Now, as these children grew, the Vareni flowed thick and rich as the rents, and Ulissa had the best tutors to ply her fingers on glass harpsichords, while Orfea sang her own little songs in the morning while she folded her mother’s work, and both were as happy as girls can be. Of course, Ulissa sang as beautifully as any flute may play, and longed to walk upon the stage jeweled in glass instead of rubies, and sing of unfortunate love and tame bears and a life on the sea. She sang arias until her father prayed her give him peace, for he did not approve of opera, and even then she whispered them to he
rself beneath her blankets. And of course Orfea, who sewed the garments of others as day dawned and day set, longed to have enough silk and trim to fashion something of her own. But even her mother’s scraps were too fine and precious for a young girl to be allowed to touch, and were resold at market to buy their milk. Instead, Orfea, quick and clever, caught the vermin of her tenements and skinned them, boiling mouse stew and rat stew and mole stew, possum stew and chipmunk stew and weasel stew. Her best dress was made of these weasel skins, and it was softer than anything her mother mended.
And when they were grown as two swans with their heads bent heart-wise, they happened to meet upon the roadside, Orfea on her way to fill her basket with turmeric and blueberries at the market, and Ulissa to have her best boots mended.
Can you not see this scene in its proper regalia, staged and sung? The two sopranos in their golden wigs! The glorious set-pieces! We perform The Two Duchesses once a year in their honor—you must come!
So it was—and you must, in your mind, see it as it is rightly shown, with Ulissa in her ermine and black bodice, with a little crown of netted silver over plush blue linen, and Orfea in her weasel rags, her plump calves showing, her feet all bare and humble! You must imagine it, how they each dropped their burdens in shock and surprise, how they touched each other’s peculiar curls, how they exclaimed in wonder!
“Why, you could be my mirror, walking the streets like a girl!” cried Ulissa.
“Why should I be your mirror, just because you can afford glass! You could as well be mine, and how dare you walk strumpet-proud, bearing my face?”
“Let us not be enemies!” said the Duke’s daughter. “For what fun we might have if we were allies!”
And so it was decided. Ulissa would go into the slums and sing for her supper, and Orfea would wear ermine and laced corsets. Neither was entirely sure that she would be as happy in her new life as in her old, but it seemed too good a trick not to play it at least once, and besides, Ulissa had seen many an opera in which this sort of thing turned out reasonably well. Once a month, they would meet and exchange clothing again, and go to rest in the arms of Orfea’s broad-cheeked mother, and Ulissa’s white-coated father, for a single day before separating again.
For a long while, this was a very satisfactory arrangement. Ulissa rose quickly among the actresses of Vareni-side, for her hair was golden and her eyes were blue, and even in these parts it is well enough known that this is the proper masque of an ingénue. Because of her high bearing and her cultured voice, she earned for herself the nickname of The Duchess, and laughed to herself every night in a shabby bedroom where bottles of perfume stood dusty and dear, where Orfea had boiled water with rose petals and rose hips floating pink and red until some thin scent could be gleaned. Ulissa would touch these bottles and smile, and think of her far-off friend.
Orfea, for her part, learned to dance in very complicated ways, and in very complicated dresses, and though she liked the Duke very much, thought he was odd and haggard about the eyes. She did not dare ask about the golden-haired woman who had once lived there, but on her lace-covered table there were costly oils of frankincense and rosewater and ambergris, and she touched them with wonder, thinking of her far-off friend.
Each month they met in a courtyard far from the center of anything, peppered with persimmon trees and coconut shells. Orfea would take her weasel-skin dress in hand with joy, and help Ulissa into the black gowns she loved so well, and arrange her familiar hair under the glittering snood. But one month of all months, as sweet little Orfea was skipping home, fur-clad, thinking of her mother’s caterpillar pies and stone tea, she was stopped by a curious sound in a nearby alley, and paused, as girls ought never to do, to listen.
It was a clacking and a dragging, and a chirruping and a moaning. Orfea, with her curls close around her chin, twisted her weasel-tail belt and peeked around the corner—only to glimpse a Basilisk, his head bloodied and baleful, clambering up the cobbles. She gasped and hid herself, for even poor girls hear stories, and our Orfea knew well that the gaze of the Basilisk turns flesh to stone. But oh! Foolhardy Orfea! She had to look again, to have a thing to tell her mother, to have a thing to tell her friend, who knew well enough all the wonders of the Duke’s residence, and needed nothing less than to hear once more how much better her own shoes were than a pauper’s.
It was smaller than she had imagined, the size of a wildcat or a large pig. It was a four-legged serpent covered in a cockerel’s feathers, all black and red and pale gold, and its face twisted into a scaly, peeling, greenish brown beak. Upon its head was fixed an iron miter, which pinched terribly; that the young girl could plainly see. Trickles of blood had dried around the bands. It moaned and pulled itself up the steep turn, its jaw broken and scabbed. Its feet were red sandstone, pocked and prickled, the very stone of the streets and walks and campaniles of Ajanabh. They scraped along the road, sending up the occasional spark.
Now, it is well known that young women with golden curls and blue eyes are afflicted with a certain fatal innocence. Thus it is that in Ajanabh, where the local coloring tends toward the dark and coppery, there are so many clever, cunning girls. But in pity, as her folk are compelled to do by some inner song which sings not to others, Orfea cried out and went to the poor beast—imagine the aria floating high and pitiful!—wrapping it in her arms and loosening the miter and rubbing its shattered jaw.
The creature looked at her in horror, glaring and gazing with all its might. Yet Orfea lived, warm and sweet.
“Why do you not turn to stone? I demand that you turn to stone immediately!” roared the Basilisk. But his voice was rough and sibilant, as it too was all of red sandstone.
Orfea’s gentle brow furrowed. “I do not rightly know—but is it not fortunate for you that I do not? I can clean your wounds and make you well. It is as simple to sew flesh as organdy.”
The Basilisk sniffed her from neck to ankle, and when his beak grazed her hem, he recoiled. “What sort of creature goes swathed in weasel skin? I am quite sure that is not the height of fashion.” The girl understood him well enough, for many of her friends and uncles in the tall tenements were often as drunk and slurred as a mutilated Basilisk.
“I am not the height of fashion, myself.” She shrugged.
“Weasel is the enemy of the Basilisk, forever and all time. It is but the thickness of a dress which protects you from me.”
“Then I am thankful for it, and I will make you right again. But what has happened to you, poor beast?”
The Basilisk squirmed out of Orfea’s arms, nipped her briefly, just to see what she tasted like, and sighed his resignation. Whipping his tail around him in an oddly feline gesture, he began, his tongue-stone wagging pitifully.
THE TALE OF
THE TONGUE
THE TONGUE OF A BASILISK IS A VALUABLE thing—the thin veneer of skin, thinner than a manuscript page, hides a muscle all of fire, and with this we hunt, and eat tasty hens and seabirds and pretty little finches. You might think it is wicked of the Basilisk to eat hens, but we will eat what we like, and if what we like is you, woe to your bones! In the lands where the sun is hotter than a thrice-struck blade and the earth is parched as a throat, it is known by even the smallest child that the Basilisk were born when a hen, her feathers warm and golden, saw a clutch of serpent’s eggs whose mother had been eaten by barbarous, base, blackguard Weasel, and being kind in her chicken’s heart, sat upon the eggs until they hatched.
Hens ought not to sit upon things which are not theirs. One of the little brutes ate her right up, with bits of shell still clinging to her pate. And then, being a wise beast, she began to look for Weasel, who had chewed on her mother’s backbone. Ah, but Weasel is tricky, is he not? She could not touch him, when she found him in his filthy hole, though she lashed her fiery tongue at his tail and reached for his furry throat with her throttling claws and glared and glared until the grass itself had turned to stone.
“What have I done?” cried Weasel, trickster-cunning. “I was only hungry! I have my own babes to feed!”
But we were not fooled. Weasel may seem sweet—so may anything. Weasel had eaten our mother, and she must have been a great serpent—cry Woe and Harm! How shall we know her now that Weasel has taken her from us?—for her green meat in her murderer made him by some dread alchemy immune to the tricks of her children.
Weasel is wicked; we shall not forget.