To George R. R. Martin. The bard of our times.
The red squirrel tore his face and he could hear the claws as it worked its way up the tree. Sitting with his back against the silver spruce, the coward dared not look up to where the animal barked at him high in the boughs.
He could not sleep. Last night he watched as a water rat pissed in his lap. Trees creaked scornfully as they swayed in the wind. The spruce bark made itself sharp and hard into his back. Everything had him marked. The only mercy came through the soft dead needles beneath him.
There was a curious sound and he opened his eyes wide. Nothing could be seen. But he could be sure it wasn’t kindness rattling in the brambles. Kindness, like love, was nowhere in the woods. For a precious few minutes he thought of both ideas. Kindness and love. Completely unnatural. This was no forest of the fairy tales. The lofty thoughts of men were not here. A mosquito sucked blood from his hand.
For as long as he remembered the coward ran from attention. That concept seemed dangerous. His nerves knew there was something rotten about being seen and all of his understanding came from those delicate fibers. No learning could overcome the nerves. They were like that water rat. They were like the bigger kid who threw a smashed beetle into his stew with its erupted organs floating bright on the broth. His nerves had him marked as easy quarry. But he believed, somehow, those nerves were not him.
He couldn’t remember ever feeling outright anger. His worries wouldn’t allow anger through. When the loud boys of the village would catch him as a child they would pick him up and begin shaking him. He did not feel anger. He didn’t even mind the ones who laughed or the ones who hit him in the face with horse dung. At night he lay wondering why he deserved this. It was evident that he was doing something wrong to draw this sort of attention.
One day the coward was held to the ground by a boy his age. When the boy smiled down at him the coward learned smiles were not altogether good. The grotesque leer caused the coward to open his mouth in surprise and the boy spit in it. The taste was similar to pickled cucumbers and onions. He turned his head to keep the boy from spitting into it again and he saw her there in the crowd.
This was the day the dark haired girl taught the coward a little trick.
She was not laughing like the others. Her face was marked with an absorbed concern. Their small eyes met for a moment. Both helpless and maimed. Both of their stomachs convulsed. He saw a tear run down her face and he remembered to cry as well. But before that he instinctively smiled at her and she smiled back.
Then he disappeared. His body was still there like a bawling piece of meat but he was gone almost completely. He became as small as a half forgotten thought in some fantasy land that none of those vulgar eyes could see. He became a faint silvery scent that none of those ghoul’s nostrils could catch.
What made it thrilling was the fancy that only she could still see him. Perhaps even more romantic was the memory of walking with this dark haired girl one gusty summer evening. She seemed so pale and delicate in the blue fading light that he feared her legs would shatter. But the coward wasn’t certain if this memory was real or only a dream.
If it weren’t for her innocence being spoiled, or the thought of any other chaste soul seeing him being humiliated, he would still be hiding back in the village. But the little spell was exhausting to perform and the coward could not always escape detection in public. There were always sad little eyes created when the wolves came to tear him apart in the town square. Blighted and doomed little eyes with all the magic torn apart. The coward refused to play a part in this tragedy.
So he ran to the glory of nature. No older than a young man but weakened and withered by years of casting the vanishing spell. Nature was a place with no chivalry and little peace. He felt the animals revolted by him, a sad wisp who had no place in the wild. The weeds were disgusted at his lack of valour and cut his ankles deep.
***
The coward leaned forward to escape the tree bark biting into his back and heard something crawling through the fallen leaves incredibly slow. Nothing like the squirrel. His sleepless eyes searched the floor of the forest for some time until he saw a turtle in an emblazoned shell that looked like honey and flames.
The creature moved boldly and the coward pulled his legs up to not hamper its freedom of travel. He pulled the legs back tight to his body by hugging his knees to his chest and the turtle only stopped when there was no more room down at the coward’s feet. Slowly, a blood-red eye looked up into the coward’s pupil and he knew the creature had seen something he tried to hide away from the entire world.
Then the turtle flipped over onto its back.
It was the coward’s worst fear. He’d much rather the thing bite a piece out of his wasted body than to do this. With horror he watched as the turtle tried to use its neck to its full extent to flip the shell. A few times there looked like a chance when a scaly foot caught the ground but it only pivoted a little to no avail.
For a moment the coward thought of getting up on his spindly legs to hurry off but he soon heard a wheezing from his lungs and all around his cheeks he felt pressure. The old feeling of aching in his stomach crawled back to him. He began blinking his eyes. He was terrified at the helplessness of the turtle. He dreaded interfering with the nature of things and causing an alteration that led directly back to him. A gagging, creaking sound came from his throat.
He leaned forward to get up on his feet and collapsed onto his side. He pleaded in his mind, as he got onto all fours, for the Brazen God to turn this poor creature over, to do something. This Brazen God was a thing that he only had courage with. All of the world worshiped this sparkling deity and feared his gold shine but the coward was of the few who learned to despise him for allowing moments just as this. His favorite prayer was thinking about creeping up on this god when he had turned off the flames for the night, right when he was at peace in his cloud bed, and smashing his sacred head in with a gold brick.
“You coward,” he said, thinking of the almighty glowing god and he began to sob. Not sorry for his words but because of the turtle and the dark haired girl who saw him being molested. His face pruned as he gasped and sobbed. And he crawled over to the helpless turtle and said, “You worthless coward,” equally to himself and god as his hand began to shake. The tears poured as he watched this trembling hand move toward the shell like it was a remote instrument.
Delicately, he flipped the turtle over.
The creature crept out of its blazing shell, lifted on its scaly legs, and looked at him with its large red eye. Then it turned and began walking away.
The coward remained on all fours trying to stop crying. This was the first time he could remember crying since he was a child. He wished to cry but crying brought hideous attention so he learned to shut it down before it had a chance to get going. He looked all around the woods because he knew people weren’t the only things that heard cries. People were horrid enough. But the air heard them. The trees. Invisible things, much worse than sterile ghosts, who felt the charged emotions and sent all sorts of the living to go punish them.
The coward crawled back to the tree, where he waited in terror, flinching at every bird song or falling dead limb. Something was burbling too. Only a brook, he thought. Only a brook he repeated in his head. He was too terrified to imagine the Brazen God now. Very silent. Not even a whimper. He tried to breathe so quiet and shallow. Only a brook. Only a brook.
***
The voice was strident and deep. A rollicking ballad thundering in from the direction the turtle came and whence it returned. Between a laugh and a song. So boisterous and cheerful. Soon after, and adding a rhythm to this caroling, came the clomping of feet and what sounded like a chiming, a ringing of metal upon metal.
Directly toward the coward came these raucous yet merry sounds but he had turned his head to the side far before one glimpse of the approaching monster could be seen. His red flushed eyes begged to be extinguished to a darkness as they protruded painful and dry.
This was it. The final scene of this hideous show. Just to darkness, he thought, only a little bit of this tragedy and then darkness. No more colors. A moment of incredible pain and then no more pain. The hurting afterward? It would be like it never existed! Once the curtains closed, that is.
And ever so briefly he discovered something cruel in all those revelries where he murdered the Brazen God in his bed of clouds. Something that he had never considered. Only an instant before those jangling steps came perilously close. It was so cruel that he almost smiled.
The very idea of wanting revenge against a creature who only existed in the minds of men. A child’s fairyland tale. Free will was always out of the question. The cruel yet clever nerves kept that idea in chains where it belonged. But a supernatural ruler, one who pointed his burning finger at him at birth and said, “Coward!” That gave him something to focus his blame on.
What a goofy little toy to have played with. Dead gods, living gods, perfect gods. He might as well have had a bloodlust for unicorns. But darkness comes to rid us of all our toys. Every last one of them. The drama is about over. The final act. Only make it quick and clean like you would for your favorite chicken, whomever does approach.
“Look fast, squire, and attend to me,” came a voice to shake him of this reverie. The clomp of steps and chiming of metal stopped. “You hear? Look at me! What are you staring at over there? I see nothing. You should be looking at me. Do you not love me?”
There was a shimmering sound of sliding metal but the coward did not turn his head. He knew nothing of squires or what sadistic game this person was playing. Looking at him would only provoke some combative urge that all animals had, no matter how they’ve evolved. The same can be said of the world. Turning your gaze upon it invites a challenge. Best to look away. Best to be deep in another land with deep thoughts and deep art. To be so deep that you have not the slightest relevance to anything or anyone. So deep that you hate yourself.
“It isn’t your fault really. It’s not any of our faults. The magic of a lightning bolt stirring together minerals. But one day, perhaps tens of thousands of years from now, people will see what I see in you. They will have instruments to put us back on the level. Maybe even make us great. But we don’t have that kind of time, do we? Look at me.”
The coward would not look.
“They see me as a big dumb ox of a man. A bull’s sweating balls grazing the grass with their own dew. They see me as a man! Can you believe it? A man! They see you as a trembling fairy. A wilted lily. A dud. Not even a dud! A dud has an excuse but a coward has none. But only a small change and you would be as brave as me. I know you hear me so look and see who is addressing you.”
The coward would not look.
“We are the same, really, you and I. We could be brother and sister.” The jingling devil roared with a laughter so loud and deep it sounded like it came from the throat of a giant. “Excuse me, brother and brother, I should have said…” A bough snapped above. The coward tensed before hearing the branch whir into the thickets. “But let us forget all of that for the moment. I am full of drink and my loins are howling wet. I’m dismally lonely in this wilderness. I’ve been out here for years cutting up carrots and onions. And I’ve been waiting for you. A lover. And now I will give you my love whether you turn that head or not.”
The clomping came again. So heavy in those soft spruce needles. The man had to be enormous. The chimes were clanging together like odious bells and the coward’s mouth moved but nothing but rasping came from it. He wished to beg for his life but all of the moisture had evaporated from his throat.
A cold, smooth, and incredibly hard hand grabbed his muzzle and turned his head. “Look!” said the giant in tarnished steel armor that appeared mottled and cloudy like an oily and charred copper. In the slits of the great helm elegant green eyes appeared for a moment in a ray of sunlight.
“You must look at me in the eyes while I do it,” said the armored knight and he squeezed right on the jaw joints and lifted the coward to his feet, taking him chiming over to where the burbling came. The coward was like a whelp in his hands, his feet barely touching the mosses and bracken as he was taken backwards, always forced to gaze into the dark slits in the helm.
Down in the sedge near the edge of the brook the knight knelt with the coward in his arms like a bride. “We are the same, my love,” he said as the coward draped gingerly in his arms like a wilted flower. “Now I need you to look me right in the eyes. It won’t take long. I have been dreaming of this moment for so long. Look in my eyes!”
The knight slammed the coward’s head into the very rock which caused the burbling in the brook. “Look at me!” the knight screamed. The skull was lifted and slammed again. The coward had pink foam bubbling from his ears but the knight did not stop.
The remarkable thing was the coward was not afraid when the back of his cranium collided the sixth time. He only wished to laugh at the sound it made. It was funny. Just like when a clown conked the false Pope over the head at the Feast of Fools.
An incredible urge to laugh but not able. The Pope falling to the ground and kicking his legs like a jackass. That was the last thing the coward’s jarred brain projected while he heard again, “Look at me!” and his head, like an oyster on the stone, finally cracked open.
***
The dry grass was pushed aside and the lake was there. A gaping black depth with a starry surface. Just like his stomach. He could not remember his stomach feeling as empty and alive. Even when he was a starving child. A gasping desire with stars in its throat.
On his other side was a fire nearly out. On his stomach he faintly saw bones of some fowl with absolutely nothing left on them. When he rolled onto his stomach his arms gave out when he attempted to get up. But he was hungry. The pain in his nerves was nothing compared to the hunger that demanded he stand. Even on shaky legs the hunger compelled him to move.
“Hullo there! Why hullo! Hullo wobbling squire! I see the old coals have been revived on the grate. Someone is back home.”
The armor stood dappled with stars down beside the lake.
“You better sit back down before you fall and crack your damned head again and ruin everything. I’ve got something for you to eat.”
When the coward saw something raised in the knight’s hand his stomach screamed like an infant for that sweet dark stuff that illuminated his tender insides with warmth. Way back before the young creature knew it was white and called milk.
“There he comes a bumble dumble blundering,” the knight sang with a merry spirit as the coward lurched and stumbled closer, “there he comes, the hobble bobble clown! Be careful, clown.”
When he caught a scent of the braised meat he had to shut his eyes. But it wasn’t the aroma particularly that caused him to savor the moment. There was a pride in the strength of the appetite, the wet and stinking vulgarity of his hunger.
“I warned you, dear!” roared the knight as the coward stumbled and clasped his weak arms around the steel ankles. “I do think you are beginning to see me, though, squire!”
The knight kicked the coward from his legs and walked closer to the lake shore. “Look, old man!” The knight waved the braised meat overhead again. The coward could see it more closely in his mind dripping with melted fat down his elbows. “I did quite the job on this boar. But I’ve got a better meat for you, squire, my love.”
The knight threw the leg of meat far out into the water.
The coward rushed the armor and was thrown into the lake as well.
“Do you see me?” said the knight. “You are looking right at me now, aren’t you? The days I’ve spent crying for someone like you. The entire world would never see what is really there. But I do. And you are perfect. Am I as perfect to you?”
The coward struggled from the water and a crack could be heard beneath a tree surrounded by golden rushes.
The knight was no longer paying attention to him but watched the ripples across the surface of the water, distorting the silvery stars. “I hope you keep some of that old poetry. Not just become some animal. I only wanted to heal you so you aren’t always suffering. To remove the things that were not you. Perhaps that is not possible. Not yet.”
The knight was hit flush on the helm and the suit of armor was suddenly too heavy. While trying to regain balance the knight hit the ground.
The famine in his stomach caused the coward to take the shell of a mussel glimmering opalescent in the mud and attempt to spear it through the eye-slit of the helm.
But a steel gauntlet soon stopped him with a slap to the skull.
“Are you only a brute? Is that all you are now?” said the knight pulling a sword as he got to his feet.
Mud slapped through the helm and covered both eye slits.
“Oh you skunk!” said the knight as the coward smashed the gauntlet with a stick and the sword fell to the mud.
Trying to clear the eye slits, the knight was struck over the helm again but kept balance even with the heavier blow from the stolen sword. The blade slammed into the cuirass again and again, slowing each time it dented the armor on the sides of the breastplate. Just as the eye-slits were cleared the sword fell as light as a feather onto the mottled steel and slid off to the ground.
The cowards arms were numb with exhaustion and a boisterous laugh echoed inside the steel shell, vibrating the shoulder plates and tassets as the knight reclaimed the sword and aimed it at the coward.
“Such a tricky little cock now, aren’t we?” the knight said walking, and the coward backing away from the blade. “What have I created? Should I finish you now before you have time to harden and thrust yourself into the world? Do you even remember how delicate you were or are you just another thoughtless lout, a shameless bruiser? Should I have left you as you were and carried you back to my little home in the woods like a pet rabbit?”
The coward fell again near the dying fire that held onto life.
A voice crept out of the cowards mouth. An unintelligibly weak voice. The knight approached closer. The coward said again, “I think I remember.”
It was all the knight could do to keep from fainting. The armor swooned and the gauntlet went up to the brow of the thrown back helm. The voice. The beautiful intimate voice. Even with a gloomy resonance that stirred the loins like music.
“Please do not speak again,” the knight said, attempting to hold the sword steady again toward the coward’s breast.
“And why is that?” said the coward. He wiped his pants as he stood and slapped the sword away. “I feel the best I have ever felt in my life. Nothing bothers me. Not the crickets. Not the darkness. Not the chirps of nature that used to assail me so much that they drowned out all that was me. Everything seems to have altered and they now chirp for me. Even you. Each swing you take at me is a kiss. So why shouldn’t I speak?”
The suit of armor was immediately silent except for heavy breaths stirring a whirlwind inside. Like a wilting statue the knight tottered backward with the sword dragging the prairie grass and the coward rushed and drove the suit of armor to the ground. He took the helm in his hands and the knight screamed, “No, don’t look at me. Not now! Not now!”
The visor seemed welded shut so he began unbuckling the straps as the knight’s voice became disturbing and shrill like a caught animal.
The helm was finally loose and the coward leapt to his feet when it was fully removed. Exposed alone from the remainder of the heavy steel was a pale and emaciated face of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen with dark hair flared out from where the helmet had been torn free.
Tears poured and she shut her eyes. And, as though by magic, or from his unclasping those few straps, the rest of the straps came undone. The breastplate fell aside. The cuisses slipped away from the legs, the vambraces from the arms, the sabatons from the feet. And soon from this metal shell the slender body of the girl in a translucent sweaty slip was bare to the world.
“Do not look at me,” she whimpered, “Do not speak.”
Just as the coward knelt next to her she took flight.
His legs were still wobbly but he gave chase. He heard her laughter ahead in the woods and soon he saw her next to the burbling brook. She sat on the rock where his head had cracked open and he instantaneously smelled her.
Their eyes met and the violence of eternity sang.
The coward put his hand on her frail cheek and then tore the slip from her body. He took her by the hair, lifted her until her holes spun to him and he felt his penis extend up so far into her body that the tip felt close to her throat. He said nothing as he tore into her skeletal figure. It was like a toy to him. Her body was barely there. He was a stiff wind and she a whirligig. He chopped into her like the lumberjack on the fence of his grandpapaw.
“Don’t just fuck me like that,” she said. “Warm it hot in my ass and then sate the other hole so I can make us a bad little baby boy.”
He took her each and every way and then, just as the tickle got to be too much, he pulled free and placed her emaciated head on the bloody burbling stone. He held it there on its side. As soon as he saw her pink little tongue the tickling sprung wide and her face was warmed with wet pearly semen as she said, “Thank you, thank you so much! My god! My god!”
She began to weep.
“I’ve waited here so long. Everyone thinks I’m crazy. I hear them thinking.” She rubbed her hands over her face and held the semen out in her tender palms so it could catch the starlight. “I just wanted someone who could love me,” she said, gazing into her hands. “Not even love me but just like me and talk to me about how strange the wind is and how these stars are.” She was quiet for a moment. “But you have changed. Please tell me you remember what it was like and how you felt when you bled so invisibly that everyone noticed somehow. I saw the blood but I’m not like them. Instead of making me want to hate you, or hurt you, I fell in love.”
He walked away. Up again to the prairie where the dying fire refused to go out. He threw on the shoulder plates and then began putting his legs through the greaves. He tied the cuisses over his thighs.
She was still naked as the stars when she approached. He was attempting to fasten the breastplate and she hurried to help him.
“Bend a little forward, my lord,” she said, trying to secure a clasp. As she fastened each remaining strap she kept looking up into his ragged face that dripped with sweat. “Are you well?”
His eyes were dark in the dimmed light of the flames. The sweat poured down into them and over his cheek bones. He pointed and grunted for the helm. After he placed it over his head he knelt for her to bind it tight.
“Lord?” she said when a gagging erupted inside the mottled steel shell.
After the echoes quieted a foggy voice within said, “I dreamed of a small boy while I lay here beside this fire.”
“Who was this boy?” she asked.
“I do not know. They hurt him.”
“Who hurt him?”
“Everyone.”
“Did you?”
The knight stood and cleared his throat. He held his arms up high and stretched his back with a loud groan. Fully suited, the coward knight at once looked menacing and strong.
“Where is my sword?”
She struggled as she lifted the heavy blade to him. When the knight took the grip in both his hands he stumbled and nearly fell.
“The coward boy dreamed of a witch one night,” he said, laboring closer under the weight of the armor. “A dark-haired witch with the power to bust the smiling teeth out of each and every…” He lifted the sword over his head and stared down at her dark hair and her face that was like a candy skull.
She was not afraid.
“Am I your spell?” he said.
“Yes, my love.”
“I am too hungry for love,” he said.
— Glahn is a fantasy writer who believes in the dominance of wicked love. He was dropped on his head as an infant at a Christmas Eve party.