Thorn Boy and Other Dreams of Dark Desire (29 page)

In the silence
that followed, Brackeny looked at Persilian and let go of his hand.
Like a blight, the curses and kicks of the servants of Emiraldra
seemed to howl, to rise and buffet round his head. As he had
feared, all he could ever be was Persilian’s plaything. Brackeny
backed away from the thrones, shaking his head. Persilian held out
his arms in dismay. And then strong hands were on Brackeny’s
shoulders and a gruff, loud voice was in his ear, reverberating
around the hall.

‘
Stop
this!’ it growled. ‘Would anyone dare to repeat that? Would anyone
dare to insult the future lord of Emiraldra?’

A gasp hissed
around the room and Brackeny turned his head. It was his
grandfather, Thaldocred, who had spoken, Thaldocred’s fierce
dignity that had echoed round the room. ‘This is my grandson,’ he
boomed. ‘In rags because my heart has been in rags. Since the day
his mother died I have denied him, but no more. Let no man say that
he is not fit to rule with Persilian in this house. Nor let any man
judge them for what they believe. This is my grandson.’

‘
And my
beloved,’ Persilian added dryly.

At this, Duke
Orvember threw up his hands. ‘Well ladies,’ he said. ‘Let the music
continue. Let there be dancing once more. Enjoy yourselves as best
you can. It seems the matter is out of my hands. There will be no
matchmaking tonight.’ With a wave of his fingers, he bade the
orchestra to play and servants moved once more among the crowd
bearing trays of wine.

And so,
Brackeny’s destiny was fulfilled. He was united with the one he
loved and reconciled wit h his grandfather. Persilian’s servants
gave him splendid clothes. He washed his face and hands and feet.
Tatters was gone for good. When he emerged once more into the hall
to take his place at Persilian’s side, he searched for Charlaise
among the crowd. There were so many questions he wanted to ask her.
How much had she known? Had his father before him loved, and been
loved, by men? But even as he searched, he knew that Charlaise had
gone. If she’d had a mission, she’d completed it.

In the night
air, Brackeny fancied he could hear a faint echo of her magical
flute, a mournful tune, a sweet farewell, but he could not be sure.
If she was ever seen again in that land, it is not recorded.

My Lady of the Hearth

This story
first appeared in 1998, in ‘Sirens and other Daemon Lovers’ edited
by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (Harper Prism). I’ve always been
fascinated by cat-headed deities, in particular the Egyptian
goddess Bast. I reinvented Bast for the Magravandias trilogy,
making her a goddess of the land of Mewt and renaming her
Purryah.

This story is
in Pygmalion vein, as the protagonist prays to the goddess to
create his perfect woman – in this case from his cat. One of
Aesop’s Fables, ‘Venus and the Cat’, also greatly influenced and
inspired this story.The man gets his perfect cat wife, but
ultimately she cannot forget her origins. I’d always loved that old
tale, and thought about what it would really be like to have one of
your cats turned into a human by divine agency. Knowing my cats as
I do, I could only foresee great problems, and if you threw sexual
desire into the equation it could all get a bit tricky.

The most
beautiful women in the world have a cat-like quality. They slink,
they purr; claws sheathed in silken fur. In the privacy of their
summer gardens, in the green depths of forests, I believe they shed
themselves of their attire, even to their human flesh, and stretch
their bodies to the sun and their secret deity. She, the Queen of
Cats, is Pu-ryah, daughter of the Eye of the Sun; who both roars
the vengeance of the solar fire and blesses the hearth of the home.
Given that the goddess, and by association her children, has so
many aspects, is it any wonder that men have ever been perplexed by
the subtleties of females and felines? Yet even as we fear them, we
adore them.

When I was
young I had a wife, and she was a true daughter of Pu-ryah. It
began in this way.

When my father
died, I inherited the family seat on the edge of the city, its
numerous staff, and a sizeable fortune. The estate earned money for
me, administered by the capable hands of its managers, and I was
free to pursue whatever interests I desired. My mother, whom I
barely remembered (for she died when I was very young), had
bequeathed her beauty to me: I was not an ill-favored man. Yet
despite these privileges, joy of the heart eluded me. I despaired
of ever finding a mate. Thirty years old, and romance had always
turned sour on me. I spent much of my time painting, and portraits
of a dozen lost loves adorned the walls of my home; their cold eyes
stared down at me with disdain, their lips forever smiling. It had
come to the point where I scorned the goddess of love; she must
have blighted me at birth.

It was not
long past my thirtieth birthday and, following the celebrations, my
latest beloved, Delphina Corcos, had sent her maid to me with a
letter, which advised me she had taken herself off to a distant
temple, where she vowed to serve the Blind Eunuch of Chastity for
eternity. Her decision had been swayed by a dream of brutish
masculinity, in which I figured in some way - I forget the details
now.

The banners of
my birthday fete still adorned my halls, and I tore them down
myself, in full sight of the servants, ranting against the whims of
all women, to whom the security of love seemed to mean little at
all. The letter in all its brevity was lost amid the debris. I dare
say some maid picked it up in order to laugh at my loss with her
female colleagues.

Still hot with
grief and rage, I locked myself in my private rooms and here sat
contemplating my hurts, with the light of summer shuttered away at
the windows. Women: demonesses all! I heard the feet of servants
patter past my doors, their whispers. Later, my steward would be
sent to me by the house-keeper, and then, after hearing his careful
enquiries as to my state of mind, I might consider reappearing in
the house for dinner. Until then, I intended to surrender myself
entirely to the indulgence of bitterness.

In the gloom,
my little cat, Simew, came daintily to my side, rubbing her sleek
fur against my legs, offering a gentle purr of condolence. She was
a beautiful creature, a gift from a paramour some three years
previously. Her fur was golden, each hair tipped with black along
her flanks and spine, while her belly was a deep, rich amber. She
was sleek and neat, loved by all in the house for her
fastidiousness and affectionate nature. Now, I lifted her onto my
lap, and leaned down to press my cheek against her warm flank. ‘Ah,
Simmi, my sweet angel,’ I crooned. ‘You are always faithful,
offering love without condition. I would be lucky to find a
mistress as accommodating as you.’

Simew gazed up
at me, kneading my robes with her paws, blinking in the way that
cats show us their affection. She could not speak, yet I felt her
sympathy for me. I resolved then that my time with women was done.
There was much to be thankful for: my health, my inheritance and
the love of a loyal cat. Though her life would be shorter than
mine, her daughters and their children might be my companions until
the day I died. Many men had less than this. Simew leaned against
my chest, pressing her head into my hand, purring rapturously. It
seemed she said to me, ‘My lord, what need have we of sharp-tongued
interlopers? We have each other.’

Cheered at
once, I put Simew down carefully on the floor and went to throw my
shutters wide, surprising a couple of servants who were stationed
beyond the window, apparently in the act of gathering flowers. I
smiled at them and cried, ‘Listen for my sorrow all you like.
You’ll not hear it.’

Embarrassed,
the two prostrated themselves, quaking. I picked up my cat and
strode to the doors. ‘Come, Simew, why waste time on lamenting? I
shall begin a new painting.’ Together, we went to my studio.

I decided I
would paint a likeness of Simew, in gratitude for the comfort she
had given me. It would have pride of place in my gallery of women.
I arranged the cat on a crimson cushion, and for a while she was
content to sit there, one leg raised like a mast as she set about
grooming her soft belly. Then, she became bored, jumped from her
bed and began crying out her ennui. I had made only a few
preliminary sketches, but could not be angry with her. While she
explored the room, clambering from table to shelf, I ignored the
sounds of falling pots and smashing vases, and concentrated on my
new work. It would be Pu-ryah I would paint; a lissom, cat-headed
woman. Simew’s face would be the model.

Pu-ryah is a
foreign goddess. She came to us from the east, a hot land of desert
and endless skies. She is born of the fire and will warm us, if we
observe her rituals correctly. I had no intention of being burned.
My brush flew over the canvas and I became unaware of the passing
of time. When the steward, Medoth, came to me, mentioning politely
that my dinner awaited me, I ordered him to bring the meal to the
studio. I could not stop work.

I ate with one
hand, food dropping from my fork to the floor, where Simew composed
herself neatly and sifted through the morsels with a precise
tongue. Medoth lit all my lamps and the candles, and even murmured
some congratulatory phrase as he appraised my work. He made
Pu-ryah’s sign with two fingers, tapping either side of his mouth.
‘The Lady of the Hearth will be pleased by this work.’ he said.

I turned to
wipe my brush. ‘Medoth, I had not taken you for a worshipper of
Pu-ryah.’

He smiled
respectfully. ‘It comes from my mother’s side of the family.’

I laughed. ‘Of
course. She is primarily a goddess of women, Medoth, but perhaps
because she knows the ways of her daughters so intimately, she
makes a sympathetic deity for those who suffer at their hands.’

Medoth cleared
his throat. ‘Would you care for a glass of wine now, my lord?’

I worked until
dawn, given energy by the fire of she whose portrait I made. Simew
lay on some tangled rags by my feet, her tail gently resting across
my toes. Sometimes, when I looked down at her, she would wake and
roll onto her back to display her dark golden belly, her front paws
held sweetly beneath her chin. She seemed to me, in lamplight, more
lovely than any woman I had known, more generous, more yielding. If
I were a cat, I would lie beside her and lick her supple fur with
my hooked tongue, or I would seize the back of her neck in my jaws
and mount her with furious lust. This latter, inappropriate thought
made me shiver. Perhaps I had drunk too much wine after my
meal.

As the pale,
magical light of dawn stole through the diaphanous drapes at the
long windows, I appraised my work. Fine detail still needed to be
added, but the picture was mostly complete. Pu-ryah sat upon a
golden throne that was encrusted with lapis lazuli. She was
haughty, yet serene, and her eyes held the wisdom of all the
spheres, the gassy heart of the firmament itself. She gazed out at
me, and I felt that I had not created her at all, but that the
pigment had taken on a life of its own, and my own heart had imbued
it with soul. I had depicted her with bared breasts, her voluptuous
hips swathed in veils of turquoise silk. Her skin was delicately
furred and brindled with faint coppery stripes. Her attenuated,
high-cheek-boned face had a black muzzle, fading to tawny around
the ruff, then white beneath the chin. Her eyes were topaz. Around
her neck, I had painted a splendid collar of faience and gold, and
rings adorned her slender fingers. Her claws were extended, lightly
scraping the arms of the gilded chair. Behind her, dark drapery was
drawn back to reveal a simmering summer night. I fancied I could
hear the call of peacocks in the darkness beyond her scented
temple, and the soft music she loved so much. Her taloned feet were
laid upon flowers, thousands of flowers, and their exotic perfume
invaded my studio, eclipsing the tart reeks of pigment and solvent.
She was beautiful, monstrous and compliant. If I closed my eyes, I
could feel her strong arms around me, her claws upon my back. No
woman of this earth could compare.

Weary but
content, I went out into my garden to sample the new day. Dew had
conjured scent from the shrubs and gauzed the thick foliage of the
evergreens. Simew trotted before me along the curling pathways,
pausing every so often to look back and make sure I was following.
I felt at peace with myself, at the brink of some profound change
in my life or my heart. Delphina Corcos seemed nothing more than a
thin ghost; I could barely recall her face. Let her deny her
womanhood and seek the stone embrace of the Eunuch. The day itself
was full of sensuality, of nature’s urge to procreate. The woman
was a fool to deny herself this.

Simew and I
came to the water garden, where a low mist lingered over the linked
pools. Simew crouched at the edge of the nearest pond, her whiskers
kissing the surface of the water. I gazed at her with affection.
‘Oh, Simew, how cruel it is we are separated by an accident of
species! If you were a woman, we might walk together now with arms
linked. I might take you in my arms and kiss you.’

The fire of
the goddess ran through my blood. As the sun, her father, lifted
above the trees to sear away the mist, I spoke a silent prayer to
Pu-ryah, declared myself her priest. Yet, in her way, she was a
goddess of carnality, so how could I worship her alone, without a
woman to help express my devotion?

I pressed my
hands against my eyes, and for a while all the grief within my
heart welled up to smother my newfound serenity. I had riches, yes,
and a loyal feline friend, but I was essentially alone, devoid of a
companion of the heart, with whom I might make love or talk about
the mysteries of life.