Well, this put in mind of a pair of characters we rarely see, who turned up from one of your Random CD Prompts. And the ending is there to annoy you, because it always annoys you :)
Horns Dead Love leaned her head against the cart she was supposed to be pulling and howled. The path was sheer ice underfoot; the narrow pathway had been snowed on, and then the snow trampled to ice, so many times that it would take months for it to thaw away and reveal the rocky earth beneath. To the sides snow mounded over things, hiding them and making them look sculptural and abstract. Here was something not unlike a Henry Moore, and a little way ahead of them was what David might have looked like if Picasso had sculpted him instead of Michaelangelo. Lady Betrayer looked them over impassively, uncaring of their crystalline beauty or the way they tugged at the mind, insisting that their abstraction wasn't beyond reach and that with just a little more thought the viewer would suddenly, ecstatically receive a revelation. She didn't care for art, or for beauty, and she and Dead Love walked this path through all the seasons and she knew that the snow truly covered stacks of skulls, mangling of body parts, and the occasional inventive reconstruction of human flesh. She quite liked the skulls in autumn, when the lac beetles scurried in and out of the eye sockets and the scarabs fought over loose teeth. Dead Love howled again, her plaintive cry a haunting sound that mingled with the sound of horns from the distant caves on the Fengrim Plateau. For a moment the horns stopped, and they resounded again as though responding to her. Encouraged, she threw back her head and opened her mouth wide to howl once more. She staggered to the side, her mouth closing and her eyes spinning in their sockets, as the head that Lady Betrayer had pulled from the cart caught her just above her left temple. The sickening crack of bone against bone was a percussive note in the onslaught of the horns. "Pick that up," commanded Lady Betrayer, pointing at the head. It had belonged to a middle-aged man once, passably handsome in the right light. A beard, dark dappled with grey, covered the chin and cheeks but there was no moustache. His eyes were long gone, fed to the crows or beetles, and his ears were ragged tatters of cartilage where rats and shrews had nibbled on them. "And put it back on the cart." Dead Love's pathetic reaching out and patting the ground suggested that she had double vision from the blow, but she eventually found the head and scrabbled it up in hands that had fingers worn down nearly to stumps, and put it on the cart. Lady Betrayer watched silently and then inspected Dead Love's hands. "Another two weeks," she said imperiously. "Then you may replace them." Dead Love's eyes flickered to the cart and Lady Betrayer inferred that Dead Love had picked out the hands she wanted already. "No more tattoos," she said, curious to see if this whim would upset her pack-horse of a companion. There was no flinch, no glance back at the cart. The new hands must have some other detail to have attracted Dead Love's attention. The horns sounded again, a new rising note, and Lady Betrayer punched Dead Love between the shoulder blades. "Get moving," she said. "The Ilmatu hunt at dusk and I want to be on the plateau by then."
2 comments:
Well, this put in mind of a pair of characters we rarely see, who turned up from one of your Random CD Prompts. And the ending is there to annoy you, because it always annoys you :)
Horns
Dead Love leaned her head against the cart she was supposed to be pulling and howled. The path was sheer ice underfoot; the narrow pathway had been snowed on, and then the snow trampled to ice, so many times that it would take months for it to thaw away and reveal the rocky earth beneath. To the sides snow mounded over things, hiding them and making them look sculptural and abstract. Here was something not unlike a Henry Moore, and a little way ahead of them was what David might have looked like if Picasso had sculpted him instead of Michaelangelo. Lady Betrayer looked them over impassively, uncaring of their crystalline beauty or the way they tugged at the mind, insisting that their abstraction wasn't beyond reach and that with just a little more thought the viewer would suddenly, ecstatically receive a revelation. She didn't care for art, or for beauty, and she and Dead Love walked this path through all the seasons and she knew that the snow truly covered stacks of skulls, mangling of body parts, and the occasional inventive reconstruction of human flesh. She quite liked the skulls in autumn, when the lac beetles scurried in and out of the eye sockets and the scarabs fought over loose teeth.
Dead Love howled again, her plaintive cry a haunting sound that mingled with the sound of horns from the distant caves on the Fengrim Plateau. For a moment the horns stopped, and they resounded again as though responding to her. Encouraged, she threw back her head and opened her mouth wide to howl once more.
She staggered to the side, her mouth closing and her eyes spinning in their sockets, as the head that Lady Betrayer had pulled from the cart caught her just above her left temple. The sickening crack of bone against bone was a percussive note in the onslaught of the horns.
"Pick that up," commanded Lady Betrayer, pointing at the head. It had belonged to a middle-aged man once, passably handsome in the right light. A beard, dark dappled with grey, covered the chin and cheeks but there was no moustache. His eyes were long gone, fed to the crows or beetles, and his ears were ragged tatters of cartilage where rats and shrews had nibbled on them. "And put it back on the cart."
Dead Love's pathetic reaching out and patting the ground suggested that she had double vision from the blow, but she eventually found the head and scrabbled it up in hands that had fingers worn down nearly to stumps, and put it on the cart. Lady Betrayer watched silently and then inspected Dead Love's hands.
"Another two weeks," she said imperiously. "Then you may replace them."
Dead Love's eyes flickered to the cart and Lady Betrayer inferred that Dead Love had picked out the hands she wanted already.
"No more tattoos," she said, curious to see if this whim would upset her pack-horse of a companion. There was no flinch, no glance back at the cart. The new hands must have some other detail to have attracted Dead Love's attention.
The horns sounded again, a new rising note, and Lady Betrayer punched Dead Love between the shoulder blades.
"Get moving," she said. "The Ilmatu hunt at dusk and I want to be on the plateau by then."
Greg - oh good, I shall look forward to reading this then.
Ah, no actual appearance, just the threat of their appearance. I can handle that. Plus the rest of this was just so pleasant to read...
Post a Comment