Chapter 4 - Echoes and Wax

“Another tick thinks she’s going to suck the blood off of Mother Vimienn. Keeping rings tied under your long tresses, eh my sweet? Keeping your glinting silver for yourself? Mother Vimienn’s too wise to those tricks, dearie.”

A muira women bent her spine to pass under the low arch of a hollow lodging, a little cave dug into the embankment beneath the Longclasp Bridge. The hollows were pitch black, pools of darker tint on the already-dark slope under the shadow of the bridge on the clouded night. The woman circumvented this difficulty by means of a beam lantern. She carried the lantern before her in the hooked grasp of one skinny, pale claw. This was the lone source of light upon the embankment under the bridge, and the woman now directed its glow into the hollow lodging. The space was a small one, not high enough for a grown man to stand, not wide enough for him to stretch. The walls were bare rock, the floor unfurnished excepting a small pile of rags and straw that formed a rude bed.

It was over this bed, and the curled figure shivering under a patchwork blanket beneath, that the muira woman bent her spine and her lantern’s beam.

The woman paused. She tilted her head, as if listening. Then she stared at the bundle before her. She convinced herself that the figure in the hollow was truly asleep, reassured by the slow rise-and-fall of the blanket. She resumed her mumbling in a whisper. “My poor sweet little boy. Taken a little too much of Mother Vimienn’s wax, have you?” She sank nearer to the breathing heap; Her knees cracked and popped. “All my little girls and boys go too strong on the wax some days. And then they doze. Just like you, my dear. They forget their poor, poor mother needs rings: what with food, and making for them all this lovely buttery centipede wax, and for poor poor mother to have a small rub herself now and then. Well, never mind, sweet boy. Mother’s just going to take those rings you owe her. And maybe a teensy tax.”

The woman reached a long, clawed hand. She grabbed the ragged edge of the threadbare blanket and began sliding it slowly, carefully back.

“Vimienn.”

The voice that spoke her name came from behind the old muira woman. Startled, she let the blanket fall. She nearly cracked her head on the ceiling as she straightened, spinning around and casting her lantern before her.

A silhouette stood in the arch of the hollow lodging. It wore a black-green oilcloak, shiny in the humid summer night, with the hood pulled low over the face. “What’s that, stranger?” Vimienn asked. She made her voice sound softer and more fragile than it had a moment ago.

“We aren’t strangers,” said the silhouette.

Vimienn recognized something in the voice that made her shiver. After a short cognitive reflection her eyes spread with sudden recognition. “You! Mell-”

“Stop,” The silhouette warned with a strong voice and sudden raised arm. The arm was feminine, skinny, and pale, but not with the ivory tone and golden veins of a muira, only the soft pale skin of a young human woman. The strong voice went on, “On your life, don’t say that name.”

“You needn’t fear the sleeper, sweetie. They sleep heavy as stones when they’ve rubbed too much of the wax.”

“The girl of that name, who used at one time to inhabit this body… I have strangled her out of it.”

“Oh.”

“You mustn’t call me by a dead girl’s name.”

“What name shall I call you then?”

The voice under the dark green hood paused, then replied, “Say ‘Kloe’.”

Vimienn smiled and nodded. But the smile shrank from her cheeks, and her nodding slowly stopped; Kloe remained as still as the sleeping bundle in the hollow. Vimienn swallowed. “Kloe it shall be. Whatever you like, sweets.”

“Come away from that hole. And stop shining your lamp under my cloak.”

Vimienn did as she was bid. She bent herself out of the hollow lodging in the same way she’d bent herself into it, emerging onto the shadowed embankment beneath the Longclasp Bridge. The shadows were not so cloying without the cramped interior of the hollows as they were within, and with the lantern pointed down and away from her face, Kloe could distinguish some of the features of the muira woman opposite her.

Even after emerging from the hollow Vimienn’s spine maintained a slight bend at the top where it met her neck, giving her the aspect of a vulture. This was augmented by a talonish hook of her arms and hands as she walked, and a bird-like, cunning gleam in her black eyes. Her skin was more the color of slightly-aged parchment than the true muira ivory; and the wrinkles around her lips and eyes, and the orangish tint to her golden veins, and a sere, dry, lusterless head of black hair - all contributed to the aspect of a muira woman entering her late-middle-age, perhaps into the sixties or seventies of that species. Vimienn was thirty-five.

Kloe said, “You still sell centipede wax and goldneedle.”

Vimienn coughed once. She looked around with an uncomfortable expression. “Not goldneedle. Too dangerous, that little pleasure. The wee girls and boys got too excitable. It’s only the wax now, and really only a small morsel of that.”

“Mmm.”

“And mell, you were never partial to my wax neither. I always say, ‘IF they don’t get the taste young; they won’t find it when they’re old.’”

Kloe took a step closer. “You’re not as cordial as you once were, Vimienn.”

Vimienn withdrew, her chin sinking back to her chest, her shoulders bunching. “No, sweetie. If you wanted, mother Vimienn could give you a free rub.” And the muira women rubbed carefully under her own eyelid in unconscious imitation.

Kloe shook her head. She stopped abruptly and darted a glance up at the bridge, at the same time revealing a small mouth and pale chin from under the shadow of the green hood. “What was that?” she asked.

“Nothing, dearie, nothing,” Vimienn answered truthfully. “Only far footsteps. Echoing. No one crosses The Longclasp this late in the stars’ watch.”

“Continue on, Vimienn. Act as you would were I not here. And meanwhile attend to what I whisper.”

Vimienn nodded. “Certainly, sweet lady, certainly.” She scanned the broad embankment beneath the Longclasp with the beam of her lamp, passing it over one hollow after another. Unlike the hole she had just departed, most of the hollows had the small luxury of a tattered, grimy, wind-torn curtain over the opening. Vimienn’s light darted with a practiced flash from one open curtain, to another, to another, before stopping in a flash on one ragged sheet of fabric drawn over a black opening. Mumbling incoherently to herself, Vimienn shuffled toward it.

Kloe walked behind and to Vimienn’s right, matching pace, footsteps making no sound on the embankment gravel. Instead she broke the silence by saying, “How deep are these hollows?”

“They’re no deeper than a boy or girl needs for a lie-down after a good rub. Small and snug.”

“All of them?”

“Every one. Heh, heh, you never were down in the hollows when you were little, mell-”

“Say no more.”

“Sorry dearie. I was only meaning to say; I suppose you’ve been busy up in the streets. Too busy to be much in the know of underside life.”

Kloe said nothing. The two stopped at the curtain on which Vimienn had set her light. The muira woman shaded the flame of her lamp by sliding the aperture closed until only a small sliver of honey light shone through a crack. Then she whispered, “Sweet and beautiful Acanor, are you in tonight?”

“Yeeeess,” came a drawling man’s voice from behind the curtain.

Vimienn caught the tattered fabric up in one pinch of her white fingers. She shed her thin beam of light behind the curtain.

A man lay with his back against the wall. Though human, deformity left his species questionable. Half of his face had been disfigured by some physical trauma - his left eye was gone, and that entire side of his cheek and brow were warped and gnarled, shriveled like the stump of a tree poisoned with oil. Yellowing and freckles marked the other side of his face and the rest of his skin. His entire shape was thin from long abuse of centipede wax. Only in his eyes was there any gleam of vibrancy, and this was a hopeful, sad glimmer. The man said, “Who is that I see at your shoulder, Mother Vimienn?”

Vimienn glanced over her shoulder; Kloe shook her head beneath the hood. Vimienn said, “No one, sweetling. How are you?”

“Need something soft and smooth, for my nerves. Do you have my medicine?”

“Course I do, sweetling. Course I do. But have you any gift for your dear mother in return?”

From a ring sack inside his sweaty tunic the man pulled two silver rings. When these had passed from his shaking hand into Vimienn’s, she in turn produced a clear glass stoppered bottle - small enough to fit snugly her palm - from some pocket inside her shirt, beside her ribs. Inside the bottle was a liquid the color of mustard, with shiny silver flakes inside. It seemed about as viscous as warm tree syrup.

The patron’s eyes followed the bottle closely. “Want mother to give you the first rub?” asked Vimienn in a saccharine tone. The patron nodded. Vimienn sank down to her knees in the small hole beside him. She set her lamp upon the cold stone floor. She carefully uncorked the bottle and ducked her middle finger inside - the opening of the bottle was fitted almost perfectly to her long, skinny digit. Acquiring a small dollop of the syrupy mustard liquid on the tip of her finger, she reached up to the patron’s face with her other hand. She pinched the bottom lid of his one good eye in between her thumb and index, folded it down, and with her other hand rubbed the centipede wax underneath his iris.

The patron neither twitched nor squirmed under the application. Rather, he seemed to fall into a kind of trance the moment the wax touched his lid. He said, “Ohhhhh. Blissful.”

Vimienn leaned in and kissed the man on his scarred cheek. “Rest, beautiful Acanor. Mother’s got other boys and girls to heal. If you start feeling ill again, just take a little more of your cure.” She set the rest of the tiny bottle on the ground beside the man, gave him another kiss on the cheek, then rose. The two silver rings tinkled as she slipped them into a pocket.

Outside, Kloe had turned away to gaze over the rest of the shadowed embankment. As Vimienn emerged she asked, “How often do they come for your cure? And how many?”

“They come when they needs it, sweet Kloe,” Vimienn answered. She grinned. “Three dozen little lost girls and little lost boys. Not all at once, bless my gods! When they needs it, and when they have a gift for their mother.”

“Keep moving.”

Vimienn bobbed her head up and down. “Surely, dearie. Surely.” She cast her lamp across the face of the slope until she spotted another hole with a curtain draped across it.

As they marched across the gravel Kloe resumed, “These patrons; muira and human?”

“Yes, yes. I don’t distinguish.”

“Which are weaker?”

Vimienn sniped a glance at the hooded form. “Why, all girls and boys are about the same when they come. Shivering and scared.”

“Then who comes more?”

“The- the muira, mell.”

“Good.”

Kloe followed Vimienn for a time, a second shadow, invisible under the pall of the bridge. The muira wax dealer could not help but glance continually at the companion who had attached herself without cause; and could not help but lose her course among the hollows; and could not help but wonder. After stopping and delivering her medicine to three other children in want, Vimienn worked up the nerve to ask, “So my sweet Kloe, what brings you to Aster-Szem after so many years away?”

“Business recalled me,” answered Kloe.

“Was it- is it done?”

“Not yet. That’s why I’ve come to you, Vimienn.”

“Me?” Vimienn turned her lantern unconsciously upon the green shadow at her shoulder. “Why me?”

“Stop there a moment. Don’t move.” Kloe darted a hand from under her shoulder-cloak. She held Vimienn in a vice grip that put Vimienn’s own grasping hands to shame. “What was that I heard just now above our heads. No, my mistake. It was only those echoes you spoke of. Perhaps they are the footsteps of spirits on the wind. Or wraiths who bear vendetta against the acts we performed in life. Nevermind. Tell me now, for this is what I came to learn: where does your wax - your cure - come from?”

“My dear,” said Vimienn softly. “You sound anxious. Are you sure you won’t take a small dose?”

“Just tell how you come by it.”

“My dear,” said Vimienn again, in an even softer tone. “You know I could never say such a thing. You must know. Where the wax comes from, a mother keeps hidden from her children.”

“Wretch.” The voice under the hood breathed sharply. The grip tightened as Vimienn tried to recoil. “What do you think of me? Shall I reveal your secrets to the vigil? And what would I gain? Besides, the vigil are too busy now to bother with your pathetic druggism. They’re hunting other game right now. Hunting day and night.”

“It’s not the vigil, sweetling.”

“The royal army?” The voice scoffed. “I’d never sell you to oppressors from Ahn. Though I assure you, there is every reason for you to fear your own enforcers more than my nation’s. When your leader - leaders like this one recently slain, I hear, Srik Tillich - when they will bring in any foreign mercenary migrant from the southern continents to serve in their armies… Yes, mell Vimienn, fear your lords.”

Vimienn’s lantern strayed widely over the open space between the embankments of the bridge - over the dry, cracked bed of earth that had once been a river, but now served only as a dividing canyon between the twin town of Aster and Szem - as her hand dangled idly. Her jaw hung slack, her eyebrows wrinkled. Finally she gulped and said, “Surely, dearie. Surely. But it isn’t them as accounts for my being cautious either.”

“Who or what?” asked Kloe.

“Mell… I don’t know where the medicine comes from. I gets my medicine from a man who meets me by the city tunnels.”

“Ahhhh. That is just who I have business with.”

“Really?”

“What is his name?”

Vimienn squirmed under Kloe’s grip. “I don’t know,” she said.

The voice under the hood said nothing for a moment. “Then you must arrange a meeting.”

“Dearest friend Kloe,” Vimienn pleaded. “Why put upon an old medicine woman so?”

Vimienn felt Kloe’s grip leave her shoulder. She saw the hand dart back beneath the cloak, to a small pouch at Kloe’s side. She stepped back a pace, bird-eyes wide. But her gaze sharpened when she saw, clutched in Kloe’s fingers, the glitter of golden rings.

“Payment,” said Kloe. “This man of yours, he can enter the city from the cisterns? He knows the paths?”

“Ohhhhh,” said Vimienn. “He knows.”

“Then I must speak with him. I need a- I’m sick. What I need only grows in a specific part of the cisterns. He’ll take me to my ‘cure’.”

“Surely, dearie. Surely.”

“Good.” Vimienn saw the shoulders go slack under the hood. “I need to speak to him now.”

“It can’t be done. The medicine man only comes every tenday, dearie.”

“I’ll return tomorrow.”

But by way of pleading and coaxing, Vimienn reached a bargain time of five days. At midnight, on the 19th of Middle Summer, Vimienn was told to count on hearing the voice beneath the hood once more, under the Longclasp Bridge.

“Vimienn,” Kloe warned as the muira woman stepped back and nodded vigorously, “don’t think of not showing. Or of bringing any other than your cistern man.”

Vimienn saw a flash beneath Kloe’s cloak as the latter shifted. A gleam of short, sharp steel. She said, “Sweet one, never! Never shall I-”

Suddenly the shadow in the green cloak spun. The head tilted. Above, there sounded the echo of footsteps. This time they boomed louder than before, and a hollow thumping on the paved stones above accompanied the echoes.

“Five days,” Kloe hissed. Then she shot into the gloom along the embankment. Then up its slope. Then sliding along the lip of the gorge, until a bend in the old watercourse took her from Vimienn’s sight. Kloe had run, sprinting, over the crunching gravel; yet it occurred to Vimienn after the other woman had vanished, that her footsteps made no sound.