From Barlyron

To Matryius

 

The Physician

1847 UC

 

 

     “Take two and you’ll get this one, no charge”, shouted the seller, his dark skin marking him as Corfian, the two serpentarius birds dangling from his hands confirming it.

     The birds of prey eyed the physician as he quickly moved on from the zealous trader. But it was in vain, for today was the day of the constitution bazaar. Elected representatives of the republic, swordhands, farmers and even Ibni idolaters crowded into the vast bazaar.

     Initially no more than a small souq, stalls had sprung up celebrating the first constitution of the Barlyron republic, the stalls had swelled over the years, to surround almost the entire city of Barlyron in a human ring of frenzied haggling – the bazaar. Everything and anything could be bought from across the known world in the cool shade of the high city walls. Whether it were precious salt from the pale men of Fionn or the unrivalled camels of Leria. Gold was as ever in overwhelmingly supply, it was, as many representatives would say, the true blood of the United Cities. Overhead the scorching sun turned the earth yellow underfoot and the heat only magnified, reflecting off the golden glittering world of the sellers. The United Cities were a hot land, with few places where the heat could be escaped. As a result the continents people dressed loosely, wherever they hailed from, but the myriad of canals that wormed their way through the city of Barlyron gave off a cool breeze, meaning that unlike other cities, citizens of the waterways could decorate themselves with luxuries and jewels, normally too stifling.

     It never ceased to amaze the physician as to how many hues of gold the bazaar could obtain and it never surprised him as to how fervent the competition between the goldsmiths and miners remained. The goldsmiths, as always, laid back on gilded chairs whilst singers they had employed sang out praises to their gold-spun-work. The miners simply shouted and even screamed in response, almost throwing their work in the faces of those ensnared by the throng of people.

     Hmm, the singing is poor, thought the physician.

     It offended his sensibility, he pressed ahead through the golden realm of trinkets and ornament, pushing and shoving when he needed to. He passed through the food stalls; a long stretch of humble tents pressed against the city walls as did barnacles to a ship’s hull. Dates, chillies, cassava roots, ginger, bananas and a plethora of spiced couscous and goat milk stews brought the air together in a recipe for the senses – he was not hungry.

     His walk was determined if not aggressive and for the most part people made way, for he was a respected and well-connected man, only those travellers from far and wide slowed the physician. Each year the dust clouds thrown up by the shuffling feet grew more viscous, people became lost and irritable. Many would retreat to the nearby canals. But the physician knew his way around the bazaar and the catacombs beneath it. Whilst others sun-dried and were cornered by merchants, the physician glided by in the shadows, minding his business until arriving at his destination, Melyiak’s stand.

     The physician had an unrivalled love for stringed instruments. Every year on the day of his birth, he would be showered with new instruments from those that wished to curry favour with his skills. Alas, they were only ever destined to be ornaments, for whilst they were pretty and ornate they produced mediocre sounds. Years of prudence and trial had taught the physician that Melyiak made the best instruments money could buy.  

     “Ah Tamrat, my best patron”, called out Melyiak.

     The physician almost smiled, stooping beneath the low doorway of throws and beads and into the carpeted tent. Instruments lay on the ground, hung from the ceiling and on top of one and other in heaped piles of lesser note.

     “Gooday Melyiak, do you have it.”

     “Of course, of course.”

     Melyiak scurried away only to quickly return with a long pear shaped instrument. He carried it carefully and placed it before the physician with great ceremony.

     “This Tamrat, will be your oud, made entirely from one piece of wood, taken from the highest Chelakar hills. As requested it has eleven strings and the neck too has been thinned to your specification”, Melyiak stood back, parting his hands as if a curtain had lifted upon his reveal.

     It is beautiful, and light, but…

     The physician plucked each sting carefully, one after another and closed his eyes as all sounds of the bazaar left him and he felt he could hear the vibration of the strings themselves within his ears.

     Ah, Kolos luthiers are really the finest.

     “It is perfect Melyiak”, the physician gave over a sizeable pouch of coins.

     “Oh before you go master, I should tell you that there is a slave singer, owned by Abidemi. She is causing quite an uproar in the slave quarter from what I hear.”

     “Really, well I still have much to buy today”, answered the physician, turning to leave.

     “Yes, yes, indeed. But the biding’s been going since morning, and still it goes on.”

     “No, that is not possible”, answered the physician, stopping beneath the shower of beads, the sun across half his face.

     “It is, I would go if I were you.”

     “Rumours I’m sure, good day Melyiak”, the physician headed out into the full heat of the midday sun.

     Directly before him a young girl sat on a cart, bartering aggressively with a middle aged woman, an inlaid mother-of-pearl box the source of their disagreement. The physician’s eyes fell on them a moment without ever actually looking at them, he had intended to turn right towards the spicers, but with his oud in hand he found himself turning left in the direction of the slave quarter. The need for slaves was what brought most out to the bazaar, though slavery had grown wrong in the eyes of some prominent artists and thinkers it did little to stop the trade. Besides, many of the dissenters had left for Kolos, where slavery was becoming greyer under scrutiny.

     Now that he was pressing deeper into the heart of the bazaar, fewer woman could be seen and the long fine robes of elected representatives were a rarity. Hundreds of dark men lined the path, humbly dressed and smoking the qalyān water pipes of flavoured leaves and dried fruits. They handed the long serpentine pipe to one and other, chatting amiably in the aromatic haze - let’s see if you were right Melyiak,

     At the mouth of the slave quarter there was an energy that could just be gleaned; the edges of excitement emerging from within the tall gate of charred bronze stone. The excitement grew more palpable within the slave quarter itself; a high rising labyrinth of stone domes and archways and long caverns lit by lanterns where the sky was not visible. In this shadowy slave quarter, all shades of white slaves were available to the black people of the United Cities. The physician quickened his pace, down a series of stairs and through ever more archways, deeper he pressed into the maze until natural light slowly died and he began to grow weary of the hunt. Shrines to different gods carved in alcoves lined much of the way, their thousand candle vigil scenting the stuffy air. The maze narrowed and sunk, heat became physical, the air thickened with the aroma of frankincense and the stalls canopies hung listless and dirtied with the smog of spices. The physician was not a tall man and so he found a footing in the wall in which to raise himself up and look over the vast crowd.

     No.

     It was too full, too full with people, too full with heat, full with its own weight.  The physician stiffened his sinews took a deep breath and turned to leave but then through the menagerie of sound; haggling, yelling, echoing footsteps, screaming monkeys and squawking parrots – a note wrung true through the bedlam. A note that was pure and honest and yet so soft, it seemed as if it could not exist for long in the close-pressed chaotic underworld it found itself in. The physician followed his ears.

     That note…

     He pushed through the crowd, sure and aggressive. Men twice his size but half his standing, parted courteously at the sight of him, but travellers and hagglers with no clue of the noted physician, fought with him to make their way to the front. The mass of people had created a bottleneck, but none had paid any heed to a half crumbled staircase to the rear of the throng. The physician climbed the crumbling staircase and from its precarious top, he could see everyone and everything.

The chamber loomed overhead, its dome encasing them like krill in the belly of a whale. The floor was awash with slavers and eagle eyed buyers, but every eye was on the singing woman. She had a voice that made honey seem bitter to memory. And she was as beautiful to the eye as her voice was to the ear. She was a thin white woman with an equally thin nose and thin lips and her hair was a flowering brown that fell to the base of her back. Everything about her was frail, but nothing more so than her voice, whose fragility was such that it captivated the human heart.

     That voice…

     She finished her song and the shouts rang out quicker than the volley of a hundred bowmen.

     “ONE THOUSAND” shouted a bald man from the front.

     One thousand!

     “ONE AND TWO” shouted a man from across the chamber who stood clung to a giant lantern, his face sickeningly illuminated.

     Shout after shout, turning into cries and screams filled the air. The singer stood awkwardly, covering her scantily clothed body as best she could. Her slaver lay spread across a draped bench, upholstered with leather, eating mouthfuls of lychees – he had never been so happy. He did not attempt to stop the frenzied bidding and in fact, after what must have seemed an age to his slave, commanded she sing again.

     She hesitated and that was all it took, her slaver jumped to his feet and she spluttered into song. A low, sorrowful song that sent a quivering trail to the physician’s ears like the fluttering of falling leaves from a soon to be winter tree.

     I must have her, I must…I will.

     The wild crowd stood silenced in the candle lit dome, as the voice of the white woman made their hearts bleed from deep wells they had not believed could be dredged. Upon her final note a hundred hands took to the air, but one voice, a particular voice, commanded all.

     “TEN THOUSAND!”

     The outlandish bid caused every head to turn and every eye to narrow on the figure who, from his perch, stood shrouded in the spice fogged air. The physician descended, the slaver already entreating him to the dais, throwing his lychee scarps aside.

      “Ten thousand. You mean it?” asked the slaver.

     The physician brushed aside the slaver, as one would an unwelcome smell. He laid his oud on the floor and grasped the woman gently by the chin with his thumb and forefinger.

     “I do.”

 

*

The Physician

 

 

     The Physician’s home was a peculiar place; dense with other worldly herbs and potions and a phantasmagorical array of surgical tools. From every nook and cranny an abnormal object seemed to linger unnervingly. And where knives and saws were missing, bizarre jars of pickled animals and their body parts, lined the shelves and table-tops as one would hang their washing. Ever present were the musical instruments, shrouded in sheets of parchments holding both the beginnings of songs as well as notations on the human body.

     Upon entering the physician’s manse the singer cried, but the physician would not allow it to persist, he made her a tea of ginger and lemon and they sat quietly, her drinking, and he watching. Before she had even finished the tea, he asked her to sing, and she obliged, all the night, until she could sing no more. With exhaustion taking hold, the physician put his slave to bed and watched her whilst he cradled his oud. Slowly as she drifted to sleep, he began to play.

     What a blessing.

     With the passage of years his blessing would become his wife, and never would she refuse to sing. The first year she had a child by him, a girl named Efula. Little Efula would enjoy the greatest lullabies ever sung to a child and the physician would enjoy them too, until jealousy took hold. It had always been there, sometimes subtle, in unblinking eyes or capricious, in the slamming of a fist and the insistence of another sung. More years passed and the physician’s infatuation festered. He went out into the city less and less, and often, elected representatives would arrive to beseech him to return to his work.

     “But the republic needs you. There are developments that require your knowledge.”

     “I am happy here. I will come when I need to”, was the physician’s only reply.

     He shut the door and turned to face his wife.

     “Come, we have just begun to understand the vibrations of your throat, continue.”

     His wife did continue and he observed, occasionally touching her throat and scribing annotations, and even sometimes stopping her, to look down the length of her throat, before returning to sketch diagrams. Efula just sat in the corner, a silent witness, knowing that if she interrupted her mother’s singing, her father’s scalding would be terrible.

     In the year 1853 UC their second child was born, but the physician was not there to witness the birth. Instead he was in the other chamber dissecting the throat of a bird and growing frustrated with his findings. Efula assisted her mother and after six hours of struggle, Talia was born.

     She was a slight bronze thing and adorably sweet, with tiny eyes surrounded in pudgy gold folds of baby fat. And from the moment she opened her eyes on the chamber that was her world, she began screaming. The screaming never stopped. Night and day she screamed. So much so that the physician wished to throw her out. But his wife sang ever more for her husband, and every time her daughter cried, she sang louder and higher to drown out the noise.

     By the time Talia was two, her screams had subsided but it did little to raise her father’s interest in her. He only grew more deranged by the day. He spoke of strange things he would like to do with his wife, which caused Efula to cry – Talia was too young to understand.

     Until one day it was all too plain.

     In an overwhelming tide of futility the physician overturned his table. He threw glass jars of preserved dissections to the floor, and they shattered with a clamour. One after another, his deep guttural screams filled the manse. Years of work, diagrams, musing, objects and instruments were smashed and torn until he slammed open the door, bursting out, animal like from a cage. He stormed across the floor hurling items at his wife until he was upon her. He yanked her by the hair, “What is it? Tell me how you sing. TELL ME!”

     Efula began pulling at her father’s arms but he shrugged her off. Talia erupted into tears and screams, pushing back into the shadows with the heels of her little feet.

     THAT DAMN CHILD!

     “You taunt me, I give you everything and you give me nothing. No answers at all”, the physician let go of his wife and slumped against the wall. He was gaunt and pallid, he had not eaten properly in weeks.

     Talia’s crying continued.

     “My love I –.”

     “My love…if you love me then you would help me. My love…you are nothing but my slave – someone shut her up!” demanded the physician, pointing at Talia.

     “Leave her alone”, shouted Efula.

     The physician turned two bloodshot, frenzied eyes on his firstborn…but beyond her, he caught sight of his oud, discarded on the floor, broken at the neck, stings scattered. Within that hollow neck and its broken wood, from the grain of the felled trees that leant their life to his instrument, the physician felt he understood the first portent of a hypothesis.

     Yes…maybe it could work.

     “You will not silence her…fine then. I will make use of her”, said the physician crossing to Talia.

     Talia screamed, hysterical, fighting back her father’s touch – her mother stood between them.

     “Make use of me my love”, said Talia’s mother.

     The physician thought for a moment and then grabbed his wife by the arm and led her into his study.

     “Help me recover the tools, we shall need them.”

 

 

*

Talia

 

     A year, an eternity in the timespan of pain.  But it was over, a year of listening to her mother’s screams, a year of listening to her half gasps and gargles for air, a year and it had ended. Her mother was dead. The physician’s fury was unlike anything Talia had ever seen. He cried and beat at his own body in despair. Even Talia’s perpetual howling did not rouse him, until three days later he emerged from his isolation, only to mutter, “Help me preserve her…for study.”

     It was the first time that he had spoken to Talia in over a year. In spite of everything, the thought still entered her mind, like a casual observation whose ramifications she could not foresee nor understand – he spoke to me – me.

     Tears flooding their being, the two daughters unstrapped their mother from the table and with the aid of their father, dragged her lifeless body from the room that had been her torture chamber and down into the cellar. There large jars of alcohol preserved years of dissected specimens, large, small, ghastly and bizarre.

     The physician ordered his daughters out of the cellar.

     “What’s happening”, asked Talia of her older sister as they closed the door.

     Efula only cradled her in response, too awash with tears to form any words. That was the last embrace that Talia ever knew with her sister. Only days later her father took Efula into his study and the screams and shrieks of pain resumed.

     Efula…

     It was not long before Efula too died at the hands of her father’s experiments. As they had done with her mother, they took Efula down into the cellar, Talia at her feet, her father cradling the head and shoulders. There, that night, Talia finally saw it – the head, her mother’s head, severed and preserved in a jar upon a shelf. Her skin had turned an off-white with an almost jaundice hue across the cheeks and the throat – the throat – was a horrifying open wound of picked flesh and floating chords.

     Talia stood and stared, unblinking.

     “Do not scream child!” said the physician taking Efula from Talia’s limp hands.

     But Talia did not want to cry or scream, she had no need, nor want. She knew only horror in that moment. It paralysed her, forcing her young eyes to linger and her soul to sour.

     Mother…

     As her forth birthdate neared her father and she continued to share no words. The physician remained in his study, leaving Talia to scavenge for food within the manse. There was not a great deal left to her but in the garden remained a stubborn plum tree that persisted despite neglect. Talia slept beneath the tree and ate when it provided, the clothes of her sister kept her warm, long after her smell had faded.

     Beneath the tree, in the silence of her thoughts, wretched and frightened voices found her for the first time. Voices that wondered if her mother and sister would be alive, if she herself had been taken first. Months upon months below the shade of the tree only encouraged the voices out of the shadows and into her mind, until the world beyond was but a fantasy.

     One morning she was woken by her father. He was squatting above her and stroking her face. He wore a large smile and spread it uneasily, his eyes narrowed with intent.

     Father…is that you…

     “Talia, wake up…that’s it. I have realised my mistake young one. All these years…oh I have been such a fool, you, you were meant to be my subject. Your mother and sister, they were too old – but do not worry, they helped still. This is the nature of science you see my young child. Sometime mistakes, grave ones, are made, but they point us in the right direction…which is you.”

     Me…really…

     The physician picked up his daughter and she did not fight against his hold. “I have concluded that after a certain time the human throat changes you see. It hardens and becomes what it is, but you my child, you are yet four years of age. Oh it has been terrible all this I know…”

     The physician closed the door of his study and for the first time Talia saw the carnage within. Stringed instruments lay scattered and blood soaked, tools of ghastly length and menacing curves plagued the floor. And in the centre of the chamber was the dissection table, sturdy with thick leather straps nailed deep into the wood.

     “Your mother, oh Talia, if you had heard her sing. It was…near…yes near to perfect.”

     I did hear her sing, it was the best thing I ever heard. 

     Talia began weeping softly.

     “I did not want this to happen Talia. But I must know how such sounds are made. In life we must know the answers to such powerful things. If we do not…then what are we but animals? You are young, you cannot understand.”

     “But, you killed them”, Talia whispered.

     The physician tied Talia to the table, she still did not fight, “I did. But I only wanted to make them perfect, to give them a power that we are yet to understand. Music Talia…it is the only sound the soul comprehends. Language must be learned, taught and still it is unknown to foreigners. But music, it is essence, it is us, it transcends the tongue…and we do not know why. I must – no, we must know its workings, don’t you think?”

     We must?

     The physician trawled through the littered floor finding the equipment he needed, he took them over to a basin and began sterilising them, slow and meticulous. Talia contorted her head against the strap, hoping to glimpse what he was doing – but to know what pain is coming can be far worse than the pain itself. She kicked and bucked against the table, it was of no use. She tried to wriggle and worm her way free but the straps remained unforgiving.

     “If you fight and become frightened your flesh will tighten and make this harder, you must relax my young child.”

     No, please no, NO!

     “Here drink this – drink it”, said the physician, forcing alcohol down her throat, “it will help the pain. Now let us see if our assumptions are correct.”

     The physician placed the palm of his hand hard against his daughter’s forehead and tightened another strap across her head, “shhh” he urged as she began to writhe like a suffocating fish.

     “Talia, do you not want to sing like your mother.”

     Talia held her father’s gaze.

     “Just imagine if we could achieve that together. She would be so proud of us.”

     Talia saw her face then, with all its colour with all the joy that filled it whenever she sang. She could see the tears that formed in her father’s eyes as her mother’s voice filled the air and she stopped fighting.

     “That’s it my child.”

     The physician picked up a small blade with a hair thin edge and made a narrow vertical incision down the centre of Talia’s throat. She wriggled and cried in pain. Then came another cut, deeper and across the first, forming a cross.

     ARGH!

     Talia’s legs kicked against the wood as her father pulled open the cross section, all the while applying oil and dabbing with a cloth, his hands moving tentacle-like about her. The physician granted her a moment of steadying breathe, before he picked up an odd instrument with a hinge and two small handles, he inserted it into the cut and forced open the gash. Wider and wider until he could see within.

     “Oh my, this is completely different my child. We were right.”

     Wider and wider he forced the handles until he could almost admit his fingers inside, Talia felt herself give way to sickness – then everything was black.

 

*

Talia

 

      Talia’s mother and sister had died within the first year of the physician’s experiment. But by age seven, Talia continued to live. Although it was less a life lived and rather an existence strapped to a table, forever awaiting the next cut.

     “This is astounding…your throat has healed, it is stronger than before, look”, the physician held up a mirror, Talia closed her eyes.

     “Now…we must begin on the true work, your chords. Your mother had chords like no other before her, but you…you will have chords like no other to come”, the physician put down the mirror and proceeded to set about a new bewildering array of tools.

     From it all, he held up a musical bow, but it was not the bow with which he played his oud, it was a different far more striking bow.

     “In time Talia we will use this bow, to perfect your voice”, the physician gazed at the curve and frowned, “you know I have always wondered where bows came from. They have not been used for long, for most of history musical instruments were plucked…but about two hundred years ago, the bow began to emerge. I used to argue this with a friend…” the physician fell silent as his eyes restlessly moved about his mind, “I think bows were invented by horseman, for the finest bows are made from horsehair. It is a simple, inelegant theory but sometimes that is life. We of the United Cities think we are the centre of all art, philosophy and music. And we probably are, those white men are too busy burning one and other. But the finest bows can only be purchased in Evanescere, for they obtain their horsehair from the palest of white men, the northerners of Noradis. The harsh cold air of those great mountains gives the horsehair a better grip on the strings” the physician put down the bow.

     “But that is not yet, first we must prepare your chords”, said the physician.

     He turned his back on his daughter and began brewing a potion of ginger, dried wild lemon and black honey with sticks of a strange green herb that Talia did not know. He grinded the ingredients and then, in a small bowl, heated them over coal, until they bubbled so hot that steam began to fill the rafters.

     “Quickly, take this. Do not worry, this is my invention, take the pipe”, the physician forced the leather and wooden pipe into Talia’s mouth and began coaxing the steam into the pipe.

     “Breath deep, the steam will sooth and make supple your throat and most importantly, the chords.”

     Talia wanted to refuse but she needed to breath and so the steamed potion filled her mouth and entered her throat. There it lingered only to evaporate out the open wound that was now her throat.

     The physician then pulled another bowl over to him, its yellow thick hue was unmistakeably olive oil and within it floated yet more herbs that Talia could not discern. The physician dipped a delicate silk cloth into the bowl and then ever so lightly began to run the oil drenched cloth up and down the chords of Talia’s throat.

     ARGHHH!

     Talia’s head burst with pain, she felt she would faint if she had not been strapped to the table. Her father was delicate and precise but the pain was unlike anything Talia had thought possible. The pain promised to hand her over to the release of death…but when it didn’t, when she remained, she opened her eyes and fixed them on her fathers. They were desolate balls of black with a thin band of yellow that encased the darkness.

     Talia focused on the darkness and hoped against hope that somewhere within, existed a love for her – she fainted with the effort of her search.

     The fainting became less frequent with the years but the pain remained excruciating, yet in an almost abstract sense, as one would learn of a theory in a book but not be sure of its reality. With each new potion, dissection and test, Talia left the chamber and entered her mind. In there the voices entertained her with notions of maybes and what if’s, of escape, of suicide and even of her father’s death. But within the increasing din of voices there was one voice so hollow and quiet that it was rarely heard but it was there saying, asking and even hoping, what will I sound like, like my mother, what a voice she had – NO! You are sick!

     Invariably her thoughts would turn to her mother and sister, she could still hear her mother sing and Efula humming in tune, she missed it all terribly. Her mother’s singing had been the only thing that offered any light in the darkness of her home.

     But that is gone now, he took it, HE KIILED THEM AND HE WILL KILL YOU!

     Talia opened her mouth and screamed like never before. The straps on her body vibrated with the force of her voice, glass shattered, the strings of her father’s many instruments snapped in an awful succession of twangs and then her father’s face was before her, holding his ears in anguish pleading and demanding she stop but she wouldn’t.

     CRACK!

     The physician crunched the side of Talia’s skull with one of his tools. Her head fell back over the edge of the table and in her half consciousness she saw her father, upside down and shaking his head.

     “Your voice is a thing of beauty, never use it like that, have I taught you nothing, I thought you understood what we are trying to achieve here!”, he left the chamber in despair.

     Her head grew heavier and the lights of consciousness began to extinguish, that hollow quiet voice reappeared.

     You do understand, don’t you…

 

*

Talia

 

     It took Talia until she was thirteen to fully understand what the quiet voice seemed already to have understood. With each day her voice had grown more powerful as her throat had healed until finally her father untied the straps and told her they were finished, and that he would have her sing for him.

     Yes.

     Her father took her by the hand, out into the garden, “here your voice will be its most sonorous.”

     A part of Talia knew what she must do and it took the reins. She sang a song of no words – a melody, whose notes played with each other so completely that her voice became an entire ocean of sounds, all of one body of water. She cried and cried as she sung, for in her notes she heard her mother as if singing in harmony with her, moved by her, by the union they shared, mother to daughter, forged by her father’s hand – she hated herself for it.

     But you must sing, you must give him what he wants, all of it.

     Talia did exactly as the voice urged and her father’s face was a world of ecstasy. He sank down into the grass of their garden and wrapped himself in his arms as he cried a thousand tears of wonder and felt his soul lifted to a place beyond his realm of science.

     When Talia finished and the air fell still she beheld her father. He lay before her, a comatose worshiper lost in adulation, looking past her, through her, to some truth she had apparently revealed to him – she vomited where she stood. In that instance her mind exploded in a thunderous cacophony of voices, all urging her to kill him, to thank him, to lay next to him. But that vengeful urge to kill was more vociferous, more violent – it wanted violence in return.

     But you cannot can you, assured the quiet voice.

     – No…no, I cannot.

     Talia always knew the hate and fear she bore for her father, feelings so profound they sometimes threatened to be her permanent condition, but now she was aware of what the singular quiet voice of her fractured soul had long understood. A deep truth that resided down within her, fostered in the solitary confines of her father’s study, and it petrified her greater than anything else –

     He has given you the greatest gift of all…cherish this voice.

     Talia ran from the garden. Panic pursued her about the manse and she went nowhere and everywhere, through the rooms, up the stairs, down into the cellar, until she returned to look upon her father once more. He remained unmoved, bound even, by some force that had not released him. Talia grabbed what food, money and gold from wherever she could find it. Last but not lest she grabbed a shawl of her mothers, wrapped it around her neck and fled from the manse.

     Her father never looked back, instead content to bathe beneath the shadow of the plum tree, in a transcendent bliss.

     Having seen the city only once on her second birthdate, Talia was utterly lost. She had enough gold and money to get her as far as she wanted, but the city was vast and her mind was awash with taunting voices. From atop the small hill that their manse straddled she could see almost all of Barlyron, it rose to the east and fell to the west. It was a gargantuan city, housing more than a million, with more canals, roads, and causeways than a painter could depict. Everywhere stood great libraries and houses of learning and looming over it all, the two universities of Barlyron, carved from resplendent rock and topped with hundreds of keen eyed birds. Talia had only ever heard her father talk of the wealth of knowledge that was Barlyron, but now she saw the buildings with her own eyes; impregnable and inspiring creations, larger than her imagination had ever thought possible, sitting beneath her plum tree.

     But wonder was quickly overwhelmed – it is a maze – she could not imagine her escape, let alone plan it but then the blue of the horizon spoke to her – yes, the sea.

      Talia raced down the hillside towards one of the many canals. Hailing a boat, she threw a handful of coins into the canalman’s hand and asked to be taken to the port.

     “Are you well young girl?” asked the canalman.

     “Just take me to the port…please.”

     The man obliged and pocketed the coins. He adjusted his bonnet, stood up and pushed off against the canal bed with his giant oar. Slowly the gondola went with the mild current. Evening was begging to turn to night and lanterns and glass lidded lights of mesmerising colours began to flicker and blink into existence. The water was a pallet of reflections, lighting the city of Barlyron in a medley of purples, yellows and oranges.

     Talia’s lips trembled but she would not cry. Instead she took in the splendid vista around her.

     “It is some sight isn’t it, you never get bored of it, I think”, said the canalman.

     “I…I have never seen it”, said Talia softly.

     “What! You not from here?”

     Talia tightened her limbs into a ball and did not respond. The canalman watched her for a moment, then just shrugged. The gondola continued along the canal.

     They heard the port coming before they saw it, fisherman were returning with the night catch of deep sea crustaceans and a great tide of merchants were greeting them as they unloaded their fish. The bartering began in earnest and grew wilder with each haggler. The smell of fish was overpowering, it stung Talia’s nostrils and yet gave her life.

     That smell…

     “Where are you going?” asked the canalman.

     Talia ignored him and scurried off along the sprawling quayside, away from the vast anchored galleys. She had an idea and she meant to keep to it but everywhere were distractions for her virgin senses. She could smell burning fruit as men smoked communal pipes, she could hear birds cawing above the fisherman’s catch and everywhere were the aged men of the republic, deep in discussion, holding the folds of their long thobes and looking pensive.

     Everything was fresh to her, she wanted to savour it all.

     But you can’t – hurry.

     Talia paused for a moment, trying to calm herself and think. She made up her mind and headed for the most secluded boat of all, a shabby wooden, low bodied ship, with one large triangular sail. Aboard were a woman and a man, halfway in the act of casting off.

     Take me with you!

     “Where are you heading to?” asked Talia, although she knew little geography of the known world.

     A man of a slightly similar colour to that of Talia’s mixed origin jumped down onto the jetty and began untying the last rope. Once loosened he held it tied around his bicep and only then did he look down at Talia. He was unusual to look upon, with feathers in his hair and yellow dye on his nose.

     “Run along little girl.”

     “I have money and gold”, said Talia, unfurling the hastily made bundle on the ground.

     The man hardly looked at it, “You must be stupid girl. What can you do to stop me taking that?”

     “I will scream.”

     “HAHA”, the man enjoyed his laugh, until a sizeable nut hit him on the back of the head.

     He turned around and eyed the woman who had thrown it, “take the money and let her on already, it hurts us none”, said the woman.

The man rubbed his head and mumbled, “We are going to Matryius. No place for little girls, those savage men will rip you apart. I know of what I speak.”

     “Is it far?” asked Talia unfazed.

     “As far as the world goes, either that or those mountains the white men have to the far north.”

     No, not where the horsehair comes from, thought Talia, seeing the bow her father had used to test her throat.

     Talia handed the bundle over to the man, the woman offered a helping hand, Talia took it, never letting her gaze leave the woman’s. Even once she was settled aboard, she kept her eyes on the woman’s.

     “Looking for something?”

     “You seem like an honest woman” announced Talia, thinking of the darkness that lived always in her father’s eyes.

     The woman stared more intently at the young girl.

     “How long until we are at… Matryius?” asked Talia.

     The woman did not respond immediately, she was too engrossed in the features of Talia’s face and the arresting expression that inhabited her, “six months, if we make good speed. But you will have to work.”

     I will do anything, thought Talia as she watched Barlyron fade into the distance; the thousand canal lights grew dim, the tops of the universities faded on the horizon and the smells of dried, burning fruit finally succumbed to the salty seas – her father however never left her mind, and neither did the voices.

 

*

Talia

 

 

     A week shy of six months they pulled into a bay slightly north-west of Kazli Island, off the coast of Matryius. The journey had been arduous; they had almost been claimed as slaves at one point, but thankfully the captain was half savage lander and with a cocktail of fear, bribery and talk he had them on their way again. Though they escaped that fate only to be battered in a storm, which had left them stranded for days until the mast could be fixed. But now arrived, Talia saw that the slave waters were nothing compared to the land that awaited her. From the prow of the boat all one could see was green. Ardent lush green that sprawled over everything and everyone, a rainforest without end. Trees, branches and tentacles of vines and canopies of leaves, extended so far, that the green mass seemed wider than the blue sea upon which Talia had travelled. The trees ruled as titans of a flora world that few had ever ventured into to. Talia wondered which were older, the oceans or the jungles.

     “In these lands we have a saying, it is not so good in your tongue but roughly it says; you have fallen out of the blue now you must learn to swim in the green”, grinned the captains wife.

     Talia helped the captain and his wife unload the hidden gold, apparently savage landers love of gold was even greater than that of the United Cities. Once they had loaded up the cart they headed into the thick jungle. The unbaiting sun dappled the forest tops at first, but once a few paces within it was soon vanquished by the mass of life, leaving only thin shards of light that fell like dust in the thick air. 

     There were no roads, just dried crumpled leaves and branches crushed by hundreds of years of feet marking out a way of sorts. The heat was unbearable, not the dry scorching heat of Barlyron but a wet humid heat that stuck to you like honey and drained water from the body. Talia melted atop the cart, listening in exhaustion to the sound of the jungle. The buzz and hum, with its ticks and hisses relentless and from every tree, leaf, plant, stream and branch. Life teamed and dared not be tamed. Yellow, gold, purple, black, white, pink, blue and an eternity of green hues. Things were spotted, striped, six legged, eight legged, and no legs at all.

     Talia jumped, startled by the sound of an elephant blasting its trunk through the rainforest and then she laughed, and could not be stopped. She added her mirth to the life that surrounded her – I’m free – she loosed that freedom up into the canopy. 

     That would be the last time Talia remembered laughing. After arriving in Matryius she soon parted ways with the captain and his wife. The wife had grown fond of Talia and though she begged her to stay, Talia refused. At their insistence Talia accepted a final meal altogether and a bed for one more night, but when night came she was gone, bound – perhaps drawn – to the archaic kingdom of Matryius.

     A dilapidated ancient city, Matryius had long ago been swallowed whole by warmongers. For every native there were two or more slaves. The slaves were almost always naked, whilst the natives themselves wore little in the way of clothing. Instead they seemed fond of feathers, animal hides and the hard to get leaves of the most secluded plants. They sported varied feathers in their hair that stood tall like spears and they covered their eyes and nose in the dye of crushed beetles, usually red or purple and sometimes orange. Though Talia questioned why they bothered at all, for their faces in themselves were something to behold, darker than the white man though lighter than the black people of the United Cities. They had thin eyes and thin lips and greatly pronounced cheekbones and jaws.

     Sex, eating and violence took place freely and mingled happily. The city itself was a sprawling mass of spires, made from earth and stone and heaped into great heights, adorned with intricate carvings that worshiped their one god, Haderuz.

     There were times through the years that Talia hated ever having arrived in Matryius; in the foliage entangled paths and backstreets of the wild jungle ridden city, Talia made no real friends and she talked rarely, but then the voices reminded her that she deserved nothing less. For as she grew ever native and naked and took to donning feathers and identifying the different plants and animals; she also took on the mantra of violence and blood lusting that drove the savage landers. She acquired it happily for it worked wonders at pushing down the horrors of her father with horrors of her own making – so you can forget the horror that is you, that is your gift, yes?

     The city was the perfect hell in which to banish that quiet voice within her, the voice that brought with it thoughts, thoughts she did want to hear nor begin to understand. But once banished the silence left in the wake of the quiet voice began to fester into a disease whose malignancy was self-hate. A self-hate encouraged by other lesser voices that crept into her ear dripping desolation into her being. She begged and starved and evaded death numerous times, although some of her voices asked her why she evaded death at all, if only to do so the next day. 

     The children do it, she would tell herself.

     The children of Matryius were a desperate and innovative horde, and although Talia was a quiet and secretive stranger to them, strength in numbers was what drove the children together. There was no real love between them all but over time they taught Talia the many tricks of the trade that allowed their troop to survive. How to mislead a target and gain their purse, how to take the food from the hand of a man three times your size. They showed Talia how to slink back into the shadows, and how to remain there even when the breath of your enemy was upon your nose. They even taught her to how make clothes and jewellery out of the rainforest, a skill that enabled Talia to make a great plume collar from the feathers of a black bird they called Naќaha, for her mother’s shawl had become tattered and threatened to reveal the horror of her throat – of your gift. In time she earned their trust enough to be shown the secret cave paths below the jungle city. It was there she found the carvings, carvings so old that the stone had nearly reclaimed them. She would spend hours there, tracing the carvings, not knowing why but drawn to do so. Above all she learnt what was poisonous and what was not, and there were a great many things that were. The easiest way to figure one from another was to read the markings. Red across blue meant death, green across yellow, meant sickness for several days and then there was the dotted purple frog, which if touched meant a life banished in the rainforest, where the slow, terribly contagious disease called ũmnĕick, brought fatality at the pace of a snail.

     But this counsel was not given through love, only through the continual need of collective strength, as Talia was reminded by random beatings in the dead of night. But she did not mind, that was the way of it in Matryius, especially with the horde of children. But when the dying and screaming of the city grew to be a lost background hum to her and the monsoon rains she so enjoyed moved on to planes far away, Talia found the quiet voice remained – I had never left – it emerged slow and stubborn and humming a melody that was almost imperceptible but without end. Every time the melody promised to reach a crescendo Talia screamed it down, sending the thousands of birds who took residence on the many spires, cawing back into the jungle. With each scream, less birds would take flight, and when she ventured out into the undergrowth she found them on the ground, never to rise again.

     End this – be quiet!

     But the quiet voice never did.

     Just a note – no, I am a monster…a monster of Matryius – is that what you tell yourself.

     She did indeed convince herself of that, but savagery and despair were not enough to sustain her, the will to sing remained, lingered, persisted – and in spite of best efforts, she soon found most nights passed with the humming of soft notes into a pillow of crushed leaves.

 

*

Talia

 

 

     As she approached womanhood she flowered into a striking woman and had to become quicker at evading the men, who she knew wished rape and not love. But as Talia had come to learn was always the way with the savage landers, betrayal awaited every turn. As her beauty took hold of the men and the rumours twisted into lust, the children turned on her for a coin, and led the beast they called, ‘the ringed man’, to her.

      He was a round faced brute, more a walking weapon than a man. On each finger he wore at least three rings, a ring for every warrior he had killed he claimed. A claim Talia knew to be true from what she had overheard from within the shadows.

     On a humid hot day like any other, the children came, leading the ringed man to where Talia bathed in one of the many streams afforded by the rainforest. When they found her the children pointed and screamed in excitement. Before Talia was out of the water the ringed man had her pinned to the earth, his breath reeking of rotten meat and his face torn with half a dozen scars.

     “Look at you, you are going to make me rich.”

     Scream go on…SCREAM!

     But Talia did not, she let the ringed man throw her into his cage.

     Are you so dead now that you don’t want to live?

     They entered the sanctuary of the chief of Matryius under the half-light of stars a million leagues away. It was a building that Talia always kept her distance from. It was an enormous, multi-tiered triangular structure of brown humble earth and soft stone, where every niche and alcove had delicate carvings to Haderuz, as well as the words of long lost tongues, inscribed into its surface. Atop the pointed roof of the superstructure were a hundred spires with gold topped teeth that interlocked expertly. It was a structure of age and time, so much so that the jungle wound itself in vines and branches, along the sides and even within the soft stone fissures of the chief’s home.

     As they neared Talia could see the hundreds of parapets that hung the bodies of unruly slaves and dissenting citizens. There they would rot until they fell to the earth. The packs of ferocious jungle cats would finish them off then.

     The ringed man spoke heatedly with the many guards on the giant doors, parading his ringed hands menacingly, until finally they were allowed in. He took Talia from the cage and the guards shouted taunts at her, but she did not react.

     Fight, scream – why?

     The ringed man led Talia by the arm and they ascended the wide crumbling stairs. So large that they allowed fifty men abreast. As they rose out of the treetops, the spires looming overhead, the beat of the sanctuary drums swelled to meet them. The court of the chief was the most lavish hovel one could imagine. The sun penetrated the top levels of the enormous hall and with it the tentacles of the rainforest had burst through and refused to yield. Down on the floor the sun was a distant friend amongst the dense smog of opium and fiery, nose burning spices. Meat lay strewn across the floor, as too were sex-slaves, fucked near to death. Drunken warriors of the chief’s war-band fought amongst the ravaged woman, with giant curved weapons, naked save for feathers, leaves and dye. 

     Whenever a blow was landed they threw their heads back and produced the intimidating half-laugh-yell that was their distinct war cry. The smell of sweat overpowered everything. At the far end was a makeshift dais, erected out of heaped manacles and chains that wound around several giant trees trunks. Atop this spectacle lay the chief, sporting more feathers atop his head than Talia had ever seen, around him fawned his harem and a band of slaves who played drums whilst others charmed bowls of snakes, their elaborately carved pungi instruments dispensing a plaintive tune across the gathering.

     “GORAN, what is it now, oh…ringed man”, shouted the chief laughing. The snake charmers and drums stopped so the fawners could parrot their chief in laughter.

     Goran squeezed Talia’s hand in his anvil like grip and said, “I bring you a gift my chief. To show you the error of my ways, I present the most beautiful woman you have seen, half white, half black and she does not like to speak”, Goran threw Talia forward, she fell but recovered her feet.

     Oh you must wish to scream!

     The chief sat up, pushing aside his doting harem as he did so, he nodded and curled his lips as if to say he was pleased, “she is good…what can you do?” asked the chief eyeing Talia directly.

     Talia looked about her, hundreds of eyes ogled and threatened, she did not reply.

     “Goran. Have you brought me a mute?”

     The flatterers laughed. Goran stepped forward and grabbed Talia by the head, the plume collar of feathers about her neck slipped but did not reveal her secret or her fear.

     “She is no mute. I have heard she can sing, and well.”

     What…no…how does he know!

     “Sing…that is good, sing then slave”, commanded the chief reclining back on the ocean of fabric and giant purple leaves beneath him.

     “No, and I am not a slave” said Talia.

     Is that fight in you, goaded the quiet voice.

     The chief, who at just that moment had sunk his teeth into a horned melon, choked on the insolence. Recovering his breath he snarled, “You are half white and half black, somewhere you are a slave. Don’t think you are not, now sing or die.”

     Sing or die – don’t be so foolish, sing – then I am a slave! – But you want to sing don’t you, you do, you know it…I KNOW IT, said the quiet voice deafeningly.

      – SHUT UP!

     “Goran, kill her now.”

     You want to live don’t you?

     Despite her willingness to embed herself into the savage way of things, despite the people she had killed and stolen from and despite her acceptance of nothing but blood and darkness she had always known, in that single quiet voice she so desperately tried to supress; she wished to live, and to sing in another life.

     Goran put his hand to his Katara push dagger but it quickly fell away for Talia was singing. She stood tall and thin, a starved and captured stranger in their world, not knowing what awaited her – but she sung.

     Yes!

     She sang for her life, a life born from song. But as she sung to save herself she found herself singing to sing, tears of joy and not despair filled her eyes and she sang louder and higher and clearer than ever before. So far-reaching was her voice that it seeped into the timber and stone of the hall, into the chests and lungs of her audience and shook everything irrevocably. Louder and louder her voice became until practically a howling storm of wonder. It rattled all before it as though one had their ear pressed against the ground of a forthcoming earthquake. It promised union and destruction, it left no room for any other thing, it was all – and then in an instant it was over.

     The snake’s eyes narrowed on Talia, as too did the eyes of the humans. Not a sound could be heard, it seemed Talia had sung the life out of all things only to sing it back into them, changed and the audience knew it.

     What is happening, they don’t move – maybe you should.

     “She is mine!”

     “No, I will marry her!”

     “She is a god!”

     “We must free her!”

     “How much?”

     Cries upon cry of what to do with the singer flew from man and woman. Goran stepped in front of Talia, drawing his two Katara blades, “I captured her, by our scriptures she is mine.”

     “She is no slave to capture, she is a god”, called a hulking man who at that instance threw two shuriken stars at Goran.

      The first star Goran deflected into the air but the second, he sent into Talia’s shoulder. That was the tinder to the spark. Screams and curses erupted with volcanic force – the entire hall descended into chaos. Limbs began flying like birds as blood spilled and sprayed the walls as if from a crimson monsoon. Friends and lovers began clawing at one another; knives, arrows, spears and all manner of weapons Talia had never seen were drawn into a whirlpool of madness.

     My signing has done this…

     Talia backed away into the shadows of a giant shrine and watched as the bloodbath raged. Three women of the harem disembowelled their chief and left him gasping upon his dais. Goran fought fiercely until a blow to his knee felled him like a tree.

     Talia’s eyes had seen much; she could never rid the image of her mother’s head in the jar, nor her sisters. She could never forget the mad obsession that burned somehow from the darkness within her father eyes. The fear that had taken hold of her in the stormy seas of the slave waters, the horrors done by the children of Matryius onto one another, horrors so indescribable that they had driven her to love the songs that she sung quietly to herself in the night. But the sight now unfolding before her was something that even hell would have reviled. By the time it was over whole bodies had been reduced to mulch, not a soul existed, and not a sound could be heard.

     Talia stepped over the dismembered corpses and up onto the fleshy mess that was the chief, she held her breath and searched through his clothes for some money. She quickly found it, and a pouch full of jewels. Without looking back she left the hall. Minding her way as she went through the flesh splattered floor. No guards awaited at the stairs, they too had entered into the commotion and been slaughtered. Talia was alone standing atop the wide high rising stairs. From that great vantage she saw nothing but the tops of the rainforest and heard nothing but silence…it seemed to her as if she had killed the entire world with her voice.

     But you enjoyed singing…didn’t you, stated the quiet voice.

     Talia closed her eyes and there on the steps of the sanctuary, beyond the hall and all its people she had driven to a murderous death, she promised herself - never - never again, would she listen to the quiet voice.

     Really, it taunted her.

     Talia could see the limbs of all the dead men and women. She could feel their warm blood cooling on her skin. She could see their faces, demon like in their adulation, eyes possessed. It made her vomit right there on the stairs.

     Yes, I promise, she spat back in her mind.

     You can’t!

     But…I have, thought Talia, recalling a memory. It was but less than a year ago. She sat on a giant buttress root, alone and surrounded by the noise of the rainforest. Water dripped, insects scurried, birds chirped and hooted, and animals growled as the floor slithered and cricketed with a million different species – the sound was deafening, the call of life was relentless. But in that place Talia could not hear the voices in her mind, she was alone, truly, for the first time. In that moment the thunderous life of the rainforest was the most perfect silence to her.

     Goodbye, said Talia to the quiet voice, and she banished it to an unseen vault.

     Finally she opened her eyes, blinking back blood and looked, as she had done several years ago in Barlyron, for the sea. But the jungle was everywhere, an unbroken ring of foliage.

     Talia descended the steps as fast as she dared and raced off through the city and into the jungle on foot.

Which way to the sea, which way – where will you go? – Anywhere.