Mike Allen - Clockwork Phoenix

Leopard noticed, despite the haze which seemed to envelope him, and the burning turmoil inside him, how the huge vistas of the city fell away and away. Long avenues and dwellings with roofs of carmine, purple or jade-green tiles; squares where fountains restfully played and gold and amber fish swam in pools among the lotuses; gardens of scent trees or sculpted pines and cedars… the world of the city, flawless and mathematical, grew less significant, nearly of no importance. So death must be, decided Leopard, strong enough he did not need to pause on the great stair for breath, only now and then to glance back and downward. For death too would be to leave the colourful world of life, ascending to some heavenly plain—or otherwise falling, of course, into some abysmal hell.

His reflections then were quite appropriate.

Who climbed this stair to the Palace of The Woman would indeed afterwards enter a heaven, or a hell.

At the vast doors guards were absent. Servants drew him in like a welcome guest.

For many hours he was prepared, bathed and massaged, dressed in costly robes, given to eat and drink light and ethereal foods of great nourishment and strange pale wines.

Leopard grew calm through these ministrations, but in the way of one deeply shocked by some colossal calamity or happiness. Even though such an event still lay before him.

Of the other finalists there was never any sign, and no mention. This day, this night, were unique to Leopard, as to each finalist there was given always one such passage of hours in light and darkness.

During which he would undergo the Ultimate Test, and win or lose The Woman, and his life.

In the last recent years, a hundred dead, Copper had told him. Leopard had been amazed there were so few. None had ever won her. None.

In the afternoon, flocks of pink birds flew round and round the upper arches of the Palace where Leopard was now standing. He did not see them.

Before him lay a door of bronze inlaid with gold.

It opened after only half an hour.

No one remained on the gallery save Leopard, and in the room beyond the door, there would be only one. She.

He seemed to move through air, weightless as a ghost. He crossed the threshold. The door drew slowly shut at his back.

The Woman sat on a golden chair, with her feet on a footstool shaped like a crouching elephant.

Her hands rested on her knees. Every finger had a ring of silver or gold and assorted jewels. She wore also a wig of indigo hair, plaited with blue gems.

She seemed neither pleased nor dismayed at the sight of Leopard. He found he could not fathom her expression. But then he was stunned by her wonderfulness, by her female aura and her sexual glory.

He greeted her ritually, and musically spoke aloud for her his four line poem, then knelt on the patterned floor to await her commands.

Silence snowed heavy as old blossoms.

He smelled incense and perfume from his clothing.

Partly afraid to go on gazing at her, he stared at the floor and the painted animals there began to waver before his eyes.

“Oh, get up,” she barked suddenly in a hoarse high little voice. “Rise from your knees before you faint. So many of you do. How I dislike this fainting. Get up! ”

Unsteadily yet quite gracefully Leopard obeyed her.

“Your poem’s thought clever,” she said. “That use of the one word see three times, then a fourth time but altered. How admirable. I suppose. Well,” she said. She reached her small plump hand towards a silver side-dish and selected a sugared plum. She ate it slowly, looking at him.

And her cold-sheened eyes slid over him. They were entirely expressionless, like pieces of opaque black slate. Over and over him the slate eyes slid.

How wondrous she was.

Oh gods, he could hardly bear it—and already in a kind of desolation, fearful she did not like him, even so his sex was upright and ready, the most potent weapon of love.

“Come here then,” she said. “Since you must.”

He went to her, stood there, standing once again in every sense.

“Well,” she said, her shrill voice rather more dull, “take off your garments. Let me see what you are, you—what do they call you?— Leopard? ” And at this, his name, she laughed, more shrilly, like a flute warped by rain.

And yet he laughed as well, vibrantly, loving her mockery even, loving her , and burning.

Naked, Leopard was a man like a perfect statue, made of satiny tawny wood polished smooth as glass. Wide-shouldered, slim, every muscle well-developed yet lean. He shone in the icon of his body, which had the form of both fighter and dancer. On his chest the two jewels of his nipples, themselves erect, were the colour of the purest beer. At his groin the short black pelt resembled, in its silkenness, the thick silk hair upon his head. And from his groin also rose his succulent phallus, blushing and firm as the most edible fruit. He had no flaw. And his face too was a marvel. Where his brother Copper was transcendently lovely, Leopard was incandescently handsome. And while his parted lips—he was breathless with terror and lust—revealed the whiteness of his teeth, his large dark eyes revealed the flames of longing, and perhaps some aspect of his soul.

The Woman regarded him with care. Then she pushed herself off her seat and puttered all around him. She observed him front, sidelong and back, scarcely blinking. Were her own eyes pitiless? Like a reptile’s? Surely merely a trick of westering light.

She was not tall, The Woman.

The top of her blue-wigged head was level only with Leopard’s ribcage.

Behind him still, she grunted.

He was afraid to turn, in case this sound of hers indicated some annoyance—or disappointment— dismissal .

He trembled.

Out of one of his luminous eyes a single tear dropped like silvery jasper. Yet even now his eloquent phallic erection stood its ground. His brain and heart might quake; this rose-gold warrior, primed with battle-juice, was too forthright and too wise yet to surrender.

Perhaps—could it be?— its instinct, if not the man’s, had picked up from the short round woman who patrolled the vicinity of Leopard’s splendour, some secret scent of answering desire…

“Oh,” eventually said The Woman, at Leopard’s back, “very well, then. Over there. The room behind the lacquer doors.”

“Lady—do you mean—”

“I mean we’ll go to the couch and do what’s to be done.”

And then The Woman turned and waddled away, and Leopard, dipped in fires, followed her.

Among his self-educations, which as an adult had come to include singing, fighting, drama and philosophy, Leopard had not neglected to add the arts of love. He had learned these, as with the others, from the best teachers, who taught him everything at one remove. And he had then practiced all alone, over and over. “Beware,” they had told him. “If ever you should enact these things with a real subject—that is with a woman —it will be as it is also when you fight. For in love too your lover, male or female, is unwittingly your opponent, striving to overthrow you. But you must subdue your ardour and yourself remain the master. And, whereas in battle you must kill with force and pain, in sex you must kill with delight. That death’s a very different matter.”

And Leopard, his goal—her—had fully learned and then practiced with total dedication.

Now therefore, even as he saw The Woman take off her clothes, even her wig so her hair fell forth, he kept the confidence of a great mage, whose power sweeps in on him at his instruction. The more mighty the odds against self-control, the more mightily controlled now might Leopard be.