Rain Washes Off All the Other Colors by Tethys Resort

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Flights

For the Queens of the Quill Challenge

The Music

By Mirabai

My friend, the stain of the Great Dancer has penetrated my body.

I drank the cup of music, and I am hopelessly drunk.

Moreover I stay drunk, no matter what I do to become sober.

Rana, who disapproves, gave me one basket with a snake in it.

Mira folded the snake around her neck, it was a lover's necklace, lovely!

Rana's next gift was poison: 'This is something for you, Mira.'

She repeated the Holy Name in her chest, and drank it, it was good!

Every name He has is praise; that's the cup I like to drink, and only that.

'The Great Dancer is my husband,' Mira says, 'rain washes off all the other colors.'

https://allpoetry.com/poem/14327827-The-Music-by-Mirabai

English version by Robert Bly

 

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“Geil.”  Her mother spoke quietly, sitting under the mango tree on a blanket.  “I will not see you again except in dreams.”

Geil nodded.  It was a long way from the Villa in the City of Spices to the House of the North King next to the Sea, and her mother faded a little more with each passing year.  Faster and faster now.  “Mother.”  Her eyes filled with tears that she let fall, landing with tiny plops on her crossed legs. 

“Be brave.  Do not forget who you are: Nâluphel, proud princess of lost Numenor.”  Her mother’s eyes met hers, the same clear gray, and she sighed sadly.  “It may be that the North King will grow to love you as your father loves me, bless you with children.  Maybe even as one of the Faithful recognize you as one of the Hidden.  But of all my children, I have dreamed of you alone on the Sea…” 

“I will try to be brave.  I love you Mother.”

Her mother’s hand was cool as it swept across her cheek and then pulled her into a tight hug.  They lay together crying as the sun set over the hills she would cross tomorrow.

***

Osgiliath was better. 

A trade town on a river, like the City of Spices.  Unlike the City of Spices, tall stone with tiny gardens.  Away from the Sea and the nightmares it provoked.  She did not have her mother’s gift, to dream the future but she had hated Pelagir.  The court had been full of women who mocked her halting, accented Sindarin and Westron.  The docks and bay had smelled of dead and dying fish: the smell of industry they had assured her. 

The City of Spices had been at the cross roads of the great Trade Road east and the rivers.  There had been fishing there too, but she did not remember the docks, boats, or market ever smelling like they had been left to rot. 

Worst of all had been the gulls, ever mourning with their cries over the city. 

Still, she might have learned to live there if it had not been for the King of the North. 

She had expected him to lie with her at least a few times, enough to bear him children.  She thought that was why she was in the trade agreement.  Instead he had waited the customary three years, and then quietly but summarily told her to move. 

Somewhere, anywhere. 

Just not the bedroom next to his.  Whose adjoining door he had never opened.  The door he had always left locked.

He had probably not expected her to move quite so far.

Geil laughed as she spun through the empty hallway, feeling free.  There were servants, even now she could hear them in the other side of the mansion unpacking and opening the rooms.  But here she was Queen and ruler and Lady of the House.  Here there would be no one to tell her not to wear the colors of the Lady of Pity or “misunderstand” her requests to stop bedecking her with too much jewelry; like a concubine instead of a wife.  There would be no questions, or sidelong looks speculating why she was not yet pregnant with an heir. 

This mansion could be like the women’s quarters of the Villa, if she wished. 

One of the noblewomen from one of the ruling families of Osgiliath stepped into the hallway.  “Your Highness?”  The noblewoman curtsied, dipping low in obvious embarrassment.  “I am very sorry, but your private rooms have vermin.  They’ll need to be removed before we can finish unpacking.”

“Vermin?”  Geil visualized the scorpions, spiders and little jumping rats common to the City of Spices.  Surely not.  Perhaps the large rats of the waterfront in Pelagir?  Or the gulls, who had at one point nested on a cornice across the courtyard from her bedroom and driven her half-crazy with their croaking? 

The noblewoman looked at her hands.  “A nest of cats.”  Her nose wrinkled and her lip tucked up.  “They are under one of the big wardrobes and we’ll need to get some of the porters to move it to get them out.”

Cats?  Brushing aside the irrelevant thought that she didn’t know the word for a group of cats, but she was certain “nest” wasn’t it, she said, “Cats?  Are vermin?”

The noblewoman frowned back.  “Yes, your Highness.”

“Do they not kill rats and mice?”

“Yes, but they get everywhere and have no loyalty.”  The noblewoman sniffed delicately as she got into her subject.  “They do not obey commands and go where they please.  They break things and carry fleas and other pests into homes.”

Idly Geil wondered if the people of Gondor had ever heard of fleabane. 

“There are sayings, you know?” 

Geil looked blankly at the noblewoman.  “The three blessings of a housekeeper are cats, incense, and a broom?”  That was the only one she knew about cats.

The noblewoman looked aghast.  “No!  ‘Having a cat’s loyalty.’ Or ‘disobedient as a cat’.”

There was a yowl from down the hall and Geil stomped off toward her new bedroom.  One of the servants was trying to poke the cats out from under the large wardrobe with a broom handle, swishing the stick back and forth with vigor. 

There were thumps as the broom connected with bodies under the furniture.

“Stop!”  The room froze, except for the sound of an angry cat.  And below that, the pitiful and terrified noises of kittens.  In a sudden fury, Geil stomped over to the servant and yanked the broom out of unresisting hands.  She threw it to the floor.

“But your Highness,” the noblewoman had followed her into the room, “we need to remove the cats.”

Geil whirled back and snarled, “People who abuse animals are cursed by the Gods.”  She looked at the servant.  “Get out of my sight.” 

He fled. 

She turned back to the noblewoman.  “Do you treat all your faithful animals this way?  Do you also mistreat your dogs and horses when they do not obey your wishes?”  The noblewoman cringed at her tone but Geil continued fiercer yet.  “These cats are now mine.  Harm them and I will see that the curses of the Gods come to rest where they are deserved.”  She took a deep breath, grasping for patience.  “Now.  Have my possessions brought in and put away, I shall deal with the cats.”

The noblewoman fled.  Geil could hear her barking orders at the servants, to hurry with the boxes.

Geil sat down on the end of the unmade bed, suddenly very tired.  She looked at the now silent wardrobe.  Yelling, threatening like that was ill done and her mother had always told her to look to her temper. 

She sat quietly while the rest of her things were brought in.  As her dresses were placed in the wardrobe.  As her one small chest of things from the City of Spices was placed at the foot of the bed.  She moved to a convenient chair as they made up the bed. 

She sat in silence as they made their skittish farewells, expecting more fury. 

She sat in silence as the servants went downstairs, into their own domain. 

Finally, as the sun went down and the stars began to appear, she whispered in Adûnaic, “It is safe now.  They are all gone.”

Silence reigned in the room.

Geil said, “Would it help if I sang a lullaby?” 

She smiled at the wardrobe and began one from childhood, one that her mother had always sung.  A lullaby, or maybe a hymn.  Telling the names of all the Gods, all the Lords and Ladies.  She had gotten to the verse about the Lord of Water, both life giving and drowning, when a pair of eyes gleamed in the shadows of the wardrobe.  The mother cat, come to see what she was doing. 

More eyes followed until they had all emerged.  One black and white mother cat, and her three black kittens. 

Geil smiled, “Why hello.”

The mother cat glanced at the changed room.  “Is this now your domain?”

Geil stared at the cat.  She had never had a cat, or any other animal, speak back.  “How is it that I hear you speak?”  In Adûnaic.  She had never had any talents such as her mother or siblings.  And she would expect cats of Osgiliath to speak Westron or Sindarin, the twinned languages of Gondor. 

The mother cat gave a slow, friendly blink.  “How do you know that I speak?  And not your own loneliness and isolation?  From what I have seen, you have no friends here.”

No friends in Pelagir either.

“Perhaps we may become friends.”  The mother cat sounded quite untroubled for a creature who had earlier been attacked with a broom. 

“Do you have a name?” 

The mother cat purred and began to wash along one hind leg, sprawled out.  “My name is my own, I will not share it.”  She nibbled at the middle of the leg.  “But you may name these ones, perhaps they will stay with you.”

***

The first time she tried it was after an exhausting afternoon of arguing with the noblewomen who had been assigned to “help her join civilized society”. 

Geil sighed.  Meeting other people, the noble families who had remained when the King moved to Pelagir, yes.  But decorating in a “civilized manner”, no.

She did not want rugs or hangings or tapestries on every wall and floor.  Despite what the women said, she understood quite well that there were no running spiders or scorpions here.  She wasn’t certain how to politely say that unless you were a merchant of ill-repute, houses should have few trinkets and baubles.  Wealth and power was displayed in well-chosen taste rotating through the seasons, not number. 

And the colors of the tapestries made her skin crawl. 

And there were the cats.  Who in their right mind would put draperies everywhere and then be surprised when cats climbed them?

Tim and Gos were sprawled into a fuzzy pile on the cushion of her armchair when she flung herself into her bedroom.  She flopped across the bed before staring across at them.  “I wish I could be a cat like you, instead of a Queen.”  Geil smiled, visualizing a life of lying in warm sunny garden nooks and chasing birds. 

Gos yawned.  “You could sneak out.”

Sneak out? 

“The cook does not come here and will not call for dinner until the sun sets.  The flower lady and the striped lady have left and will not return today.”  Gos licked at a foot, carefully washing between pink toes.  “No one will notice if you take our way out.”

Tim slithered out from under Gos.  He hopped onto the open windowsill and Geil walked to the window to watch him. 

He jumped down onto a little ledge, probably two hand spans in diameter, and walked along to the corner where her room met a storage closet.  He leaped lightly into the tree shading the corner and clambered down before looking back up.  “I will wait.”

To go out.  To be free, like she had been in the City of Spices. 

Just for a little while.

Geil flew over to her wardrobe.  The noblewoman had filled her closet up with dresses that “suited her station”.  Too tight, too colorful unless she was trying to compete with the tapestries, too expensive for day to day wear.  But she had noticed the underdresses looked like the clothing of the women she saw on the street.  And a patterned scarf, to tie back over her hair like the tradeswomen she had seen in Pelagir.  Soon enough she was stifling giggles as she tiptoed down the ledge like she had the child’s balance beam while learning to dance. 

The tree was a little harder, but still easy enough.  The mansion the garden belonged to was empty of all except a tiny upkeep staff. 

And Gondor didn’t seem to have ever heard of assassins. 

Or maybe the King hoped an assassin would fix his problematic Queen?  Geil made a mental note to set up some of the tiny noise traps her mother had taught her, and darted across the overgrown yard and out into the deserted alley that backed the other side. 

Tim strolled past her, walking out of the alley and turning the corner.

So she followed Tim, trying to look like a woman of Osgiliath. 

The roadway outside the alley was busy, full of people pulling carts.  Horses are not allowed in the upper levels of the city with their steep and dangerous streets.  Directly ahead Tim skirted a man with a barrow calling, “Fish!  Fresh fish!”  She ducked a little, trying to blend with the crowd, as the cook’s helper darted out.  But the cook’s helper only had eyes for the fish, and Geil continued onward unnoticed. 

She went all the way down to a little sheltered park at the end of the block.  Kiw sat under a spindly tree there and she rested, patting him and Tim before making her way back.  No one gave her a second glance as she walked back up the street, but she thought maybe she should have a basket or bucket next time she went out.