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Ianheh | ||||
The Rope
a new tale of the Antique Lands The rope was braided out of common halfa-grass, as many ropes are in the Antique Lands. It trailed from a low and broad basket, made of doum-palm fibers but unworthy of further remark. Some length of the rope lay coiled beside this basket. The other end of the rope, which had to be thought of as the far end, stood at present some fifteen yards distant. And this, as will be seen, was worthy of remark indeed. The rope had been displayed in the Lower Ópetian port town of Noofr for five days now. Late each morning the blind old man who owned the basket set it in a broad sort of plaza that periodically filled up with tradesmen and merchants, forming near the ice manufactory an ephemeral sooq of goats, bitumen, fish, rice, and other regional produce. This place was more than broad enough for the rope to have been laid straight out in any direction without touching the wall of the native town, or that of the manufactory, had its owner chosen to do so. The old man, whom the people of Noofr came to call the little khedeev (that is, the little "ruler of Ópet"), chose not to do this. The effect of this location, likely unintended by the old man, was also to keep the rope some distance from any building whose roof or window might have facilitated a closer inspection of the far end. The residents and visitors to the sooq were much inclined to attempt this, because from its coil beside the basket the rope rose straight into the air. And there was no yardarm or balloon tethered anywhere along its length. Rope-charming is a profession not unknown in this part of the world, but it has never been a common one. Most rope-charmers will use cordage, thin rope or often ordinary cotton twine, not longer than five or six yards. (The precise length of the little khedeev's rope had not been determined, but its diameter was in excess of two inches.) Some rope-charmers use drums, and others reed pipes, to "draw up" the rope. The little khedeev used a side-blown ivory horn. From the embouchure of this unsophisticated instrument he forced a curious series of notes. These were themselves worthy of as much remark as the rope, on account of their duration, tonal achievements, and charming effects. He also had a boy with him, as rope-charmers sometimes do. The boy was seven or eight years of age, black-haired, brown-skinned, and slender, a good Upper Ópetian type one might expect to see on a photographic cabinet card. Each day the boy swarbled up the rope. With him he dragged the attention of the crowd, away from the dusty street, away from their chores and labors. Away from the recently depopulated harbor, away from their worries about the real khedeev, who was very unpopular. The khedeev was, in fact, so unpopular that two weeks prior to this day, while he visited abroad -- and specifically on the very day he toured L'Exposicion Grand in Lutet -- a minor uprising had disturbed Noofr. Several buildings had been set afire and certain people were beaten, threatened, or killed. This had precipitated both the departure of most of the foreigners by means of the tourist steamers operated by Baker & Son, and the arrival of a contingent of the khedeev's army, which had quickly brushed through and removed the offenders like nits on a louse-comb. These occurrences had left things in such a state that even the local population did not know what might happen next. Ever since, to whatever extent possible, the foreigners had stayed away, visitors and ex-patriates alike. A nebulous sense of worry hung over the town, except here in this plaza. The rope and the boy and the old man had become a sort of holy trinity, granting a bright daylight hour of relief from worldly cares. Such ease of heart notwithstanding, rope-climbing boys do fall now and then, before they have had a chance to run away or grow too large in their proportions or be stolen away by some family member or slave-dealer. A bad note or rhythm from the rope-charmer's instrument, or a slip of a clumsy hand, can pluck him from the sky and send him back down, haste post haste, to the street. In such cases gravity proves the greater magic. Much more rarely, a boy neither descends the rope nor plummets from it. Now and then, it is said, a boy climbs up and up and up into the glare-gold of the sun, and never returns. It is supposed to be a rare and marvelous thing for a boy to be so pretty and so virtuous as catch the fancy of God. (It being usually difficult to maintain both states simultaneously.) But in the event that this boy fell, he would not lie on the streets to be picked over by thieves. In the shadow of a mendicant eye-surgeon's awning, a young woman of Lower Ópet named Iánheh tá-Heybesi waited, ready to fetch his body to Temple servants who would properly entomb him. This was not her usual employment. She was, in fact, the vaccinator's daughter, although Iánheh herself had no deep interest in the science of inoculation and these days earned a modest income as a dragoman, guide and interpreter for foreigners who found themselves in Noofr. Her current role of jackal was occasioned by the recent events. These had deprived Iánheh of her customary clientele, and few of the local population knew quite what to do with her (her father being in Lutet with the khedeev at the time). During the minor uprising, which earned several column inches in local and foreign newspapers and half-tones in those that had the apparatus, the vaccinator's house had burned down. The servants of the Temple did not particularly care about Iánheh's politics (they were anyway awaiting the return of the great eminence called the Sole of God), or even her religion (she wore the white and yellow qafiyeh that marked her as one of the kópees, who worship a multiplicity of powers rather than exclusively the sun, which is called God in the Antique Lands). In return for the boy's body, and thereby his soul which the servants of God would press into duty, they would give her something to eat. By this time, Iánheh had come, somewhat unhappily, to the conclusion that the boy was not going to be providing her dinner. At least it was fortunate for him. But Iánheh had waited five days for his consequences and, as her own consequence, had gone rather hungry. There was today other game afoot here, and Iánheh finally decided to pursue it. Like Iánheh, the other people of Noofr had been watching this performance for five days and had grown just a little tired of it. More strangers, for whom the rope remained yet a novelty, made up the crowd now. While there were no foreigners from beyond the Antique Lands, the various nations (if they may be so called) within the Antique Lands, and the forty-two provinces of Upper and Lower Ópet, were well-represented. Someone might need a desert guide, when the performance was finished. Iánheh knew the routes. She had followed her father's inoculation rounds for many years. A well-bearded man of Qinahni found himself in her aim. He had crossed the Crocodile Canal (Noofr stands at its northern entrance) into Ópet, and had earlier remarked to the eye-surgeon that he was bound next for Qáriyá, grandest city in Ópet and, by certain accounts, in all the world. "Yá sáyeed," Iánheh said, approaching, "the roads from Noofr are not as felicitous as those that bring a man here. A móteneet would smooth your path, keep dogs from your shadow, ensure water for your horse, or find you a horse if you have none." She used a common word for desert guide in the language of the kópees, who are famed and prized for remaining loyal to their employers. Her lineage and its accompanying reputation did not impress the Qinahnite. He continued to stare in the direction of the boy, pulling in the flowing sleeve of his embroidered cotton robe so that it did not stray too near her body. "Where are your foreign masters gone off to, girl? Swim after them!" Attempts upon several others likewise brought rejection, if not so cruelly. Iánheh's usual services were evidently of no greater use today than her unusual ones. She said to herself, "My father will return from Lutet soon. But not so soon that I can wait for him without eating." She had one last salvaged morsel, a fig, slightly charred. Before making a meal of it, she made it vanish and appear at turns by sleight-of-hand. Her father had taught her these tricks, for the amusement of those children to whom he administered in his inoculation duties. The fig walked the back of her hand, was reborn from an old woman's ankle ("Here is your last-born, sáyeeda! May it grow to bear you many fruit that those who crouch in your shade might share!"), disappeared into thin air -- O no, there it was, beneath Iánheh's qafiyeh. Was the honest leger-de-man of this female adept any less wonderful than the tricks of the rope-climbing boy? Taking away the wonder of the rope and installing him upon an ordinary pole of no great height, certainly not. Regarding more passive aspects of their presentations, ornamental as the boy was, Iánheh was herself a reasonably attractive specimen of a Lower Ópetian type (with even a few red hairs among her dark brown ones, barely numerous enough to suggest a latency of mischief to anyone who came close enough to notice them). But as this boy was now, a pretty Upper Ópetian appended to an untethered rope that had risen to a very respectable height, he was a creature of air, an occasion of contemplation and joy. Iánheh might as well have been a snake in the dust of the earth, the bystanders accorded her such notice. "How high the boy has climbed! O God! O God!" one onlooker remarked to the next. "How marvelous the little khedeev's magic is! Will it happen today? Will God take him?" From their hands rained báqsheesh in the form of coins and, among them, a copper bracelet, these puddling before the crossed legs of the blind rope-charmer. The bracelet was thin and green with age. Iánheh thought, "That is nothing more than a scrap, an insult, a bruise upon the flesh of his poor purse! What will the old man do with such a thing? But I know the sort of foreigner who'd buy it. The foreigners will come back. Their winters will grow cold again and they'll forget about the uprising -- even if I won't -- and remember only Ópet's warm breezes and anteekehs." The bystanders craned their necks heavenward, looking holy in contemplation of God as the Temple horologues sang the noon hour. By now the boy had gone higher than they had ever before seen any boy climb on such a rope. He had to be nearly at the far end, the very end. Everyone -- Iánheh not excepted -- drew a loud breath. The boy fumbled for his hold as he had never done before, and was pendant from the rope by one hand only. Everyone -- even those who had grown bored with the performance -- watched now. As their breaths came out filled with urgency and prayer timed to the rapid cadence of their hearts, O God! O God!, their hands went out, collectively. Everyone -- Iánheh not excepted -- tipped or flicked their wrists or bent down to put their hands before the old man. The little pile of báqsheesh grew, despite all things, larger than before. But their eyes still attended the boy. Now Iánheh was excepted, because she was examining the copper bracelet she had pinched from among the coins. And her neighbors ululated. Iánheh leapt up. The rope stood there still, but the boy was gone from the end of it. Iánheh said to herself, "Where has he fallen to?" but the ululation was of overwhelming joy. The boy was gone. He had climbed straight up to the sun. "O God! O God! God be praised! His presence fills my heart! O God! O God! What a blessed boy! What a fortunate boy, to be taken away by God! O God! O God!" People departed amid self-congratulations, saying, "Did you see? Yes? O how wonderful for you and your family, and me and mine. Yes, it is a blessing to witness such a miracle with one's own eyes, to have such manifestation of God's love to sate one's heart." They went away, thanking the little khedeev with gifts of even more coins. Iánheh squinted into the sun as it continued on its way, her fingers feeling the edges of the bracelet. Foreigners would return for it. They would return for her, and her father would too and the khedeev would come back and everything would be as it had been, except for the house, which had burned to the ground. She wondered if the boy might also return. She said to herself, "Did the sun god come for him as the unblinking eye of a falcon, or as a ball pushed along by a beetle, or as a golden boat? Or maybe, as the Temple servants say, as a flawless orb of light." And she wondered too, "Will the boy fall?" read
the rest of the story in Fantasy: The Best of the Year
2008 Edition (edited by Rich Horton)
|
 Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2008 Edition edited by Rich Horton (Prime Books: trade paperback) Amazon Barnes & Noble (Cosmos: mass-market paperback) Amazon (pre-order)  Fantasy short story Realms of Fantasy April 2007 illustrated by Paul Lee Honorable mention --Gardner
Dozois, The Year's
Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection Honorable mention & cited by Ellen Datlow as one of "the best darker stories" appearing in Realms of Fantasy in 2007 --Ellen Datlow and Kelly Link
& Gavin J. Grant, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2008: 21st Annual Collection 2007 Recommended Reading List "...
very fine work. [...] Doyle unspools
her story carefully, leading to a very neat and spooky revelation..."
--Rich
Horton, Locus,
April 2007
"This will appeal to those looking for an erudite
tale."
"... this inward-revolving tale
[...] shows
the beauty, hope, and terror of reaching for one's dreams..."
other excerpts: Ankhtifi the Brave is dying. Callum's Feast The Chapter of Bringing a Boat into Heaven The Chapter of Coming forth by Night The Chapter of the Hawk of Gold The Dovecote The Execration Horizon Shadow of the Pyramid Trading Places |
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