Tozzath

Pellucid pachyderms wade across the purpling River Manjees and Tozzath watches from the bank, the seat of his maroon pantaloons soaked with mud, his nostrils flaring with the fragrance of ombadalias, whose lacey petals flutter like the wings of long-dead butterflies, bestirred by ghoulish breezes, the colors bleeding from moribund antennae, slim as a cat’s whispers Tozzath casts his gaze into the river’s ripples, where crocs lurk, awaiting unwary dreamers, ready to snatch their phrenolic flotsam in bejeweled jaws and shred it into despairing wisps spiraling into slanted moonbeams glimpsed from quiet rooms with carelessly parted curtains made from the silk of a once-noble lady’s sigh Tozzath’s gaze plumbs into a palatial abode atop the highest hill in Anakabrazan. He climbs a slim tower ringed by crenellated battlements, pushing his essence through walls of besooted sandstone, recoiling briefly from the reeking opulence of the pasha’s slumber chamber Scents of licorice and sandalwood and kershoolo rise from incense sticks, and Tozzath wends his way through furnishings of walnut and mahogany encarved with likenesses of winged beasts, and approaches a bed covered with damask cushions filled with nightingale feathers which sing nocturnal ballads when tossed and turned upon Tozzath eyes the furrows in Pasha Doasdra’s troubled brow, where seeds of doubt sprout like weeds, nourished by a rain of ruminations. Blue rivulets of dreamstuff run down the pasha’s weary face, lined with the memories of sixty sunsets, and creased by a dozen more, lost in moonless crevices Doasdra’s neatly trimmed beard belies the thicket of twisted briars in his brain, entangled entropies cloaked in conscious canopy as convoluted as the treacherous undergrowth within the Night Woods of Shaddeshan Tozzath strides forward, unafraid, his mind encased within the protective curling confines of a conch snatched from a beach where the paw prints of forgotten creatures imprint shiftless sands drizzled through an hourglass of purest amber, overturned by the hand of Time Tozzath fights through the flora and breaches the beach, wading into waters where sad thoughts settle like silt in the somber depths He follows the flow, paying homage to a tributary, and dries his very best, as a dusty road commences beneath an umber sky. He sets his feet upon it, his soles shod in slipshod sandals He cuts across fallow, hallowed ground and nears a farmhouse where termites have made a banquet hall of the boards He steps onto the porch with catlike grace and finds no door to knock upon. He enters, stirring dust motes caught in a sunbeam pouring through a shingular aperture Tozzath ascends rail-less steps, heads down a hallway, pauses, passes through a closed door; its piney panels tickle A young girl blanketed by shadows lies on a bed of rusty spirals while her head squats in the corner, covered with cobwebs. A small spider splays in her open mouth. The eye sockets serve as a hovel for fruit flies. Her scalp is bare, the hair plucked long ago, prized nesting material for birds, none of them nightingales The girl’s thin arm moves, her bony fingers grasping an emerald nestled in her cleavage, attached to a scarlet ribbon draped around her cloven neck. She removes the priceless pendant and places it in Tozzath’s palm, cold as an unswaddled foundling Tozzath leaves the shadow girl and departs the farmhouse. The baked clay beneath his feet gives way to golden cobbles, and buildings of alabaster and porcelain rise on either side, topped by bulbs and minarets of finest moonstone The grand markets of Anakabrazan stretch before him, bursting at the seams with beggars and choosers, merchants and mendicants, overflowing with goods and bads. The clamor rings in Tozzath’s ears, mingling with nightingale songs He spies two ragamuffins in an alley. A boy picks up a piece of broken bottle and turns to a disheveled girl, draped in grimed homespun, not shadows, her eyes bright as emeralds. The boy entwines the bauble and hangs it around her neck. She kisses his cheek, leaving a smirk and a smudge Tozzath watches sadly as a wagon heaped high with melons rounds a corner, the driver cracking a whip over hunchbacked horses. A melon falls from the back and instantly a dozen urchins descend, their ears attuned to the sound of falling fruit. Their dinner chime. The boy and girl dash out of the alley. The boy steps in mongrel dung. He slips and falls, sliding beneath the clattering wheels. His head splits open like a melon and the girl screams. Somewhere, a mongrel mourns And in a silken bed in a marbled manse on the higher side of town, a noblewoman cries out also as the slippery head of a newborn pasha erupts from her womb. The odd indentations in his skull will fade in time In another alley the grimy girl stoops, prying up paving stones, clutching them to her heart. She’ll hurl them at the melon merchant next time he passes by A crowd gathers in a courtyard outside the army barracks and watches a soldier’s scimitar seek out the girl’s slim neck, sending her soul to the shadows Tozzath returns to the farmhouse where shades of meaning await the womb. The girl still tarries, tallying, carping about unkind cuts, refusing her rebirth But an old man, swaddled in silks, shall soon depart his bed, and recall the emeralds he made from broken bottles before he ever was And the boy shall come to the farmhouse, cleansed by the rains of remembrance, no longer confined to the prism of Fate’s fractals, and the two fast friends shall ride a kinder conveyance, with bespokened wheels encircling eternity And they shall quaff dregless brews from green, unbroken bottles