No More EXAMS! *jumps up and down, screams and generally goes bananas*
And…reviews please! Especially for the last chapter…like to know what you think
Enjoy :-)))
XXV. View from the treetop
"Just please, please don't make a fool of yerself again. Please." Indeed, if this went wrong, he felt his face would remain permanently red for the rest of his life.
"Again? When was the last time I made a fool of myself?"
"Sorry, my mistake. You cannot make a greater fool of yourself than you are." He prepared to duck his friend's podgy hand, knowing it would fly at him any second. And yet, whether because he was too proud or unwilling to start a fight that would invariably end with rolling in the wet soil they stood on, he simply contented with glaring. Venomously.
"All right, buddy, just listen: if thou dithereth much longer-" he made a flourish with his hand, "Thy lady in the tower, she will find some man better-"
"She is not my mistress, she…"
"…and the letters, that thou sent, adorned with mould-"
"There is no mould in my shop!"
"Sure, what was that green fur I ate yesterday? Was it a monster kitten in pastry? It almost made my mother's cooking taste good in comparison…"
This time, he had to duck the flying arm. Straightening up, he looked at the fuming eyes, that could frighten one if not for the hint of a well-suppressed laugh at the corners of the lips. If someone looked at the two of them, they would find no pair of friends less alike; one exceedingly thin, freckled and black-haired, quick, like a fox; the other resembling a formless sea creature, in the worst possible physical condition, with a bald patch glistening on the back of his head in his few twenty-five years; if one listened to the two of them, especially in a moment as this, one might think they were two brothers who saw their brotherhood as some sort of incurable disease, rather than a pair of staunch friends.
"Sorry, pal. But honestly, you need a-"
"Woman to make anyone set foot in my shop?"
"Yes."
"Fine."
"All right, so, you give me a leg up, as I'm a quarter of your size –" he ducked the hand again – the blow made a swooshing sound in the air. It sounded as if it could break a few bones. "And I climb up, find the perfect spot, and then you can get up there before your muse decides to retire to-"
"Your tongue will earn you a broken nose sometimes…"
"And your cooking will earn you a nice trip to the gallows for poisoning someone with your-"
"I might as well be the one to break your nose-"
"And I might be the one to send you to that nice old noose – I'd be a good citizen and save some people from poisoning. That stuff even kills the rats-"
A great deal of sudden rustling told him to prepare to duck – perhaps even curl up on the ground like a baby – as his infuriated friend, all romantic thoughts forgotten and stored away, advanced towards him through the bush, rolling up his sleeves. Having friends such as that and a mouth such as his was only compatible with wearing chainmail and medieval armour all day long.
"You, I'll show you-"
He stopped short. A voice, a song, carried from somewhere above them.
See, see, mine own sweet jewel,
See what I have here for my darling:
Undoubtedly, the song carried from the window above to where they stood, listening; from her window. Her, whom his friend dreamed about every night, talking about every waking minute. Her voice was rather peculiar, not what one would call beautiful – it had a slightly yawning quality to it, and the song sounded strangely warbled by the cockney accent. And a prominent accent it was. Sometimes, he wondered what his friend saw in her. Sometimes, he wondered, if she would see anything in him. They made for a good pair, but a rather impossible one at the same time.
"Hurry up, maitre cuisiniere!", he said, trying to take his mind off her. They disturbed him, these thoughts. Maitre Cuisiniere – purposefully, of course – allowed his foot to slip slightly from his joined palms and made him cling to the jagged tree trunk with raw hands.
A robin-redbreast and a starling.
These I give both, in hope to move ye –
And yet you say I do not love ye…
When he had climbed high enough to see her standing with her back turned to the window, he gave his friend the signal, who began clambering up the tree as noisily as was possible. If she had not been singing, she might have called the constable for the commotion he made.
And yet you say I do not love ye…
An all-too-audible sigh prompted him to camouflage himself a little better within the foliage of the tree – of which, luckily, there was plenty – for some reason he could imagine this woman, who stood now, with her back to him, her hair loose and in disarray, swinging an axe, or some heavy object, his way. Perhaps opposites do not attract after all.
"I think you should keep quiet." He could not be rid of the image of that woman with an axe. Or a knife. Or some nightmarish implementation of the sort.
"Look who's talking."
"Hmph."
"I climbed up a tree to see her. Just to see her. Won't she love it?"
"If you pronounced those last two words the way I think you did, that was a very bad joke." (1)
"Joke's on you."
He opened his mouth to snap back at him, but stopped short. Hidden as he was by the dense foliage, the window they stared into was quite wide, and he could see a good portion of her room if he tilted his head to the side...he could see her, clear as day, standing in the middle of the room, swaying with the song she no longer sang...
"Just you look at her…isn't she beautiful…" all arguments forgotten, his friend leaned forward onto the tree trunk, and he knew what the expression on his face would be. His little eyes would be clouded, his mouth half-open in a smile, his eyebrows raised...
She stood with her back to the window, to them, wearing only a plain, white nightgown, with bare arms and shoulders, her hair gathered on top of her head in a messy, frazzled bun. She was thin, but seemed big-boned; her shoulder blades stood out, thrown into relief by the meager light.
The skin on her back, shoulders and arms was rather sallow, he thought, and he imagined in would be dotted with pale, barely noticeable freckles; her hair was more auburn than red, though in the light of her lone candle, it seemed to be the colour of blood.
A while ago, he imagined her wielding an axe, or a knife; now, he imagined her with a rolling pin, flour in her hair, and his friend by her side; suddenly, he could picture their faces together, picture a merry baby in her arms. Perhaps it would all happen.
"You know, I always thought you were hopeless, but…"
His calm tone of voice seemed to sober his friend. Without turning, he answered, with the same tranquility.
"I always believed you, even if I argued with you till I dropped."
"A good friend thinks you're a good egg, even if you're slightly cracked."
They chuckled together at that, and it seemed that their soft laughter moved the leaves on the trees they sat on. The breeze blew into her room, and the candle flickered. Flickered, but remained burning, her hair still red, blood red.
Suddenly, he heard his friend gasp, and then stiffen suddenly. She had walked to the side to face a large standing mirror, and stood there, with her cloud of blood red hair, with a necklace of cheap red beads hanging from her hand. As she raised her hands, the beads slid down her sinewy arm and remained hanging from the crook of her elbow, like droplets of blood on a string.
Her index finger slipped under the straps of her nightgown, lifted it, and so she allowed it to fall to the floor, the white material pooling like foam about her feet. His friend was now trembling in earnest.
"Calm down, old boy. You'll bring the tree down."
She now slipped the necklace on, and it reached down to her breasts, lay there like pearls of blood. Her red hair flamed in the darkening room, and her lips were crimson. He thought, for a moment, that if she looked up, her eyes would be red, too. Red, like her hair, like her necklace, like blood.
She moved back, back from the mirror, arching and twisting her body like a snake, a snake that could stand, a snake that was, millennia ago, cursed to crawl for evermore on its belly. And yet, she defied the curse, she arched, left and right, moving backwards. barely lifting her bare feet off the ground.
Suddenly, his friend made the mistake of leaning forward a little too much, and his foot slipped off the branch he had set it on, causing it to crack, leaving him hanging off the tree, hugging the bark for support. His podgy body swayed comically, to and fro, as he struggled to get back into a sitting position on an adjacent branch. Frightened as he was of his friend's object of affection, and still unable to rid his mind of the image of her wielding a studded rolling pin, he hid as well as he humanly could, in the foliage. It tickled his cheeks.
By no means deaf, she turned round, grabbing her nightgown to cover her nakedness. Her eyes were not red, not red as he imagined them to be. They seemed to have no colour at all, in fact, and their darkness moved over the tree, over the man with the red face, clinging for dear life to the branches. Perhaps the eye contact encouraged his recklessness. It was hard to understand his emotions. This way or another, without further ado, he swung himself over to her windowpane, with surprising agility, and hauled himself into the room.
They stood there, eyes locked, for a few seconds. Or, perhaps, it was a whole hour. Or a year. He did not know. Then, she spoke. And as she did, the ice didn't break. It seemed to get even colder.
"You should leave."
His friend seemed to have turned into a statue. He stood, speechless, looking at her, and he could see he was trying to keep his eyes on her face, not fix them on there where the crimson beads shone like a beautiful wound. Where the creases of the nightgown she held against her body parted to reveal her skin, beneath which her blood would flow. Red, as those beads, red as her hair. And as he stared, something changed in her face, in her features. Her eyes became sharp. Narrowed. Angry. Her mouth creased at the edges.
"Did you…see me?" She gestured at the mirror.
He nodded.
She contemplated him for a second, her chest, her chest with the blood red beads, rising and falling, in anger, and indignation.
She slapped him.
The sound was like a crack of a horseman's whip in the darkness. A small firework. An echo in the night. Her hand shot up, once again, and his friend flinched, before feeling her touch on his reddened cheek. The nightgown had fallen to the floor once again. Pulling his face towards her, she kissed him. She kissed his friend. Full on the mouth. He wondered what it tasted like, to kiss her. His friend would probably tell him, tomorrow, that it tasted like berries, or like sugar…but he would always imagine that it tasted like blood.
Trying to make as little noise as possiblehe slipped down from his branch, and set off homeward. Into the dark, away from her candle.
1 Hmm, thats quite a give away.