The A'Rak by Michael Shea Page A

dusk outside the window, a tapster appeared at my elbow and presented me with a spice-sprigged potation of aquavit, indicating that it was sent me with the compliments of an angular, exotic dame of a certain age who, at my bow, beckoned me to her table with a smile of ironic charm.
    "Amiable lady!" I saluted her, "Thank you for this cordial gesture! I am Nifft, an Ephesionite traveller." Her hand was very cold, and steely strong. She was lean and languid in a silvery sheathe of some reptile's skin, her eyes rimmed with kohl.
    "I am Dame Eelritter, a Stregan, travelling too, though not from such a distance as yourself. You looked a bit at loose ends, Nifft. You struck me as a curious foreigner, hungry for discoveries, for local lore—an observant, enterprising fellow trying to get a feel for a new locale. Do I err?"
    "You are clairvoyance itself!" I did not shrink from displaying an affability that bordered on fulsomeness. Any fool could see she was dangerous. Her spareness was as densely strong as a python's, and her being from Strega, one of the two Greater Sisters of the Astrygal Islands, gave her good odds of being a witch. "You have quite hit the mark! Of course as an outlander one fears to seem rude, to poke and probe with queries, but one craves the doings, the details of a new land. Why else does one travel?"
    "Why else indeed? Well well. There is so much I could tell you, for I know Hagia intimately. What about popular culture? What about ballads and other such artless rhymes. The anonymous popular verses of a folk—do such things interest you?"
    I could not help displaying a brief hesitation. Unless this were a wild coincidence, a reference to what I'd just sold the Ecclesiarch seemed intended. Was her glittery, gleeful eye taunting me now? She could be grinning at her own thoughts, the apparent allusion pure accident, but I didn't really believe it for a moment.
    "I relish such things! Ballads and roundelays and the like. Am I so transparent, Dame Eelritter, or are you indeed a reader of thoughts?"
    "Neither, honest Nifft. It is, rather, that I am myself keen on folkloric verse. Let me share a particular favorite of mine with you. It is a local ditty, and a perfect gem of rural Hagia's unique ethnic whimsy. It is called `Something Unspeakable.' Listen:
     
Clawtip by clawtip, so gingerly-daintly!
Advancing now two steps, now one step, now three . . .
Hark there! Can'st hear it? Though ever so faintly?
Hear it tiptoe from thicket to gully to tree?
Something unspeakable followeth me!  
     
What stayeth when I stay, and when I go, goeth?
It hasteth when I haste, and when I slow, sloweth.
To advance I'm afeard, yet to linger am loath,
Such tickle-foot terror attendeth on both.
Doth the boskage there stir? I search, but naught showeth!
     
Crickle and crackle old Crooked-Legs speedeth
And under my footfall concealeth his own.
Hast ever happ'd past some copse where Crook feedeth?
Heard his paralyzed prey—as he's drained—feebly moan?
     
Ye zephyrs that fluster the foliage, stand fast!
What was it, just yonder, that just whispered past?
What pursuer so leisurely-sly giveth chase?
Ye gods, let me not feel that thorny embrace!
     
Ye breezes harassing the high grass, desist!
By little and little, degree by degree
Thy rustle and bustle the monster assist—
Lest I be seized let me harken! Oh list!
     
That delicate stealthing—what else could it be?
From a footfall so multiple, what hope to flee?
For scuttling from thicket to gully to tree
Something unspeakable followeth me!  
    * * *
    I did not need to feign fascination as she recited. Was this a threat? A warning? If the poem's theme had not seemed pointed in itself, her smile would have made it so, this cool, ophidian dame with her eyes kohled as fierce as a carnival demon-mask's. How could I not feel a taunting admonition against my thief's errand in the lines? Or was something else afoot. Had the hostile Fursten Minim, for instance, guessing my mission, sent her