Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
The Viennese Nights’ Entertainment
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
The story was, when the siege failed and the Turks retreated from the walls of Vienna, they left behind sacks of coffee that became the basis for the city’s coffee houses. A couple decades later, the most popular coffee houses traded on the exotic mystique of the beverage’s origins, with sumptuously cushioned benches surrounding mother-of-pearl inlaid tables and a room full of gurgling hookahs at the back. During the coldest months, they added storytellers to draw customers. The most popular were Iskander, at the Bachmann’s, and Mahmood, at the Royal Crest.
They were brothers — twins — and not actually Turkish, but Vienna-born sons of an Egyptian merchant. They’re best remembered for the story duel of January, 1702.
It began when Mahmood whiled away a sleety Monday evening with an impromptu tale involving three dwarves, a hippogriff, and a sieve that turned sand to gold. Iskander retold the story for the next day’s dinner crowd, with a fourth dwarf and the hippogriff changing to a gryphon. The sieve, now, turned sand to silver and silver to gold.
On Wednesday, Mahmood’s version of the story had six dwarves and a two-headed serpent in addition to the gryphon. The dwarves were royalty, three brothers and three sisters, and there was a grand wedding at the end. The sieve turned sand to silver to gold, etc., but it also turned gold back to sand.
Thursday, Iskander had a dozen dwarves wind up in a grander wedding after adventures involving a gryphon, a hydra, and a tortoise that had extra heads where its feet should have been. The sieve turned wind to the sweetest music. The story took all day to recount.
On Friday, the brothers prayed together at noontime and dined together in their father’s house at evening.
On Saturday morning, Mahmood began telling interlocking stories of a dozen dwarvish warrior-kings and the gryphons, rocs, sphinxes, orophants, hamadryads, and other wondrous creatures. Before he even got to the sieve, his brother began telling his version on the other side of the city, elaborating each thread of the story with feats more daring and creatures more wondrous. They continued non-stop, neither pausing to sleep, sustained by ever-stronger coffee and rolls nibbled between sentences. By midweek, the brothers dreamt aloud of giants, ghosts, djinni, clever maidens, untrustworthy tailors…
Their listeners shuttled between coffeeshops, wondering how the story — for the two tales wove now into one — would end. The brothers seemed to finish each others’ sentences, even though they were half a mile apart, telling of miserly stepfathers, unlucky grandmothers, spiderwebs wide as oceans, volcanoes spewing rubies, flocks of mechanical birds, winter queens…
Their listeners stumbled, half-sleepwalking, from one to the other, lost in worlds of summer kings, immortal mask-makers, courageous dwarves in hippogriff-hide cloaks, indigo gryphons weeping for unrequited love, sieves that sifted light from darkness, coffee from plain water, truth from coffeeshop tales…
…and woke in a city blank with new snow to find they’d each dreamt a different ending.
Bad Business
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
Business is bad in fairyland. Someone’s mixing iron filings with pixie dust and I can’t shift my stash for love nor money. Troll construction workers are rioting again too–renegotiating their contract they say. The only one’s hitting the street are the Sidhe union busters.
So, when the door’s kicked in, I’m a little bit taken aback. I’d pretty much written the night off. Sheckel’s already so strung out she’s summoning will-o-the-wisps to bring her bowls of cereal and I was thinking of indulging myself, except Sheck used up the last of the old stash and the new stuff is suspect due to aforementioned messed-up mixology.
But in the doorway are two trolls looking to unwind after an evening’s negotiations. One is holding his own broken horn in one hand.
“What can I do for you fine gents?”
“Want me to pluck your wings?” says one-horn.
“Fix you up shall I?”
“How much for the girl?” says the one who’s head is still mostly in tact, though what that counts for I don’t know.
“Who says we’re paying?” says the other. They both chuckle and snort.
I fill the baggies fast as I can while they circle Sheck. She’s giggling and they’re pulling at the sheets. I push back the shower curtain that hides my little shop and pretty much hurl the baggies at the troll’s heads. Both of them tear them open and inhale deeply.
Old one-horn sits down hard, eyes rolling. The other one grins, pulls on the power he just inhaled and a particularly large gun appears in his hand. Not his first trip apparently.
Still, pointing it at me is about as far as he gets. He’s already gray around the gills. His fingers shake and then freeze. He manages to roll his eyes to look at his comatose friend before even they seize up.
Then all I’ve got is two huge stone statues in my room. Turns out the new stash has been spiked after all.
#
Business stays bad. Spiked pixie dust stays on the streets. My stash stays unsellable.
On the other hand, though, turns out the stone Troll too market is booming. A rare commodity, I’m informed, highly valued by the Sidhe. So all in all things aren’t so bad for Sheck and me in fairyland.