For the Second Time

Follow this back to: Faded Away

BB wondered if Mab would recognize these people, understand the play of gestures and sounds, the position that went between them, the way they placed themselves relative to each other.

The courtyard was roughly square though there were no sharp angles in it anywhere. All the surfaces were rounded, smoothed plaster, much of it brightly colored, painted in vivid blues, reds and yellows. There was a structure in each corner of the courtyard, each structure an integral part of the wall, each one different, separated from the others. Entering by the gate there was a structure on the left with windows looking over the courtyard but no visible door; on the right was a structure with no visible windows but it had an oval shaped door just a few steps away from the courtyard gate; it was slightly larger than any of the others. Opposite the gate on the right was a slightly smaller structure with a door. Opposite the gate on the left was a still smaller structure though, unlike the others, it had two stories.

The two younger men and one of the women went and sat on a platform placed between the structures on the right; the other two women and the older man went and sat on a platform between the structures on the left. The hearth was between the structures opposite the gate. Various plates, trays, jugs, cups, spoons and other utensils, many loaded with food, were carried from the hearth to the two platforms.

BB watched them wondering what they would do. As they sat, a woman on each platform started putting food into large bowls, handing a bowl to each of the other people on the platform. The younger woman was handing out the food on the left side platform. She handed a bowl to the other woman, then the old man and then filled another and stood, walking over to where BB sat by the courtyard gate, almost hidden behind the gate, watching the younger woman and the other people on the platform with her. She put the bowl down beside him.

When he reached for it, she laughed and shook her head, beckoning him to follow her. For the second time that day, he followed her. For the second time that day, people watched him, some of them talking angrily.

He watched the younger woman, putting the others out of his mind, away from any place where they could touch him; watching them from a distance so he would know if he needed to act. He followed the younger woman across the courtyard and she led him to the huge pot. She pointed to it making rubbing motions with her hands, one against another, rubbing her face with her hands.

BB was fascinated by the texture of her skin, the firmness and smoothness of the skin of her face against the skin of her hands, the texture and color of it. For a moment, he was completely lost, watching her skin with all the intensity of his being. She laughed again and tapped him on the arm. He blinked and looked at her.

He quite understood what she wanted; he was just too overwhelmed by her in the moment to be able to act on what he knew. He bent over looking at himself in the small bowl of water she had drawn from the huge pot. Looking at his reflection and hers, touching each other in the image in the water. He reached out and gently touched her face, shattering the picture as he did so. He wrapped the water round his hands, taking her image with it. He lost himself again in the touch of the water, remembering the touch of her hand on her face. He closed his eyes and splashed his own face feeling the softness of the water on his lips, in the crevices of his eyes, running down his face over his chin and down his neck.

He blinked again when she touched him on the arm, handing him a cloth. He dried himself and stood. As he did so, she reached out and touched him just at the point of the jaw a little below the ear on the left side of his face. She smiled at him, turned her head slightly to the right, watching him all the while. He reached out his right hand and gently touched her where she touched him. Feeling still the echo of the gesture on his own skin as it reverberated through his body, making his hand tremble. She turned her head back again as he touched her, bringing her chin in contact with the inside of his palm.

She spoke, breaking the hold between them. She stepped back smiling at him and pointed to the bowl of food still over by the gate and turned away, leaving him as she walked over to the platform to the left of the gate joining the old man and the other woman.

BB stood alone for a moment, watching her walk away. It was as though she surrounded him in a bubble of silence. The sounds of the courtyard intruded on him as she left him; the old man and the woman talking together, pointedly ignoring them; the two men and the woman on the other platform talking loudly, the two men evidently intending him to hear what they said even though he could not understand it.

BB was hungry and thirsty. He took a mug, filled it from the large pot and walked over to his food by the gate, sitting down behind the gate, taking a spoon and eating, quietly continuing to watch the younger women, the other woman and the old man on the platform. The other three were invisible to him hidden by the structure with the door near the gate. The door opened just by him. He felt threatened by it but took comfort in the food and the occasional glance from the younger woman on the platform. She looked at him now and then as she ate her evening meal and chatted with the other two people on the platform.

It was late in the day and the evening sun had long since sunk below the level of the courtyard walls. The courtyard was now in complete darkness apart from the remaining glow of the hearth where the food was prepared and the lamps on the platforms where the people sat.

The younger woman picked up a lamp and walked over to BB carrying a blanket. She gave it to him and then beckoned him over to the other side of the gate where there was a small, windowless structure. It had an opening giving access to the inside. The opening did not have a door. Inside were some pots of uncertain purpose and fire wood, stacked for the hearth. Fortunately, there was not much fire wood as she indicated he should sleep there, miming sleep with her hands to one side of her face, her eyes closed. She also indicated he should take the pots and stack them outside the door.

There were five of them, each with a tightly fitting wooden lid. He picked them up one at a time. He dislodged one of the lids, as he did so, he realized from the smell what they were for and simultaneously solved another problem for himself as he had been getting increasingly uncomfortable as he sat after the meal, contemplating the needs of the body and wondering what he should do about them. She nudged the smallest of the pots towards him with her foot and picked up one of the others, turning her back on him, walking back to the platform, calling out to the woman who had been sitting with the two men.

The Day in his hotness,
The strife with the palm;
The Night in her silence,
The Stars in their calm

The three women gathered in the center of the courtyard and danced a slow, quiet dance, speaking to the night air words not for any one person present with them.

The men acknowledged them with grunts and drumming on the platforms. They were careful not to interrupt the flow of sound but added emphasis and punctuation to it. The grunts and the drumming came in the gaps between the words, in the pause between one step and another, in the moment in which a face turned, shoulders leant this way or that, in which the eyes closed, waiting for the night to come and accept the sounds they gave out into the courtyard around them.

BB found himself asleep sitting in the door of the gatehouse, his eyes wide open, his mind gone from him, dwelling in the space created by the women out in the courtyard. He watched them and watched himself in a dream that came over him as he turned back to the blanket laid out in the gatehouse, lay down and slept.

He was aware of the other men also leaving the platforms; the two younger men went into the structure on the right of the gate, appearing magically round the corner, giving visible evidence to their existence that previously had only been evident from the odd snatches of conversation he heard through the evening. The older man left the platform stepping down into the courtyard, carefully keeping his distance from the three women as he made his way across to the building opposite the gate on the right. The older man was alone. BB wondered, as he slipped into the dream, why the older man slept alone. His wonder expanded to encompass the relationship between the women and the men. The woman who sat with the two younger men seemed somehow connected with them, though BB couldn't see what the relationship might mean.

He did not see the woman; the eyes of his mind were closed in sleep. Only his senses still felt the movement in the courtyard and the structures around it. He did hear the woman connected to the two younger men make her way up the stairs to the room opposite the gate but on the left. The other two women went into the structure on the left of the gate, just by the gatehouse where BB slept. They both laughed and called out quietly to the woman in the room up the stairs.

She did not respond but tapped on the railing with her knuckles; a sharp penetrating sound that carried round the courtyard, an insistent, penetrating presence that drummed in his sleep, making its way into his awareness even as he slept, a summons that called out into the night. He turned and stirred, though he didn't wake, knowing the summons was not for him. BB was aware of one or other of the men in the structure on the right of the gate moving about inside; whispering, rubbing something, feet moving over the floor, sounds and fragrances wafting out into the courtyard, making their way into the house where she waited.

She called them and they came. She drew them to her like moths to a flame. They were helpless in the light of her life. They fluttered and moved around her, feeding her flame, casting giant shadows around themselves as they fluttered around her. Each of them worshiped her in turn, as they gave the dust off their wings to her, revealing the patterns of themselves to her, coming closer and closer till they fell, burnt and exhausted, back into the courtyard, returning to the structure by the gate.

To follow this thread in the story go to: Witnessed the End

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