The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Sixth Annual Collection

THE BLUE STONE EMPEROR’S THIRTY-THREE WIVES Sara Gallardo

Behind the great king hangs a painted leather hide. It can waver; it is the wind. Or not waver; the queen is listening. I count within myself those dead at his command. Those dead at his hands are within me. Foolish women, those who bewail their lost youth; they do not know the secrets of fermentation. May they see drunkenness beneath the stars; if water is for daytime then alcohol is for power.

Alcohol is old age. I lost my teeth; my nourishment is to influence. I braid my gray hair; what gets braided without me?

I have a whim, nonetheless. I’d like to have that girl killed. And her child in her arms.

For me, stretching leather. Eating. Going for water. Sewing the skins, preparing the threads, weaving. Looking at the smoke, whether it will rain tomorrow. Relieving myself calmly among the rushes. Seasoning the venison through the wound in the flesh. Preparing mate and drinking it. Dying ostrich feathers.

To each day its own. A good life. Sleeping.

I make people travel. Careful, horseman. Not a word of what we said can be repeated. The most terrible of the kings moans like a calf. I never needed beauty.

I am the one who travels. Door of journeys.

It is true that I take risks; I see death at every step. How can you fasten my body of a thousand lives to only one man?

No one is as young nor as old as I.

I tortured them, the women. I still thirst. I saw them die, naming unknown people in other languages. I did not satiate myself. If each grazing were the subject of humiliation and each star an eye to blind, my anxieties would go on.

Wool, wool, morning has come. Shake off the dew, scare off the cold. If you take in what is red, you warm your eye. Tie the strands of life together.[1] Grid what is black, cross what is white. The form of the woof; the woof is my shape. Here the line of silence, the border, madness, the little tracks of the skunk, the tips of the night, footsteps, footprints, tracks. Life is between these steps: the yes, the no, the now, the never.

This is the poncho I wove for the king.

Friend, give your mouth to me. Spread your legs for me. I used to pick fleas from your hair. Fat ones to you, medium ones to me, skinny to die between my fingernails. Something happened. To be the king’s wife matters little to me. To be the king’s wife matters little to you. Is it possible to hide it? There are so many eyes.

I won’t speak of another time, of another language, of another man, other children. Here the wind, the horror.

To rock to sleep, I am the oven and the bread. Nine bakings. Nine loaves of bread.

I see six with the riding master. One, the bola balls. One, the lance. One, the dagger. One, the hobbled gallop. One, the race on foot. One, the stretching out.

They will talk among themselves. I will be a single ear: horses, horses. Only horses. Can any other words matter to me? Can they?

There are two more; then run close to my steps. What steps do I hear if not those?

One remains, asleep. Happy lap. I had a garden. There are no petals besides those eyes.

Nine loaves of bread. I ran in this same wind to kill other children.

To go along, without footprints. Ant. Air. Nothing.

I glory in his glory.

I repeat that the wind might carry:

Two thousand five hundred leagues of confederation. Two thousand lancers.

Four horses per lancer.

Thus is counted the greatness of my king.

I walk weighed down with splendors.

Why did he mount me but once?

The Marquis whispered: the carriage is tied. Madame, all we have to do is flee. She lifted her mask. Her heavenly pupils were farewell. A ring with a seal on it slipped through her hands.

I can’t remember what came next . . .

I will always see him as ridiculous. Every night guarding his females. He found me with my friend. He buried my face in a blow. He went off to bed. In the morning, he called my companion. He asked him for twenty sheep.

I was blind after that.

Twenty sheep.

In the land of shadow, I still see him. Ridiculous.

My grandmother—it was so long ago on the other side of the great mountain— had an ear for the dead. Strolling through the countryside she used to say:

“Here, some buried people. Dig, you’ll see.”

We dug. The bones appeared.

With the years, that same ear opened itself to me.

Others know where the enemy is by the smell of the wind. I deal with the dead. Looking for an herb to dye the wool, I walk a lot. At some point, someone dead calls.

They call, like a warrior in the alcohol of dreams, like the creatures in the night. Their yellow bones are not dust any more. I tell them to sleep.

“We walk by day. Soon the night will come.”

Everything was glorious there. With my cousin, I used to run horse races. We broke them in. Mine used to halt without reins, didn’t drink, knew how to wait. We had a specimen, the most beautiful: Nahuel, horse of my father. We were almost children.

One night I heard the witch sing like the water in the cauldron. She was talking with the devil. The smoke of her fire responded:

“What scared you, lord?”

“I shall tell you, I shall tell you.”

“What drove you away?”

“I shall tell you.”

“Return to me, I am an orphan, I can no longer fly.”

“The small one that eats from the hand of the leader scares me. Its neigh startles me, its odor scares me, its mane drowns me. Its feet break my powers. Each time it swallows fodder, I am asphyxiated.”

“Fear not, my lord, you shall return. He shall die.”

I dragged myself over and awoke my cousin. I told him what I’d heard. Nahuel, horse of my father, heard. He turned around in his stall. My cousin spoke into my ear: “Go to sleep.” I didn’t sleep. Almost a child, he cut the witch’s throat. She woke up facing the fire burnt down to the bone.

There was a scream in the morning. We were playing with our horses.

What a meeting, what talk, what arms raised, the boys hid, the women filed their nails. My father put on his blanket, the woolen crown.

“She is dead,” he said. “Dead she will remain.”

There was a lot of low talking, not in front of him. Who killed her, why weren’t people punished? He didn’t know why himself. But a great prosperity followed. What for?

The king of kings—but a king among kings—asked for my hand.

I said to my cousin:

“We show our horses, don’t we?”

And we escaped. My father mounted Nahuel. Nahuel caught up with us.

My father carried his lance. He raised it and shouted.

“It is true that I love you like a son. It is true that you were going to be leader.” He killed my cousin. He shut himself up in his tent. He drank for three days. On the third I said to him:

“Your prosperity is due to the one you killed. Nahuel as witness. Your prosperity attracted the king of kings. Now you will see what he leaves you.”

They carried me covered with silver to the old man of the blue stone.

Nahuel has died, my father is a beggar, his dispersed tribe gnaws at remains.

He was born. I always feared it: blue eyes. The king, my cousin and uncle, came to see him. The wives hid their delight. I awaited death. He smiled:

“Good blood,” he said. “He will be a king.”

I wish he would die, defeated. I wish, foot on the ground, he would find himself chained up by soldiers without leaders. I wish that his children would betray him and that he would find out, that he would lose his manhood.

I wish he would die. And his race would be erased from the earth. I with it. Cursing him.

My father found me trying to fly. I never understood men’s taste. Women’s less. Lives of shadows.

Now I know. I search for buried snake’s eggs. Toads. Sleeping bats. May the enchantress receive my adulation.

I shall learn.

A traveller saw me: hopeless, dying, very beautiful. It was a mistake. I never existed.

Outside I hear the birds’ song.

I am two. I have two names, and I am two. One morning I lost my first tooth. My mother—who used to cry all the time—said:

“Maria of the Angels, bury it, and a miracle will sprout. ”

I buried it next to the tent. The next day I went to get the miracle. I didn’t see anything. I sat down and waited. When I returned, my mother—she was counting her bones—had died. Beaten to death. It seemed she was smiling.

No one else called me Maria of the Angels. Only I used to say it. No one used to say miracle.

When I buried my eighth tooth, I screamed in the middle of the field.

“Miracles! I won’t wait any more! I will forget how to say Mary of the Angels! I will only be White Cloud.”

That night, asleep, I heard a song. It spoke that which I never heard:

“Seaworthy boat, light oar.

Castle by the river, keep me from cold.

Mountain snow, goes where I go.

Angels, saints, sing their songs.”

I asked a man, an interpreter, with a red beard: “What does boat mean, and seaworthy, and oar, and castle, and snow, and mountain.” He said it. He repeated it to me gathering wood, carrying water.

One day an old man came:

The king of kings who lives on the other side of the desert makes known what he has found out from the red-bearded man. A white, fat, blonde, girl child lives here. He demands that she be brought. He will send this much livestock, this many vessels, this much silver.”

“What girl child is that?” I asked.

I was warmly received. We were poor. That king didn’t know our people, or our leader.

Now I am a wife far from there. I have two names, and I am two.

When I find my mother, she will tell me why.

The pleasure I have left is to contemplate the new.

The dew in the brush. The coming out of the new queen, the favorite, with her child in her arms. She laughs. The king wants her close.

In the spider’s web, dew drops.

In the afternoon, I lock myself in, light the fire.

In the afternoon, there is no dew in the brush. The web is loaded with insects. The dust clouds fly on the horizon.

Sometimes we run into the king. If he feels like it, he greets me and continues on his way. I don’t know where youth went.

We have been accomplices.

It’s not that he needs them. In the triumph, the punishment, the killing, the glory, the lust.

But only I saw his tears.

I gave myself to the mystery.

What was it?

A path of darkness

toward a land which perhaps does not exist. I am faithful. I persevere.

This happened when we crossed the great mountain. Playing, my brother and I went up to where the ice is very quiet.

In a cave, a small girl was sleeping.

Gold in her crowns, on her chest. Her sandals were made of green beads. Little face mask of pearls. She was sleeping.

When we went down, he died from the cold. I lived.

We never told anything.

They call me wife of the king. I use a silver necklace.

Whoever did not see the princess who sleeps in the mountain will never know about kings.

I waited ten years. And he saw me.

He was coming back from the war. Black blood flowed from his chest. I saw his children, his grandchildren. The feathers of his lances, also black, crazy with victory. Women, the aged, dogs, children were one single howl. And the captive females the color of death.

I held his glance. His horse brushed by close to my feet. I did not move. My grandmother hit me.

They celebrated for many days. The warriors slept, vomited. I waited. The king walked among the tents. I saw the leather skin at my house open.

I never said his name. He never said mine. I was the king, he the girl. I learned to rule, he to laugh.

They usually talk. They know little of love.

The moon has a halo; kings are travelling. My brother arrived.

The rain erases all the signals. I cry.

My brothers left.

The story, which still gives people something to talk about, really went like this.

My cousin had a favorite dog, used to biting people’s heels. I saw that that young man had his heel wounded.

I got some poison seeds and held them in my hand.

While dying wool with the old queen, I cried. She promised me a pearl necklace if I would tell her why. A bead necklace.

I said: “My cousin and her sisters are preparing a poison. That young man brought them the seed. They want to kill the king.”

I opened my hand and showed them to her.

My cousin, her sisters, that young man, were burned alive.

They have been dust and ash for seven years. I use the bead necklace.

That fire keeps me awake.

I asked him for his love; he laughed at me. And he visited my cousin at night?

We are sisters and we are different. The day of that double banquet—that hecatomb—we were working together. Unannounced the little leader and his two hundred men arrived for a visit. They were given lunch. They were eating and his brother arrived, four hundred lances in the dust. Another banquet.

And they satiated themselves both times.

The king inspected the rows of eaters and drinkers in person. He talked and laughed.

I guarantee it was a proud day. To be the wife of a king, to feed six hundred men, and laugh.

But my sister said: “I know what the salt of a king’s kitchen is like. Tears and sweat. Grief and fatigue.”

While filling the king’s pipe, I’ve heard how he dictates his letters. The men who serve him make lines and dots, like the white men do.

In the afternoons, I sit down. I am old. Words do not interest me.

I see the birds. Lines, dots. Every afternoon in the sky, the same letter.

Always the same, that I cannot say.

Defeat, end.

My brother, lord of the apple tree country, wanted an alliance with the great one. His wife promised me. When I arrived, he was out hunting ostriches. He returned at night, left for the war. Later he wanted to see me.

He didn’t like me.

He performed the ceremony for an alliance with the lord of the apple trees.

He never touched me.

I didn't have any women friends.

The witch asked a favor of me. I listen to all the conversations for her; I spy on every tent.

They call me names. The young boys set traps at my feet. I get hit.

Still, my mother told me stories; she promised me happiness.

I dreamed: I lost a tooth.

What will I do without it, what will it do without me? Wind has come come up over the river.

What will he do without me, what will I do without him?

It was raining. And it rained my lament. It is sad to be a wife of the old king. It was night, under the blanket. In autumn, things are like that.

My husband’s son entered the darkness. He had been drinking. Perhaps he made a mistake.

What happened was a coming out into brilliance on a battle horse. It was running. It was conquering.

On the day of the first battle, his father told him:

“Let no woman matter more to you than war. ”

On the day of the first banquet, his father told him:

“No woman takes you further than alcohol.”

On the day of the first sacrifice, his father told him:

“He who ties himself to a woman separates himself from the mystery. ”

He knew battle, alcohol, mystery. He tells me: “There are three shadows next to your red skirt.”

I have seen a vision that is not a lie in the water of the well. I saw the king's funeral. It will not be long now. His horse dressed in silver will go with him. His wives in a line, their skulls broken. His favorite one, dressed in red, will carry her child in her arms. They will wrench it away from her at the same time they kill her. Thus I saw the funeral, with thirty-two wives. I am escaping tonight.