These galligaskins were moist and rich with the scents of his unwashed traveller’s feet.
He dropped one ball in his lap and tore at the other one till he ripped it into pieces in the more worn and rotted places, the feet and inner calves. He stuffed a piece into his mouth. He sucked it, rolled his tongue around it and through the holes in the knitting. He put his hand up to his mouth so that he could breathe out upon his palm, and inhale.
His eyes were shut in rapture when the moon came up. A sibilance made him open them.
Some fish had come up onto the bank like a pack of eels, and had arranged themselves with their tails to the river and their eyes toward him. He continued to eat the one galligaskin that he had torn into pieces. It was not an easy thing to chew. Though rot softened it, particularly underfoot, its yarn caught between his teeth. This slowed his greed.
The moon showed through to the luminous back of the watchers’ eyes, making them into mirrors in which he saw himself eating as he never had—with such joy, and sadness that there was only so much to this meal. The fish took no liberties, nor made any sounds that he could hear, but they must have communicated some way, for soon the bank was so covered with fish, each head pointing in his direction, that he choked.
The first stocking, the one that held extra savour at its crusty top from a time that he fell and tore his knee, he’d gulped the last stitch of, but he could not eat more with these silent lookers-on. Tears stung his eyes.
He ripped the top of the undevoured hose with his teeth so that the knit unravelled on his tongue. Swallowing his excess saliva and his appetite, he pulled the knitting asunder and made a yarn ball, as the fishes watched. Then he stood up, naked as he was born. Walking amongst them, he broke the yarn into pieces and dropped a piece into each of the uplifted mouths.
As he broke and distributed yarn, there was no fighting amongst the fishes, even though, to give each fish a portion, he had to break the yarn into shorter and shorter pieces. When he had fed the last fish, the one whose tail lay in the river, he was unsure what to do. The fishes watched him, but if they’d turned their heads away he wouldn’t have been able to see himself in so many mirrors. There he stood on a riverbank—unclothed and without a coin of any realm.
Why did I take that medlar’s counsel? he asked himself, striking his tripe-white knees with both his fists till all were red as a maiden’s lips. Who should know better the value of what is free? He didn’t ask the fishes, of course, any more than he would have asked a mirror. They remained as they were—expressionless but still as a playwright’s wished-for audience as Werold hit himself, then wept a bit, then pondered, sitting naked on the grass. The only sound was the slow woosh of gill-moved waters.
Werold became very still and increasingly vacant-eyed, till suddenly he slapped his head. “I know!” He scrambled up, wiped grass and mud from his skinny backside, and did a little dance. “The medlar,” he sang, stamping three times. “Valued as most blessed” stamp stamp stamp “what medlars wish.”
Werold’s deliberations had led him to this conclusion: Any medlar would anoint itself with the scent of gingerbread if only it could, for that is almost how a bletted medlar smells, but never quite.
Every medlar is rootbound. “But I have legs!”
Werold laughed, an action this master argumentitioner had never been seen to take. Even now, he thought, that goodnatured medlar might be living richly in its imagination, as it travels in the shoes of the traveller it told the way to happiness. Whether the medlar assumed that the scent of gingerbread is all for everyone, is something Werold didn’t try to fathom.
He had made up his mind, with no argument that it brought forward. The fish had eaten his galligaskin kickshaws with the same delight as he—not to be polite, not to be agreeable. “We do agree!” he said, expecting not a wriggle of understanding, not a blink of their lidless eyes.
For now it was time, Werold decided. He would meet his end here, as he could go nowhere naked, but could not bring himself to don the litter on this land. “Perhaps you’ll find me tasty,” he said to them, “you poor creatures who have never tasted worms.”
He jumped from the bank.
Werold the argufier will be no more, he thought as calmly as he could, as his nose met the water. He could not swim, so hoped his end would come before he lost his mind.
His toes touched the soft thick bottom of the river, but only once. Every fish must have raced into the water. They bumped up against his chin, hit his chest and legs and back. They flayed the water from the river, from him, using their solid bodies, their lashing tails and fins. One big fish slipped under his feet and flung him free of the river. He sailed into the air and tumbled back upon the back of another giant. Without thinking, he grabbed that fish’s fin. It turned its head back toward him, and he saw himself in its eyes. Werold, wearing a smile to rival the happy face on Pleasanz’ gate.
The fishes would not let his head slip into the river, but they pushed him so that his body hung in the depths. Then began a procession in which each fish rubbed against him backwards, and they rubbed him everywhere below his head, from his neck to the undersides of his feet. Soon he was as covered with a thick coat of scales as they, though the arrangement was somewhat Galligaskinish—saggy and slovenly next to the tight, neat patterns on the fish.
His coat and leggings needed constant adjustment, but the fish took care of that. His new profession—and the fishes greatly looked up to him—was to lead them up the great unexplored river where he pulled the worms off boys’ hooks in every new fishing hole. If there was a fishermen’s net poised to throw upon the river, Werold stood up, on a long sinuous fish’s back (this was the only treat the fishes still squabbled for) and dazzled and intimidated all the two-legged landlivers with his shining raiment. Whenever fishermen saw the wondrous man of the river with their own eyes—the man who was coated in a fish’s rainbowed mail—they rushed to their huts and then back to the river, where every fisherman emptied a bucket of offerings. The waters swirled the most at worms, but also liked were pig’s knuckles, roasted hens, buttons and buckles and belts, soft slippers, and the lees of ale. The action of leaping fishes and man was so looped and wet and active that no one could say for certain whether the man ate worms or only hens and bacon.
Two-legged landlivers watched, drool-mouthed. And that night in the house of every civil citizen who saw that the man was not a myth, everything wearable though it be new as the morning egg, was ripped and cursed and piled in a heap—from gold-embroidered shirts to hose as fine as spider webs. On fine streets, it was impossible not to hear the rich men wail, and grizzle, answer their ladies’ cries with sharp replies; and kick their dogs, and moan and keen and weep.
In rude huts, fishermen tore their hair, worried over whether their offerings were rich enough; whether the visitors had gone their way sated or having left a curse upon the nets.
The glittering vision on the river, the unattainably clothed man—though looking just the same from year to year, from sighting to sighting—left fashion in a leap.
So this is almost the end of this true story, except for what I pass to you.
At night, those days, only scoundrels and the wretched were not in bed at home. At campfires along the river, fierce arguments flamed over what the man on the river droned, for on moonlit nights the one they called Silverlips was seen to sit on the back of a fish, spouting a stream of endless words. About one thing though, every loud-mouthed vagabond agreed. That each word might have made some sense in some other order, but the arrangement from the mouth of Silverlips made “nonsense.”
My great greeaaaaat grandfather, a wretched poet, watched the fire and held his tongue, but while others were sleeping, he’d slip to the riverbank and cup his hands around his ears. The river was slow and deep, never a babbler, so when one violet dawn he heard a drone, he knew it was Silverlips. He caught the stream coming from the river, answered back in like, and penned the story with the quill he carried, and his own hot blood. A fine procreator, he passed down his talents and this tale.
Avant-n00b
Nick Mamatas
Olivia got that witchy feeling frequently, but never so powerfully as the time she spotted a particular garment while thrifting at Dog and Pony on Guadalupe. It was a weird interstitial moment—the owner, Star, was in the back and Olivia was the only customer in the usually crowded store. She didn’t even know what she was looking at, and had nobody to ask, but was sure the item would make for a great blog post. Olivia was fashionn00b, her blog was fashionn00b.net, and its slogan was “Clothes Blogging Live From Austin—We’re the America of Texas!” It was her father’s joke, and Olivia had appropriated it the way she had liberated any number of her mother’s old dresses and shoes from the early 1990s, after mom had abandoned them. The clothes, and Olivia, that is. This garment was generous in its own way, stretching across two hangers. Its lines and folds were crazy. Was it some sort of sarong, but with sleeves, and in a half-faded black with a silvery lace gimp, instead of the more typical patterns and plaids of Asia? Anyway it was only ten bucks, and according to NextBus.com the bus was coming now!, so she decided that it was hers. Olivia left two crumpled five-dollar bills on the counter, shouted back to Star, “Hey, I bought the impossible garment on the two hangers!” and ran out of the store, with the garment in her arms. It was Saturday. Olivia didn’t hear Star calling her back, didn’t see Star leaning out the door to shout, “No, wait, not that thing!” She slammed into some big kid with greasy hair on the corner, mumbled an apology as she ran, and just made it.