?” she said, walking among them, turning sharp angles first to the left, then the right, back then forward again, unwinding what appeared to be thread or twine from a spool. Again, nothing from the observers. She passed close to Sir Athol, whispered so that only he could hear.

“You are Ariadne unwinding the Golden Thread,” Sir Athol proclaimed. “I say, Ariadne in the maze of the Minotaur, that foul product of bestial lust!”

“Excellent, Sir A!” Eugainia enthused with a conspiratorial wink. “Ariadne I am!”

She executed a perfect set of cartwheels, struck another pose, feet apart, knees bent and splayed. She crossed her eyes, opened them wide. She waggled her head. Her pink tongue darted through red lips, her white teeth startling in the black field of her face. Her arms jerked in unison through dual arcs from her waist, up over her head.

Her audience stared dumbfounded, their patience wearing thin.

“Perhaps Maha Durga is a touch arcane, considering the northern sensibility of my slack-jawed audience,” she said aloud to no one in particular. “Maha Durga? The many-armed Hindu goddess of war. Invincible when armed with her various weapons.” She surveyed the spectators. Still nothing. She walked to the centre of the clearing. “You disappoint me, Antonio. You of all people might have gotten Maha. Your family's been to the Indies, haven't they?”

Antonio nodded assent.

The sun fell below the tops of the spruce trees. Pyramid shadows gathered around Eugainia. She raised her left hand slowly until it came to rest near her downcast cheek, wrist straight, fingers curled in toward the palm. She raised the index finger heavenward. She crooked her right arm at the elbow. Her right hand lay, palm open, below her breasts, awaiting the birth of her heart. She dropped her eyes, her head angled modestly, her glance cast downward and to the left.

Eugainia stood silent and immobile. A moment of ancient artifice flicked though the meadow with the last of the afternoon light.

“And who am I now?” she murmured to the gathering dusk.

Keswalqw and Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk looked from the living statue radiating peace to her enraptured audience.

Sir Athol knelt. As did Henry.

“You are the Black Madonna.” Henry lowered his eyes.

“I am indeed. You, my Good Lord Henry, protector and unprompted friend, win the final round!”

She attempted a handstand. The first attempt failed. The second? Perfect. Exactly vertical. She held it, the newfound strength in her inverted body apparent. The muscles in her upper arms began to twitch with strain. She struggled to remain vertically reversed, hand-walking a tight circle in the centre of the meadow. Her pitch-stiffened skirt, plastered to her legs, sagged and fell over her head. Embarrassed by her own impropriety if not her blackened undergarments, she aborted the trick, regained her feet. She giggled.

“Ha! You should see your faces. Henry, you are as red as rhubarb. And burly good Sir Athol, a brace of flies could circumnavigate your gaping yaw and exit dry and unharmed. And you, Antonio,” she said with unfelt gravity. “Well...you smirk in an unkind way. I regret to inform you the Lady of the Grail hasn't lost her mind. Not completely. Not yet, at least.”

Keswalqw and Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk returned, amused and unconcerned, to their tasks.

“How unlike your reactions compared to those of my new friends,” Eugainia observed. “You shuffle and avoid my gaze. Keswalqw and Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk carry on, happy I'm resurrected.”

Henry rallied. “I am delighted, My Lady. Your spirits do seem quite restored!”