.
"Hey look, no hands!" Kino waved her arms in the air.
"Kiiinooo!" Hermes shouted. "You trying to break your arm again?"
"Oh, you worry too much!" Kino crowed, grabbing the handlebars. "C'mon! We're doing what you wanted."
"Huh?"
"Pass road! Twenty miles of it, high altitude, with the beach on the other side."
"In the state you're in?"
"I'll have you know," Kino sounded mildly offended, "I haven't had a drop of wine since the festival."
"The festival" was a euphemism, Hermes had concluded, for whatever mind-bending ordeal Kino had subjected herself to two towns back. He'd stopped making fun of her when he realized she'd become so foolhardy.
"That's not what I mean!" Hermes shouted over the roar of his own engine. They'd scarcely used his new turbocharger, but it looked like they'd be breaking it in today. The road ahead rose from the earth, clinging to the hillside like a vine.
"Whoa!" Hermes bellowed as they barely made a turn, his front wheel actually rumbling against the rough edge of the pavement. Beyond that waited the abyss.
"Okay, point. Time to concentrate," Kino admitted. "I don't need more hospital time, thank you." In an instant, the old Kino was back, fiercely focused and rational.
Together, they threaded the needle, lurching between rock face and verge, their conversation now exclusively grunts of effort. Finally Kino said, "you having fun, Hermes?"
"Now I am!" he exulted. "You're really good!"
"So are you!" And nothing more was said until they passed between two pillars of rock, almost like threshold guardians, and out to the beach.
"Whoo-hoo!" Both crowed as one.
"Now that was fun!" Hermes gushed.
They arrived at the strand. Kino revved the engine beneath her, carving and claiming a circle of the beach as their own, despite being well away from civilization.
She let him fall, gently, to the sand, and promptly started peeling away her sweaty riding gear.
"Kino? What're you doing? Someone will see you."
"Enjoy the view," she shouted as she ran to the water.
Kino bobbed and bounced around in the waves for almost an hour before she returned to Hermes' side, and then lay down in the sun.
"Whoo, that cold water helped! I haven't done that since I was a kid," she panted. "How many days squandered, when this was waiting for me all the time? Heartbreaking! Poor ocean," she said with mock pathos.
Hermes let her catch her breath before starting to nag her again. "Alright, who are you and what have you done with the real Kino?"
She smiled. "I have changed, haven't I?"
"First chance I've had to look over the damage." From the nape of her neck to the soles of her feet, Kino's skin was still speckled all over with scabs, and striped red with welts. Just under the surface, ugly bruises had turned yellow and purple. Ligature marks circled her ankles, but those had almost faded away. Everything looked swollen, but there was no sign of infection or of any lasting impairment or mutilation. "I know it'll all heal, but they really worked you over! I don't wanna be a pest, but it's high time you explained it to me. What on Earth did they do to you?"
"Oooonly if you don't tell. If someone's warned, they won't be surprised." Kino sounded manic. He'd not heard her like this since she was drugged, though she sounded more in control this time.
"Alright, I promise. Did they drug you?"
"Hah! I wish. They murdered me."
"Uh huh."
"Six or seven times, I lost count. Lemme see..." she started counting on her fingers.
"That isn't helpful. Start at the beginning."
"Well, you remember they stormed in the room and practically kidnapped me?"
"Yup. 'You brought it on yourself,' I said, and went right back to sleep."
"Uhm, black comedy was the order of the day." Kino turned over to sun her front, and brushed sand from herself. "So they took us to a bath house. There were two other 'May Queens' with me, I was a last-minute addition, y'see. Never did have the chance to meet 'em. I figured, 'fine. Ritual ablution before we get started with whatever boring ceremony they have in store.' Wrong! I now know what drowning feels like."
"Yeesh!"
"And while I'm fighting for air, I'm thinking, 'oooh, they bamboozled you, Kino! The whole thing was a scheme to make you drop your guard.'"
"Doesn't pass the common sense test. Needlessly complicated."
"Sure, in the cold light of reason. In the moment...?"
"Was it as bad as the gallows?"
"Yes. Same panic. So we get resuscitated. We've barely coughed the water our of our lungs, they towel us off and want us to dance circles around a pole!"
"Maypole," Hermes said.
"Huh?"
"It's called a Whitson-Morris dance."
Kino uncrossed the arms over her eyes to regard Hermes.
"I've been traveling a lot longer than you have," he explained.
"Hmm. It's on a cliff side. Beautiful sunrise. So I've still got the fact they're gonna beat the hell out of me by afternoon hanging over my head, and I now know they are serious about it. And they wanna throw a party, with us the guests of honor. They're all wearing these silly costumes, and the three of us are running around starkers. I'm warmed up now and actually starting to enjoy all this. They threw me into a net, and bounced me up and down really high..."
"...and right off the cliff?"
"How'd you guess. There was another net. Fine nylon one so I couldn't see it on the way down. They don't miss a trick! And the rocks I clipped? Foam rubber. At this point I'm dry-heaving, and cursing up a storm. On the one hand, I gotta admire the show they're putting on, and on the other, I have had it with these freaks, and their stupid, sadistic game! But the only way off the net is through this cave entrance, like a lava tube or something."
"Oh no!" Hermes moaned.
"Oh yes. I'm halfway through before I realize I'm crawling naked through tarantulas."
"Oh Kino...! Tell me they were fake."
"Did you know they hiss like cats? I didn't. 'Course, even then I knew tarantulas can't kill me; I don't think they even injected any venom." She exhibited the back of her hand, and the twin perforations between thumb and forefinger. "Could be worse. One of my counterparts got tagged on the upper lip."
"Aaghh!"
"So I tumble out of that mess. I am screaming! And they're all waiting for me, wanting to party some more. They brush off the spiders, and start making up a song about 'brother weaver giving the May Queen a kiss.' That's when I started laughing."
"You mean like... you were losing your sanity?"
"That's what I thought. So then—"
"Kino, I don't want to hear any more."
"Didn't expect you to have a weak stomach."
"You're somebody I care about."
"Aww!" Kino reached out and patted a whitewall. "Well, it just went on and on like that: party, die, party again, keep me from going into shock, laugh, cry, curse a blue streak. They thought it was funny how many languages I can cuss in. By then I knew they weren't really gonna kill me. The 'sacrifice' is all symbolic. Hey, do you know this Crom?"
"Ugh! Kino, I'm a creature of reason. I don't get on with the 'let's keep the gods happy by killing something' crowd, okay? I mean, it's like a cat giving you a dead sparrow. Would you be pleased if some royal creep was incinerating hecatombs in your name while kids are going hungry? Wanna make me happy, Kino? Recite the order of operations in my name."
"Parentheses, multiplication, division, addition, then subtraction," Kino chanted, his dutiful student. "What's a hecatomb?"
"A hundred oxes or cows."
"Oh, how wasteful!" Kino scoffed.
"Yes, but we digress. You were dancing around naked to please Crom Cruach...?"
"Right. There was some other symbolism in there too. I think I could spend a lot of my life decrypting it, but I got the gist of what they were trying to tell me."
"Don't sign away your rights to freaky cultists?"
"Heh heh! 'Stop worrying.' I mean, it was just... so completely over the top, it was hilarious! I realized, 'this is the worst day of my life. It cannot possibly ever get any worse.'" And Kino was laughing even as she said it. "Hermes, I've not had an easy life — the coliseum, Christine, the time I hid in that chigger nest, but even I don't get killed three times an hour! The day I die for real won't be that bad! So why was I so afraid? Why the hell was I carrying around eight knives, for pity's sake? That's kid stuff! I kept the Swiss Army knife, my lucky trick gun-knife, and the throwing knife, 'cause it's fun. Sold the rest. What was I thinking?"
"Huh," Hermes sounded mildly impressed. "Still, that's their idea of growing up? Six hours straight of torture and terrorizing, and you're grateful?"
"Completely irrational," Kino threw up her hands in a lying-down shrug.
"I was gonna say 'primitive.'"
"They were once a warlike people. They wanted warriors who'd keep their heads even in their last moments, and they just kept it up. When they finally got around to the mock public execution at the end, I wasn't scared at all anymore, I just wanted it over with. I've seen the real thing. That was so impersonal and inhuman it was degrading. I think that's what upset me about the schools too — I refuse to be processed like a sausage. This was theatrical, intimate, people cheering me on, scalding fake blood and all. Oh, it hurt plenty! Weird how you barely feel injuries that put you in the hospital, but superficial stuff hurts so much. My hide was still on fire from the tear gas."
"Tear gas?"
"Oh, gas chamber just before, some-such chemical irritant. Told'ja they don't miss a trick. Renewah or somebody ever try to torture me, they're in for a rude surprise."
"Humanity!" Hermes swore amiably. "Endlessly perverse."
"Maybe not. Didn't you read me a story where somebody had lost a lover, and sought out a second hardship? He said it was easier carrying a heavy burden in both hands than in just one."
"I forget. Sounds like Hemingway, but given how he died, his advice is suspect."
"Now I can live my life!" She sat up. "For example, — ow! — who cares if some cop comes by and writes me a ticket for indecent exposure. So what? I feel like getting some sun."
"I think you're gonna need to balance this out with some caution. Don't let yourself get too careless."
She stood, wincing as her bruised feet took her weight again. "Did I drive us off a cliff? I'm still me, Hermes."
"Put your clothes back on, I might start to believe you."
Kino smirked, but complied, stiffly and slowly. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."
"Didn't. You're pretty, even with all the bruises.:
Kino bounded onto the saddle— "ow...! Still sore."
"Reckless," Hermes cautioned.
She cackled back and kick-started the engine.
"So, what will you do now?"
"Keep traveling, of course! I found another piece of what I was looking for." She finished dressing by strapping on her riding gloves. "Let's go find the rest."
People do all kinds of strange, inexplicable things, without really understanding why.
— Allow me to share our history.
.
