Эйми Бендер - The Color Master

Do you know how long you’ll be? he asked.

I don’t know, she said.

Okay, he said. I’ll be here.

They spent the night almost close, her forehead pressed against the wall of his triceps. Come morning, she walked through the door and into fields of glistening green.

What marriage could recover? She did not plan on ever returning. The ogre wasn’t sure, but he thought it was unlikely. He was not insensitive, despite all suspicions. The day she left, he skipped work and went to the tavern for lunch and drank ninety-five beers. You’re a machine! the other ogres said, admiringly, as he slammed down another stein. Foam made an old man’s beard around his mouth, and he burped in an echo that trembled the hillsides.

She felt it, his wife, now miles away, following a winding path up and over lightly rolling hills covered in sage, and dandelion fields, and one meadow of sunflowers shuddering in the daylight. She walked and walked until dusk, trying to collect distance under her feet, and then she camped out under a shady elm with her checkered cloth. She unpacked some almonds and dried cherries and she also ate the cake, which would let itself diminish to half and then, under her bare eyes, build itself back up out of nothing, out of air, until it was a full cake again. She was grateful for it, but somehow it also bothered her. Finish, cake, she said, tearing off half, watching it rebuild. Finish! She tore off more than half, the whole, but the cake was unstoppable. Plus, she needed it. What, she was going to trap birds and roast them over a fire? She was a woman who shopped at a market with a wheeled cart and used honey-lavender soap. She drank from her water mug and refilled it at a spring at the edge of the meadow, and before she fell asleep, she sprinkled the remaining cake crumbs around her cloth.

In the morning, she awoke surrounded by expectant-looking crows. Enough! she said, shaking the cloth as they tottered away.

Really, she could’ve spent the rest of her life there, just sitting and feeding those crows and herself with the cake, but she wanted to reach the river.

When she heard a clip-clopping sound, she put on the cloak so that she looked like the dappled sunlight beneath the elm, a particularly glorious sunlit area that did not correspond to the rules of sun location in the sky, but who would notice that except a particularly astute observer of shadows? This was just a human horseman riding along in ogre country, looking to find some treasure, like his comrades who had come up here and survived. She watched him, his handsomeness, his vanity and sureness, his sculpted hair and cheeks, his strong hands, his proud red jacket, and she was reminded again why the ogres had attracted her, and why she had loved young Stillford so, his wet brown eyes searching out hers, those sharp, smiling, crooked teeth. The ogres knew they were ugly and in that they were decent. They did not ever think they could be like this man, she thought as he galloped off, tossing his head with pleasure. He ducked and rose over hills, and she saw it coming before he did, saw the ogre who ran the corner store just out on a pleasant walk in his seven-league boots, rounding the corner and—surprise! what a gift!—the man too late raising his gun and landing a shot on the ogre’s shoulder, which was nothing to an ogre, nothing a little mending at night wouldn’t fix, a little digging with a fork into flesh to expunge a bullet, and she watched in her cloak as the man was plucked from his horse and eaten whole. It was a horrible sight, one she had tried not to see for most of her wedded life, but on that day she found it almost comforting. Just to see it. Not comforting to see pain and death but just to see what she could not let herself imagine and therefore ruled her. She wept quietly under the tree as the ogre chewed. Then he walked off, rubbing his belly, wearing those boots, a little scrap of red cloth sticking out of his mouth until he reached out a tongue and licked it in, just like a human might do with a bit of jam.

The horse had run off, but it circled back after the ogre left, pacing in the field, then settling down, and after her shaking subsided, she walked over to where it was grazing. A couple of hours had passed, and the horse seemed focused on the grass, and calm. After all, the eating had been brief, and the man had barely had time to scream, and ogres were just about food, not about power play or torture. They were just endlessly large and hungry beings. She mounted the horse and rode lazily along, digging around in the thick leather packs on the side where she found some snacks—turkey jerky that she used to love, made in the village, and some peaches, a rare delicacy for her, as ogres couldn’t care less about peaches, and the fragrance consumed her mouth, like eating perfume, like kisses of nectar. She found a letter from a wife in royal-blue ink from a quill pen, wishing the man well. It was all awful, she thought, tossing the peach stone onto the green hillside, where it wedged against a rock, near some bees. Happy bees. She patted the horse’s neck. Now she and the widow had something in common. Though loss did not pass from one person to another like a baton; it just formed a bigger and bigger pool of carriers. And, she thought, scratching the coarseness of the horse’s mane, it did not leave once lodged, did it, simply changed form and asked repeatedly for attention and care, as each year revealed a new knot to cry out and consider—smaller, sure, but never gone. Stillford, she thought to herself, as the sun grew high in the sky. My sweet Stillford, with his dirt art. My funny Lorraine, who danced to the lute so earnestly. Out of my body, these beautiful monsters.

It was ridiculous, at times, how many tears one body could produce.

A few hours into the afternoon, during a nap on the horse, who was eating clover in the inverted bell of a valley, the ring of trumpets awoke the woman. She jerked awake, recalling the sound from her childhood, when trumpets were the way news was delivered, and sure enough, across the field emerged a troop of human men and women on horseback, some walking, two trumpeting, one waving a bright-red flag. From what she could recall, a bright-red flag meant war.

Ho, woman! called the strapping man at the lead, and she did not have time to put on her cloak; even if she had, they’d take her horse, and she liked having the horse.

They trotted over, a whole mess of people, and she hadn’t looked at so many human faces together in years. How refined they were! How tiny and delicate! Those dot nostrils! Their hairless hands!

Are you lost? the head man asked, not unkindly. He wore a helmet wrought with silver swirled markings on the sides that seemed to speak of royalty.

No, she said, thank you. I’m on my way to the river.

This is ogre territory! said the man, sitting straighter. You’re not safe!

He turned to the others, beckoning them closer.

No, no, she said, waving him off. It’s fine. I’m skilled at hiding. I’ve been living in this territory for years.

Ho! he said, digging his hands into his horse’s mane. Years? And survived? You must help us, then! We sent out a scout earlier to look for mines, and we have not heard back. Did you see anyone?

Of course, one careful look at the horse and all would be revealed, but the man was very focused on her face, as if he had been trained in it.

No, she said.

You saw no danger? said the man.

Nothing but crows, she said.

Ogres eat people, said the man, leaning in.

To her annoyance, her eyes thickened with tears.

Ah! You’ve seen something?

She shook her head, tucking her hands under the saddle and feeling the horse’s warm coat beneath her, the large and living backside. No. I just heard a story once, of someone getting eaten, and I found it sad, she said. The tears tracked her cheeks.