Pieces

(Perhaps from a Puzzle.)

(part two).

by Michael Owen Reeve

 

VI

 

It is the following morning, after they awake in each other’s arms that Ambers asks Thesus if he’d loved another woman. The question is so sudden that at first doesn’t grasp their meaning. “I slept well,” he says, thinking she’d asked him how well he’d slept.

 

“Oh, they couldn’t have been that boring.”

 

“They who?”

 

“The women you slept with.”

 

Puzzled, he considers. “I think you are putting a different meaning on that word than I am familiar with.”

 

“Were I not so mannerly, I could say I imagine you’ve rutted with pigs in a sty.” Her eyes twinkle. “I could use more colorful language if you wanted me to.”

 

“I would rather you didn’t, but I am not your master. I am but a humble man.”

 

“That’s almost beyond imagination --- a man being humble.” She pokes him. “You’re masterful at being humble.” Pinches his stomach. “One of the reasons that I love you.”

 

“Can we stop evading the issue here? What causes you to ask me about my ‘sleeping’ habits?” He raises an eyebrow. “We haven’t actually done anything. I remember I lay down here to get some rest and when I wake up, you’re lying here next to me and asking questions.”

 

“Clearly I remind you some girl you used to know. I could see it in your eyes the moment we met. Are you perhaps disappointed that I’m not who you thought I was?”

 

“You couldn’t be her.” He shudders. “She died.” He begins to shiver and passes out.

 

VII

 

He found himself standing in a place where he’d been before, beyond the perimeter of a fence. A long line of people stand waiting patiently in order to enter something behind him. He knew not because he didn’t spare a glance behind. Instead, he stared straight ahead as he had done that day many long years ago at what was approaching.

 

The crowds parted, their places in line forgotten in their mass revulsion for the horrible sight which they saw approaching them. A broken and pathetic man sat in the saddle of a starved horse, swaying lifelessly as the horse walked. Pale horse with even paler rider, he stank of death; that is, of stagnant earth from the depths of a graveyard. He looked like the embodiement of death unhooded and astride a dying horse. His face was torn off and bloodied, revealing his skull from his forehead to the hollows of his eyes. In deed, his eyes were plastered shut from dried blood and he was effectively blind. He wore a soldier's clothes which were a little too big fo him or he had simply wasted away from starvation along the long road he had traveled. His legs were bandaged in several places and one arm had been broken; it was held across his chest in a crude sling. His hair was shaped in unflattering arrangements and he bled from a wound on the crown of his head, which was also bandaged. It was the man whose grave he’d marked with the word “friend” come back from the dead.

 

IX

 

Thesus awoke this time, shrieking in fear.

 

He was in a new place now, lying in a bed. He felt the covers wrapped around his shoulders, up to his neck. He was tucked in. He squirmed. He’d never liked being tucked in. It was dark in this room. The door opened a crack...

 

X

 

He stirred from his dreamless sleep and looked across to the aged person lying in the northwest corner of the room. He rolled over from his stomach onto his back. The noise that had awaken him wasn’t coming from the sleeping old man. Well, it probably wasn’t the snoring and groaning and moaning and even the shouted expletives in a dialect that was so strange to his young ears that he wasn’t sure if it was spoken or the sound of a pig farting. This old cuss sure made a lot of disgusting noises when he slept. Completely unlike his grandfather. His grandmother always slept a soundless sleep… did he have a grandfather? Why was he sleeping in a strange bed? Why was he sharing a room with an old man who snored loudly? These questions troubled him.

 

 

His eyes shifted from the old man to his own toes which had extricated themselves from the suffocating depths of the blanket. Whether or not he had a grandfather of his own, he was sure his own grandfather wasn’t a gross noiseome beast like his current roomate. In the dark of early dawn, he smiled for the first genuine time since he had shared a bed with the rambunctuous McDonald twins. And now who were the McDonald twins? Could it be that he was getting senile in his old age? It suddenly occured to him that he shouldn’t be wondering about his own grandfather, but if he were someone’s grandfather. He certainly was old enough to be somebody’s grampy. Imagine... here he lies, not being able to sleep, and thinking about a pair of twins he can’t even remember a thing about! 

 

Before he could wonder more about them, a voice spoke from outside the door and he realized what had waken him up.

 

"Hello there."

 

It wasn't a voice he heard before. Curiosity might have caused him to look up to see who was speaking, but he wasn't in a very curious mood. He rubbed his eyes.

 

"Well, you're a rude little boy aren't you?" The door had been opened just a crack, bringing a small sliver of light into the room in which he was hiding. He guessed that the speaker was carrying a lantern, so that must mean it wasn't night. There weren't any windows in the room, so it would be dark any way even if it were still day time. He could tell that it was a lantern because the light it gave was somehow insubstantial... it pulsated... it didn't feel cheerful. Maybe the light was mocking him?

 

"You're the one who forgot to knock," he observed.

 

The stranger laughed. The door opened wider.

 

"Could you close that door?" He wanted to tell this person, whoever they were, that he didn't want company. Would of insisted that they leave. But he somehow couldn't. He'd already been accused of being rude, so he didn't want to prove this person right.

 

The door closed, but the person with the lantern had already stepped inside the room. The figure holding the lantern laughed mischeviously. At this moment, his room-mate eyes sprang open and he sat bolt upright with a curse and a loud, noxious fart that sounded like a trumpet flourish. The intruder gasped (whether from his waking or from the sound or smell of the flatulence cannot be told), and then a strange cloud of smoke hit whatshisname’s face just as he turned to face the intruder.

 

Jump from his own bed, somehow managed to trip in the covers and fell to his hands and knees.  And he realized that it wasn’t smoke, it was sand, because a handful of it was thrown into his face as well. They both lay howling in pain and writhing, trying to rub the sand from their eyes, as the intruder ran straight for the door and out.

 

 

XI

 

 

Thesus lay on the floor, rolling about and howling in pain. The door opened, Amber came rushing in. She grabbed him by the shoulders. “Thesus! Thesus!” she whispered urgently. “Why are you on the floor? Are you in pain?”

 

“There’s sand in my eyes!” he yelled, rubbing at them.

 

“Let me see!” She pulled his hands away from his eyes and felt them with her own. “I feel nothing. There is no sand. Your face is clean except for your tears.”

 

Thesus looked at her, his vision blurred. Somehow he thought what he was seeing should be tinged red, but couldn’t remember why. He blinked away the tears. “Ask him!” he yelled, pointing to where his snoring room-mate had been sleeping. He glances over, and sees there is no other bed. He’d been lying in the only bed in the small room. No, not a room. It was a simple hut. The floor had a rug, the rest was wood. Why was he thinking there should be things growing here and the walls should be made of glass? “No one there... but I was sleeping in a room with someone else. Another old man like me... he was sleeping in a bed over there.” He pointed vaguely this time, uncertain of his own recollection. “I... saw the door open... someone was talking to me... she came in and woke up the other man up... she threw sand in our faces and ran out...”

 

“Thesus, please stop saying these things!” she whispered urgently. “I have been sleeping out on the floor while you were in my bed. I was worried for you. Now you wake and tell me such things I can only think to be madness. Please don’t say... don’t say...”

 

“Don’t say what?” he asked in a whisper. If he hadn’t already been over-burdened by questions, now he must worry why she seemed so determined to be quiet. She hadn’t even asked him to whisper...

 

“Please don’t say I am falling in love with a mad man.” Having said these words, she continued on without waiting for his reply. He couldn’t have thought of one in any case. “I opened the door a crack to check on you. You tossed a little in your sleep, then dozed off again. I didn’t want to wake you. Now I find you raving about... you must have been dreaming.”

 

“I know not if they were a memory or I was remembering something from my past.”

 

She smiled slyly. “Oh, your past. Shame that you cannot tell me stories now once you finally regain somewhat of your wits & your memory. Now is the time to sleep.” She rises. “I cannot be alone this near to a bed with you.” She brushes herself off. “People will talk. Now, I hope you enjoy sleeping comfortably while I lay outside on the ground.” She moves to leave.

 

“No, no. It is your bed.” He rises. “You sleep here.” He gets up, walks across the room, and puts his hand on the door knob. She stops him. The look in her eyes stops him from speaking. They walk outside together.

 

Groupings of men and women are scattered around the tent. “Have you consecrated?” one man asks. Thesus shakes his head no. Five men shrug as if in disgust and walk off. The women remain, along with one man. The stragglers remain riveted. They atleast seem to realize that there are more things to be curious about besides matters of the flesh.

 

“He is prepared to speak,” Amber announces. They speak the next part in unison with her, “And we are prepared to listen.” After a beat, the man preens, “eagerly.”

 

“I know not what is I may tell you,” Thesus answers. “What would you know?

I am but a man who has traveled. Surely you do not expect every traveler to have tell tale of himself. Not all men are boasters of their own deeds.”

 

          “Well, we aren’t asking you to boast,” says one of the women. Her hair is golden. Her voice is that of burnished brass. “In troth we are glad that you aren’t. So of course our interest is the greater for it.”

 

          “Please. Forgive the impertinence of an old man, but how is it that your voice is so rough, young lady?”

 

          “You won’t be so easily be reprieved as you would wish, beloved,” Amber purs.