tell me how you like it
tell me how you feel
tell me have you seen her
tell me on a Sunday
tell me you love me
tell me exactly how to eat
tell me why I don't like Mondays
tell me about yourself
tell me lies
tell me now where was my fault
tell us once
tell no one
Watcher
“The centaurs are coming!”
Gamon could see the water pouring down the hillside, washing away farms and farmers in its muddy surf, the survivors quickly swallowed by a black column of smoke that followed lazily after the torrent in heavy sheets. It would be a tranquil scene if it wasn't for their apprentice.
“ They've burst the aqueduct. What do we do? Fort Ernest should have stopped them. What do we do?” The boy was new, hadn't developed the stillness of a Watcher. He twisted from one man to another, pleading with his eyes, “what do we do?”
“We do what we are supposed to do. We watch, we record and we leave.”
“But the centaurs, they will carry us off and make us tend to their stable, hold our women for them to…”
“Tosh, until I see it I don’t believe it. They would be the first creature I've witnessed procreating solely with another species. Quite unsustainable. Besides, they have trouble with stairs at the best of times and the Duke has installed the most obnoxious spiral ascent I've ever put the trouble into climbing when not under the influence of mortal peril. We are quite safe up here.”
“Relatively speaking. They will burn us out eventually.” Gamon had to turn to hide the grin from the boy’s increasingly desperate whimpers, Mord always raised his spirits at the most inappropriate times. It was unfortunate that the centaur front had moved so quickly, their obligations were over and they were set to return to the priory comfortably ahead of the advance, held back by the thick headed men of the marches. Plainly, their walls and moors weren't as thick and deep as they claimed. The propaganda that had kept the southern kingdoms to their own squabbles for so long had passed by the centaurs, never known for their social awareness or acceptance of anyone’s opinion but their own. The centaurs, as a people of single bloody mind, had decided to cross the swamps and and plains to reaffirm their right to the horizon, the pack master only needed to point the way, and it was currently pointed at Marigold. A city unprepared for war, softened by amiable neighbours, its people didn't even know how to panic. Below the Watchers they gathered in groups in the muddy streets and asked each other What to do? Where was the Duke? How is your harvest coming? Has your boy sent money back from the front? The islands of awkward conversation drifted and waned as more and more soldiers ran to the walls to watch the smoke on the water.
Old Frank
Visit the man in his suburban home, sat at the top of a shallow hill. I knocked, but the door was open and saw no harm in looking for him in such a demure place. The house smelt of nutmeg and human, old hair and linen. The sound of creaking furniture could be heard from the front room and I followed. Two paramedics dressed in green with their emergency bags’ contents spread out over tables and the arms of thick floral chairs. Both young women, both sitting at ease discussing what he had taught them today, my presence didn’t disturb them until they stopped and politely indicated that he had gone to get something from the shed before continuing their discussion. I continued my search through the tiny kitchen and into his garden. It was flanked with plum trees heavy in fruit and it concerned me, there was nothing more obnoxious than a gardener recently in fruit, maybe this wasn’t the time to see him, maybe I should wait for winter when his garden was dead. I had the decision wrenched from me with the creak and clatter of an opening and closing shed door, a portly old man was walking quickly through a vegetable patch and towards the side of the house. I hurried behind, grabbing his elbow as he got to an old side door. Unperturbed he turned on me and leaned against the door frame, scratching his great gut and tobacco yellow beard.
“How can I help you son?”
I explained and he listened, nodding and scratching at the woolly jumper that seemed to be falling apart as I went on. He didn’t mention his garden, not once, even when he leaned in, stopping me.
“Go to the end of the road and find two of the cheapest slags you can, tell them you want Old Frank, they’ll know what to do and where to go. They have to be cheap, no one else will Old Frank,” his breath was cucumbers and limes and I nodded.
“Good lad. Now if you’ll excuse me I have something on,” and he closed the door behind him, leaving me standing on the thin gravel line before his little urban orchard.
Harold
The drain grate rattled as he put his weight on it.
“Oh Harold, Harold, Harold. What have we done?”, Harold knelt and dabbed at the bars with a handkerchief.
“Just so, just so,” the cloth came back with dabs of dark red, “just so.”
He heaved himself up and brushed his hands on his jacket, leaving dark stains.
“A new suit when I find you son, least you owe…” it was dark, but the street lights caught the glitter of something piled in a shop doorway. It had the appearance of a sleeping tramp covered in the morning dew. The cane probed gently and with no resistance, instead sinking into the foamy mass of hair and skin. “It seems you already have.”
Carp
“Jacob, your repetitive perambulations ache the eyes and offend my roguish spirit.”
Jacob ignored him and knocked on boxes, kicking at barrels and unravelling ropes, throwing off tarpaulins and lids. The wharf had any number of hiding places.
“Nothing is ever found that is looked for in such a desperate manner. One looks, one encounters, and then…” he waved his finger around in the air vaguely, it had been a long night and his performance was somewhat forced. The word never game to him as his thoughts were interrupted by a deep flomp of something heavy hitting the water.
“There’s our man, off like a rock no less. Here we have our encounter, Jacob. Be a good lad and fetch him, the carp won’t leave much for us if you aren’t sharp-sharp about it. Indeed, I can hear the slap on fins all a bother. Don’t you hear me, boysir?”
He extended an arm for Jacob’s jacket, who prepared to rope the floundering escapee.
“Don’t take offence if we leave a toe or hand behind. They take what they can fit in their mouth and no more. They can control their appetites unlike some little street muffins.”
He nodded to Jacob as the the rope went taught, and he started to pull.
Tiny music
The tiny cymbal twings and everyone gasped quietly in between slow sips from their bowls.
“What…” before Anca could get his finger to his mouth a squeal burst from the closest table and spread through the room, each one more distressed than the last, bouncing off the wall like a wave it went back and forth until the clientele were holding their heads and moaning. Anca had closed his eyes. The band had picked up its instruments and were backing away from the writhing crowd who where slowly calming down as the waiters threw blankets over them in silence. One of them stood over me with a raised eyebrow and a look that said he didn’t a street boy’s custom.
“We leave. Take you coat boy before waiter politely ask to maybe consider leaving.”
Crow Milk didn’t effect Anca like the others, the only noticeable change being the raise of a hand and close of eyes when I went to help him up from the floor.
“You don’t touch or talk, you listen to their tiny music.”
Cant
“So.”
“Quite.”
“The pigs are loose?”
“And greased.”
“I see,” he released the blue smoke, letting it flow out of him with all his frustrations, as the good leech had told him.
“You’re hitting it hard today.”
He made a point of never answering indirect questions, especially not from a rising puke such as the man across from him was. Instead he dragged at the pipe and chewed the smoke to help him think. He couldn’t see the walls anymore for the thick blue miasma he had created for himself, he could barely see his conversation partner.
“Tell them…” he would work on that, until he was just a bust sticking out of the rolling blue sea, “tell them that the handle has come off and the screw are sheared. We’ll need a cotton wad.”
“Can’t we just kill him?”
The cant had changed in his time, nothing came easy like it used to.
Come by!
“And lo, did Dmitar ascend to the cloud cover and watch, as a shepherd watches his flock, with a benign yet inattentive eye. Pray ye that his divine guides come by, come by.”
As one the auditorium put their fingers in their mouthes and issued a tremendous whistle, followed by a moment of silence while the high ringing settled between their ears. Firenz had been attending the temple of Dmitar since he first acquired his interests in the Bleak, every month on his scheduled trip he would line up at the fence with the herd, as they liked to be called, and wait patiently for the gates to open. He did this with no real sincerity, but the rituals reminded him of his mother. She wouldn’t have approved of his getting tangled with provincial gods.
“COME BY!”
His ears were still ringing as he raised his arms up and echoed the priest, “Come by.”
“I hear you’re back in the family business.”
The woman had grabbed his arm and held it aloft, bringing them close together. This wasn’t so uncommon in the fevered begging at the end of a sermon, for some to get so caught up.
“I sell cutlery,” he shouted, struggling to be heard.
“Once, always. I know who you are and, more importantly, who you were.”
Mother had a way of spiting her children, even from beyond the grave. She had always said as much but they had hoped that it would die with her, if such a thing was possible.
“COME BY!”
He was running out of cities.
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