* * *
GIFTS FOR ANY OCCASION:
* THE HISTORY OF THE RIVER MOTH *
* GAMBLING PRACTICES OF THE OUTLANDS *
* THE RELIGIOUS QUARTER ON 15 S. A DAY *
* SQUID POACHING *
* CORRUPTION IN THE MERCHANT DISTRICT *
* ARCHITECTURE OF ALBUMUTH BOULEVARD *
ALSO, The Hoegbotton Series of Guidebooks & Maps
to the Festival, Safe Places, Hazards, and Blindfolds.
* * *
Book upon piled book mentioned in the silvery scrawl and beyond the glass the quiet, slow movements of bibliophiles, feasting upon the genuine articles. It made Dradin forget to breathe, and not simply because this place would have a gift for his dearest, his most beloved, the woman in the window, but because he had been away from the world for a year and, now back, he found the accoutrements of civilization comforted him. His father, that tortured soul, was still a great reader, between the bouts of drinking, despite the erosion of encroaching years, and Dradin could remember many a time that the man had, honking his red, red nose—a monstrosity of a nose, out of proportion to anything in the family line—read and wept at the sangfroid exploits of two poor debutantes named Juliette and Justine as they progressed from poverty to prostitution, to the jungles and back again, weepy with joy as they rediscovered wealth and went on to have wonderful adventures up and down the length and breadth of the River Moth, until finally pristine Justine expired from the pressure of tragic pleasures wreaked upon her.
It made Dradin swell with pride to think that the woman at the window was more beautiful than either Juliette or Justine, far more beautiful, and likely more stalwart besides. (And yet, Dradin admitted, in the delicacy of her features, the pale gloss of her lips, he espied an innately breakable quality as well.)
Thus thinking, Dradin pushed open the glass door, the lacquered oak frame a-creak, and a bell chimed once, twice, thrice. On the thrice chime, a clerk dressed all in dark greens, sleeves spiked with gold cufflinks, came forward, shoes soundless on the thick carpet, bowed, and asked, “How may I help you?”
To which Dradin explained that he sought a gift for a woman. “Not a woman I know,” he said, “but a woman I should like to know.”
The clerk, a rake of a lad with dirty brown hair and a face as subtle as mutton pie, winked wryly, smiled, and said, “I understand, sir, and I have precisely the book for you. It arrived a fortnight ago from the Ministry of Whimsy imprint—an Occidental publisher, sir. Please follow me.”
The clerk led Dradin past mountainous shelves of history texts perused by shriveled prunes of men dressed in orange pantaloons—buffoons from university, no doubt, practicing for some baroque Voss Bender revival—and voluminous mantels of fictions and pastorals, neglected except by a widow in black and a child of twelve with thick glasses, then exhaustive columns of philosophy on which the dust had settled thicker still, until finally they reached a corner hidden by “Funerals” entitled “Objects of Desire.”
The clerk pulled out an elegant eight-by-eleven book lined with soft velvet and gold leaf. “It is called The Refraction of Light in a Prison and in it can be found the collected wisdom of the last of the Truffidian monks imprisoned in the Kalif’s dark towers. It was snuck out of those dark towers by an intrepid adventurer who—”
“Who was not a son of Hoegbotton, I hope,” Dradin said, because it was well known that Hoegbotton & Sons dealt in all sorts of gimmickry and mimicry, and he did not like to think that he was giving his love an item she might have unpacked and cataloged herself.
“Hoegbotton & Sons? No, sir. Not a son of Hoegbotton. We do not deal with Hoegbotton & Sons (except inasmuch as we are contracted to carry their guidebooks), as their practices are … how shall I put it?… questionable. With neither Hoegbotton nor his sons do we deal. But where was I? The Truffidians.
“They are experts at the art of cataloging passion, with this grave distinction: that when I say to you, sir, ‘passion,’ I mean the word in its most general sense, a sense that does not allow for intimacies of the kind that might strike the lady you wish to know better as too vulgar. It merely speaks to the general—the incorporeal, as one more highly witted than I might say. It shall not offend; rather, it shall lend to the gift-giver an aura of mystery that may prove permanently alluring.”
The clerk proffered the book for inspection, but Dradin merely touched the svelte cover with his hand and said no, for he had had the most delightful thought: that he could explore those pages at the same time as his love. The thought made his hands tremble as they had not trembled since the fever ruled his body and he feared he might die. He imagined his hand atop hers as they turned the pages, her eyes caressing the same chapter and paragraph, the same line and word; thus could they learn of passion together but separate.
“Excellent, excellent,” Dradin said, and, after a tic of hesitation—for he was much closer to penniless than penniful—he added, “but I shall need two,” and as the clerk’s eyebrows rose like the startled silhouettes of twin seagulls upon finding that a fish within their grasp is actually a snark, he stuttered, “A-a-and a map. A map of the city. For the Festival.”
“Of course,” said the clerk, as if to say, Converts all around, eh?
Dradin, dour-faced, said only, “Wrap this one and I will take the other unwrapped, along with the map,” and stood stiff, brimming over with urgency, as the clerk dawdled and digressed. He knew well the clerk’s thoughts: a rogue priest, ungodly and unbound by any covenant made with God. And perhaps the clerk was right, but did not canonical law provide for the unforeseen and the estranged, for the combination of beauty and the bizarre of which the jungle was itself composed? How else could one encompass and explain the terrible grace of the Hull Peoples, who lived within the caves hewn by a waterfall, and who, when dispossessed by Dradin and sent to the missionary fort, complained of the silence, the silence of God, how God would not talk to them, for what else was the play of water upon the rocks but the voice of God? He had had to send them back to their waterfall, for he could not bear the haunted looks upon their faces, the disorientation blossoming in their eyes like a deadly and deadening flower.
Dradin had first taken a lover in the jungles: a sweaty woman priest whose kisses smothered and suffocated him even as they brought him back to the world of flesh. Had she infected his mission? No, for he had tried so very hard for conversions, despite their scarcity. Even confronted by savage beast, savage plant, and just plain savage he had persevered. Perhaps persevered for too long, in the face of too many obstacles, his hair proof of his tenacity—the stark black streaked with white or, in certain light, stark white shot through with black, each strand of white attributable to the jungle fever (so cold it burned, his skin glacial), each strand of black a testament to being alive afterward.
Finally, the clerk tied a lime-green bow around a bright red package: gaudy but serviceable. Dradin dropped the necessary coin on the marble counter, stuck the map in the unwrapped copy and, with a frown to the clerk, walked to the door.
Out in the gray glare of the street, the heat and the bustling confusion struck Dradin and he thought he was lost, lost in the jungles that he had only just fled, lost so he would never again find his lady. His breaths came ragged and he put a hand to his temple, for he felt faint yet giddy.