The Seven Days of Wander

view and measure a sprint of darkness.

  One keen eyed Captain was first to see her moving form; he realized her single flee was not a rampage of attack but a single calf. Noting the pace of her limbs, he saw sport in the kill.

  A command held the arrows, Captain and lance surged into the gray dawn, his white steed moving across dark sand; a wave foam of effortless pattern.

  ...the rabbit knew before it saw. The tremors of pursuit danced around its nostrils in an odour of blood heat. Its ears noting the mere rapid beat pressing fear and danger cold upon its back. A quick glance scented the long single talon rigid for impale, the dark supple wings folded long in the wind in a flat dive, the white underbelly pulsing with the flight, the hawkish eyes fixated in an unwave of appetite. And racing from a grave spilling like caving sand at the heels can find longer stride, harder rythmn but distance is a slipping ally between hawk and prey. Seconds falling backwards into the endless abyss. The hawk's shadow is heard to laugh...

  But this rabbit has hands; an eye catches a stone, raises its inert flesh; the body spins and an arm spits challenge.

  So close, the Captain can but swerve a little, the rock tears his shoulder, the lance is swerved from her heart and both her hands grip its wood as the horse thunders past.

  The Captain chooses and releases his lance before his wrist snaps at the held momentum.

  A circle of dust, the horse stilled. Eye to eye, the Captain stares upon a panting mongoose dangling before his charge one long tooth. Despite a humilation before his men, the Captain is much impressed by such a fury gathered out of ill borne wind.

  She stares too. Her body, soul craves another kill but her mind cautions her arms that the feel of a lance is rougher then the finesse of narrow steel.More horror may cling to living failure than a defeat dignified by her own will.

  She lifts the lance to turn it on her own breast; to have a young brave heart upon it.

  A wrist moves, a whip flicks the small distance, snakes the girl and shaft into a solid coil.

  The gallop is resumed. The girl straddles over the lance, its blunt end rutting in the sand, the deadly blade inching towards her throat by the friction's drag. She can neither move to cut the whip nor slow the approach slipping through her hands.

  Who can call destiny an idle thing? Or think design a purpose as narrow as an eye's squint in lowering fog? For just as evil can slice as a careless swing so can good save by a different turn; till these effects, so cooled and uncalculating, have that look of the most forgiving and most trustworthy god: Random. Random forgives; for blame is a mantle of fools who see purpose by closing one eye to a pair of blank doors; Random, most trustworthy, sees it lays always half a trap and half a ladder in every hole. Never wavering from its waver. For what men rail as evil in unpredictable is but the bewailing of a left handed stride. Random is not dice but men would play life as such.

  For her then, Random turned and opened a hole in the sky. No death chariot swept through this to swallow up her fill but rather a red dawn called all the Faithful to kneel in the very dust of their deeds.

  The Captain halted, dismounted and prayed upon the woven mat of his fathers.

  The girl lay unconscious, still entwined at the spear, the line running taut to the horse, whose chest as speckled foam from the frenzy of its run. Her body gave no movement, no tremble of shame or fear. Its naked exposed with even her rags tore mostly away.

  Her eyelids sealed from any perusal of the morning's religion. Only her throat lived, pulsating gently, its skin curved delicate away from the razor edge an inch distant.

  The captain rose, his soul blessed for the day, turned to his horse and slackened the rope. At the approach to the girl, he stood a foot away and surveyed her living form. 'Still alive', he thought and seems without disease. ‘Allah, perhaps has willed her life'.

  He barked for some men and another whip. Taking no chances he ordered two of his guards to bind her arms, with the old whip. He ordered the spear to be splintered and discarded and placed the new whip coiled at his saddle.

  Not sparing precious water, she was then awakened by a guard urinating upon her face.

  As the troop saddled and trotted a return to camp with this solitary bounty in tow, the Captain spoke to his second of command: “Allah, it seems has willed this creature remain to man. So be it. But her tainted birth and cat claws make her no prize for a Prince or his house. There is, however, a merchant I despise, a brothel owner, who has an eye for bargains but a deaf ear to cause.”

  “Besides”, laughs the Captain,” He will not hear what I do not tell him!

  And I have heard he prefers to stride the new young mares himself to ensure they are well broken under his obese rule. Perhaps this feast, lusted of unpolished fruit, will yield a relentless diet upon his own quivering bulk. I dare say there folds enough of him to drop away the flesh of three or four normal lepers.

  That is, if the cat doesn't pluck his eyes and plug his wailing throat with them first!"

  And so after a week's sweat and a leer's fondle, she became the promised bride of all men, at least those with coin.

  Upon examination by the House 'mother' she was declared virgin, giving the merchant an even more swollen bulbous of lips; a grin lizards would shun.

  But fate had it that a caravan was eminent for the merchants travel and business. Wishing to savour the fig longer, he ordered her bound by anklet and arm chains and allowed no leaving of the house nor male 'visitors'. Let the bride stay fresh and pale for the night of her returning groom.

  Thus she was spared womanhood for another three months; destiny's presumptions are not halted but at least eclipsed.

  Those three months gave graphic tale of another side of love, hate painted with gild. The Ruts and Unchosen which came here did not pay for bodies but rather for the ornament of faces. That gave distance to hate. In the remains of void, love would then be imagined. The better the face, the greater the void.

  Graphic for her in details given and through the instruction of a boudoir's peephole where she was made to view. And beaten for much blinking.

  Taught the feigns of pleasure and the syllables of ecstasy, to encourage the return of brief and golden moments; time travelled across desert and clinked in a hand.

  Her 'sisters' were kind to her in the way that broken soldiers have with unwounded youth, making much of no glory, making little of much fear. Like cats around the kitten yet knowing the inevitability of the dog.

  She learned it but accepted none of it. Even such a young heart could see dignity remain arise from any position; that here though in various degrees of decayed and diseased, touch was above purchase. Indeed there was truth because of the open purchase. The paw of the Beast holds no deceit here in this market place tucked away from the false clarions of hope.

  But it has been stated she would not accept it. There lied no longer an innocence about her to tremble a glancing soul into the night's corner. Her streak face silent yet her lips were a continuous taunt in a silent growl. She was civil but still desert.

  The dog in time regained his kennel and barked once at the approaching moon. Her sisters delighted in the folds and wraps they reigned upon this flower; petals for the hasty cumbersome peel at another's garden.

  Upon a couch she waited, the embroidered props were as stones to her rigid skin, tight as her eyes which dragged at the ceiling. As if willing a hole to gather thunderous and the hand of Death itself to devour her itself. Her legs and arms free for the first time in months but the door locked.

  The keyed lock on the door was turned and this once her body gave in to a single wretch of shiver. Then repoised itself.

  The merchant entered with another man almost equally as grotesque in flab and offensive finery.

  The second there having paid dearly for the show of first hand and then his own follow: this perhaps to ensure groom and commence were indeed twins at the same womb.

  Standing side to side and each leering at her from pinholes of inhumanity po
oled in flesh, she was struck by the image of a royal camel with two monkeys peering over the cheeks of its rump.

  She smiled.

  Encouraged, though a perhaps trifle disappointed that the kitten had no claws to sweeten his back, the merchant slipped from his shoulder his outer cloak. He threw it to a wall hook but it missed and fell to the floor.

  Only a cat's ears would have scented the click of metal to floor, muffled in satin gold. Like the moon picking at its tooth.

  A larger grin as she rose, gracing the sirs with a long look at her legs bared in the movement.

  She spoke in the higher whispers of attending submission "Oh, no Sir, such a garment as this weave on the sun should remain high."

  She glided past the men, whose four eyes played delighted at the now less gentle heave of her small bosom.

  And finally enjoyed the rapture of her bent frame as it curved towards the crumple of cloaked.

  Turned from those eyes, the right hand sought the hard form of her anticipation, while the left hand raised the collar to the hanger.

  Better, much better than gold or coin, a hilt was found, grasped. And her soul of woman sang.

  A swift turn, an arc, the nine inch blade drinks into the merchant's heart, his life gushing outward in a soundless stream of following. She wheels on the other as his alarm gathers past the horror first restricted at his throat. Her girlish fingers lay upon his lips while the knife points a froth of grin below his