Chapter Twenty·eight―An Infusion of Orrisroot

There had been much grumbling as Pen and David set off. "It's like everybody gets to manage my life..." Harry stooped to retrieve his now flat basketball. "Except me. I get to stand around and watch."

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," clucked the spotted pig. "You are communicating a sense of abandonment. Put you out to grass, eh?"

"Your voice. It reminds me of Lauren Bacall." Harry nodded and followed the departing Volvo with his eyes; he avoided eye contact with the pig.

"You have a rich fantasy life, Harry. Too much TV and old movies. I’m still me, you know."

"And that might be..."

"You are getting the look of a hunted creature. Believe me, I am no threat." Morgana licked his nose and looked in his eyes. "Hmm, fear and hunger predominate. That we can handle. Food first. Hungry?" When she spoke he cringed. "Won’t listen to reason, eh?" Grasping his ankle with her teeth she dragged him to the house where he got the idea and stuffed himself with bread and cheese.

"Oh, you are just in a fine old state. Have a drink, forget it." The pig wrinkled her brow and the door of a cabinet of distilled spirits swung open invitingly. "The shape you’re in, you may as well be unconscious."

Harry clutched a loaf of Old Country Rye and a brick of Velveeta he had torn open with his teeth.

"Well?"

Harry cowered at her voice, protecting his food. Large eyes switched from her to the liquor.

"You are hardly a fountain of information. Trust me, Harry."

Harry’s eyes grew crafty, swiveling between her and his liquor closet.

"Suppose I turn my back. Have a drink, then we’ll talk. Only one, mind. Have a nice party—all by yourself—then we’ll have one together." The spotted pig/Morgana left, bumping the door closed with her hindquarters. On the porch she waited, listening. After many minutes there were furtive movements and the clink of glass. Satisfied, she nosed the door open and entered. Harry was pacing, glass in hand.

"I am on a quest, Harry, I spoke the truth, but it is not what I thought when I started this adventure."

"What did you think it was?"

"There, that’s more like the old you—cranky and aggravating. I won’t bite, you know. You."

"Me?"

"Your death: immediate and terrible. This is no longer on the menu."

"My... death."

"Well, there, I have let the cat out of the bag; that is me all over. I have compromised your happy ignorance by countermanding a peril you did not dream existed and then thoughtlessly explaining it all to you. I forget people have feelings, too. Pardon me for being brusque—these are my little ways. Yes, your death, though I had planned something modern and deliciously psychopathic for you, Harry. You should be flattered. Like chopping you in little bits and flushing you out to sea."

Draining his glass, Harry picked up his basketball where it lay deflated on the bureau and reached for the bicycle pump. "You are not a pig."

"I am not a pig. And you have been in no danger since we first met."

"But you were sent to kill me." He gave a slow fly at the pump handle, listening to the low, slow whoosh of air escaping from the dry valve, and put the ball and pump back.

"And your next question will be, reasonably, who sent me. And the answer, I am only now realizing, is you."

"Me?"

"I sent you and you sent me. We are the guests of inexorable circumstance, simple, two-dimensional geometry: I am a line and you are the dot which defines the line."

"Sounds dumb to me. Like a TV preacher."

"Religion does enter in to it, and you must know who I am. I am being taught something and it would be helpful if I could find out what it is. I was coming with sword and cleansing fire to avenge a wrong. I had got you, but approaching a consummation was like coming up on a taillight driving in your fog. You were something else again the closer I got: a slippery definition perpetually redefining itself. You are a simple, straightforward man, deviousness is not in you, and here we are thick as thieves. There is a lesson here for us to discover; the goddess and her victim shall have ended up playing pattycake. Well..." Morgana nudged the door open and eased out into Harry’s dooryard. She paused to run her snout down a stalk of lupine, and then proceeded to the side of the truck. "These are modern times. We will be lovers, I promised you that. I want you to know me as I am and that will take some doing. Fire up the chariot, we are going to the Red and White."

"For..."

"For raspberry jam for two—the family size. We are going to have a party just we two."

Long stone passageways intersected at odd angles, the mind of a long-dead maker, preserved in an arithmetic of design.

"Hulloaloaloalo..." The Orange Virgin tested the echo reverberating through the landscape of the raspberry sending. "An interesting effect. Well, since somebody built these, they must go somewhere. Time on my hands, or trotters, and I am wandering the halls of an echoey edifice." She popped her head into a vaulted arch to discover a parallel gallery running alongside the one she was traversing. Her hall was featureless but the new one boasted doorways at regular intervals. "Hmmm. The express and local tracks. Time to switch."

She tried a doorknob and found it unlocked. It turned easily, inviting inspection. Inside the same polished stone walls as in the hall but with a high, hipped roof done in timber. "The Lady’s chambers: mine, I wot." The walls were hung with silk brocade and tapestries depicting scenes of the chase.
Two jarring notes. A computer terminal with associated gimcrackery filled the far end of a deep niche. Filling the remainder of the niche was a creature whose head appeared to be on fire.

The spotted pig/Morgana trotted over and struck up a conversation. "Nobody who looks as strange as you could be all bad. Hi there, nice tail." She began with a compliment for the part that protruded into room proper.

The creature jumped up, startled and, trying to turn, wedged himself sideways in the niche.

"Sorry about that. Need a hand?"

The creature relaxed, breathing a deep sigh that smelled of unwashed ashtray. "I already have a full supply, thanks. Thought you were somebody else; what I get for poking about where I don’t belong. Hang on, be right with you." There was some business as he removed a smoldering cheroot from his face. Holding it aloft, he ducked his head, a ruff of businesslike quills rasping along the floor as he reversed his body and turned to face her. "Nice tail yourself."

"You must be a Manticore."

"And you are a medium-sized spotted pig. You have heard of me?"

"Of course, silly, I named you. But you are also an archetype—one out of a myriad of manticores, basilisks, gorgons and gargoyles."

"If you are who I think you are, you already have all the answers; I don’t get out much. It’s you, the pig. Or are you the Queen of Heaven?" He came closer with a clacking of quills and scales.

"Both, I fear. I am not here; this is a dream sending, Manticore. Where is the golem?"

"Dream? I am not asleep."

"Are you sure? Where is your cigar?"

Sparks flew as he puffed at his stogie. "Real enough. This would suggest it is you who are ephemeral, Lady. A myriad of manticores, you say. Then there are others like me..."

Agitated and intrigued at the possibilities of thronging fellow mantichorae, the Manticore tried to leave, but was stopped by a smile of many teeth and a throaty porcine growl. "Ah, ah, ah, ah. That’s far enough. Don’t get all worked up; your poison is as lethal to you as anyone," said the pig.

The Manticore looked back to see a pearlescent drop forming at the end of his sting. It grew shimmering and amorphous, like a soap bubble in the sun. The cigar fell from his mouth and a spasm of panic rippled down the length of his body. His first thought was to get away, but the tail followed.

The crystal pearl detached and flew in a perfect arc to splat on the computer terminal. It drilled a precise nine-centimeter hole through the apparatus, hit the floor and dissipated, leaving a small cloud of vapor. The screen was blank.

There was a squeak of plastic wheels as a tall, lean form appeared, dollying himself about in front of another monitor screen that did not quite conform with the one just dispatched by the Manticore’s venom. Biff Bangtree was fading in and out along with his phantom computer screen. He was manipulating a joystick.

"I trust you have an explanation for this apparition, Manticore. We have established you are real. Can you see him, too? And I recommend you do better than It’s a bad day for reception from the spirit world. I had put the infant into your care."

"I meant to tell you about this."

"I’ll just bet you did."

Biff spoke. "Whoa, hey, this is great, a flight simulator like in Tailspin Tommy or Smilin’ Jack. Why don’t you try..." He noticed the Manticore had company. "Oh, hello there, it’s the funny pig. I’m just getting the hang of this..." Then he disappeared.

"Obviously, our Biff is not getting the hang of it," Morgana observed. "How long has this foolishness been going on?"

"Since you left. There was the duck, of course..."

"Of course." The pig trotted over to the computer. "Can’t say I didn’t warn you. I said stay calm. I suppose this means the joy boy of my less lucid moments is stranded in the great wherever. Can’t say that I feel bereft: my quondam priest is much more interesting. Your heavy-handed maladroitness could be an asset, Manticore. You have botched the babysitting, but I have another errand for you; besides, you are all I have right now."

The Fata Morgana sighed deeply and rolled off Harry Pease. "Mmm, now wasn’t that nice, Harry?"

A dream within a dream. In Harry's dream scenario a woman had picked him out at quayside, a lusty young scallop dragger. Tight thighed, lean and rangy, Harry was good at knots and he could pilot the Narrows. And he was twenty-four years old—young again. He smiled dreamily and reached to pull up the sheet to cover himself.

Morgana slapped it away. "No, I want to look at you."

Harry made sleepy mumblings, happy and satisfied. He ran a fingertip over her belly. Then his eyes clouded as portions of a deferred reality struggled through.

"No, no, my dear. Let it go. Let us hold this moment a while longer." Harry relaxed. "Who would have dreamed you were so marvelously endowed. Another time, another place, my maenads would have been making a meal of you, dear Harry."

Lying spent, half awake and heavy-lidded in happy fatigue, Harry had a fleeting vision of glinting bronze and red tapestries in a many-pillared hall. He smelled burning butter and twine—a tallow candle. It was afternoon; they had burned no candles. He heard a sigh, a giggle, and felt a touch—a curious finger tracing the line of his backbone tenderly to the cleft at his hams. Turning onto his side, he found himself face to face with a golden-haired boy, Mediterranean-looking, his tight curls clasped to his head with a circlet of silver. He again reached to pull the sheets over himself but Morgana pulled them back down.

"Not just yet, my love. Don’t cover yourself. I’ve invited some friends in for a peek. They don’t have anything quite like you at home."

The boy handed Harry a steaming pottery cup and faded to transparency. He could see through him to the far wall of what seemed to be a windowless, low-ceilinged murky hall lit by many lamps and hung with cloth of gold. The boy’s eyes appeared huge—they had been heavily outlined in black. Gold pearls glistened at the ends of his lashes and the eyes themselves were large-pupiled and shone with belladonna. He gave Harry a knowing smile and, fluttering eyelids that had been oiled and dusted with mica or flakes of gold, blew a kiss into the cup. Harry blinked and accepted the offered cup. The boy vanished.

"Young Glaucon finds you attractive, my love. The cup is an infusion of orrisroot. It will give you stamina. Drink up and we shall have at it again."

Harry swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. He drank and blinked again. A taste of licorice, not bad. The boy had vanished but the hall remained. His lover was most definitely not a summer person.

"Nor am I your everyday enchantress," said Morgana. She gestured to the tapestry-hung wall. "My friends find you fascinating, and I... Well, I trust you have noticed my feelings for you are not hesitant."

There was a processional rustling and a dozen or so people filed in and seated themselves on cushioned stone benches along the wall. One of them, a pretty girl with bare breasts, bare feet and a bell-shaped hoop skirt, stood, ran forward to the center of the hall, looked back at the men and women seated behind her for encouragement and, extending her arms, performed a full curtsey that ended with a grand flourish. Harry noticed she wore gold rings on her toes and her eyes, like Glaucon’s, were heavily mascaraed.

"Thank you, Philomena," said Morgana. The girl ran giggling back to her seat. "They like you, Harry. They think you worthy of me."

The hall faded as the watchers waved cheerily from their bench.

"Thank you, my friends, Mister Pease and I have more wonders to perform and it were better you not be seen."

They had made love for an audience. Harry, who should have been thunderstruck, dumfounded, outraged, or at the very least embarrassed, found he felt quite pleased with himself. These people were co-celebrants, not common voyeurs, though they had given to understand that the spectacle of Morgana’s rollicking ride pleased them immensely. Looking down, Harry discovered that the hot drink, along with Morgana’s naked beauty, had inspired him again.

Harry woke to discover Philomena seated by his head; now it was she held the steaming cup. A delicate girl smell of lavender and a recent bath filled his nostrils. He drowsily reached out and his hand went right through her.

"Take the cup. She is not for you—not yet." Philomena looked adoringly at Morgana and held the cup to his lips. It was real enough. Licorice tea, steaming and hot. The girl stroked his hair but he felt nothing. Philomena giggled and kissed him on the mouth. The kiss, like the cup, was real.

The Orange Virgin leaned forward across her lover’s body to fetch a pillow from the head of the bed. Harry trembled and groaned, happy.

"Alas, enough is enough. And for now, my pet, this is all we have time for. If I receipted my moments of ecstasy against a future audit, you would be high in the ledger." She gave Harry a farewell squeeze and swung her legs over the side of his bunk. The hall with its watchers had faded to tenuousness, but remained visible.

Philomena gurgled and was quiet; her fists shot to her mouth. There was something beyond her, thus out of Harry's field of vision. She chewed at her knuckles and backed gasping to the bench along the wall, the partygoers having emptied it in a mad scramble for the exits. The lbench caught her behind the knees and she sat, pressing herself against the wall. The reason for her horror could not be seen, but as Philomena’s small, thin keenings of fear rose and descended, it spoke. "Would you look at that, Morgana. The child is trying to screw herself into the wall. Believe me, my dear, I’ve been there and you don’t want it."

The girl’s eyes were very big as she inched along the marble.

"Stay with us; join the party," said the Manticore. "As a bearer of tidings I would have expected you to withhold your criticism until I have had my say. That is the Orange Virgin in there...? It is! Hello, Morgana, hope I’m not interrupting anything."

"It’s alright, Philomena. He poses no threat. Unless my ears deceive me, it is my old confidante, loosed upon the world. Come, show yourself, fellow. How came you thus and without my leave?"

There was a concatenation of sistrum and dijareedoo, a musical rattling of quills, scales and feathers at the junctures of his attributes as the man-dragon shambled into the picture. He removed his cigar and peered nearsightedly into the mists.

Harry Pease had armed himself with an aluminum softball bat and was standing naked, ready to give as good as he got.

"Calm yourself Harry, there is no threat. This implausible catawampus is a pet of mine." Morgana swung her legs to the floor and stood, stretching languorously. "We had just finished. Your timing is excellent if not your manners."

The Manticore’s tail arched threateningly over his head as he puffed his cigar to a glowing cherry red.

"I am sorry old friend, I did not intend to patronize you. Both of you, your noble gestures are appreciated, but stop waving your tail about."

The Manticore looked up and blanched. He carefully laid his tail flat on the floor. Harry set down his bat.

"Harry, my wistful dalliance, the dancing magic of your thighs has given me an hour of innocent merriment, but now I must go."

She turned to the sepia-toned incorporeality of the Manticore.

"Come and let me scratch your ears." He rattled and clicked happily to Morgana and out of the picture.

"Oops, sorry. I forgot. I am here and you are there. Life among the primitives. You will have to go around. Enter from the exquisites’ bench. Philomena, my dear, do take your fist from your mouth." She gave Harry Pease a tender swat of dismissal. He sat and looked perplexed. "Too bad, my darling, that’s just the way things are. You must excuse my blunt ways."

Her hand lingered on Harry’s buttocks as the Manticore hurried in past the empty bench to lay his head on her knee.

By fits and starts the watchers filed back in as they realized the new arrival was a playfellow of the queen and immediate dismemberment unlikely. Morgana inspected the gilded courtiers arrayed on the bench. Morgana gestured them to their seats, giving quiet assurances that all was well.

A medium-sized spotted pig walked into the picture from a filmy border zone. She hopped into Philomena’s lap and addressed Morgana. "Huh! So this is the best you can do. Ho-hum, just deserts and all that." She turned and licked Philomena’s face.

"Well... a little hitch-hiker," said the Fata Morgana. "We have been enjoying ourselves. And you... what a clever personage you are, bringing us here and all. Or almost all. Couldn’t pull it off, eh? The manifestation."

"This is not entirely true," said the pig. "You are there and we are here. And thank you for not jibing at my sharing your sundered state." Morgana ignored the apology. The pig thrust her nose against Philomena’s and assumed a conspiratorial tone, "He’s been in the cellar too long." She turned back to Morgana. "Guess you don’t send these gentle wraiths down for marmalade too often."

The Manticore stepped between the two. "You will have to excuse my friend, she is distraught." He anticipated a withering blast of queenly wrath.

"She is me and she is moot. This is a dream, fool. She is in no danger."

The pig lolled a pink tongue and cocked her head to the side, a portrait of adorableness. "You bet your ass, Queen. He and I are but dry peas rattling in the cavernous intelligence of the Fata Morgana."

"Your acerbity is not lost on me, little pilgrim. I would that things had happened differently, but as they have not, why should we not cooperate?"

"I am all ears," said the pig, and curled up in Philomena’s lap. The exquisites on the bench relaxed at the friendly talk, but still kept their distance.

Morgana prodded her pillow, pondering. "You, Manticore, the litany of survival has changed since your makers sang and, obviously, since they are no longer with us, their advice is suspect. Harry, my love, here is a jolly playfellow to torment your waking hours when I am away. You, Manticore—here you will be running loose. Believe me, freedom is vastly over-rated. How will you eat? Here you are almost in the real world and you can’t even open a can. I can’t help you, I am stranded in the body of a spotted pig and hard pressed to look to my own needs." She reached to stroke Harry as he put on his trousers.

The Manticore seemed pleased. "Lady, I pledge you a compact." It gave a flourish with its tail and the bench cleared once more. "You are the you to whom I am true." The clever remark brought a quill-haloed grin.

"Listen to me, Manticore, I will probably prevail..." The Orange Virgin toyed with a plait of her hair. "I have till now. If I do not..." She articulated a meandering shrug, "...you chance being abandoned to wander the earth, a twilight legend and the only one of your kind—riddled with parasites, hungry and scrofulous, your hair falling out in clumps. A scary story for country wives to threaten recalcitrant children." The Orange Virgin stood, naked and glorious, and shook herself, letting loose a blizzard of goose feathers; her pillow had burst. Harry reached for her and she blew him a kiss as she skipped away from his reach to the center of the room trailing flurries of down. She danced through the tableau with the courtiers, the Manticore and the pig turning to follow her with their eyes as she moved through them to the other side of their manifestation.

The Orange Virgin considered Harry, naked and forlorn, through the dimming watchers. "Since my lot has been cast with these creatures, I suppose I should be about doing something to make them be devoted to me." She shook out the few remaining feathers from the pillow case.

"Oh, dear. That was one of those dotty pronouncements dear to the hearts of Sybils and Pythonesses. I do wish I had been more careful. Now it has the force of law and we are stuck with it."

She put her arms around Harry's neck and gave him a deep, lingering kiss. "I trust this has been as educational for you as it has been pleasant for me."

 

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