Beyond the Pale: A fantasy anthology Read Free Page B

something else. Clanging steel and
clean-burning fire.  I will not let you harm my husband. What we ask is
not disallowed to you. Can you tell me, learned one, that it is in your book of
what is blessed and what is forbidden not to give a man golden legs?
    It is not. Not in so many words. But this
thing can’t be acceptable in God’s eyes. Can it? “Has this ever been done
before?”
    There are old stories. But it has been
centuries.  Each of her words spreads perfume and music and she
asks,  Please, learned one, will you help us?  And then one
scent rises above the others.
    Almighty God protect me, it is the sweat-and-ambergris
smell of my beloved. Shireen of the ribbing remark, who in quiet moments
confessed her love of my learning. She  would help them.
    Have I any choice after that? This, then,
the fruit of my study. And this, my reward for wishing to be more than what I
am. A twisted, unnatural path.
    “Very well.” I reach for my small saw and
try not to hear Abdel Jameela’s weird whimpers as I sharpen it.
    I give him poppy and hemlock, but as I
work Abdel Jameela still screams, nearly loud enough to make my heart cease
beating. His old body is going through things it should not be surviving. And I
am the one putting him through these things, with knives and fire and
bone-breaking clamps. I wad cotton and stuff it in my ears to block out the
hermit’s screams.
    But I feel half-asleep as I do so, hardly
aware of my own hands. Somehow the demon’s magic is keeping Abdel Jameela alive
and guiding me through this grisly task. It is painful, like having two minds
crammed inside my skull and shadow-puppet poles lashed to my arms. I am burning
up, and I can barely trace my thoughts. Slowly I become aware of the she-ghoul’s
voice in my head and the scent of apricots.
    Cut there. Now the mercury powder. The
cautering iron is hot. Put a rag in his mouth so he does not bite his tongue.  I
flay and cauterize and lose track of time. A fever cooks my mind away. I work
through the evening prayer, then the night prayer. I feel withered inside.
    In each step, Abdel Jameela’s wife guides
me. With her magic she rifles my mind for the knowledge she needs and steers my
skilled fingers. For a long while there is only her voice in my head and the
feeling of bloody instruments in my hands, which move with a life of their own.
    Then I am holding a man’s loose tendons in
my right hand and thick golden threads in my left. There are shameful smells in
the air and Abdel Jameela shouts and begs me to stop even though he is
half-asleep with the great pot of drugs I have forced down his throat.
    Something is wrong!  The
she-ghoul screams in my skull and Abdel Jameela passes out. My hands no longer
dance magically. The shining threads shrivel in my fist. We have failed, though
I know not exactly how.
    No! No! Our skill! Our sorcery! But his
body refuses!  There are funeral wails in the air and the smell of
houses burning.  My husband! Do something, physicker!
    The golden legs turn to dust in my hands.
With my ears I hear Abdel Jameela’s wife growl a wordless death-threat.
    I deserve death! Almighty God, what have I
done? An old man lies dying on my blanket. I have sawed off his legs at a
she-ghoul’s bidding. There is no strength save in God! I bow my head.
    Then I see them. Just above where I’ve
amputated Abdel Jameela’s legs are the swollen bulges that I’d thought came
from gout. But it is not gout that has made these. There is something buried
beneath the skin of each leg. I take hold of my scalpel and flay each thin
thigh. The old man moans with what little life he has left.
    What are you doing?  Abdel
Jameela’s wife asks the walls of my skull. I ignore her, pulling at a flap of
the old man’s thigh-flesh, revealing a corrupted sort of miracle.
    Beneath Abdel Jameela’s skin, tucked
between muscles, are tiny legs. Thin as spindles and hairless. Each folded
little leg ends in a minuscule hoof.
    Unbidden, a memory