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“Ahhh, but see how that one makes the milk blanch,” said a face with curly hair and beard. “It shivers and curdles, shying from the pewter, yet trapped inside. As a captive runs from her guard’s lash, fleeing over the pebbled prison yard, and yet ever enclosed in bars of iron and walls of stone; just so does the milk lie in that bowl.”
“Excuse us, great oracle,” began Nuggets.
“But this one holds no better,” cut in another head; immediately adjacent to the first, and of like features. A chitinous insect leg - huge as the iron strut of a steam swan - descended from above. It touched delicately into the indicated bowl and stirred the milk inside. “Too shallow by a hound’s head. It splashes and spilleth-over at delicate prodding. This bowl be the least.”
“You cannot think the far left finer?” asked yet another beardy face, directly above the first two. “Such lumpy misshapenness is an insult to the Blob Fish. And we know better than to offend in that direction. Why, better to drink direct from the cowsowhorse’s udder!”
The eleven other bearded faces chortled together; the many heads of the great oracle, laughing at its own joke.
When the heads laughed they shook their collective, giant spider-thorax. The furry-thorax shook the rebar-legs, which shook the ship-rope web. And as the web moved, the tangled shadows, cast down by the Sun Fish light coming through the translucent walls of the glass temple; those shadows, also, shook.
The partisans bowed low. Their noses pressed against the smooth, clean floor of obsidian glass. The backs of their necks faced the enormous oracle spider. Even Candlehead’s wick touched the floor in supplication. Nuggets, however, stepped beneath the web. He held forth a gilded iron bowl and said, “Please great oracle, we bring you the sacred milk.”
The densely-packed, bearded faces turned on the young man with shushing and chiding.
“Hush mooncalf!”
“You insert yourself in private debate.”
“Would you have us choose bowls without care? Have us risk a choice disrespectful to the Sun Fish’s temple?”
The admonished Nuggets backwards-crawled, still holding the partisan’s milk-sacrifice. He set their bowl down, away from the row of other bowls arrayed beneath the oracle. Nuggets dropped with his company into spine-curled supplication. Mr. Grey heard the young man sob.
Mr. Grey and Honeydew waited apart from Jodee’s lot. Above them, as above the partisans, rope-thick spiderwebs draped the ceiling like silk. The shadows they cast crisscrossed Mr. Grey’s staring face. Every miniscule patch of the temple interior - every wall, ceiling, floor - was glass. Sun Fish rays refracted from surface to surface. The light dropped and split in rainbow components through the stained-glass, jigsaw roof. It landed and bounced off the volcanic-glass floor at wild angles. It struck the frescoed-glass walls, and the walls ignited at the rays’ touch. They glowed with glass pictures of ceremony and worship. A taffyglass orchestra dressed in uniform robes of ribbonglass cowsowhorse-hair, playing their reed pipes to the grassglass figure of a salmon. An old woman with stoneglass hair, bent over the brim of her goldglass trumpet, reading crystalglass condensation gathered on its bell. A huddle of crowglass cultists, sleeping in velvetglass chairs, with a table and a silverglass carafe at their center. All these scenes grabbed the light, used it, and tossed it back through the room. The Sun Fish rays ran pell-mell through the temple interior; they only stopped when they struck a web, a kneeling tourist, or the great oracle spider.
This rushing-about of the light made the room quite bright and hot.
Mr. grey felt the setting called for decorum and courtesy - felt indeed that every setting called for those behaviors. He held his tongue, as usual, but this time Honeydew joined him in silence. She seemed impressed.
The two listened while the heads of the giant oracle spider - taking the places where eyes went on a regular spider - argued.
“With this bowl, we petition the Blob Fish’s ire. He would add bad looks to our curses of fatness and sentience. And with this bowl, we inspire the Rain Fish’s jealousy. She will lay herself darkly on the bubble over the temple, and send frozen rain to shatter our web!”
“Do you imagine the Rain Fish dares strike the Sun Fish’s shrine?”
“We all know she’s temperamental.”
On this last point there was general consensus. “But how could any bowl show proper deference to each and every fish?” mused another beardy face.
The heads considered. Each one occasionally started up in a whispered thought, only to mutter, “No, that’s not it.” Nuggets and the other partisans, though still bowed, now passed sidelong looks to each other. Mr. Grey cricked his neck at an acute angle and read their upside-down expressions. Honeydew paid the partisans no mind. She’d taken out her pocket mirror, and was trying to capture a beam of light inside. A tiny click sounded in the room each time she snapped shut the clasp.
The heads debated. The partisans looked concerned. Honeydew clicked. Mr. Grey had resolved on entering the temple to engage with neither the debate, nor the partisans’ petition. But an idea struck and, as it were, roused him. He’d 60%-listened to the debating heads and their bowl dilemma. Now his sudden thought pressed forward. Insistently.
Mr. Grey said, “Excuse me, Mr. Oracle.” The curly-bearded heads turned on him as one, cheeks anger-ruddied, spider-thorax-hair bristling. Mr. Grey spoke through a lumped throat. “Have you considered a Wine Do?”
“Tell us, man of stone, what is this Wine Do?” asked one head. The spider pulled itself closer to Mr. Grey. He cooled under its impatient shadow.
“A wine…party…. event… thing. The guests drink wine and tell stories. They’re voguish in Wine Medo.”
“We dispute milk. Not wine.” the heads clucked and tisked and chuckled.
“I thought it might be transferred,” added Mr. Grey. “The Wine Do is all about gestures and stories. Made and told at precise times, in precise order. Nuggets here, a Wine Medo local, he could give you the details.”
“I for sure could, Oracle,” said nuggets after choking back a sob. His head still faced the glass.
“If you translated it to milk, you could put the fish-worship emphasis on the ceremony, and take it off the bowl. All while still drinking quite elaborately.”
The thorax-shadow lingered motionless over the stiff grey man; around its edge, the eight leg-shadows undulated. The bearded faces stared at Mr. Grey.
“Elaborately…” muttered one head.
“Drinking…” added another with approval.
“Quite,” said a third conclusively.
The heads swayed. Mr. Grey, warming somehow in the cold shadow, said, “You might try with the partisans’ offered milk.” He waved at Nuggets. Nuggets happily took the offered bone, grabbed the bowl, and held it once more forth in petition.
The oracle’s shadow shifted off of Mr. Grey. Its legs made sounds like an upright bass set down too hard as they pulled the creature over the proffered milk bowl. One iron appendage reached and stirred the milk, while nuggets held the bowl. The two-dozen eyes in the dozen bearded faces, however, remained on Mr. Grey.
“You worship the Clam Fish,” said one head.
Mr. Grey answered, “I’ve heard that before, Mr. Oracle. I don’t have a special fondness for clams.”
“Ahhh, but your violin tells a separate story. It is the instrument of the Clam Fish.”
“I don’t know-”
A head scoffed. “Insightful in wine; ignorant in fish!”
An adjacent one added softly, “All enchantments come from the great fishes, man. Your preferred instrument tells which fish’s favor you receive. The Clam is the rest-loving fish with a pearl heart. The pride and the shame that holds men back from wrongdoing.”
Honeydew had listened raptly up to this point. Now a film covered her oil-eyes. She returned to snaring light beams in her pocket mirror. Another of the spider’s heads, noticing her distraction, spoke louder. “You may see the Clam Fish wherever there is patience. Picture this: a father sits quietly, listening. His knee-high girl, fresh from the schoolyard, babbles about her day. The father plies the selfish child with question upon question. He only interrupts with the barest snippets of hard-won wisdom. He sacrifices his road-worn feelings to let his child voice her developing ones. That is the Clam Fish.”
Honeydew didn’t listen, but Nuggets and the other partisans did. They angled their ears to the great spider and attended its words. Nuggets, unable to contain himself, spoke as one in rapture. “Please awesome Prophet; Oracle of the Sun Fish. Take our offered milk - chug the entire bowl - and bless us with knowledge too! We brought a question, super important. Where is found the Golden Lure?”
“You supplicants!” said one face with an angry wave of its beard. The many faces of the oracle-spider stared down from their web. The many faces of the partisans looked up from the dark glass floor. The angry head went on, “Have you no patience? You ask a second question before the first is answered.”
Mr. Grey raised a finger - to put in that he wasn’t a partisan - but another head took up the rant where the first stopped. “We haven’t need of the milk you proffer! Do you not see the bowls already arrayed? And the details of our Milk Do have yet to be arranged!”
“Of course, Oracle,” said Nuggets. He retreated, holding the bowl with one hand, using the other to wipe tears with his tiny visa cloth.
The stern, bearded faces wore uncomfortable, guilty expressions. One asked, “Why seek you, anyway, such ancient lore?”
Another head answered ahead of Nuggets and the partisans. “The ‘why’ is within their number. Look to the huddle’s center. Legendary Candlehead - our brother in Blob Fish curses - comes to further his Glory. And with such trivial questions!”
Candlehead, of course, did not speak. Nor did he move; he knelt, forward-facing, under the oracle’s taunts. Another bearded oracle head said, “Anyone from the bubble of Antiquity might have told you that the Golden Lure lies there - Hidden! - in The Lost City of Fountains, in the silty bed of the Great Fish’s Pond.”
The oracle-heads above smirked with self-satisfaction as they looked on the partisan-faces below, which suddenly frowned and shone with sweat. The partisans turned to Candlehead with new worry in their eyes; as though the oracle spider had given some derogatory remark on wicks.
Yet another head picked up the strain. “Yes, you see now. Our answer to your grey friend was not irrelevant. You see his value in your quest.”
Nuggets whirled around the partisan cluster’s edge, spilling milk from his bowl. He ran to Mr. Grey and Honeydew with a begging look on his streaked face. “Oh please Mr. Grey,” he began. “Can’t you see the sights with us? You’d be welcome to. Like I said before, players are always helpful. And you’re a blessed one, favored by a fish. We’d love to have you along, and Honeydew too. Also that guy, Tom!”
This got Honeydew’s attention. She snapped shut the hand mirror, empty of Sun Fish rays, and looked to Mr. Grey. The oracle pretended to debate about the new Milk Do plans, but its heads side-eyed him as well. All waited for his response.
Mr. Grey said, “Well… I’m not sure it’s my thing. And I don’t think I’m blessed by a fish…” He glanced at the cursed Candlehead.
“You can have the sacred milk!” said Nuggets. He held the bowl out to Mr. Grey, though most of the milk had spilled. The oracle heads grumbled.
“I’m not thirsty. Thank you anyway,” Mr. Grey took the bowl but didn’t drink.
Every set of eyes and every pair of ears waited on him. Nuggets repeated his request. “So will you join us, and look for the Golden Lure?”
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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