The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [61]
“Yes,” Awa whispered, looking away. “Focus on how you would like to appear. Now. But if you call me beast again I’ll ruin you, understand? I’ll take you apart and—”
“Oh!” said Omorose, and looking back at her, Awa echoed the sentiment. The young Egyptian woman looked even more delicate and lovely than she had in life, and her tattered, stained shroud was replaced with a lovely blue-and-green silken abaya embroidered with tiny trees and flowers. She took Awa’s heart yet again as she admired herself, and for a moment she seemed to forget her antipathy as she gazed at her own flawless hand. “Am I … is the rest of me so fair?”
Awa nodded and, finding her limbs slightly more obedient than her mouth, retrieved the clothes she had made Omorose and offered them next. Glancing at them, Omorose sneered. “What use have I for that trash? My garments are made of far finer stuff, are they not?”
Awa nodded again, and striking a low bow, managed, “I would use the ring to make myself inconspicuous on the road, but I have done you a great wrong and don’t know a better means of making amends. Please forgive me, my lady. Please. All I have is yours, and I would give you my life if I did not need it to better serve you.”
Omorose made a low sob, and Awa kept her head low so her mistress could not see her smile. She had finally forgiven Awa, or if not that, then at least realized that her servant was contrite. Awa would be washed clean in the tears of Omorose, and no longer need blame herself.
Except Omorose was not crying. As her mistress laughed and laughed, Awa supplied the tears she felt the occasion deserved, and only when the dry chuckles faded with the light did Awa daub her eyes with the rejected tunic she held clutched in both hands. Then Omorose demanded she explain what had transpired to allow her to leave the mountain, and with a wondrous ring to boot. Awa told her, in as clipped and dead a tone as the mindless ones giving their answers to any who asked.
“Well, beast,” Omorose said when Awa had concluded, the night fully around them. “I have no use for lizard eggs, and as I cannot bury it in your wretched breast I do not want your dagger, either. I do want his book, though, and I will find it, and I will break your curse.”
The last words obliterated the first, and that small patch of hope in Awa’s breast grew larger and wilder, her palms damp, her mouth dry. “Together we’ll find it, and once the curse is gone I’ll find a way to make you all better. All better, I swear!”
“Once the curse is off I’ll carve out your eyes and tongue and cunt and every other thing that gives you joy,” Omorose snarled, and before Awa could draw back in hurt or lash out in anger her mistress had spun away and was dashing across the glacier. Then Awa’s indignation trumped her naïve surprise, and she pushed Omorose’s soul out of her fleeing body.
Except Omorose was already too far away, and moving farther with every instant. Appreciating just what she had done, and finally dispensing once and for all with her unrealistically charitable opinion of her beloved, she scrambled up in pursuit lest Omorose get away and make good on her threat. Awa could outrun anything on the mountain, and—her right leg was asleep and she tripped, falling in the snow.
Crying out in frustration, she got up and hobbled after Omorose, but by the time she had shaken the limb awake her reanimated mistress was gone, swallowed by the night mountains as neatly as Awa’s tutor would swallow her spirit if she did not find his book, and find it before Omorose. Chastising herself, Awa returned to her hut and changed into the clothes she had made for Omorose. They fit perfectly, given that she had knit them based on her own proportions, and putting the dagger, the box of salamander eggs, the smoked meat, her blanket, and extra clothes into her leather bag, Awa turned her back on the only home she now remembered.
The Long Walk to Golgatha
Two individuals of the opposite sex will, if forced to go on a journey together, fall in love. Often begrudgingly,