When Infidel grabbed me by the seat of my pants and charged toward the window, I didn’t protest. Partly this was due to the speed of her action, but mostly due to my inebriation from the sacramental wine we’d stolen. Plus, it wasn’t the first time I’d been defenestrated by her. Of course, this window was five hundred feet up, in a lava-pygmy temple carved into the sheer cliff face of a volcano.
In my semi-drunken haze, I admired the view as I departed the temple, surveying the landscape around me. The night sky was bright orange as the bubbling caldera above reflected against belching steam. Far below, the dark, vine-covered canopy of trees draped like a casually tossed blanket down slopes stretching to the moonlit ocean. A lovely tropical night, one might even call it serene, save for the steady pulse of war drums and the nerve-jangling pygmy battle cry. It’s difficult to relax when five-hundred waist-high men are barking in unison, “Yik-yik-yik-yik-yik!”
I reached the apex of my arc and began to fall. The pygmies were drowned out by the whistling wind and a deafening, high-pitched shriek tearing from my throat.
I don’t know why I was screaming. If experience was any guide, Infidel had aimed me toward a particularly bushy looking patch of forest. While my brain had faith in her, my vocal cords had doubts. I quickly saw that my brain was correct as I fell toward a living net of blood-tangle vines. I threw my hands over my eyes. My leather gauntlets spared my face from the worst of the thorns as I punched into the canopy, the vines popping and snapping beneath my weight. I bounced from branch to branch on the trees below. Even with my leather armor, the beating was as bad as anything I’d ever received at the hands of a mean-spirited bouncer.
Seconds later I jerked to a stop, completely tangled. I spread my fingers and found my face inches above a jagged obsidian boulder. The sobering realization I’d just escaped a messy death negated the effects of the stolen wine. I reached for the steel flask in my back pocket and took a quick gulp to restore myself. As much as I wanted to hang in the vines until my nerves calmed, I knew that the pygmies wouldn’t need long to find me. I reached for my bone-handled hunting knife and chopped at the tendrils, my body lurching, until I slid onto the boulder and tumbled to the ground.
I looked up at the hole I’d punched in the canopy. Far above, a dark speck shot from the window through which my hasty exit had been facilitated. The speck quickly took on the shape of a woman as she hurtled toward the gap in the trees.
Infidel was laughing. She had both hands wrapped around the dragon skull, hugging it to her chest like an oversized watermelon. Her long blonde hair trailed out behind her. She was still wearing the loose-fitting white blouse and navy breeches from her recent stint as a mercenary in the pirate wars. She was barefoot, the soles of her feet black as coal. The orange light caught the string of yellow beads around her throat, a necklace of human molars that she’d kept as a diary of sorts while she’d served aboard the Freewind.
If she’d been aiming for the hole I’d left in the vines she missed, overshooting by several yards. I lost sight of her, but heard curses and grunts as she bounced from branch to branch, the blood-tangle snapping as it slowed her fall.
I managed to find my feet as she stumbled out of the darkness. Her blouse and breeches had been torn in a dozen places, but there wasn’t a scratch on her enchanted skin. She had blood-red flowers jutting from her hair, and thorny vines draped over her shoulders. She held the dragon skull above her head one-handed, as if it was carved from balsa. With her other hand, she used her cutlass as a machete. Her lips were pressed together tightly as she spotted me.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Nothing’s broken,” I said, my voice trembling. I took another swig from the flask. “Your aim’s still good.”
She giggled. “I’m glad you’re fine, because I’m looking forward to teasing you for the next ten years about that scream. Even I can’t hit a note that high.”
I held a finger to my lips and whispered, “You can laugh later. The pygmies won’t be far behind.”
“We’ve got a good head start,” she said, looking up at the temple. She plucked a few flowers from her hair and flicked them away. “You worry too much.”
For most of my life, I’ve earned a reputation as a man who doesn’t worry enough. It’s only around Infidel that I play the role of responsible adult. She’s been magicked up to be as strong as ten men, with skin as tough as dragon hide. Her supernatural gifts have left her fearless, an aspect of her personality that draws me like a moth to a flame. Like many a moth, I sometimes get singed.
She held the dragon skull toward me, admiring it in the dim light. “The Black Swan’s going to slip in her own drool when she gets a look at this.”
Since I was presently in hock for a life-endangering sum of money to the Black Swan, I hoped that would be the case. There are blood-houses throughout the Shining Lands that pay handsomely for dragon bones. A single knuckle can be worth its weight in gold. An entire skull, complete with lower jaw and all the teeth, was a fortune so large that adjectives fail me. It would cover my debt, and, more importantly, once more restore my line of credit at the bar. The cheap river-pygmy hooch I’d been swilling since the Black Swan cut me off was unbefitting of a connoisseur of fine spirits.
I whispered, “Let’s get going. The pygmies know this jungle better than we do, and-”
There was a tapping sound, like raindrops hitting a leaf. Infidel looked over her shoulder, stretching out her long, slender leg. Three porcupine quills were caught in the torn fabric of her pants. Suddenly, the air around her was thick with flying quills, some tangling in her hair, some bouncing off her impervious forehead. My own armor sprouted a dozen of the missiles. None made it through the leather, which was good. Lava-pygmies tip their darts with poison.
“Follow me!” Infidel shouted, slicing at a wall of vines with her cutlass and leaping through, the dragon skull balanced on her shoulder. She could have stayed and fought without risk. By running she was protecting both me and the pygmies. We’d come out here to rob them, not to kill them.
I ran as fast as I could, slashing out with my bone-handled knife to better clear the path. In the darkness, I focused on Infidel’s bright hair bobbing before me like a ghost. The pitter-patter of pygmy feet echoed in the canopy. Darts tapped across my shoulder blades as they continued to fire.
I kept falling farther behind. I was only a week away from my fiftieth birthday, too old for this profession. Once this was over, I swore I would find a safer, more gentlemanly way of earning a living. My breath came in ragged gasps. A stabbing pain ran up my side. I could barely raise my knife to chop away the remnant vines Infidel left in her wake. I felt sure that if I pulled off my boots, sweat would pour out like stale beer from a pitcher.
I wiped the perspiration from my eyes and when I pulled my hand away, Infidel was gone. I kept running. The darkness in front of me had an Infidel-sized hole torn from it, and beyond I could once more see the rolling clouds of the eerie orange sky. There was a bass rumble ahead, a sound like a waterfall. I skidded to a halt on the lip of a cliff and looked down into a deep scar in the earth. Infidel dangled from a mass of roots just beneath my feet. She was still carrying the dragon skull, but her cutlass was nowhere to be seen.
“I know where we are!” she yelled, her voice nearly drowned out by the rushing water beneath her.
I knew as well: the southeast slope of the volcano is cut through by a whitewater river that cascades all the way to the sea, about ten miles distant.
“We’re practically home!” she shouted.
I was of a different opinion. Many years ago, a palm-reader in Commonground told me I’d die of drowning. More poetically, she’d told me, “The sea will swallow your bones.” It had been one reason I hadn’t joined Infidel on the Freewind. I extend my caution by never imbibing anything weak enough for a fish to live in.
“Jump!” Infidel yelled.
“Let’s weigh our options!” I shouted back.
Of course, arguing was pointless. Infidel pulled herself up on the thick root she held, clamping onto it with her teeth. With her now free hand, she punched the cliff wall. The root-draped stone beneath me crumbled.
As I dropped, Infidel grabbed me by the shoulder, pulling me toward her. She wrapped her arm around me, pressing me tight against her unbreakable body. Her breasts flattened against my back as she spooned me, curling us into a ball with her powerful legs. Her breath was hot against my neck. We fell through darkness, weightless.
I couldn’t breathe. Partially because Infidel’s arm across my belly was as gentle as a python, but, even more, because I so often dream of Infidel’s embrace. She’d been a mere teen when I met her; I a worn-out drunk twice her age. I’d watched as she’d ripped the arm off a bold warrior two feet taller than her who’d pawed her lithe body as she’d stood at the bar of the Black Swan. I wasn’t the only man to witness this that quickly decided an attempt at seduction wasn’t worth the risk.
I was, however, the only one who bought her a cider that evening and told her tales of the ruined cities hidden in the jungle. I’ve always been quick to make friends. Fate has brought me many fortunes over the years, and I’ve spent those fortunes making sure the patrons of the Black Swan never go thirsty. Yet, I’ve never had a friend quite so true as Infidel. Her lightness balances my darkness; her recklessness makes the ongoing foolishness of my life look like sage wisdom. The two of us laugh together freely, and trust each other with our lives. I’m the one person who would never betray her for the obscenely large bounty on her head. She’s the one person who never abandons me when my money runs out and I’m suddenly begging for drinks.
Never once in ten years of friendship has a night passed in which I didn’t fantasize about her touch. I’ve never spoken a word of my secret passion. She means too much to me. It’s not my arm I fear losing; it’s her company. Our time together is so much sweeter than our time apart.
As dreamlike as her embrace might be, there was the unfortunate reality that we weren’t in a bed, we were hurtling toward a dark, raging river. With a horrible jolt, Infidel’s shoulder cracked a boulder. We bounced into the torrent and her grip loosened. I inhaled, a bad move since my head was under water. We slammed into another rock and I slipped from her grasp. My face popped above the surface for a second and I coughed, water spraying from my lips. I sucked a cupful of air and croaked, weakly, “Infidel!”
She didn’t answer as I bobbed along, careening from rock to rock. In moments of panic, the mind can grasp onto the most trivial details, and I noticed I’d lost my knife. Infidel either misplaced or broke her weapons on a daily basis, but I’d carried this knife for forty years; it had been a gift from my grandfather. For a fleeting second, finding the knife felt like a priority. Then, from the thunder ahead, I realized that I was about to be swept over a waterfall, and my new priority became not to do so. I clawed desperately at boulders, but my hands had no strength. I still could only gulp small mouthfuls of air. The rocks pummeled me like the fists of giants. The knife-sharp pain that had torn my gut while running sliced me from groin to gullet. The water pushed me under and I went numb.
They say that drowning men see their lives pass before them. I could only see the fortune teller, an old woman with dark eyes, her ears sporting gold rings and thick tufts of gray hair. Her voice crackled like dry leaves as she traced the line of my palm and told me how I’d meet my end.
Of course, she’d told Caleb the Crusher that he’d die by hanging, and he’d been the man whose arm Infidel had torn off on her first night in Commonground. You have to question the skills of a diviner who misses such a fate.
I slammed into a rock face first. Stars danced before me, changing to snowflakes as they showered down in the darkness. I found myself standing before Aurora, the ice-ogress who serves as the main muscle at the Black Swan. She was discussing the small matter of my bar tab. In the three months Infidel had been at sea, I’d been a little freer with my purse than usual. When I confessed that I had no money, Aurora had pointed out that a man was never completely without assets. Artfully butchered, human flesh could pass for pork; only a few coins per pound, but for a grown man that added up. I assured her that once Infidel returned, my fortunes would improve. She gave me thirty days. It was thirty-two days later when Infidel got back. Unfortunately, the Freewind had been on the losing side of the pirate wars. This was in no way Infidel’s fault, but it meant that she’d not received the bonus promised to her in the event of victory. Given the way the Black Swan calculated interest, the handful of coins Infidel had been paid failed to dent my debt. Thus, not for the first time in my life, I was off to plunder the ancient tombs and temples of the Vanished Kingdom.
As I was swept over the lip of the waterfall, I took some small measure of comfort that my corpse would be sufficiently mangled that Aurora couldn’t even sell it as dog food.
The drop proved to be the shortest distance I’d fallen that evening, a trifling fifty-foot plunge into a broad pool. The water at the base of the fall roiled. In the turbulence, I couldn’t even guess which direction was up and which was down. The shallow gulps of air I’d gotten bobbing in the river were exhausted in seconds. My leather armor was heavy as steel plates. The pounding water pinned me. Yet, the pain and pressure felt distant. The water was warm, heated by the volcano, almost pleasant. The polished gravel beneath me was as comfortable as a feather bed. I went limp, all my weariness flowing from me like bubbles from my lips. There were worse ways to die.
As I was about to discover.
Just as I was on the verge of sleep and surrender, a strong hand grabbed my hair. I was tugged into the air and tossed over Infidel’s left shoulder like a sack of sodden potatoes. She was still carrying the dragon skull, her fist shoved inside the base. She waded through knee-deep water as I draped across her back, my eyes at the level of her heart-shaped buttocks. Water poured out of my lips and nose, but I couldn’t muster the will to inhale.
Infidel laid me on a beach of black sand, dropping the skull beside me, then straightened, shaking her head to get the hair from her eyes. She looked as soggy as a drowned rat; her torn pirate blouse hung from her arms like flaps of skin on a once-fat man. Her hair was plastered to her scalp, knotted so horribly that she needed a razor more than a comb. At some point, her necklace of molars must have snapped. The only evidence it had ever been there was a single tooth wedged between her hip and the top of her broad belt. Despite her sorry condition, her waterlogged clothes revealed the magnificent paradox of her body, the sleek and sultry curves that sat atop angular, iron muscles.
I spotted something amiss on her flawless form. A dark red stain glistened atop her left shoulder. I sucked in a spoonful of air, the effort making me tremble, and whispered, “You’re bleeding.”
She frowned as she followed my gaze to the crimson circle that seeped out across her blouse in ever-lightening shades of pink. Her eyes grew wide. In the adventures we’d shared, I’d only seen her bleed three times. Once, No-Face had caught her square in the mouth with his ball and chain, producing a split lip. He’d hit her by accident and she didn’t hold grudges, which was the only reason he was still alive. The same couldn’t be said for the bounty hunter who’d gone after her with a shadow sword. He’d crisscrossed her arms with a dozen cuts before she wrestled the blade away. They’d had to carry out what was left of him in buckets. And, of course, there had been the tussle with that mechanical tiger with the diamond-tipped claws. The only scars on her otherwise flawless legs had come from that fight.
Her face turned pale as she pushed the remnants of her pirate blouse down her shoulder, revealing streaks of red across her ivory skin. She wiped away the blood with her fingers, leaving behind smooth, unblemished flesh.
She looked back at me, her face turning whiter still.
I looked down. I understood why I couldn’t breathe.
The good news was, I’d found my knife.
The bone handle was jutting from the waist of my leather armor. Eight inches of honed steel were lodged in my gut. I couldn’t feel a thing, but blood pulsed from the wound with every fading heartbeat.
Infidel dropped to her knees. I looked up at her, her face so bright as the world around me darkened. I took in another thimble of air and mumbled, “Tell the f-fortune teller… I want… my m-money back.”
Infidel frowned, then just as quickly grinned. “You faker,” she giggled. “It’s nothing more than a scratch.” She grabbed the edge of my vest with both hands. The thick leather tore like tissue paper in her superhuman grasp.
Her jaw went slack.
It was something more than a scratch.
Her gaze met mine once more, and for the first time ever I saw tears gleaming in her eyes, her lovely eyes, a pale blue-gray, the ephemeral color sometimes found on the horizon of the ocean, where you can no longer tell where the sky ends and the water begins.
I couldn’t let my final words to her be some joke, some quip that hid the great secret truth of my life. I managed to swallow another mouthful of air and whispered, “I… have always… l-loved you.”
“Stagger,” she whispered back, eyes closing, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Oh, Stagger.”
I closed my eyes as well, unable to spare the strength to keep them open. My heartbeat fluttered in my ears, faint and failing. I hoped I could die at peace now; I’d confessed what I should have revealed ten years before. And yet… and yet there was one thing more. One last secret haunting me as I slipped toward my final rest. My blood turned cold as the guilt of my only betrayal of Infidel’s trust pulsed through me.
I mouthed the words, my voice barely audible, “I… didn’t lose… the m-map. I… s-sold it… to the… the… f-fishmon-” My voice failed. I tried to breathe but couldn’t. My body refused to obey, save for my eyes, which opened once more.
Infidel’s face was inches from my own. Her lips were puckered. I had the distinct impression she was about to kiss me. Then her eyes snapped open. She jerked upward as my final words sank in.
“You did what? ” she asked.
I tried to answer, but it was no use. My body was done for. I couldn’t even close my eyes. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what she said. Her words were lost beneath the roar of waves from a distant, invisible ocean. Behind her, I could see the bright orange faces of lava-pygmies as they emerged from the forest, holding spears tipped with glassy black rock above their heads, preparing to strike. I couldn’t warn her. I couldn’t do anything except drift upward. Whatever essence there may be of a man that is separate from his body had come loose as my heart went silent. I found myself floating, a shapeless, formless thing, a fog composed of memories and broken dreams, cut free from my flesh.
I looked down though non-existent eyes at the scene beneath me. Spears were bouncing off Infidel’s back. She rose with a snarl, yanking the bone-handled knife from my belly. Normally, I love to watch Infidel in combat. She fights like the unholy union of a bobcat and a ballerina, a whirlwind of blades and laughter that traces the landscape around her with long and looping arcs of blood.
But, I paid little mind as she raced toward the first pygmy and delivered a kick that sent him flying above the treetops. Instead, I looked down at the sorry, sodden thing that I’d once thought of as me. I hadn’t made it to fifty, but the mask of wrinkles around my eyes could have belonged to a man twice that age. My cheeks and chin were speckled with scraggly white stubble; I couldn’t grow a decent beard on a bet. My shoulder-length hair was streaked through with gray, and my pony-tail did nothing to hide the scaly bald patch at the back of my skull. I was tall, and in my better days my torso had been shaped like a V, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. Until this moment, I always pictured myself with that body, and had never accepted that the bottom of the V had gotten lost beneath an O, a big, oval jug of jiggling fat that must inevitably attach itself to a man who loved his liquor as much as I did.
With my eyeless vision, I could see the truth of who I’d been: a fat, half-bald old drunk who’d been vain enough to fantasize that a woman whom the gods must surely envy might one day love him.
As my consciousness expanded, ever wider, ever thinner, I was dimly aware that I’d miss that man.
Then, I had no awareness at all.
Or, more accurately, I had awareness, but no will, no ability to guide my perceptions or ponder the scenes I saw. I was spread through all things. I was present in the dark depths of the ocean, floating beside hideous fish with lantern eyes and jaws like bear-traps. I was present in the jungle, slithering among the branches crawling with snakes and toads and beetles, all in rainbow hues brighter than gemstones. I was present in the bars of Commonground, where battle-weary veterans of the pirate wars stumbled along the uneven boardwalks as whores called out for their company. I could feel all the lust and loneliness of their moments, all the sorrowful joy that spills into the universe when two strangers touch in intimacy.
And, far, far above the squalid city, I was present in the clouds, looking out upon a night sky full of glittering diamonds, keenly aware of every point of light. The sky shimmered with distant suns and unseen planets, and I could hear the murmur of countless voices, the indecipherable echoes of life on worlds too numerous to number. What was left of my mind shrugged and surrendered, unable to absorb the infinite majesty of a creation in which my life had been of no consequence at all.
It was into this vastness that I would disappear. The final spark of my consciousness calmly dissipated. Like a stream of stinking urine spreading into the ocean, I was absorbed once more into the Great Incomprehensible All.
Then, blood pulsed within my non-existent heart.
There was another pulse, then another, and I began to feel as if I once more had veins and arteries, as if I once more had lungs. The atoms of my awareness raced back from the ocean, from the forest, from the sky, coalescing into a specter above my still very dead corpse. Where I’d been only a formless mass of thought, I could now look down at ghostly fingers, wraith-like toes, and a phantom wang. I was hanging naked above the shell of my body. I reached down to touch it, but my ghost hands found no purchase in the dead flesh. Yet, I was definitely me again. Something had halted the dispersal of my soul.
Around my body, the ground was wet with blood. Far more blood, I knew, than had ever pumped through my heart. I quickly spotted the severed limbs and mangled torsos of half a dozen pygmies. I felt a shiver of guilt that I’d brought this fate upon them. I spun around, searching for Infidel.
She looked as if she’d been doused with buckets of tomato juice. She had a pygmy dangling in her grasp, a chief judging from his feathered head-dress. She had my bone-handled knife pressed against his throat.
“Call them off!” she growled, as more pygmies emerged from the trees. “Just leave us alone and no one else gets hurt!”
The chief responded by spitting in her eye. Two seconds later, his head was separated from his shoulders.
As his blood flowed across the bone-handled knife, life flowed back into me. I inhaled, my ghost lungs filling, and shouted, “Infidel!”
She didn’t react. She was too lost in her anger to hear me as she charged the newest round of warriors, a dozen spearmen clustered in a frightened clump at the edge of the clearing.
I grabbed at her arm as she raced past me. My fingers passed right through her skin.
“Infidel!” I screamed again.
She didn’t even blink as she crashed into the wall of spears, splintering them. The wide-eyed pygmies turned in unison to flee. She gave chase for only a yard or so, then, either in frustration or as a warning, she punched the nearest tree, splintering the trunk.
The tree groaned, then toppled, as Infidel lowered into a half crouch and scanned the area, her eyes as intense as a cat searching a bush for a bird.
Infidel remained alert for several minutes as her panting breath returned to normal. At last, she relaxed, straightening up. The pygmies had taken the hint. She twisted her head in a slow arc, her bones popping as the tension in her neck and shoulders slackened. Her lips parted slightly as she took a deep breath. Looking at my body, her shoulders sagged.
She walked toward my corpse, her arms limp at her sides, my bone-handled knife barely dangling in her grasp. When she reached my remains, she stared down, breathing slowly. The music of frogs and insects began to hum and strum as the violence of the moment before was swept away by the unceasing flow of time.
She shoved my knife into her broad leather belt and knelt before my body. Placing her arms beneath my knees and shoulders, she lifted me. I twisted my ghostly form to occupy the space of my corpse, trying to feel her hands upon my dead flesh, to no avail. I could no more grasp my body than I could grasp the wind.
She carried my cadaver into the calm end of the pool, walking ever deeper until I was submerged. She ducked her whole body beneath the water. I didn’t know what she was doing. I was mystified, unable to read the blank mask of her face and eyes. She bobbed back above water to breathe. The blood from the battle washed from her face. As the water carried off the gore that caked my grandfather’s knife, my ghostly body faded from my sight. I was no longer dispersing into nothingness, or allness, but was instead simply invisible, intangible, a memory of a man haunting the woman he once loved, his soul somehow bound to the blade that had killed him.
Beneath the water, she undressed me, peeling away my torn armor, still studded with pygmy darts. She washed the blood and mud and sand from my pale skin, her fingers gently tracing the lines of my face. She calmly worked the tangles from my hair, then let my body drift in the still water as she ducked back beneath and pulled off the shreds of her own clothes, scrubbing her skin, her hair spreading through the water like a halo as she patiently pulled out bits of vines from the numerous knots. Twenty minutes later, she carried my now clean corpse from the water. She was naked save for the thick black belt that sat upon her angular hips. The blade of my knife pressed against the smooth arc that traced where her belly met her hip, the tip resting near the thick blonde curls of her pubic hair.
She laid me gently on the black sand and sat beside me, her legs folded beneath her. I looked as if I was sleeping. The hole from which my life had drained was just a jagged flap an inch or two across, not so fearsome. She folded my arms over my chest, cupping the uppermost hand in her slender fingers. Free of blood, her skin gleamed like marble.
She sat for a long time, her lips twitching. Sometimes, she looked on the verge of tears. In other moments, I was certain she was about to curse, and beat my battered corpse with her fists. In the end, her lips curled upwards, as the faintest hint of a smile managed to claw its way up from beneath grief and guilt and rage.
She shook her head gently as she looked into my face. As the jungle crescendo grew with the approaching daylight, and song birds lent their voices to the drone of bugs and frogs, she swallowed deeply.
“You old fool,” she whispered. “I loved you too.”