‘I look like a scholar, then?’ Her voice was arch.
‘Not exactly. It was just a feeling.’ I paused, and then added hurriedly. ‘I saw your face briefly in the Pyramid, and I would like to see it again.’
Ast shifted restlessly in her seat. I had made her uncomfortable. ‘You are intrigued by the unseen,’ she said. ‘By mystery. Mipacanthus should fascinate you just as much.’
‘You are a living mystery,’ I countered, ‘while Mipacanthus is not. I’m sure his secrets are fascinating, but he is still dead.’
‘A pity you don’t have more imagination,’ Ast said waspishly.
‘I have plenty but I prefer the present to the past, experience to theorising.’
‘Experience can be dangerous.’ She reached out and touched the lip of the water jug with the tips of her long fingers. ‘People are selective in their interpretation of the prophecies. Sometimes the truth stares them in the face and they see something else, a harmless fantasy.’
I wished she wouldn’t keep steering the conversation back to the prophet. I felt we had more interesting things to talk about. Did she find me pleasing? Would she walk with me in the city? Could anything else happen between us? Did I really want that? I was still confused about whether I liked her or not. However, my curiosity - if not my actual desire - was aroused. I was eager to look upon her face again. Only then, could I decide whether I wanted more from her. Ast had recognised my inexperience with women. Perhaps she would find that attractive. I struggled to think of something witty to say, but at that moment noticed my father and Moomi sitting at a table on the other side of the plaza. They had obviously not seen me. ‘My father’s over there,’ I said. ‘I’d better attract his attention.’
I raised my arm in the hope of waving wildly enough for him to see me, but Ast thrust out a hand from between her veils and stopped me. ‘No!’
‘It’s quite all right,’ I said. What unenlightened place had she come from, where prevailing social customs condemned young men innocently sitting in a public place with unknown women?
‘If you want to go to him, I must leave,’ she said. ‘It’s up to you.’
‘But why? We’ve only just started our conversation.’
‘That’s just the way it is. Make up your mind.’
I stood up. ‘I must go. It would be impolite not to. I promised to meet him here.’ If I had hoped to call her bluff, I was mistaken.
‘Then go.’
I hesitated, and began an awkward introduction to suggesting we might meet again. ‘Could we...’
‘Tomorrow morning,’ she snapped, clearly anticipating my request. ‘I shall be at the Pyramid again. There is an inn called The King’s Stair nearby. Wait there in the late morning and I’ll come to you.’
I was so surprised by this, having expected a cold good-bye, or at least a need for gentle persuasion, that I simply nodded wordlessly and walked off across the plaza. Halfway to my father’s table I turned back, but Ast had already gone, leaving the rest of the bread and pate uneaten.
Because of Moomi’s earlier reaction to the girl, I decided not to mention having met her in the Library. Our earlier visit to the Pyramid had apparently left my father in a state of spiritual intoxication; even Moomi looked slightly impatient with him.
For the rest of the day, Moomi and I investigated other areas of the city, dragging my father, who seemed blind to the wonders on offer, along with us. We went to the cat market and watched the auction of an enormous leopard, who wore a jewelled collar and sat licking his paws in apparent disdain as rich merchants bid for him. Cats are sacred animals in Charidotis, and ailuromancy (divination by cat-watching) is a widespread form of prediction.
Later, we ventured into the nut market, where we found a restaurant in which to take our evening meal. Moomi must have been bored with both my father and myself, for we were equally distracted. All I could think about was Ast. She had disturbed me, but the memory of her was exciting. I couldn’t wait to see her again.
It was a long night, but I did not dream of her.
In the morning, we all went to the Pyramid again. We intended to stay in Charidotis for six days and this would be the way each day would begin. I couldn’t be bothered with all that queuing again, and I told my father I wanted to spend some hours examining the carvings on the outer walls of the tomb. On one side there were steps that zig-zagged right up to the summit. I thought I’d climb them before I went to meet Ast.
The view from the summit of the Pyramid was stultifying. The lands of three countries, Ou, Miplux and Cos, were visible from there. The most celebrated monument of Miplux, the Great Obelisk of Ewt, could be distinguished in the bluish haze of the distance. The river was a silver ribbon across the land, an artery from Cos in the north, that led down to the lifeblood of the delta and drained into the Great Sea, Ertang. I wished that Ast was with me. I could have pointed out in which direction Elanen lay, on the northern marshes of the delta.
Eventually, I could not contain my impatience and hurried back down the Pyramid steps. It took me some time to find the inn Ast had spoken of, and I dreaded she had been there before me, had got tired of waiting and had already left. I asked at the bar if a woman of her description had been there, but the pot-girl shook her head. Encouraged, I purchased a cup of ale and sat outside, beneath a twisted orange tree, to await Ast’s arrival. She appeared through the crowd almost immediately, as if she had been waiting, hidden nearby, looking out for my arrival. Her slight willowy figure came gliding towards me, and I felt my heart crash. It was a feeling of longing but, in some bizarre way, also one of horror. I decided I must see what lay beneath the veils once more, to reassure myself.
Ast greeted me curtly and sat down. I offered to buy her a drink, but she demurred. ‘I have just taken lunch with my friends,’ she said. I was immediately curious.
‘What are they like? Are they the same age as you? Are they male or female?’
The veils were motionless. I had no idea what she was thinking, whether she was amused or affronted. ‘Maybe I will have a drink,’ she said.
Inside the inn, I fumbled with coins, terrified that she would have fled by the time I returned to the table. But when I emerged she was sitting there still, one arm lying on the table in front of her. It was a strong, slim arm, with nut-brown skin, and the long-fingered hand was far from delicate. I felt that hand had purpose and was not disposed to idle tasks. Perhaps my unconscious mind thought of death, then.
She drank all of the ale I had bought her, though without speaking. I tried to begin conversation several times but she would not be drawn out. I feared she regretted suggesting we should meet again and my heart hammered against my ribs as I searched my empty mind for something fascinating to say. In retrospect, it is easy to see that Ast was preoccupied rather than bored.
Presently, she put down her empty cup and appeared to appraise me minutely through her veils. I felt myself colour, sure she was thinking badly of me and my appearance, even though I considered myself well-favoured, and had often been told as much. Then she announced, ‘I would like you to come with me to the place where I am staying.’
A chill of clenched my flesh. ‘I thought my company did not please you...’
She neither laughed nor sought to reassure me. ‘It is your choice,’ she said.
I was terrified, elated, weak, yet eager. ‘I would like to see your face,’ I said.
She stood up. ‘Follow me, then.’
It was in a quiet part of the city, away from the noisy pilgrims’ hostels. I thought she had taken me to a private house for, once inside, there was no indication we had entered a hostel or an inn. I commented upon this and Ast replied, ‘This is what money can buy for the discerning traveller.’ I bridled at her scorn. What did she want with me? To her I must seem like an untutored, provincial creature. I was romantic, then, and believed lust to be an adjunct to love, rather than the other way around. Of course, I was falling in love with her even before I saw her face again.
She repulsed me, she intrigued me, she filled me with terror and desire. In the movements of the girl, in her words, her very shape in space, her use of time, a prophecy resided. Yet I was blind to it. I could only interpret the feelings she inspired in me as love, for I was inexperienced. Perhaps, in those moments, I was influenced more by the romantic optimism of Cairus Casso rather than the dour vision of Adragor the Lame, whose sentiments, had I been open to them, would have been considerably more useful.
The house was sleeping in the afternoon; we saw no-one on the stairs or in the corridors. Ast’s room was a darkened place, with blinds drawn over the windows; the light was sepia. There were two beds, and items strewn around that suggested occupancy. She shared this room with someone. Where were they? I felt a stab of jealousy. She could have a lover, out there in the city somewhere.
Ast left me standing awkwardly in the centre of the room while she busied herself in the shadows beside the door. Presently, she brought me a cup of wine. I took a sip. It was red, and dry as the desert. Would she sully her veils now and take the ruby liquor through them? She watched me as I drank, and I sensed her enjoyment of my predicament. There was something unnatural about her: the invisible vigilance, her taut stillness. I sensed threat. Then, with absolute precision, with those strong, slim hands, she carefully peeled back the veils from around her face. I felt light-headed as I watched her, terrified something vile would be revealed.
Her appearance did come as a shock, but simply because I could look into her eyes. Her beauty was almost abnormal, yet I was not allowed the luxury of exploring it. She had me impaled with her eyes, and they were all I could examine. I could neither move nor speak. Then she began to unshroud herself.
The outer veils were discarded first, cast off to lie about her feet in a fretting pool, worried by the draught coming from beneath the door. Beneath this outer covering, she was wrapped in a complicated bandaging of fabric; blues of every hue. Never allowing me to evade her gaze for an instant, she began to unwind herself, her slender body swaying as she did so. Gradually, she revealed her upper arms, her neck, her shoulders. I thought of the serpent, and how it sheds its skin. I was entranced by her, utterly entrapped within the static silence of the room. I did not feel afraid, for I was beyond fear. I had become condensed desire, for that is what she wanted.
Languorously, she peeled herself to the waist. Her skin was a pale, golden brown, lighter in colouring than her arms and hands. She was like an idealised statue of a woman brought to life; the breasts perfect, the flesh poreless and smooth, yet with the appearance of silken velour. I longed to touch her, and she danced towards me slowly, her hair a shifting forest of darkness about her shoulders. Her peculiar garments hung down about her hips, obscuring the rest of her exquisite form, which I was desperate to behold. She reached up to cup my face with her hands. ‘You, the unbeliever,’ she murmured, and kissed me. My arms went around her and locked; my whole body felt contused with blood. I could not even return her kiss, but it did not seem to concern her. This was the moment when the secrets of adult passion would be revealed to me. My initiation. Ast drew back, and her hands went to her hips. ‘Now you will know all of me,’ she said.
I felt it then: the cold. And in my deepest heart, I must have realised the truth, because I had held her close.
I did not feel saved when the door opened behind me, nor thwarted. I felt released, but crushed. Light came into the room, and presence. Ast uttered an exclamation, and her arms went around her breasts. An older woman, also dressed in blue but with an unveiled face, hurried past me and grabbed Ast’s arms. They did not speak aloud to one another, but their eyes said many things. Then the woman shook Ast’s body. ‘Are you mad?’ she snapped. ‘Here? In this place?’
‘He is mine!’ Ast hissed. ‘He wants me!’
The woman laughed harshly. ‘Wants you? He doesn’t know what he wants. He’s only a boy.’
I cannot recall whether I spoke or moved while this transaction took place. I might as well have not been there, but then the older woman turned her head to me and said, ‘Go, boy! This is no place for you.’
Ast snarled then, and spat out a tirade of expletives. It did not surprise me to hear it, though some of the words were unknown to me. She struggled with her companion, clawed at her.
‘Go!’ repeated the woman to me, keeping Ast in a firm hold. ‘You should thank me for it.’ Something in her voice, or the simple evidence of her last words, sent me fleeing from the house. I heard them shouting at one another as I ran along the street below her window, but could not discern the words.
I was almost delirious with conflicting emotions by the time I reached the sanctuary of our pilgrims’ hostel. As I had raced down the last few streets of my escape, I had felt as if a formless danger was chasing me. I kept visualising Ast sprinting up behind me, her breasts bared, her beautiful hands clawed, her hair wild. My back prickled with anticipation of the attack, when she would leap upon me. Then what?
I slammed into our room and leaned upon the door. Drooping there, panting and groaning, it was some moments before I realised Moomi was sitting up on her bed, staring at me in surprise. Presumably, I had woken her up from an afternoon nap.
‘What have you done?’ she demanded. It must have been obvious I’d been running from something.
I sat down on my own bed, my head hanging between my knees. Moomi padded over to me, and put a hand on the back of my neck. She made soothing noises, asked me no further questions. After a while, I looked up at her, and said, ‘The girl we saw, the girl in the Pyramid...’
‘De blue woman,’ she answered, and sighed. She sat down next to me and hugged me fiercely. I could not understand why. ‘She found you,’ Moomi said.
‘I found her,’ I amended. ‘It was... something strange has happened.’
‘Tell!’ Moomi commanded. I realised she was frightened for me.
What was there to tell? It was difficult. ‘We met,’ I began. ‘I went to her house. She was... odd. Then someone came into the room. I was sent away.’ I shrugged. ‘That was all.’
Moomi exhaled noisily. ‘Stay away! She smell your innocence. She want it. No, she not for you, not your kind. Forget.’
‘What is she, Moomi? What is it you don’t like about her?’
‘She a blue woman, wid de power of fear and desire. She turn light to her own colour. De blue woman fill a man wid longing, yet he scared of her. He can’t turn away. Bad luck. Knowledge of her change a man. She, de girl we saw, she blue.’ Moomi clawed her hands and grimaced, mimicking a predatory thing. ‘She devour a man.’
I laughed nervously. ‘Really? You mean, she eats people?’ I was not in the position at that time to refute it. Anything seemed possible then, in that haunted, sleepy afternoon. I thought of the dim room I had run from, the glowing girl swaying towards me, the promise, the menace, the unexpected release.
Moomi shook her head. ‘Not bones and blood,’ she said. ‘Dere are ancient peoples, Lexi, very ancient. Place like dis, it lure dem. Dere is much for dem here. But not you...’ She stood up. ‘You be safe now. I sure.’
And I was safe. I never saw Ast again. But I dreamed of her. Just once, but enough for to have it stay with me all my life.
The dream came that same night.
In the dream, I woke up and got out of my bed in the dark. My father and Moomi slept nearby, but they did not stir. I dressed and went out of the hostel. The streets of Charidotis were empty, which proves it must have been a dream, because even at night, the city was alive and thronged with people. Now, the streets were still and the buildings loured overhead against a purple sky, glistering with pulsing stars.
They were moaning on the Pyramid; all those carvings. As I approached I saw them move, heard the faint distillations of their cries that came to me down a tunnel of centuries. Dancing girls, kings, saints and soldiers. As I passed through the first portal, I felt their stone hands grab for my back, but I did not look round.
Inside, a ribbon of cand
les led me onwards. Each flame illumined a tiny space around it, but otherwise all was in darkness. I followed the faint lights through every echoing room until I came to the ante-chamber of the tomb itself. She was waiting for me there, blocking the portal. Her veils were cast back from her face; she smiled at me kindly, and beckoned me with a slim arm. We did not pass into the inner chamber, but into the darkness of the ante-chamber, beyond the feeble, flickering lights. She led me to a stone stair. ‘Hold on to me,’ she said, for there was no light. I followed her up the steps, stumbling, grabbing hold of the floating blue that wafted around me. I could sense that I was high above the ground, knowing that one wrong step would send me plummeting down to the floor: I would be maimed or killed. Ast climbed with a firm tread, seeing in the dark like a cat. Presently, a stone passage-way absorbed us, and there was faint, sepia light.
‘Follow me.’
We negotiated a maze of corridors. There were echoes all around us; the merest hint of cries and laughter, music and the bleating of animals. The air smelled strongly of a deep, earthy musk, enough to make me feel nauseous. It was a concentration of the perfume I had smelled upon Ast, when I had first met her in the Library. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked her.
She laughed, and the sound seemed to come from far overhead. She slapped at my hands, so that I lost my grip on her floating veils. Then, she began to run from me. I tried to follow her, stumbling and tripping, but it were as if an invisible mesh of strings impeded my feet. Her form grew smaller before me, her blueness dimmed. I called her name, crashing from wall to wall in the narrow passage, but all sound was muffled. I groped my way along the wall, suddenly terrified, and eventually my scrabbling fingers found an open doorway. There was light within; blue light. I stood at the threshold and could see this had once been a library, but all the books were cast onto the floor, their spines broken, their pages scattered. Blue candles, with sapphire flames, dripped molten wax onto the ravaged books. I seemed to hear voices coming from the open pages; quatrains being recited, but faintly, without hope, fading out. Knowledge lost, destroyed. I went into the room, and bent to pick up one of the volumes. The smell of hot wax was overpowering.