In a traditional folktale from Alak, a dreamy good-for-nothing young woman seeking excitement discovers a life of adventures may not be what she expected. Be careful what you wish for!
Novelette | 7,515 words
Introductory Note: The Deed mentioned in this story belongs to a class of magical artifacts that we find occasionally in Alak folklore and mythology. The original and most powerful of them was the Deed of Talorow, which, according to legend, was accidentally dropped by a sort of monster or demon hastily fleeing from the wrath of the gods. It was subsequently discovered by a little girl, who felt a very Alak-like disgust at the wildness and chaos of the world in her day, and who realized that the magic of the Deed would fix in their forms and roles everything that came within sight of it. The girl imagined how much more orderly and regular the world would be if only the Deed could be displayed in a sufficiently prominent place, where it could be seen by everyone, and therefore affect everything. It then occurred to her that, of course, the sky was incomparably the best place to show the Deed, for then no one could really avoid the sight of it. She wracked her brains for a way to introduce the Deed into the sky, and finally decided to thrust her head into a pond and drown herself while holding the Deed firmly in her hand. She believed that, once she died, her spirit would be free of her heavy body, and could carry the Deed aloft into the sky. And so it happened, and her spirit welded, with its own substance, the Deed to one of the stars, displaying it to all the world. As a result, what had flowed became fixed, what had improvised became standardized, and a greater orderliness and predictability flourished everywhere. So great a benefit was this to the Alak Empire that the Divine Family officially adopted the little girl, and the star was given her name, Chlawgar, which it still has today.
Alaks maintain that the world has always existed and always will; and, naturally, this goes for the Empire as well. While this idea stands at odds with the official history, which records many different accounts of the foundation of the Empire, the premise is nevertheless everywhere among them sustained. The Empire, it is at least implied, has always existed in its ideal aspects. Its tangible aspects must be realized in time by human beings. There is a belief among the Alaks in what is known as the “impossible time” that somehow preceded proper time, and the sly influence endures as a present remnant of the impossible time, accounting for the various setbacks the Empire has encountered throughout its history. Is it surprising to read that the Deed of Talorow, that mighty ordering power, is the work of the entropic sly influence? This is not clear at all, but one might speculate that the sly influence was once considered to be more lethargic, passive, and inert than it later came to be. In any case, the Deed of Ilianeghis in this story is likewise a work of the sly influence, imbued with all of its out-of-place, chaotic, and inventive power. This explains its cursed, dangerous character.
The term “Zaman Wislin” refers both to a divinatory philosophy and to its adherents, or “mathetes.” Since it is recognized by the Predikanten, the Alaks tolerate its existence. While they are not a cult, Zaman Wislin do claim to be in a tutelary relationship with a godlike dragon called Gilshrakes who is at the center of the universe. They are commonly supposed to collect Deeds of the sort mentioned here, and might perhaps also be able to draft new Deeds themselves, which explains their role in this story.
Our narrative’s main character, Temedy, belongs to a category of personalities familiar to most Alak readers and listeners. She is the ne’er-do-well, the malcontent who joins in the work of the Empire without enthusiasm and is not at one with it in her heart, and entertains these feelings of disaffection because she is too weak and foolish to resist them. Temedy is the inadequate instrument, someone who is not sufficiently real. This type of character is always attractive and talented, the better to emphasize what a waste they make of their lives, and what a loss that is for the Empire. The story is a cautionary tale intended to help readers and listeners correctly identify this type when they encounter it, and thence to take appropriate action respecting them, but there are stories about such characters finding their full reality, for example, in confronting a challenge.
These characters are often named “Temedy” for ease of both recognition and application, since this name is not one that any real person would be given. Its etymology is obscure; it is most probably derived from the Gaboktja Ujhik word “temeschlem,” meaning tatterdemalion or guttersnipe. The title of this story reflects this preferred derivation, but there are those, including Quil Qusogh himself, who maintain that the meaning stems instead from the Lemkhitz word “demd,” meaning sickly, pasty, disorderly, or meagre.
Finally, a “soul burner” is an Alak hobgoblin, who devours the evil spirits once believed to infest the world, in order to absorb their strength and cause greater mischief.
Once upon a time there lived in the village of Sogtrul a shiftless, threadbare young woman named Temedy who was good for nothing. She worked as a copyist for the calendary, slept in a loft above the offices, and eked out a living that barely kept body and soul together. No one who looked for her, and there were not many who did, could ever find her, because she was always wandering off into the countryside. She would stray for hours among the hills, often walking all the way to the feet of the mountains. To be sure, if she weren’t expected at her desk, she would have climbed them, perhaps never to return. Her parents were dead; her only living relation was a married sister who rightly repudiated her, who had prospered her education and now lived in the great city of Sunflik, where she conducted highly important business. Temedy did not seek out her sister, but languished in hapless devotion to the idle and melancholic daydreams with which her mind busied itself during her solitary rambles. No one in Sogtrul had the least respect for her, so why should we listen to her story?
You’ll see!
For there was a day when, stumbling along at random as usual, she blundered across something strange. It was a place at the feet of the mountains, where rolling grasslands crack open in crevasses and where slender brooks fan out at intervals like lacework. There was one spot in particular where people used to cut whetstones for sharpening barber’s razors, and the heavier blocks were used to press cadavers for preservation. This was done, as you may know, by placing the corpse on a slab with a slight concavity to it, then surrounding it with blocks of ice. Another matching slab was then laid on top, and, as the ice supporting it melted, it would sink gradually down and flatten the body without crushing it to a pulp. The cadaver would keep indefinitely afterwards, like a pressed flower. Places like that attract Zaman Wislin; they come looking for ghosts, elementals of work, haunted winds, portentous lights, and, above all, archaic inscriptions, hidden texts, forbidden scrolls, to winnow the dragon-secrets of Gilshrakes from them. At one time they had a camp there, which they left for reasons as mysterious as their reasons for establishing it in the first place, and their abandoned tents, now little more than long white rags knotted firmly to their frames, were still there. No one could say why, but they had named their camp “he Cloister of Glowing Cores,” and the name endured after they were gone. Temedy had read the name many times in the records and letters of officials that she had been called upon to copy, and indeed she was so addicted to reading things not pertinent to her duties that she had sought out and studied other historical documents in crumbling district ledgers, to no better end than to appease her curiosity.
Now, as if in a dream, she saw this fabled spot with her own eyes. The rags of the ruined tents billowed in the incessant wind like water weeds in a strong current, so she could hear them flap and rustle like a great fire without heat or smoke. It was a lure too strong for her feeble willpower to resist, and she descended down to Glowing Cores, wondering if she might find some traces of the mathetes there, or other trash of former days heedlessly thrown aside and tramped down by people with better things to do.
She was just passing a small stand of trees when a hacking cough erupted somewhere nearby, and Temedy realized that she wasn’t alone. In a spasm of cowardice, her first impulse was to hide herself, and she did not resist it. Temedy scrambled back toward one of the trees and put it between herself and the direction the cough came from, then watched carefully, crouched down, not daring to breathe. A moment later she saw a figure in black walk stiffly out from behind one of the ruined tents. It was an older man, clean-shaven, in black clothes. He carried his head erect and his shoulders square, his rigid back was unnaturally straight, so that he moved a little like a puppet on a stick, turning his whole body to look this way and that. It was obvious that he was searching for something he expected to find on the ground.
Temedy didn’t want to have anything to do with this stranger, but, she would certainly be seen if she fled, and that was not something she wanted either. What she wanted was for the stranger to go away, so she could go on exploring. Instead, he came directly toward Temedy’s tree, swivelling this way and that as he continued to examine the ground, without pause. Temedy thought frantically—could she manage to creep around the tree as the man passed, or should she make a run for it? Too late! The man was already there, and saw her.
“Well, well,” the man said.
Temedy could only say “Well!” in reply.
The man had a harelip and strange, round eyes, like two circles, so Temedy could see the whites going all the way around the pupils. His black clothes were made of some rich, heavy stuff like bombazine that was all stained with salt from the man’s dried perspiration. Indeed, there was so much salt in his clothes that little puffs of it came out when he moved.
“Have you come from—far away?” the man asked. His teeth flickered as he spoke, white as chalk.
“Not . . . not very far . . .” Temedy spluttered. She didn’t like telling this man anything about herself. He dressed and acted a bit like an official, so she asked him, “Are you . . . from the calendary?”
“I’m Obelizer,” the man said, and smiled broadly without parting his lips. His voice was hoarse and low, but it was the kind of voice, Temedy knew, that could boom out deafeningly loud if necessary. “From the Shrine of Zeroes.”
That, Temedy knew, was the name of a fane where the mathetes of Zaman Wislin lived, on the mountains’ far side. You can know someone is Zaman Wislin if they have a name like that, because they leave behind their wholesome names when they become Zaman Wislin, and receive new names that reflect what they do. Every mathete will also have something wrong with them, but it won’t always be as easy to spot as that harelip, so examine every stranger you meet carefully and be suspicious of little irregularities.
“I’m uh, Temedy,” Temedy said. Of course, giving her name away was the last thing she wanted to do, but, when a name is given, a name must be returned, and Temedy was too frightened to invent one.
“Have you happened to see,” the man asked, “a wooden document case, about this large?”
His long hands drew a sort of rectangular shape in the air, to show Temedy what he meant. The flowing motion of his hands was at odds with the stony immobility of his body, so that it seemed as though they belonged to someone else, standing behind him.
Temedy shook her head.
The man lowered his hands to his sides and sniffed. He gazed at Temedy with an enigmatic expression on his face.
“It’s—a fine day,” he said at last. Only then did he look up at the sky, tipping his whole body back at the waist to do so, then returning to his former posture. You may have noticed he has a curious way of speaking too, but that was in keeping with what he did. An obelizer is someone who cuts things out of pieces of writing, and marks the cut with a little drawing of a knife to show where it happened.
“I was just going for a walk,” Temedy said.
Obelizer smiled that same close-lipped smile at her. Temedy found it hard not to stare at the man’s upper lip, joined in two halves so that it seemed as if it were expressing two different emotions at the same time.
“You seem to do quite a bit of solitary walking. That’s because you live with people who don’t understand you,” Obelizer said.
This was more than Temedy could stand.
“I ought to be going,” she said, turning away.
“I will reward you if you help me search,” Obelizer said.
Temedy stopped.
“Reward me? What with?” she asked.
Obelizer chuckled, and his shoulders jostled up and down.
“Well—with money—if you don’t mind!” he said.
When Temedy turned to face him again, Obelizer was looking toward the horizon beyond him.
“What comes from the mountains must—go to the sea,” he said. “I must bring that case to—Tulltillarna, and that is long travel from here on foot.”
Temedy had never heard of Tulltillarna, whatever that was. Perhaps you have?
“So, the sooner I find it and begin my—journey, the sooner I’ve done what I set out to do,” Obelizer went on, facing her again with a businesslike air. “Will you help me look?”
Of course, she was still frightened, still full of the desire for escape, but there was something else, perhaps in that name, Tulltillarna, and in the dreaminess in Obelizer’s eyes as his look flew away into the distance, a kind of call, evilly soft, that very gently caught her.
“I’ll help,” she said, without knowing why.
With a little shower of salt, Obelizer’s hand lifted from his side. He pointed down toward a few of the larger ruined tents that stood apart from the rest.
“Search over there,” he said, with some authority, and Temedy began moving at once, stopping only when she came near her destination. Then, not quite sure where to begin, she glanced back and saw Obelizer hadn’t moved, but stood smiling at her. He nodded at Temedy, as if to say, Go on, start looking! He must have been waiting, Temedy thought, to make sure she did what she was told, but that didn’t account for that broad split smile there on his face, did it?
Temedy began to poke around in the rags and wreckage of the tents. While she worked, she couldn’t shake the feeling that Obelizer was watching her. It made her whole back prickle, and the hair on her scalp bristle. Obelizer had gone off out of sight, toward the other group of ruined tents, but Temedy was too afraid to defy him and leave.
The sooner I get this over with the better, she thought, and she hurriedly rummaged in broken tent poles and the tumbled stones that had formed the lower foundations. She found a little heap of spent candle ends, like a pile of wan coins. There were trampled quill nibs everywhere, and the fragments of smashed ink pots still stained black. The awkward metal-and-leather contrivance she pulled out of a twist of canvas proved to be a false leg, terminating in a wooden facsimile calf and foot all painted a fanciful canary yellow color with chipped purple toenails. The foot and leg were split and badly cracked, and the metal bands in the harness had been twisted all out of shape before the rust began to bite, and she wondered at the accident that had led to its being discarded. Then, as her mind began to wander into stupid daydreams about dainty, one-legged people, her eye fell on a straight length of polished wood, dully gleaming beneath another heap of canvas and wooden rods. Sure enough, when she pulled it out, it proved to be a document case. Without thinking—and do I need to tell you what happens when you act without thinking?—she undid the hasp and peeked inside.
The case contained a single sheet of parchment, white and flat with trim edges, and adorned with characters that caught the light like silver. There were red and blue ornaments drawn into the lines of writing, which crept all over the page like snail tracks. That red was as deep as artery blood, and the blue was like the color of the sky as dusk begins over the mountains, or like the ocean is sometimes. The size of the writing varied as the lines warped across the paper, but the largest letters spanned the top of the sheet, and her eyes, all too quickly, read them. They spelled out “DEED OF ILIANEGHIS.” A fragrance like incense wafted up from the page and billowed over her face as she impulsively snapped the case shut again. Abrupt fears had beset her, and—do I need to tell you?—her heart flooded with a wild desire to possess this parchment. Hadn’t she found it, after all? But she felt, and perhaps even she knew what madness this was, that the parchment was already hers.
A quick look around told her that Obelizer was still out of sight, so she pushed the case down into her scrip. She always brought some bread rusks and a tiny pot of butter to munch on if she got hungry, and she rammed the case down under them. Then she pretended to continue the search, her mind going in a thousand different directions at once, until Obelizer appeared again by the stand of trees where they had spoken before, and beckoned.
“I found nothing,” she lied, when they were close enough to speak. She realized that her deceit would be more plausible if she could meet the man’s gaze, and when she raised her eyes, she saw that Obelizer was once again smiling his closed-lipped smile.
“Ah well,” he said. “It must have been found—already.”
He swivelled to give his surroundings one last look.
“I am sure that it is not lying around here anymore,” he added as he gave Temedy his full attention again. “Thank you for all your help.”
Temedy nodded, waved, and began to leave.
“Just a moment!” Obelizer said.
Temedy’s heart sank.
Obelizer’s hand lifted and turned palm up. Gold coins shone there.
“Your payment.”
“But … I found nothing!” Temedy said.
“But you—searched,” Obelizer said. “Work is work.”
Temedy reluctantly took the coins from the outstretched hand, which was as cold and dry as rock. As Obelizer made no further remark, but only stood there, Temedy told him goodbye and returned home. It was difficult to fight the impulse to run, and, after all, why shouldn’t she hurry? The day was drawing to a close, and she had money now. The feverish sensation of being watched chilled her as she went, although furtive glances over her shoulder failed to disclose any sight of the strange, stiff man, Obelizer. Those Zaman Wislin types always have a reason for speaking with you, you know. Well, of course he’d had a reason! He’d needed help looking for that document case! But what if there were some other reason? Something to smile about? Was Temedy carrying a curse back to the homely lanes of Sogtrul? The coins she carried, tucked into her shirt, banged heavily against her chest, and later she found they’d left a bruise there, right over her heart. Was that her liar’s mark?
But nothing mattered apart from her ferocious desire to peruse the piece of parchment that she carried, like a sort of miracle, down under her dinner in the battered, hand-me-down scrip she’d received from the village interlocutor in exchange for scorekeeping duty at the winter card games. Thoughts, visions, and feelings all boiled up and erupted so vividly she could barely see the dusty track that wound back to the village.
Temedy went directly to the loft where she slept. She decided to hide the case beneath her straw mattress and, when she knelt down, pulling the case from her scrip with many desperate looks, the gold coins Obelizer had paid her tumbled out onto the blanket. They shone there with a light of their own, three of them, big as belt buckles, and there were big crumbs of salt clinging to the letters and the sacred emblem of the termite. These she pushed into her scrip, which she tossed aside. She didn’t dare spend money—what did she accept it for? If she turned up with gold coins somewhere, what talk would there be about her? All she wanted to do anyway was pore over the Deed, but Dzudzu the gardener kept his tools and things up there and was liable to appear at any time, so that night she lay on top of the mattress on top of the case, unable to sleep. From time to time, she fancied that the fragrance of the parchment was teasing her again, and followed her into intense dreams that left her dazed in the morning, without leaving behind even the slightest memory of what they had been.
Except perhaps for one image: three lips closed in one broad grin.
Her responsibilities the following day were unusually light. She perceived this as a stroke of luck, but how often do we mistake our bad fortune for good! Temedy thought herself lucky to have the opportunity to study the Deed in secret, with the bright sunlight to read by, in one of the many hidden places she knew outside Sogtrul. Today she picked a little wooded hollow with a pond at its bottom, where she could sit on the big rocks there and no one would see her unless they came right up to the edge of the slope. The day was brisk and the sky was filled with rushing clouds; the daylight ebbed and brightened and a little wind frisked through the grass and stirred the tops of the trees in the hollow. But, down by the water, the air was always still, the pond eerily still, still, still, still, and quiet, quiet, quiet. In such a place, as silent as a library, Temedy knew she could read carefully, without distraction—but then, when didn’t she? And so she did, while the light came and went, and the sun traversed the sky unheeded above her. You see what comes of reading things you shouldn’t?
Now I am sure you will all want to know what the Deed said, but if I recited it to you word for word, then I would be guilty of casting a spell! So, to be safe, I will only describe the document’s contents very generally. It referred to a place by the sea called Tulltillarna. She recognized that odd name; Obelizer had mentioned it. There was no doubt about it now. This was the very parchment he had been looking for. And, like any Deed, this one conferred a kind of ownership, and certain rights, to the holder.
To the holder! Why, wasn’t she the holder? But then, was mere physical possession of the document sufficient to grant her the right to the rights it granted? Did she have the right to be granted rights? If she were to come forward and exhibit this Deed—and who to, by the way—would it be snatched indignantly from her? Or—stunning thought—would the stony indifference of the official face melt into a kind of ritual deference?
When dusk welled up from the water and began to fill the hollow, Temedy was lying on her back, draped across the rock, staring up at the sky without seeing it. The Deed, restored to its protective case, she pressed to her chest with both arms. Temedy didn’t know if she were dreaming or awake. She rose numbly and began making her desultory way back to Sogtrul, barely recollecting herself enough to stow the document case back out of sight in her scrip again. This daze did not fade; she was as numb as a sleepwalker, so that even her employer began to worry about her.
Perhaps that idiot’s mind has finally gone altogether, he thought. Please, not now. It means a consultation with the Controller and an arrest. Oh, Divine Family, don’t add that to my troubles!
He needn’t have worried, however. It was becoming more and more clear to Temedy that she had to find Tulltillarna, to see just what it all meant, or some of what it all meant, or if any of it meant anything—she didn’t fail to realize that the parchment was old, that other arrangements might have been made in its absence that would prevent her from realizing its promises. But to ignore it, that she had not the strength to do. She had dreamt again and again of that closed three-lipped grin, and she knew what it meant. It meant something ominous, which did not fail to include an acknowledgement that, having plainly grasped that omen for what it was, she could never reject the Deed. She would go toward that smiling promise full of dread, not so much for what she thought might happen—whatever that would be, it would be bad, she knew that—but that it waited in particular for her, like nothing else in her life, and she had to see it for herself.
You have to feel a little sorry for her, don’t you? Surely, if there had been those around her who cared more for the stability and regularity of things, they would have risen above their disgust for Temedy’s worthlessness and seen the danger that she posed. A timely intervention now, just as she went about surreptitiously gathering what she needed for her journey to the sea, in search of a chimera called Tulltillarna, and under the spell of an evil document, would have fended off . . . Well, I’ll show you.
A woman travelling alone under the best of circumstances will go in fear, and Temedy, bearing as she did a treasure that had quickly become more important to her than her own life, and weak in her mind, went in mortal terror with every step. But go, she went! The impetuous zeal of her own fantasies swept her from the outskirts of Sogtrul unseen in the dim, predawn hours, and carried her down the arduous, rolling way into the land of the Nemosems, and toward the sea beyond. Her blazing eyes rolled in their sockets without ceasing, looking everywhere for the sight of another traveller, and when she spotted people toiling along the road, on foot or in a cart, in a group or alone, she left it at once and concealed herself until they passed, or struck out through the trees or clambering over the rocks, always making her way with pain toward the coast. For three days and nights she walked, not sleeping, barely pausing to make a wretched meal of the meager provisions she had managed to bring with her. The three gold coins Obelizer had given her were concealed in a little bundle she had tied to a cord around her neck, and the bundle hung down inside her shirt, slamming into her chest with every step, darkening the bruise over her heart. She hadn’t dared to spend them, but brought them with her because she wasn’t sure she would ever return to Sogtrul, and believed in their protective power as if they were a magic talisman. That gold would help her survive, she thought, if she needed help. But so afraid was she of being overtaken in the dark, and so wild were her thoughts with fantasies of what she might find, like waking dreams that made it hard to see the actual world around her, she couldn’t sleep, or even rest, but dragged herself three days and nights to the sea.
When she first caught sight of it, she stood stock-still for a long time. She had never seen the ocean before, you know. What a sight! Blue, blue, blue, document blue, and wide, wide, wide as the sky. It was like another sky, lying flat on the land, looking up at its paler reflection in the air. It was placid and windy, and the air was flying with salt. Great white birds were there, laughing at her as they sailed effortlessly around and around in circles of their own. She had found the sea. Now, to find Tulltillarna!
A cliff split the road into two turnings that ran parallel to the shore. Not knowing which way to go, and being assured that she was completely alone, Temedy pulled out one of the great golden coins Obelizer had given her.
“Heads left, tails right!”
The coin landed head up, the termite glinted and flared like a firework in the wind-whipped sunlight. She retrieved it, and then took the left turning and walked along the top of the cliff, a white track in green grass overlooking a tan beach with a blue sea and white froth, a pale blue sky and pale white clouds. The road fell and rose again, and, when she had come to the next high point, she saw before her another road coming from the direction of the mountains, almost exactly like the one she had just quit, but with one important difference—a signpost. Temedy hurried down to read it, and her heart bounded in her chest when she made out the faded letters that spelled tulltillarna on a pitted stone arm that pointed further down the coast. With luck—with luck, she thought!—she would see it soon, perhaps from the next rise, and she hadn’t had to ask a soul! That part of the coast seemed deserted, and the borders of the road were encroaching back on it.
Temedy saw no sign of Tulltillarna when she reached the next high point, nor the next, but then, as she came within view of the land beyond the third high point, she thought she might have caught a glimpse of a gaunt spire, a plume of smoke, or a banner flapping, somewhere beyond, but though the day was clear, her vision was hazy and uncertain from fatigue and want of food, so she couldn’t quite be sure. She pressed on. With a near desperate longing she now went toward the next prominence, which would tell her if that fleeting impression had been a vision or real.
What lay before her, when she reached that place, was a short green slope that levelled off to form a vast natural shelf, a flat space sheltered by rising ground. Where the green ended, the white sand began and slid down into the sea. The cliffs subsided here, so that it was possible to walk all the way down to the breakers. As Temedy advanced to get a better look, her foot struck against a great bronze marker, evidently welded to the exposed rock. There was a corroded square hole in the center, into which, she thought, a signpost might once have been fitted, and there was, too, etched into the bronze, a curious mark: a diamond with horned stems protruding from its four corners—the kaikalak, symbol of Zaman Wislin. This discovery prompted her to look again, and now she saw low angles in the earth of that flat space, and lines, and realized they were what remained of the foundations of buildings, walls, and streets. Then she knew she had found Tulltillarna, that her arduous journey all the way from the distant mountains to the sea had been for nothing, that there was no one left here to receive her or recognize the Deed of Ilianeghis. Temedy fell where she stood, wept and wailed aloud, lying across the heated bronze of the defaced waymark.
When she had recovered sufficiently to take stock of her situation, she was too indifferent now to her own fate to give it much thought. She continued down the path, which drove right through what must once have been the narrow, winding main way of Tulltillarna, and so on down the coast. She left the confines of the town that had once been there. As the sky darkened, and the wind of the sea began to bite, she noticed a tumbledown cottage not far from the road, and approached it. As she drew near, she saw no sign of life, no smoke, no light. The place was overgrown with flowering vines, and there were a few stunted, gnarled trees keeping it company; but there were crabapples on those trees, and, at sight of them, Temedy’s hunger got the better of her. She staggered to the nearest tree and began picking and eating the fruit, which was ripe enough, if tart. As she restored herself with the crabapples, she studied the house with better attention. The door was closed, but not fastened. She called quietly, knocked quietly, tried peering through the shutters—nothing.
When night fell, Temedy was sitting inside the cottage by the hearth, warming herself with the fire she had managed to light. There was some tinder and a little wood left, grey and bone dry, a flint to strike sparks with, and the chimney still drew. The wind whistled around the stone walls all night long, and Temedy heaped up rags she found and made a sort of nest by the tiny fire. She lay there, shivering with cold and misery, but grateful for the shelter she had found.
Round about, from farm to farm, and through Sluich Temnook, a tiny hamlet that was the only village on this part of the coast, Temedy went, running other people’s errands, helping people with their chores. She made enough to keep herself alive, and then hastened back to the cottage she had come to think of as her own, because it was the repository of the Deed, whose magic lit up her face every solitary night, and whose disjointed words fell into her dreams as randomly as rain.
One morning came, as it must, when she remembered her dream in waking life, which you must be very careful about. In her dream, she had been lying on her rag bed by the hearth. The fire was completely dead, but there was a kind of eerie light outside in the darkness that she was too weak to ignore. There in the sky, the moon hung new, a great black ball that hovered in the starry blue. It seemed to watch her, she thought she heard it breathe, and don’t you know the sly influence is greatly encouraged whenever the moon evilly veils its face altogether, and hides itself? In the darkness and stillness, for there was no wind, and the waves below did not stir, but lay flat and entranced like the grass and the branches of the crabapples, there was a wrong sort of light that shone down on her, and she thought of Tulltillarna—what would it look like now?
Well, of course, it looked the same way it always had. There below her, as she stood again by the bronze marker, were the grass, the lines and angles. In her hand, she found the document case. She opened it. The Deed of Ilianeghis shone there like a lit windowpane in her hand. She began at once to read the words aloud, like an incantation. She read and read and read, going back to the top of the page whenever she reached the bottom, but without ever finding the end, and the more she read, the more there was to read. This is the sign that the voice you hear belongs to the sly influence—never listen to it. Temedy knew this, but perhaps, in her foolish excitement, she forgot. The words rose up before her. They quit the page and floated up before her eyes. She was reading the Deed of Ilianeghis without looking at it. She was reading it everywhere. Even when she shut her eyes, there were the words, most distinct of all! Temedy opened her eyes. The new moon hung before her in the sky and the silence like an uncreated world waiting to be born.
She began to speak. Speech makes things real. She saw a wall in her mind. She spoke it, and it was there! She saw a street. She spoke it, and it was there! She saw a whole town before her. She spoke it, and it was there! She saw people in the street. She spoke them, and they were there! Tulltillarna . . .
Temedy sat for a long time after awakening from this dream, panting with fever. Everywhere she saw the needle-like spires, the winding ways, the windows aglow with amber light that spilled into window boxes overflowing with clustered, aromatic flowers, and there were wind-whipped pennants and radiant figures who moved gracefully in the shadows or stood with stolid dignity on the ramparts. She heard a stately sound of bells and a murmur of curious words. When she could collect herself, she went to see Tulltillarna again, and it was once again the level zone of green grass, lines, and angles, the traces only of what had been. And so she brought out the Deed of Ilianeghis and began to read it aloud, this time by daylight. She read and read, starting over at the top of the page whenever she reached the bottom, and she tasted her own blood, and her arms and legs went cold and numb, and her head grew at first light, and then heavy, throbbing, and painful, but the words kept marching out of her mouth, even as her vision faded, and the pain in her head became so terrible that she felt as though huge hands were tearing it in half.
A shepherd passing that way with his flock later in the day saw what he at first took for a heap of rags, oddly gathered there up by the old bronze marker. He had to draw very near before he saw that there were feet and hands emerging from it, and fine old parchment lying nearby in a wooden document case. But the woman lying there was dead, and a broad red band of blood streaked the grassy slope from her body, extending so far that it ended by touching the foundations of the wall that once had encircled Tulltillarna. All the blood in her body must have soaked into that ground, there was so much. The shepherd, without thinking, thought to turn the body over, and see who it might be. It was only then that he realized her head was gone, nor was there any sign of it. And when the authorities came from Sluich Temnook, they said at once that her head had pulled itself from her body, that the corpse was haunted and must be burned and the ashes scattered. This was done on the day, and the streak of blood was salted. The Deed of Ilianeghis was likewise cast into the flames, but would not burn. So, it was sealed in a lead casket and flung into the ocean instead. The authorities wisely forbade everyone to approach or disturb Tulltillarna, surrounding it with warning markers. Correspondence with the regional advisory committee was initiated, to see if steps should be taken to bury, destroy, or exorcise the site of the old town.
You may be inclined to feel a little sorry for Temedy—but the story is not over!
No, because, for one thing, that red streak never faded, and the grass never covered it. In fact, that red tint began to seep into the stone foundation of the wall. Passersby, who, of course, did not disobey the warning markers, could not have known this, but official surveyors were given limited permission to enter the area, and their reports made the rounds, the way these stories always do. But then there were others who, hurrying past the boundaries on weirdly still days, or after sundown, overheard a solitary voice raised in song somewhere within the cordon. The song went:
I’m all rips and rags, I hang in shreds,
Salt on my tail, and cracks in my head,
I’ve got a hunger that can’t be fed,
Salt on my tail, and cracks in my head,
There’s not one day I don’t wake up dead,
Salt on my tail, and cracks in my head.
There were times when this song, or at least the echo of its melody, could be heard here and there in the lonelier places along that part of the coast. Solitary travellers, shepherds, and circuit riders reported sightings of a ragged woman rambling on the cliffs, singing to herself, and those who ventured nearer said that what had, from a distance, appeared to be long flowing locks of hair, were only rags that billowed and flapped in the incessant wind like water weeds in a strong current.
A traveller who accosted her found himself confronted by a face of crumpled rags, with a torn mouth and torn eyes, and she asked him what he wanted, and the voice came not from the bundle atop her neck, but from the bulging satchel she carried. He said she held out a long skinny hand and offered him three huge gold coins, with crumbs of salt clinging to them, if he would guide her into town, and he ran from her half mad with fright. Others had similar encounters, and one young girl who met her on the shore was so terrified that she fell into a brain fever that nearly killed her, and permanently robbed her of her sight. She raved that she had seen the ragged woman walk up out of a shadow on the ground like someone coming up the stairs from a cellar. As she fled from the apparition, the girl threw a look back over her shoulder and saw her, and behind her, a mountain stood where the ocean should be.
The regional officials posted to the canton received word from the land of the Nemosems that a sort of evil spirit was afflicting Sluich Temnook, that it crept into people’s houses at night and devoured all their food, that it crept into people’s barns and devoured every last grain of barley, every last onion, whole wheels of cheese. Worst of all, this spirit seemed to have a special preference for the taste of gold, for she had been seen guzzling coins from the town coffers, and no hiding place seemed proof against her, because she could smell the gold wherever it was, and now, they said, her rag mouth shone, all smeared inside with gold.
“When you try to catch her,” they said, “she just turns into a faded grey rag and flutters away in the wind, back to Tulltillarna where no one can follow her, because it isn’t there.”
And so Sluich Temnook declined, and the people moved away, and no word came from the regional council because the messages had never reached them, and the land around became abandoned and desolate, because no one could keep anything they made there, and no one could catch the raggedy ghost who sang:
I’m all rips and rags, I hang in shreds,
Salt on my tail, and cracks in my head,
I’ve got a hunger that can’t be fed,
Salt on my tail, and cracks in my head,
I’ll eat all your gold, and all your bread,
Salt on my tail, and cracks in my head,
Here’s where I live, and here’s where I’m dead,
Salt on my tail, and cracks in my head . . .
So if you hear the tatterdemalion singing, you don’t stay to satisfy your curiosity but leave as you came, without so much as a glance over your shoulder as you go. Throw down your bread or your gold and leave it to her, if you don’t want a fever, if you want to keep your sight. And if you don’t want to become a tatterdemalion yourself, remember how she got that way!
“Tatterdemalion” copyright © 2026 by Michael Cisco
Art copyright © 2026 by Raven Jiang
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Tatterdemalion
Looking up unfamiliar words led me down some fascinating rabbit holes, including:
With these in mind, I can reread the story as propaganda woven around local history. This allows the history to still be discussed, reducing the number of things that must be officially forgotten, under a cover of the official philosophy that curiosity, reading for comprehension, spending time alone, fact checking, initiative, an interior mental life, reading documents created without Imperial approval, and historical inquiry are all bad. (Also, good Imperial subjects practice reflexive repugnance by using those with physical differences as a stand-in for abstract notions that we should reflexively reject before we think about them at all.) The storytellers and the audience may or may not believe what they say.
So. A while back, there was a person who everybody knew was sliding toward an officially decreed bad end. She was known, or suspected, to hang around with members of a deprecated group that is allowed to exist because it takes in anybody who won’t or can’t conform to Imperial standards (thus getting them out of the way while keeping them handy for purges at will, as at Glowing Core). Whether that is true or not, she left home furtively and was later discovered hanging around a coastal village, doing odd jobs without official imprimatur and living alone. She died an unauthorized violent death that could not be covered up.
Knowing that calling it murder would cause the authorities to decide on a culprit to punish, the local council declared her death to be uncanny. It helped that she had been murdered near the boundary wall of Tulltillarna, an erased town whose officially fostered reputation was already uncanny.
The cantonal authorities sent surveyors and cordoned the place off because people were becoming too interested in it, but in the meantime, the rural community of that area had a run of bad years. The disruption of the undesirable person’s death and the stress of governmental regard, added to bad harvests and poverty, caused the community to seek out a witch to blame. In the usual way of things, they egged one another on with wild stories. The stories became so prevalent that a girl who suffered retinitis due to high fever saw the witch in her fever dreams.
The locals begged for help from the regional authorities, who did not want to get mixed up in curse breaking and witch fever, so they pretended never to have received those messages. So the coast was abandoned with all its unanswered questions and unwelcome mysteries.
Whether the Zaman Wislin began as the dispossessed losing side in that part of the Alak Empire is not clear. But of course it doesn’t matter, because the Alak Empire has always been and will always be.
It left a nasty taste in my mouth. I just hope the author was being as ironic as I think he was. This curious loner with a lot of interior mental life got right tired of being treated as no good when the real problem was ADHD and the introversion just a way to be. I liked the illustration though.
Shortly after I read this story, I heard another story from a co-worker.
I should start by saying that I visited China when you rode the Friendship Bus to the Friendship Store and you stayed in the Friendship Hotel and so on and so on. This co-worker is much younger and was able to ramble all over the place in China, after gaining official approval of course. And a friend of hers was even paid to teach at a Chinese university.
Now, this friend of my co-worker came from a community that has a long-standing tradition, let’s call it Talking Over Coffee, of gathering in a third space once a month in order to tell stories on pre-selected topics. The whole neighborhood gets into it. It’s a multi-cultural and mobile neighborhood, and he was teaching at a multi-cultural university that was naturally seeing people come and go all the time, so he decided to start a Talking Over Coffee program in a common room on campus. Anybody could sign up if they were willing to stay on topic and within time; you had to preview your story with the organizers so they could be sure that you weren’t going to be riding hobby horses or pounding bully pulpits.
It was a great success!
Until two Koreans joined in. Then the Chinese government sent a couple of very serious people to talk to my co-worker’s friend. “What are you doing? Why are you promoting South Korea?”
“They get the same chance as anybody else, no more,” the teacher said.
“Well, why are you doing this at all?”
“To foster community,” he replied.
The superior officer leaned forward and stared at him. “What is this ‘community’?”
He tried to explain, about getting along regardless of difference, and defusing grudges, and fostering patience and goodwill, and so forth.
And they told him to drop it and stop talking about “community” or leave the country permanently.
And I immediately thought about the Alak Empire and their demand for total commitment to their goals.
So, I think the author was being ironic. At least, I hope so.
It’s somewhat unfortunate that the publisher omitted the original explanatory notes by the translator. To stay on the safe side of the copyright law, I’m adding my very short retelling.Unlike “Samizdat”, the notion of “Namizdat” remains unfamiliar to the Western audience. The desperate desire to become acquainted with the literary world outside of the Iron Curtain reached its peak in the early 80s. At this point, the USSR was in a pre-boiling state where small and disconnected groups of students in provincial universities adopted the idea that in lack of original books from the capitalist America, these books might be re-created from scratch by sheer will. As a spiritual opposite of Borges’s (ironically – an author also unavailable in the Soviet Union until 80s) Pierre Menard, these 18 year olds became capable of recreating Burroughs and Dick from fragments of communist critique and cover illustrations appearing for a few seconds on black and white TV screens.Mikhail Kisko, a young faculty member of the Donetsk State University (DonGU) in the Eastern Ukraine, was