The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [167]
She pulled her clothes off as she walked, no longer crying, her mind as cold as the creek water she lowered herself into. In one hand she held the last salamander egg and in the other the ibex knife, and as the frigid water shocked her into taking a sharp breath she floundered back to the edge of the shallow creek. She placed the egg in a pile of grass on the bank, then hacked off her greasy, matted hair with the knife, clipping pieces of her scalp as she heaped the hair and grass ever higher over the egg.
Finally she breathed the word onto the stone egg, and as it caught fire the stink of burning hair cut into Awa’s nose. She piled more grass onto the small fire, which burned ever hotter, and then added a small fir branch that had floated down from the forest and become hung up on the bank. The wet wood caught and burned as though it had been seasoning in a shed for years. Then the fire died down, the smoke thickened, and Awa saw a small shape moving inside the miniature pyre.
It looked like a newt. Not a flaming newt, or a mysterious newt that glowed like coals in a furnace, but a simple newt. When she tried to pluck it out of the ashes it scalded her fingers, however, and she popped them in her mouth as it crawled away from the creek, its tiny legs moving ever so slowly and carefully as it wound through the grass.
Awa sighed a happy sigh as she had upon first sitting in Carandini’s marvelous padded chair, and then she lay back down in the creek, the spirits of the water doing what they could for her seared fingertips and bleeding scalp. Fuck her, and fuck her tutor, and fuck all of them, and Awa put the knife to her own throat. The blade pressed against the skin and Awa looked straight up at the cloudless sky, a river stone her pillow, the water her shroud, the banks rising sharply on either side the walls of her coffin.
A Tale for a Colder Night
There is always a choice, and Awa made hers. Fuck that, and fuck him—she had to try, no matter if she was as terrible a person as Chloé seemed to think, no matter what. The creek suddenly felt as hot as it was cold, and with a gasp she tossed her knife over the side of the bank and scrambled up after it. Surely somewhere along the line one or two of his apprentices had done themselves in or perished of external forces; for all she knew that might be exactly what he wanted. Besides, giving up was the same as letting him win, and she would fight until she lost.
It was so simple that Awa grinned as she dried herself with her discarded clothes and put on her least filthy leggings and tunic. She found a large flat boulder where the creek met the forest and, clambering onto it, took out the book. Her book. She asked her question and the pages dutifully began to turn.
The book settled on a page that began Pity Boabdil, and Awa took the time to read his version of her life. That he had seen so much from his prison atop the mountain brought all of her anxiety back to her tight throat, her pounding heart. How could she hope to compete with such power? It was the nature of the book that as she read the writing pulsed and changed, so that while she read for quite some time she only turned the page once, and she saw clearly how he had folded the rectangle of skin and stitched it into place, creating two full pages—only the front and back of the first was written upon, the second blank as one of Manuel’s fresh canvases. Taking the knife, she sliced into the first page.
The book hurt; Awa felt it quivering as the iron knife dug through the page. The words were dripping off it, and by the time she had the leaf free her hands were covered in blood and the page was a wet clod of old skin. She wiped it in a small circle on the stone then put the crumpled page in the center, and put the knife to her arm. She only went in with the tip a little, and as the blood welled out she daubed a wet ring around herself on the boulder.
She