Wargermopolis - Entrée
Treats of A Fish Contract
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…and revealed a doctor behind. She kept one hand inside the heavy driftwood entry, and the other tucked in a front pocket of a coal-dust covered, single-shoulder-strap, hippopotamus-patterned robe. Mr. Grey thought she looked a bit like Lord Snake’s doctor, back in Wine Medo. She was a ‘she’, but had the same sour twist-of-mouth. And the same face, lined by the rollicking twins, Care and Time.
The doctor threw her eyes over them in a quick sideways-scrape; enough to shave off an impression of tourists. She said, “What now, more of you able-body seekers? You’ll find no stock for revolution here, so get out from under my lintel. This house is for the sick.”
“Please miss,” said Mr. Grey as she began closing the door. “My friend here is sick. A bad odor bite, I think. Lots of coughing, a good number of sneezes. He’s from Wine Medo. He sniffed one-too-many foreign flowers.”
Mr. Grey waved a presenting hand at Tom. The doctor slid her eyes onto the sick man. She snipped them up and down and across Tom’s big form, like a tailor with measuring tape. Tom noticed the attention and tried to look vigorous. He threw his shoulders up, threw his eyes wide, and forced a smile among his bristles. He said, “I feel absolutely fine, we shouldn’t ha…” But a lawfully-obligated coughing fit cut him short. Tom bent double and released a slew of throat-ripping barks.
The doctor said, “Don’t get many of you Wine Medo lot. Hmmm, perhaps some drawer in here holds a dose or two of ambrosial-cologne. Oh very well, come in. But step fast. The ward’s thronging.”
The doctor yawned the door open and took a sharp backstep. Tom filtered in after a few dry-handed pokes, followed by Nuggets and Mr. Grey.
The doctor closed the door and took the lead. They followed her keen-tapping footsteps down a cave-ish corridor of rough, scratching bricks. A few sparse lanterns swayed on iron hooks in the ceiling. The creaking parchment-and-metal lights shed a greasy film of lesser-dark, by which the three had dreary vision. They saw small, den-like hollows lining the crooked hall. Curtains stood over the fronts of these holes, but some were drawn open. Each time Mr. Grey peeked inside, his eyes found one of the patients.
Each odor attack victim lay on a bed of moss-covered stone. Some sprawled across the lichen, so that Mr. Grey saw a full display of their illness; how it wracked their limbs wan, stripped fat and muscle, and outlined their ribs under their robes. Others curled in on themselves; like sun-withered caterpillars on pavement. Every patient - when they flayed open their pale and veiny eyelids, like parchment scribbled over with ink - stared with uncomprehending eyes; dark and ruddy eyes, like thunder-clouds beneath a blood moon. Every patient - when they drew back their flaking lips to show the pearly bone and flushed gums behind - exhaled sick-laden air. Each raw breath topped off the hospital cave-halls with a humid, sour-cheese-smelling miasma.
Another physician sprung suddenly from an alcove, wearing his own coal-dust robe. He strode up to their doctor, set a palm on her shoulder, and consulted in a funeral-home whisper. The doctor leading Mr. Grey, Tom, and Nuggets paused over the chart presented, struck her signature into the parchment with a quick-draw quill-scrawl, then tapped once more down the hall. The three visitors followed.
Mr. Grey drew up closer to her. In a fitting inside voice, he said, “Doctor, miss, these patients…”
She snapped her neck around and flicked eyes on him. “What about them then?” she asked. “You’d dare find fault with the poor and sickly?”
“No, but… will they cease existing?”
“Cease existing?! They’re only odor attacks, young man. Most will see a full recovery,” Another physician sprung from another alcove, holding two options of decorative wreath and a pamphlet of suit-fabric swatches. The doctor shook one of the wreaths, pointed to a swatch, and walked on. She said, “Of course there wouldn’t be sickness at all if you tourists hadn’t wafted yourselves through Panache.”
Nuggets’ voice came up petulant and loud behind Mr. Grey. “Jodee’s setting people free! She’s tearing down walls,” The doctor shushed him, so he went on softly, “Locals can travel, tourists see all the landmarks. No stupid restraints, set by time and place.”
“Never mind those restraints might exist for a purpose,” said the doctor. She snapped around a sudden T-section corner of the dark hall. A case of craggy brick stairs led to a second story. The doctor mounted these with an unflagging pace. She ranted through the ascent. “Never mind that foreigner scents attack some people more often than others. Never mind that odor-cologne’s not available everywhere. Never mind that lots of locals can’t pay the treasure costs when cologne is available. Noooo, let’s just throw locals and tourists into one big, smelly petri dish, and watch the stink spread! And you don’t plan to stop at Panache! Noooo, you want to do the same thing in Pluck, and Prestige, and old Antiquity too. You partisans lack even a fragment of foresight.”
“We’re not partisans,” said Mr. Grey. He spoke absently and stopped walking, distracted by a sick-alcove set along the stairs.
The doctor stopped and spun; glaring down a sharp nose. “You’re Defense Force loyalists then? As if they’re any better. You think only the sick find treatment here? Roughhousing victims take an equal share of my time. Broken bones, busted noses, blackened eyes; you Glory-lovers have all sorts of ‘fixes’ for unrest.”
Nuggets stuck his downy chin at her. He spoke with conviction. “We’re not Defense Force. We’d never work with soldiers.”
The doctor threw her hands up and turned to the next crooked step. She said, “Whatever you are, you’re wasting my time. I’ve people to heal.”
Mr. Grey said, “Just a moment, please. I… I think I know this woman.”
Mr. Grey pushed aside a half-closed velvet curtain and stepped into the sick-hollow. One of the greasy lanterns let its filmy light fall across a mossy stone bed and, atop it, the room’s lone occupant. She looked pale, like other patients. No breath issued from her nose or mouth. But, from the ragged, rushed, squeaky puffs of her mice-hair, Mr. Grey saw that existence clung - just barely - to the body of Ms. Maysey.
She lay there, motionless. Insensible to Mr. Grey’s entry, and to the louder entries of Nuggets, Tom, and the doctor behind him. Her mice did glance at Mr. Grey, but from resigned, sunken, beady eyes. As a rodent, caught by its tail in a trap, and thinking itself destined for slow starvation, sees the unexpected early doom of a housecat’s approach; just so did Ms. Maysey’s mice watch Mr. Grey.
The doctor swept past the statuary man. She took Ms. Maysey’s chart from the foot of the mossy bed and gave it a quick skewer with her eyes. “This is precisely what I mean,” said the doctor with a hint of triumph. “A patient like this; preexisting conditions. She’s hopelessly neurotic and intractably hypochondriacal, you know.”
“I know,” said Mr. Grey.
“Well, someone like her? One missed cologne dose; they’re bedridden. Their bodies barely function with the illnesses they only imagine!”
Mr. Grey drummed a foot on the rugged brick floor. “But she’ll make a full recovery?”
“A full recovery?” began the doctor, but checked the snide comeback she’d planned. “She’s… receiving aromatherapy. You said you know her?”
“We’re coworkers.”
“Oh, coworkers,” The doctor breathed with unmistakable relief. “As I said before, she’s being treated. Now, you wanted that cologne? For your big friend there?”
Tom began, “I feel fi…” but Nuggets clapped his shoulder and spared another coughing fit.
Mr. Grey said, “This aromatherapy; she’ll get better after it?”
The doctor had walked to the curtain. She turned back to Mr. Grey and frowned. She folded her arms, pursed her lips, and in a gentler voice said, “It’s not likely. She was at high risk for odor bites and scratches. She shouldn’t have been outside Starharbor at all. The therapy will ease her pain. But it’s likely she’ll cease existence. Sorry.”
Nuggets and Tom shared looks of sympathy to which Ms. Maysey was senseless. Mr. Grey’s face expressed nothing, but he said, “Are there other treatment plans?”
The doctor hid an impatient, tapping hand inside her robe pocket. “Not unless you want a fish contract. And those are expensive. Now are you going to dawdle all day or can we find that ambrosial-cologne? I do have other patients.”
“It’s just that we’re coworkers,” said Mr. Grey. “Not asking feels wrong. Could you tell us more? About this contract with fish, the treasures involved?”
“Oh, very well. We’ll see if the attending haruspex is available.”
The doctor walked over to a driftwood table crouching in the corner. She took the telecards that lay atop, stacked them into a sending-house, called the haruspex to their hollow, and knocked the message out. They waited. Mr. Grey, Nuggets, and Tom stood awkwardly on one side of the cave-room, the doctor on the other. Mr. Grey drew his ticker. He found the greasy lantern glare made its face unreadable.
Presently a second healer entered from behind the velvet curtain. He wore the same coal-dark robe of hippopotamuses. He rubbed a palm through pattern-bald hair, put on a great frown, and said, “Who’s supplying the entrails?” After a tock he discarded the frown for a toothful smile and nudged Tom on the shoulder, letting them in on the joke.
The haruspex went and stood by Ms. Maysey. He pulled a length of dry cow gut from his shoulders, set one end against his ear, and hovered the other above her pale, motionless body. He passed it first above her heart, circling his hand in a waxing motion, before moving slowly up to her head. The haruspex hummed a constant, gravelly, ancient tone as he performed the ritual. Ms. Maysey’s hair mice watched the proceeding with beady, dull eyes.
The haruspex ended his drone and draped the gut back across his shoulders. He turned to Tom, Nuggets, and Mr. Grey. He said, “Unfortunate case. Terrible shame. Taken at the height of existence. Nothing for it. Body’s half-ceased-existing already.”
The doctor nodded, as if to say she’s already stated as much. Mr. Grey asked, “Not even a fish contract? That wouldn’t help her?”
“Oh a fish contract would do,” said the man with a bald-head-nod. “Exorbitant cost. Case like this. Surely not something you wish to pursue?”
“I would like to hear the terms.”
The doctor rolled her eyes and rapped on the floor. The haruspex lowered his head at Mr. Grey. The man peered from behind his brow and bald patch, confirming Mr. Grey was serious. Finding nothing in Mr. Grey’s face that wasn’t, the haruspex shrugged. He rubbed his hands together briskly, then held them wide to the sides with palms upward-facing. He rolled his eyes back until only the bloodshot ivory showed. He spoke thusly, in a whispery voice:
“Even Great Fish, with all their enchantment, may neither give nor redact existence. Only may they shuffle it. Yet the Clam Fish hears your voice, grey man with fiddle. If you would spare this mortal woman with hair of mice, you must then enchant, with good tone and timbre, here and now in the room of her illness. Think of the great Clam Fish; dedicate your enchantment to him, that he may hear it and be pleased. But know; half the mice-hair’s existence only may you buy in this manner. The enchantment’s cost? The treasure for half an existence? Half your own.”
The haruspex rolled his eyes back, lowered his arms, and looked at them. Nuggets stared back with dropped jaw, Tom bobbed his head up and down with a confusion-knit brow, and Mr. Grey looked on unreadably. Back in his normal voice, the haruspex said, “Never good terms. Only way to give her even half-an-existence costs half yours. Shame. But these things happen.”
“Kind of you to inquire,” said the doctor. She drew back the curtain. “Back to your friend’s cologne then.”
Tom sorted out the reading, cast Ms. Maysey a last look of mourning, and turned to go.
Mr. Grey said, “Half’s not all that much.”
The others stopped on their way to the curtain. Tom waxed his sleepy eyes alert with a pale hand. He said, “Reconsider this. She’s a nice lady, but...”
The doctor added, “She’s a coworker?”
“It seems courteous. Just the coworkerly course,” said Mr. Grey. “And that half I’d give, who’s to say I’d use it well?”
Tom forced a stern, ordering look onto his weary face. Nuggets saw it. He interposed, saying, “It’s, I mean, his decision.”
The haruspex said, “If you’re serious…”
Mr. Grey’s face answered.
He set his coffin on the driftwood table beside the fallen telecards. The hollow’s dank light turned his unbuckling, bow-nut-twisting, and peg-turning into clumsy procedures. Mr. Grey eventually arranged his instrument how he wanted. The doctor, meanwhile, had swept the velvet curtain aside and gone to attend other patients. The haruspex stayed to watch and stood between Tom and Nuggets. The haruspex laced his fingers before him. Nuggets mimiced the stance. Tom folded his arms and grimaced. Illness and the dim light doubly darkened his face.
Heavy shadow collected in the hollow’s corners. It fell thickly on the three bystanders. The haruspex, Nuggets, and Tom became background; like parchment printouts plastered against the jagged bricks. When Mr. Grey stepped away from his coffin - stepped beneath the greasy lantern gleam - he seemed to stand alone, over Ms. Maysey on her mossy slab. Mr. Grey brought the violin softly to his shoulder, nestled his chin against its rest, thought of the Clam Fish, and played.
He played to the room. Not a fusillade of jerky-elbowed sawing or a whacking staccato jig. Simple order. Picked notes. A minor key. Nor did Mr. Grey make clamor by scattering shiny pebbles over the dusk floor. His enchantment needed no common treasures. Mr. Grey plainly played. He played beneath the lantern spotlight, shining faintly; like a lighthouse in the fog. He played over Ms. Maysey, on her bed of moss. He stood stiff and grey - a statue but for his arms - over his coworker of the mouse hair. And as Mr. Grey played, earthy brown crept down Ms. Maysey’s pale arms. It slid across her thin cheeks. An inky gleam returned to the beady eyes of her wood-mice hair. Under the dim light and the glacial aspect of the statuary man looming over her, existence ripened in Ms. Maysey; like fields in a golden sun.
When Mr. Grey’s enchantment sank away - into the absorbent shadow-and-brick walls - he made no ceremony. He quickly set his violin and bow away and buckled the coffin. Ms. Maysey appeared, if not her old hypochondriacal self, healthier by a flush. Her mice breathed easier and air flowed between her lips. Mr. Grey seemed unchanged; but then, he could hardly turn greyer.
The other three peeled themselves off the brick-wall backdrop. Mr. Grey turned, coffin in hand, and said, “No point waiting around here. She might be startled, finding us waiting; waking in a strange setting. Best to let her be.”
Tom walked up and gave Mr. Grey’s shoulder a shake, as if testing his solidity. He released a nasally sigh, and said, “We can probably just go. I feel just…”
At that moment, the doctor reappeared with a metallic whisk of curtain, and said, “Do you or don’t you want that ambrosial cologne?”
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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