Mike Allen - Clockwork Phoenix

The servant took Leopard upstairs.

Copper, just fresh from the bath and belted in a dressing-gown of embroidered white silk, lay on a couch. His hair, worn some inches longer than any merely male man would wear it, coiled over his shoulders, gleaming black as sharkskin.

“Gorgeous as ever,” remarked Leopard, between praise and banter. “Prince Nine tottered down, almost dead of love.”

“So I should think. We were together three hours. It wouldn’t look good for me, would it, if he pranced out bored and burping. But you,” added Copper, “you’re pale as a marble death-stone.”

Leopard stared at Copper. Then Leopard went and kneeled at his brother’s feet and laid his head in Copper’s lap. Murmuring gently, Copper stroked Leopard’s own hair, shortly thick as a cat’s fur. There was nothing sexual between them. Copper had become like a mother-sister for Leopard at about the same time Copper also found his own inner femaleness.

“Ssh, what is it, darling?”

“Oh gods of the seventy hells—”

“Don’t invoke that uncouth nasty mob.”

“The eleven heavens then. Oh Copper, Copper—did you know?”

“Know what, my baby?”

“ She was shown in the city today.”

“The Woman ? Gods, yes, I’d forgotten. No wonder half my best lads’ clientele was absent. Damn it, there was I cursing them. And they too stupid to remind me.”

Leopard shook, but with laughter.

He sat up and gazed into his brother’s exquisite and surprised face.

“Listen, Copper. I applied.”

“You—my own spirit! When? ”

“Last Rose Moon.”

“Three months ago? And all this while you never told me—”

“I was afraid I’d be thrown out from the first examination. But I passed them all.”

Copper sank back on the cushions, fanning himself.

“Wait, sweetheart. You go too fast. I’m staggered as an old hag on her last legs.”

Leopard gripped his hand. Glowing with pride, he detailed every contest he had entered, and passed, always well, and often with the brilliant coloured inks of his competency and genius marked on the scroll. There had been reading and writing, in which, though village taught, he had had the luck of erudite masters, and the added learning Copper had later bought for him. There had been philosophy and debating too, humour and drama. There had been the art of painting, and the arts of war—cross-bow, staff, moon-sword and bare fist. Finally he had had to compose a love poem of four lines only, each line containing only four words. Leopard modestly said he did not believe his own work one twelfth as good as others he had seen inscribed on the judges’ parchment, but by then he had also been physically examined by physicians and dentists, some of his skin and hair, his urine, blood and saliva scientifically evaluated. Lastly his semen was checked, having been gathered after the use of a certain drug and a dream, as he had thought, of The Woman herself. Only the finalists of the examinations were ever given this hallucinogen, but after it he could not recall what she had been like, the goddess of his orgasm. Now, naturally, he need not wonder for today he had seen her in person. Her eyes had—surely? unbelievably?—rested on him in turn.

In a restrained tone Copper observed, “And they allowed you to stand close to the road where she travels by in her chair. Only finalists may stand so near. Or the most wealthy, they say, who can afford to buy places. But, Leopard, my sweet one—these contests concerning The Woman occur only once every year—”

“I know. And now you know why I’ve lived in this city for a year, the parasite beneficiary of your bounty, and never a hard word from you though I earned myself not even a single bit of lead.”

“I’ve plenty,” said Copper, “why should I mind—yet Leopard—Leopard—”

Leopard raised his proud young head. “Say nothing to bring down my mood. Nothing . Don’t tell me how many others have almost won her, yet failed the Ultimate Test. Say nothing of that.”

Copper lowered his eyes. The kohl on his long lashes glistened. They might have been wet with tears. “I say only this. One hundred men have died, in only the brief years I was here in the Crimson City, because of The Woman, and the Ultimate Test.”

“I love her,” said Leopard.

When he spoke of love, which was a common enough word and a concept often enough employed, love’s very soul seemed to brush across Copper’s elegant reception chamber.

Copper Coin had been named, at birth, for the copper coin their mother had bribed an itinerant hag to fix in the neck of her womb and stopper her, following the previous birth of Leopard. It was rumoured their mother had told the hag, “I can endure no more. I can bear no more.” But the hag, though a villainess, had nevertheless been also either inept or cunning, and the coin had not saved Mother from conceiving, carrying and ejecting her last son, even if his advent killed her.

Copper had always, though glad to have been given life, felt very sorry for their mother.

Not himself desiring women, which he found a blessing, Copper had space to respect and pity them. Even the old ones—especially they perhaps. And even The Woman, maybe, the demon-goddess, cold and distant as some far off planet, whose surface, if ever one did reach her, smashed men like brittle dragonflies on her rocks of razor and adamant.

The sky was green as young-grape wine.

Alone, Leopard stood on the roof of his lodging. Below, his city room, a cell equipped with a pillow, a writing-stand, and the fixtures for elimination and ablution in one corner, had also a ladder which had often led him up here.

He watched evening stars like molten silver burst from the greenness. So love was. So it seared forth from the dusk of life.

Leopard had dimly heard of The Woman in the Crimson City since the age of six. But, at sixteen he heard with more than his ears. Thereafter he had had only one goal, which he kept secret from all who knew him closely, until this day.

Now Copper had been informed. And now Leopard had beheld, in flesh, not two arm’s length away in front of him, The Woman.

Oh, to win her, to retain her—which must be impossible.

Yet to see, to have, and then to lose her—also impossible.

In the balance of the gods of balances, his weighted hopes and dreads must lie level tonight.

He had visited various temples about the city, sometimes passing other finalists he recognized, or they him, each man nodding politely, heart hidden yet well understood. He had travelled the white streets for miles, and made his offerings lavish, financed by Copper’s generosity. And Copper had said nothing more. And yet, at their parting, Copper’s perfect eyes truly had been full of tears, like diamond pearls. Such beauty.

If only Leopard had loved men, as Copper did.

But no. Leopard loved women—loved The Woman.

Nothing else would do.

Even if so many other hundred thousand men had perished, Leopard believed he alone would prevail. He would pass the Ultimate Test, have her and keep her. Him she would love. But too, of course, he knew such a thing could never be. He could only become one more shell smashed upon her steely beach. One more dead, useless man.

Unlike the dusk, the dawn was a peach. The moisture of it put out the blazing stars yet lit the lioness of the sun, who leapt up high above the city.

“Oh, Sun Lady, give me my dream….”

Leopard climbed the three hundred marble steps to the Palace. He did this alone. For no finalist of the examinations ever made his final journey in company with any others.