Monday, June 1, 2708, continued

          (June first.  And for the first time, after all these years, I do not feel ready.  They expect the Headmaster to never let anything ruffle him, to have seen it all.  But some things a man should never get used to.

          How do I teach?  How do I say anything to these staring students, wondering which ones might have participated in...that thing?

          Nonetheless, the Headmaster must make an appearance now and then, certainly at this annual evening assembly for the “entertainment” of the boys, where the staff expect me to exhort the student body to virtue by telling old stories of good rewarded and bad punished, which all but the newest have already heard, every year, ad nauseum.  And yet one hopes, one really hopes, that the repetitions sink in.

          Yet I have to go up in front of the auditorium knowing that no, they haven't, yes, I waste my time.  It’s all just pages to them, dry, rattling pages, crumbling at the edges, fading in the letters, nothing to do with anything alive.

          Oh what I would have given to have heard such words in my youth, before I ever came to the school!

          But it’s more than the usual foibles born of boredom and hormonal surges—I can’t deny it any longer.  I look at that sea of faces and know that something has gone wrong, terribly wrong, and I don't know the first place to begin to set it right.

          I hope the Tilián have some answers.)

* * *

"The soldiers won't take long to come this way," the man whispers earnestly, his arms around me and Chulan, his head so close that I feel his moustache tickle when he turns my way, as we gaze down into a valley full of moonlight.  "You'll get your guns, if you've got the guts for it.  They won't likely have made an account of where they're bound tonight to the rest of their barrack-mates."  So far I don’t see anybody making the climb up to this roadside stand, but the night has barely fallen.

Chulan has changed back into the “clothes” she wore when she fled Madame's.  Fatima has, for her part, wrapped her hips, sarong-style, in one of our hostess's scarves , and tied into a halter-top a shawl that normally only sees use on Sundays (I cringe at the thought of what that lace must feel like against the nipples, but pros get used to all manner of discomfort.)  Kanarik has hitched up her skirt, undone her top buttons, and rolled up her sleeves, after Chulan used the child’s watercolor-set to paint vines and flowers all over the teenager’s arms and legs, up her neck and down her front.  And when she dances she will not wear underwear.    "Do you have any instruments?" Kanarik asks.  "Dami..."

"Hush!" the woman hisses.  "You don't know our names, and we don't know yours."  She glances back at the hidden grave, marked in ways that only the family would know.  "We saw how Aron fought not to tell them everything he wound up telling anyway--if he couldn't hold out, nobody can."

I glance around at us.  They know at least that this rebel cell travels with an ex-pro who called herself “Father Fatima”, not to mention an unusually long-haired, half-Mountainfolk woman somewhat too tall for her race, and a freakishly fat man who carries dental equipment in his car.  How safe can we ever be?

Damien says, "Kan...the lady, here, wants something that I can play music on.  I can lull the soldiers like a melody-wraith if I get half a chance."

"We've got an old thambriy, but we don't know how to tune it."

He nods.  "I do.  My uncle taught me to play all kinds of instruments."  One day I'll have to ask him what a melody-wraith is; I haven't heard that one, yet.  I don’t bother telling them that I can play the thambriy, too.  I don’t want to remember Jonathan teaching me how.

Soon I hear the sweet twangs of Damien’s tuning as I help Malcolm camouflage the car and sweep its tracks away.  We had better hurry; they could arrive at any...I hear them!  I run into the woods, throwing my broom into the bushes and diving for the machete hidden right where I want it.  Fatima, Chulan, and Kanarik hastily swish chaummin around in their mouths and spit it out, then pose loungingly on the picnic benches, holding glasses that our hostess fills half-way, previously marked with their lipstick mouth-prints.  (Lipstick!  Rubyberry smears, really--what else would the bad girls of the mountains use?)

Through leaves I see the jeep pull up and teenagers pile out, swaggering into the lantern-light.  "Glory be!" one shouts.  "You came through, man--you really did it!"

"Just needed to put the fear of God in their heathen hearts," another says smugly and pinches our hostess's rear.  She squeaks, but tries to smile.

Those first two immediately take over benches and pull Chulan and Fatima into their laps, while the third makes a face at Kanarik.  "You rats just had to leave the ugly one for me."

"If you weren't so stone-gut slow..."

"Wait till you see her dance," our hostess breaks in, hastily filling mugs all 'round from the chaummin-jug.  "Boy!” she calls out.  “Give us some music, here!"

"Whoa!" the first says in appreciation.  "You broke out the beer mugs for us--no more of those nasty little thimbles, huh?"

"Like I said," says the second, "the fear of God.  We won't pay a dime more than the old price, mind you."

"Oh no, sir.  You're our special customers."

"Where's that music boy?” shouts the kid with Kanarik.  “Boy!  Get your ass out here or we'll turn you over to the Mantles like your footless village-mate."  Damien comes out, stony-faced, carrying an instrument that looks sort of like a red and green butterfly (Jonathan trained me on one painted blue and rose) two parallelogram sound-boxes, tapering towards one middle, with wires stretched across them, “black key” notes on one side and “white key notes” on the other.  But soon Damien grins gaily (all but his eyes, if anybody notices) pounding out a drinking-song on the strings with rubber-tipped sticks.

"Now that's more like it!"

Kanarik leaps from the soldier's lap to dance like a demoness while the boys sing along, gulping chaummin like beer at all the right places in the song.  Every time they start to get too interested in Chulan or Fatima, she does one of her quick, high kicks and they pay attention again.

Precisely when Kanarik does a most intriguing little shimmy, our hostess

cautions, "Be careful drinking that--my best brew is rather..."

"Good enough for us."  They gulp as one, a larger swallow than they might've.

Damien introduces a brief interlude of slowness to let our dancer catch her breath; her moves become more sultry and suggestive.  Just as Kanarik slides her finger up her thigh and winks (and yes, the vines do go up all the way) the hostess timidly asks, "Would the gentlemen like food?"

"Fornicate the food!  If you dare interrupt..."

"But if you don't have some food with that, you'll..."

"We'll drink as much as we damn well please, and you'll bring the jug out here yourself--y'hear?"

"A jug for each of us!" the others shout.  "An' make it quick!"  Good--now as a point of pride they'll have to drink much more than they intended to.

High and tinkly, the music takes up another song, faster than before, as the girls giggle and nuzzle, and nudge the cups to loose and grinning, unshaved lips.  They don’t sing anymore; they just swallow.

The last guy to arrive drinks twice as much as the other two, not even keeping time with the music anymore, just staring stolidly at Kanarik like a bull trying to remember what he felt last spring.  "'Sgot good legs," he says at last, and she dances closer to him, flirting with the hem of her skirt.  "Even be pretty—if y'chopped ‘er head off."  None of them see Damien scowl, or note that he steps up the pace on the songs and that they drink even faster.  I recognize that tune, even if the words have probably changed some through the years and translations:  "Up the airy mountain," they would go, "Down the rushy glen--we daren't go a-hunting for fear of little men..."

I watch them, framed in leaves.  Our own "little man" beats at the strings like he forges some wicked weapon there; sweat pours down his neck as he bares his teeth over his work, eyes hot and gleaming in the shadow's margin.  Our host claps out the beat for Kanarik with his big, rough hands, and she, too, sweats to keep up with it, firelight on her shiny skin, damp hair curling all around her face, painted jungle colors trickling in streaks.  And they watch and drink with mouths hanging open between their gulps, as they fall under the spell.

The music slows down, down to the pace of a stalking beast.  Last Guy gradually sinks backwards till he slouches against the table, still watching the dance.  The hostess refills his mug and he automatically raises it, but drops it after the swallow and slumps down unconscious.  Just then Kanarik slowly, teasingly, starts to unbutton her shirt the rest of the way, grinding her hips and licking her lips and I don't think the men even hear the mug bounce off the bench and roll down to the ground.

Little brown Mountainfolk hands move their own mugs to their lips for them as Kanarik sways, her shirt now entirely undone; the flowering vines curl down her belly to dip below the waistband that has settled to her hips, and they can't tell which swerve of her ribs will be the one to unveil a breast, but their eyes won't leave her just in case they miss it.  I can almost feel their thoughts: flowered or unflowered?  Maybe petals radiating from the areole, maybe tendrils twine around, maybe different on each side.

Despite their best efforts they begin to blink stupidly.  I pull my machete silently from its sheath, for once glad that I don't have one of the automatic-sharpening ones that make a noise when drawn.  Fatima snuggles up to her soldier, her arms around him.  Happily he remembers her, and grinning, starts to reciprocate, unaware as she carefully unsnaps his knife and slides it slowwwwly up...

"Hey, wha's she doin' wi' your knife, Jeb?"  Quickly she stabs Jeb as the other lumbers to his feet, Chulan sliding off his lap.  Malcolm and I leap out from cover and descend on the bewildered men.  It ends that quickly, just a few flashes of steel and some spurts of blood, and I stare at the passed-out one as his severed head rolls off the table.

"Did I do that?" I gasp.

"No," Malcolm says.  "I did."  Of course.  I don't have an arm that heavy.  "The fool didn't suffer a second--better than he'd have given us."  And they all stare at me--the weak link, the one afraid to kill.  I'm sorry Aron--I keep trying, but...dear God!

"You're right," I say as resolutely as I can.  "They all got better than they deserve."  I'm learning to do this.  I have to.  Everybody else gets used to it much faster, but they don't have my altered neurons, they don't see the world go by in slow motion the way I do, they don't have time to think in the thick of battle, they hardly even know it when they slay.

I slew the other two.  Or helped.  Both machete and knife wounds bled them quickly enough--they didn't suffer much more than their companion.  I glance down at my clothes, cut from vestments and altar-cloths, now desecrated in red.  I look at the bodies at our feet; already rainforest insects swarm down to the feast.  I wonder if the boys have enough alcohol in their blood to make the beetles tipsy and I start to giggle.  Malcolm puts an arm around me and leads me away when the giggling turns to sobs, and he helps me wash my face in a nearby creek.

I have got to get used to this!