Chapter 6 - finale

No one came to fetch her from below the stage, and so she stayed there until the act was over, laying in the darkness, hearing the applause. At that time, the Wizard of Lazu, as the papers and billboards called him, joined her in the musty-smelling cache where things hidden were cast. He crept down there, observing her unseen – but not unsmelt, for Amos was able to detect through the musty scents of the hideaway the man's natural musk. He'd been sweating a lot onstage, in those bright lights. His odor excited her.

“It is a good thing I was standing on the trap door,” she remarked in a most seductive tone.

“It was as fortuitous as your dropping the box was unfortunate.”

“This is the second time you've been there after I've fallen,” Amos said.

“In my experience, that means there will most likely be a third,” the Wizard replied, coming closer. “How you do you like it here, in this 'parallel dimension'?”

“It is cozy; but a bit cold.” Amos patted the cushion next to her. The Wizard came to stand next to her, but did not climb up next to her. He took a good, long look at her.

“You must be the one my mother warned me about,” he said, with a smirk.

“And you must the one the Wizard informed me of,” Amos answered.

Her companion smiled, his eyes twinkling with lively notions, a myriad of mischief. “And what Wizard would that be?” he enquired.

Amos cocked her head. “Don't you know?” she replied, coquettishly.

The Wizard shrugged. “I know so many; as I know also very many of their female assistants. Let me say that few if any of them have made such an impression on me as you have done tonight.”

“My clumsiness is an art form,” Amos said, quoting what her Aunt Mere always said about her. “I've been cultivating it for years.”

“I know talent when I see it,” the Wizard said, still grinning. It wasn't the same lonely smile he'd shown her in Aulo Phonox. This was almost a younger, more boyish version of that man – but perhaps it was just another part he was playing, another disguise.

As if reading her mind, the Wizard pulled off his fake beard. He removed his top hat, too, so he could place the delicate hair piece, as well as a few other props, into it. Amos watched as he put a pocket watch in there as well, and pulled out a wad of colourful silk scarves from his britches in order to add them to the collection.

“How did you manage to infiltrate the odeum crew?” the Wizard asked next. “Are you a spy?”

Amos caught her breath. Carl had warned her that this man – Leni, he had named him – would know things that most would say was unknowable.

“It didn't require a lot of spying,” Amos confessed, dodging the demand for a direct answer to his question. “I could spy right away what your employer wanted in exchange for my admission.”

Leni considered this with a moment of thought as he removed his cufflinks and, one by one, tossed them into his hat, which sat now upon the cushion next to Amos' naked thigh.

“I'm impressed,” he said. “Carl is usually only compelled to feed his seed to women when he visits the cabaret, never here, in the odeum. I hope he was gentle with you; I hear his member is quite large!”

“He is thick in the knees, as they say; and also, he knows how to bend them.”

“In that case, can I offer you something to freshen your breath? Some wine?” Here, Leni produced a bottle of sparkling wine from his top hat, which held no longer any of the articles he'd placed in there, but only a cluster of glistening cubes of ice.

“I've had enough to drink already. Your patron is most attentive.”

“Very well,” Leni put the uncorked bottle back in its place.

“Why do they call him the Caul?” Amos asked as she watched his movements.

“The reasons are three, although only two are well-known. The first, is that he wears a skull-cap to keep his bald head warm in the cruel winters of Caza; the second is that his theatre is exactly like a press where veneers are laid – in fact, the theatre was called the Cauldron when it first opened – were you aware?”

“Yes, I knew that. And the third reason?”

“Well, I would be no magician of any worth, if I gave everything away, now would I?” Leni said, smirking at her.

Amos slid off the cushion, getting on her knees for the third time that night and said, “What can I do to compel you to confide in me?” She knew that Leni wanted to play, was excited by her promiscuous aptitude.

“You can put this on,” Leni said, tossing her a black hood, which was used during his tricks whenever he needed a blindfold – either for himself, or a volunteer.

Amos, confounded by this, and a bit confused, did nevertheless as she was bid. Inside the hood, all was dark. It smelled of some faint and pleasant perfume.

She heard Leni speak to her then in a whisper. “Now you are in my net,” he said. “I can choose to remove what keeps you in the dark, or I can let it smother you. Which choice shall I make?”

“If you must make the choice, then you don't deserve it.”

“Well said, my dear.” Leni then tore the hood from her pretty head, displacing her hair, which was already hopelessly mussed from her fight at the door, from the rain, and from the activities that granted her access. “But consider this – you must first make the choice to have the caul removed. You must choose Life, by coming into this world and opening your eyes. You must deserve the gift that you have been given; otherwise, you will find your light extinguished!”

Leni fucked her that night, for the first time. Under the stage, upon the cushion where she'd landed, he spent long, blissful moments with his face pressed between her legs, in between bouts of sticking it to her where he'd made her so wet with his tongue.

As he thrust into her, devouring her with those intense eyes of his, he muttered and mumbled some few things over and over again:

“That's it; it's so warm. What a good princess you are!”

Or, when he turned her over, and gave her a slap on her behind:

“That's a sweet, pretty arse you've got.”

Amos noticed that his accent had entirely evaporated: gone were the funny 'v's in place of 'w's, and there was no more brogue about his 'r's – although she swore he did purr a little after he came within her.

She smiled then, beneath him, playing her hand through his sweat-soaked hair.

“I'm quite the little strumpet tonight," Amos told her new lover, reflecting on her two different men had given her their seed in two different place.

“In my experience,” Leni murmured once more, “These things always tend to happen in threes.”

“I wonder if that means someone else is going to violate my 'sweet, pretty arse' before the night is through? That Folo wasn't bad looking...”

Leni chuckled. “I've already invited him to,” he said. “He should be here any moment.”

Amos snorted with laughter, thinking he must be joking. She slapped his own ass – which was also rather fine – with the hand that wasn't entangled in his hair. The Wizard wasn't expecting this, however, and he jumped; still semi-hard within her, Amos felt him flex his member in a most satisfying way.

It was at that moment that the door to the hideaway opened and Folo appeared carrying in some props. Leni lifted his head to look at his little strumpet, his princess, and he gave her a wink mixed with a grin; then he rolled over, bringing her on top, commencing a second round for himself, while simultaneously inviting the usher over to give Amos her thirds.

Afterwards, Leni and Amos retired to his accommodations above the odeum. He cracked some oysters fished out of the Lapsiam; Amos knew what that meant, and ate a good number of the slimy, shucked shellfish.

“I can see you're something of a modern woman,” Leni observed with a sly smile.

“You mean that I like sex?” Amos asked point-blank. “My parts feel just as good when you touch them as when I touch yours.”

“Is that what you want, to touch my parts?”

“Hey, baby – you can hide your rabbit in my hat, anytime!”

“That's my girl!”

Amos could sense immediately that this was the place she belonged – not in the haunted House on the cliffs, not in the employ of Sevo Sala, and certainly not married off to some lout or fool like Opho, or worse! She knew that Caza was the place for her; but only now did she perceive that its motley underbelly was where she would fit right in.

“It's not like a gentleman to esteem a girl who declares herself easy.”

“Easy? I wouldn't say that. 'Determined' is a better word.”

“You're not exactly a man of the times, are you?”

“Ha! You can say that again!”

That was when the shucking knife slipped off the knobby shell of the oyster and sliced his thumb open. Leni winced and put wrapped his thumb immediately in a clean kerchief.

Amos liked seeing him like this, vulnerable, injured. She liked to know that he couldn't foreseen everything, including his own pain; and also that he couldn't make anything he liked – or in this case, disliked – disappear.

“I'll have to teach you the art of being clumsy,” Amos said as he went to fetch some tonic to disinfect the wound. She grabbed the last oyster he'd managed to crack and slurped up its juicy, salty contents. “The trick, you see, is to save up your until it explodes forth in the most spectacular of ways.”

She put a heavy accent on the word explodes.

Leni couldn't believe his luck!

“I'll teach you a few tricks of my own, in exchange!” he called out from the other room.

Amos smiled. “It's a deal,” she declared. “Shall I sew you up? I'm actually quite good with a needle and thread.”

“Not necessary.”

“Then I can help take your mind off of it. I know that your eager for your third of the night. Can't stop at two, now can we?”

“Haha – you've got a point there – I am a point behind you!”

“Is it a competition?” Amos asked. “In that case, I think if you really want to tie me in my score, you'll have to go back down into the odeum to gratify your manager with your mouth!”

“What makes you think I haven't already?” Leni joked.“I only got this gig in the first place by gagging!”

Leni came back into the room with a bandage wound round his thumb.

Not too long after that, he climbed on top of her right there at his little wooden kitchen table and got the third and best round in. In their thrashing, they knocked over the plate of oysters which went clattering to the floor, while the shellfish – both shucked and non – were scattered about underfoot.

Leni glanced at them. He was known to be a reader of futures. He had given the ministers, princes, and queens of all Oaga their fortunes by reading tea leaves, cards, and bones – but while those had all been shams, he found that now the oysters in their seemingly random fall displayed upon the wooden floorboards a future that meant he would face more wounds, far many more because of this girl, but that Amos would be there, and she would make good in her promise to furnish him sutures.

“The following morning,” Amos concluded, “he asked me who Sevo was, and whether he was to be considered as competition. He wasn't worried about Carl or Folo, of course. He knew he had me; but he wanted to know if anyone had me, also. I was, quite naturally, still under the thumb of the very powerful mobster-”

“The Lobster!” Colm sputtered, snickering like a schoolboy.

Amos glanced at the Commander, who by this time was utterly wrecked on brandy and whatever Leni had administered to him; then she looked at her husband to say with a sly look of the eye that maybe he shouldn't have gotten their new ally completely plastered!

Leni of course was also quite drunk right now, and his pupils were dilated. She could only imagine what he had taken to bring on this state of muddled euphoria – but she knew at least that he had a sound reason for doing so. He always did, and no single act of his did not serve a multitude of purposes, which were often only partially revealed, if ever at all. Amos suspected in fact that Leni moved with a certain grace that he put absolute faith in – like a cat that takes a leap, with complete trust in its whiskers to sense dangers, claws to catch a hold, and tail to strike a balance; and that perhaps some of his motives were actually unclear even to him. Life was a dance, an act, and Leni knew all the moves perfectly. He coordinated every limb, invoked every word, and provoked a host of gestures just at the right time. How he had this ability to see everything before it happened, Amos in her two years with him had not yet figured nor reckoned, cajoled, coaxed or conned out of him.

She didn't always try that hard. She enjoyed the surprises that he led her toward, and the tricks he pulled to delight her and others. She loved him for these things, for this was the dance that he was leading her in. No one else seemed to be alive like he was; no one else could hear the music. Luckily, despite having two left feet, Amos proved rather apt at keeping up. She was a skilled follower.

She had Sevo Sala to thank for that.

Naturally, Colm knew all about the Lobster Mobster, for he was one of the richest, most cunning, and minacious men in all of Caza. His family, with a wealth built generations ago on lobster fishing and importation, with many corrals constructed on the rivers both to the languid west, and the langostina-infested east, past the cataracts, and as far out as the Falls.

Looking once again at Colm, who was so red in the face from the drink and mirth that he looked almost like a cross or cousin of the claw-fish that cooked up a brilliant scarlet, Amos shook her head. She had seen men like him lose themselves in such ways; the most modest and tightly-wound men sometimes became devils or dervishes when they'd imbibed enough to bring on a state of unbridled libertarianism and immemorable inebriation.

Amos needed to get out of here. She looked at the boy, Obuc, for sympathy or perhaps some breed of help. He'd been lost in a reverie that no doubt involved a string of sexy cabaret dancers in slinky costumes being sodomized. The poor lad came to his senses when Amos cleared her throat loudly, and he shook his head in an entirely different way than what Amos kept doing. He didn't, however, have the presence of mind to cover up the prominent erection that was poking up within his trousers.

Amos stood up, as if that was her cue.

“Well, I don't need any Stanzas or Wizards to tell me that the time has come for me to take my leave of you all. Commander, I trust that you've received enough information from me to begin your investigation; if you need to call on me, I'm sure you'll be able to trace my location.”

At the mention of time, Colm struggled to sit up. “What's the time?” he barked, as if suddenly concerned that he might have missed a crucial appointment.

“It's the same time that it always is,” Leni lamented. “It is neither then nor when, not afore nor after, only now, or near-about, anyway; only now it is time that has forgone what it has not entirely forgotten, for it is for tomorrow that we begin practicing for what goes on before today.”

“I think you have forgotten something,” Amos said, extending her gloved hand to her husband, who was horizontal on the divan, or near-about, anyway. “You told me when I first met you that I was to take you home immediately, if ever I caught you spouting poetry.”

“You've been poetry-izing all evening,” Leni slurred drunkenly.

“In this case, what is good for the goose, is poisonous for the gander.”

“Good thing, then, that I'm a drake!” Leni said as he took her hand and sprang from the sofa. He put his arm around his bride's waist, letting it be known to the Commander and his inspired but somewhat baffled aide that he planned to go directly home and reenact some of those unspeakable acts that Amos had so easily spoken of.

Colm, oblivious, was muttering to himself. Holding his pocket-watch, he moved now in an agitated state, trying to collect his thoughts. “She's going to flay me tonight...” Amos heard him say. The Commander picked up the broken mermaid that Leni had placed on the low table by the hearth. “I can't believe I lost track of time!”

“Not to worry, Commander,” Leni said with a flourish of his hand. “Luckily, Time is keeping very good track of you!”

The magician smiled at his wife then, showing her lips and teeth that were stained blue from the nanpria residue, in what he hoped was a winning leer but had in its wise a look grisly that gave her only repugnance and grue. Had he planned for this, too, she couldn't say – but she sincerely hoped he had a cure for it, as there was no way she was kissing him, or letting him go down on her with that mouth as it was.

There's no way I'm waking up tomorrow with a pussy that looks like it belongs to a corpse, she thought as they left Colm, left his assistant – one in a stupor, and the other stupefied - and staggered out of the office. Here, Leni poured out a pungent potion from a glass vial into his pocket handkerchief. Inhaling its fumes, he came to himself, and stood upright once more, entirely sober now, but still stained in such a way as it looked as though he'd been kissing with a lascivious squid.

“That's a pity,” Amos intoned girlishly. “I was hoping to ask you some pertinent questions before the sooth-serum wore off.”

“You can always ask them now,” Leni replied.

“But the answers will vary so greatly. There are times, my sweet, when the truth interests me more than a little mystery.”

“Barter then, shall we? I'll answer every one of your questions, if you answer me all of mine.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Who is the man in the cave?”

“I've told you: a Wizard.”

“But I was not there; I did not catch you. So, what – have you lied?”

“No, I told the Commander the truth: the Wizard is you – or at least he looks and acts like you.”

“Most intriguing.”

“Is it my turn to ask now?”

“Indeed! Ask me anything except what you know I have no answer to.”

“You have an answer for everything, Leni – but that's not the same as telling me the truth.”

“The story is often more interesting than the history, my love. People aren't moved by the truth; they want something far more fascinating.”

Amos decided to cut right to it. All of this circumlocution was just Leni being ridiculous. 

“What's written in your great Book?” she asked.

“Words, mainly. The occasional lewd drawing of you and a horse.”

“Leni!”

“Well, sometimes it's a donkey. I've animated parts of it, so that if you flip through the corners of the book you get to see a little cartoon depicting you leading the beast on with a carrot in a most creative way.”

“Leni, please!”

“What? It's done very artfully. I don't do anything half-assed when it comes to donkeys.”

“Har har. You're not going to tell me, are you?”

“Will you tell me the rest of the verses you learned in the cave?”

“When the time is right.”

“Who decides when that is?”

“You do, I suppose. You gave me the stanzas, down in the dark.”

“I did no such thing. I was not there.”

“Your eye is quick, and you can perceive the veil; but I don't think that you can spot yet what lies behind it, no? That must just slay you, eh, Leni my love?”

“Will you not tell me, my love? What else did he say to you, this Wizard who stole my face?”

“Is that what you believe?”

“I'll believe anything you tell me.”

“How appropriate. Since you believe in nothing but what you come up with in your own mind, I shall leave you with only those ideas to play with.”

Amos strode ahead down the corridor, a little pissed off with Leni for not believing her. The magician sauntered along after her.

Neither of them noticed the figure following furtively behind, listening intently to every word.