Tom Robbins - Jitterbug Perfume

The burial mound was outside the city walls, in a field dotted with cow pies and large stones. The stones had been arranged geometrically in patterns that were supposed to mean something to the gods. Presumably, the cow pies had fallen at random, although then, as now, the division between what is random in nature and what is purposeful is extremely difficult to determine.

Warriors carried Alobar's body to the mound's summit, where a shallow indentation had been dug. After the body was laid in the hole, the councilmen covered it with dirt. They sprinkled mead on the grave. They chanted an incantation half as ancient as the stones in the field; words arranged, like the stones, in sensuous patterns; words that saber-toothed tigers may once have overheard. There were no tears, except the ones that Frol had shed back in the citadel yard. Death was not a weeping matter. The indentation in the mound-top represented the navel in the Great Belly. Alobar was back where he had begun. Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard.

Alobar was back where he had begun. But not for long. As soon as the funeral procession had wound, imitating the undulations of the Serpent, back through the gates of the city, Wren ran from the shadow of an upright stone and started frantically to dig him out. Only two feet of earth lay over him, so he was soon uncovered. She had a vessel of mead concealed in her cloak, part of which she used to clean dirt out of his mouth and nostrils. The remainder she poured down his throat. A potent beverage, the mead gradually counteracted the effects of the nightshade belladonna that she had placed in the egg. Since belladonna, in small amounts, will slow heartbeat, it had helped Alobar feign death. Wren also had stuffed the egg with algae that she had scooped off the surface of a stagnant pond. It was the algae that had given the green cast to his skin.

There had been no fatal poison in the egg Alobar devoured. Following a plan they had devised in the week between Noog's discovery and the execution ritual, Wren had secreted Noog's death egg in her bodice while she waited in the hut, substituting an egg filled with the algae and a nonlethal dose of nightshade belladonna.

Alobar was considerably dazed, but as soon as he demonstrated to Wren's satisfaction that his breathing was of sufficient velocity to billow the sails of his soul, she left him. “I must return ere I am missed. I have to prepare myself to receive my new husband.” The last she said matter-of-factly, but she rubbed his nose poignantly before fleeing.

As dazed as he was, Alobar had the presence of mind to let his body roll down the slope of the burial mound, which was starting to be illuminated by a rising moon. He came to rest in shadow. He also came to rest in a more or less fresh cow pie — but he uttered no oath. I may be mad , he thought, but I prefer the shit of this world to whatever sweet ambrosias the next might offer .

East was good enough for the morning star, it would be good enough for Alobar. He should not travel westward, for the Romans, with whom his people had traditionally skirmished, controlled the westlands, and for a long time now the Romans had been increasingly under the spell of some borrowed god who sounded like particularly bad news. Modern Romans insisted that there was only one god, a notion that struck Alobar as comically simplistic. Worse, this Semitic deity was reputed to be jealous (who was there to be jealous of if there were no other gods?), vindictive, and altogether foul-tempered. If you didn't serve the nasty fellow, the Romans would burn your house down. If you did serve him, you were called a Christian and got to burn other people's houses down. There was a long list of enjoyable things Christians could not do, however, including keeping more than one wife. “Come to think of it,” mused Alobar, “that might not be such a bad idea.”

Ah, but Christians were meddlers, and a man on the run from death, duty, and who knew what else? was a man who didn't need meddling with. It was possible that he had insulted quite a few deities of his own acquaintance, so he didn't relish some aggressive foreign hothead getting in the act. Christians populated the south as well as the west, while up north the pebbles lay with their faces already in snow, and Alobar had neither furs nor spear. It was settled. He would journey into that east whose pinchers had so recently released October's buoyant moon.

When the last spasm of nausea had subsided, when all traces of dirt and drug had washed away and his blood flowed melodious and clear, he stood, stretched, gathered his burial wraps about him, and set off at a trot toward the east — and the multiplying unknown.

As he trotted, he could hear in the distance the drunken din of the city, where his people simultaneously lamented the broken mirror and celebrated their rescue from feebleness and decay. Then he turned upwind, and the night was suddenly quiet. He paused to look back. The red glow of torches and bonfires caused the city to resemble a miniature sun a-setting. Let it set , he thought. A fresh one will rise in the east . Nevertheless, there were pangs in his heart. Mixed in that caldron of sound that had just faded might have been the feline wails of Wren, who, no doubt, lay with the new ruler beneath his ermine covers. Did Mik snore at the foot of the bed? he wondered. All of Alobar's wives belonged to his successor, if he wanted them, but Mik was eternally Alobar's and would have been buried with him had he not demanded, prior to his “execution,” that the hound be spared. “I would vow to retrieve you, Mik,” whispered the former king, “but as sorely as I miss you, I will not be back. Not one companion from my reign will I ever see again.”

He was quickly to be proven wrong.

He was now at the threshold of the dark forest. Unarmed, he dare not venture deep inside lest enterprising beasts process his flesh into sausage cakes and brew their winter's ale from his blood. Therefore, his plan was to lie down just inside the tree line and sleep until daybreak. At earliest light he would strike out, attempting to transverse the wood before it again grew black. Having a terrible thirst, however, a need to rinse his mouth of the accumulated residue of mead, mud and egg surprise, he decided to first go in as far as the spring and drink. Then he would retire to a resting place less convenient to the wolf kitchens.

The spring bubbled in a little glade, a clearing lit like an altar by the ever-ceremonious moon. So bright was the glade that Alobar could watch his shadow slide along the promenade of moss and kneel with him to drink. “Me and my shadow,” he said wistfully, anticipating the popular song by a thousand years. “Me and my—” What was that? His shadow had attracted a second, a companion, shadow, slightly smaller than itself though nonetheless human in shape. If his shadow was no longer alone, did that mean that he, too, enjoyed companionship? And if his shadow's shadow friend aimed a shadow spear, could Alobar conclude that a spear was pointed at him, as well?

Still on his knees, Alobar whirled and lunged at the place where the shadow had led him to expect he would find legs. Yes, those were legs he grabbed! He yanked them hard, hoping to upset the body they supported before it could shove a blade through one rack of his rib cage and out the other. He felt the spear point graze first his cheek and then his shoulder, as the being who wielded it crashed down on top of him. Alobar no longer knew how the shadows were behaving, but as for himself, there was an attacker straddling his head. Disgust mingled with fear as he labored to withdraw his face from his adversary's crotch. In the struggle, some part of him, most likely his nose, fired a message to his brain. The message contained a single word: female!