milliways_bar | (no subject)

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The Trojan royal stables are all in an uproar as Hektor slips away from them; he pauses in the door, then shrugs a moment and comes the rest of the way in. If the goddess has called him, he is not going to argue. And anyway, he has offerings now: small tokens and gifts from the men of Ashgabat, but worth nearly a prince's ransom in Troy. He bows to the Bar, fist on brow, and stands tip-toe to place the silken purse and ivory carvings on the surface. "Thank you," he says as the offering vanishes, and then again as the loaded cup and plate appear. "It has been a hungry morning."

That said, he turns about him to find some suitable place to sit, and consider that which he has seen. But he would not mind company.

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Food!

Monkey is being tiny today, no more than two inches high, to see what it's like.

Mainly: slow.

When it becomes clear the food may all be gone before he gets there, he conjures a (suitably tiny) cloud, and zips over. "Hello!"

"Oh!" says Hektor, who has not seen this fellow in a while. "Hello, Monkey! How is it with you?"

"Everything is very big today," Monkey says.

This includes his voice, because Monkey likes to be heard and doesn't care about consistency. "How are you?"

One is best off not questioning magicians and pilgrims with sensational powers. Hektor simply assumes the voice is how it is supposed to be, and leaves it at that. "I am well, thank you. My father received visitors today from a country so far away that it lies even beyond Babylon, and they brought horses. Do you like figs at all? The goddess has given me plenty."

"Figs are excellent." Horses less so, at least in terms of deliciousness.

Monkey parks the cloud neatly on the table, and sits cross-legged. "I do not know where Babylon is, I think."

Hektor nods, selecting one of the figs and offering it to Monkey. "It is a city very far to the east and south of Troy," he says. "Do you have silk in your country? Because Babylon is on the road that the silk traders take, before they come to Troy or Egypt; the traders must spend a whole year coming west from the places where silk comes from, before they ever see the walls of Babylon."

"You will have a fortunate rebirth," he says automatically, and then: "Silk comes from the Middle Kingdom."

This fig is huge! Smallness is great. Monkey begins taking slow, head-sized nibbles. "That is where my master comes from. There are deserts west of there, and barbarians, and what else I don't know."

"Oh, I see," says Hektor. "Well, the men who came today are from a land of deserts and mountains, bounded on the west by the Hyrcanian ocean, and the mountains to the east of them only grow higher, and are filled with barbarians and monsters. So maybe the road east from their city would come to your master's lands eventually."

"Maybe," Monkey says. "There seem to be barbarians and monsters everywhere, though."

"No one has ever said the road is an easy road," Hektor points out; then, curious, he asks, "What sort of monsters?"

"Rakhshkshskxshkshas," Monkey says, with casual disregard for Sanskrit and all its speakers. "And White Bone Demonesses, and ogres, and wicked animal spirits. And things like flying coconuts with teeth inside, in two parts, that fly around and then come together and crush your head."

Hektor nods, and then frowns a little. "Please," he says, "what is a coconut?"

"It is a big hairy nut," Monkey says, and obligingly turns into one, breaking his size rules. The coconut rocks back and forth a little bit, but otherwise remains still.

"Oh!" says Hektor, bending down to peer at it more closely. Then, because he is curious, he pokes at the nut very carefully with one finger. But very carefully, because he does not want to anger Monkey by poking too hard.

The not-actually-a-coconut begins to buzz loudly, as if it was full of bees, and splits in half. There are bits of broken skull and teeth inside, and the pieces begin to hover and swoop around.

Hektor jerks his hand back swiftly, though he calms a little when he sees there are no actual bees.

And then tenses again, going wary as the pieces begin to fly about him. One hand goes to the little bronze dagger at his side, though he does not yet draw it.

The pieces swoop around in wide arcs, and then slam together; not on Hektor's head, because Monkey likes Hektor, but loudly, and close.

"That was not a coconut," Monkey says, when he's Monkey again. "That was the monster that looks like a coconut. Coconuts are for eating, and I am not."

"I would not have tried," says Hektor. "I only wanted to see what that felt like. I will not do that again, though."

"It was just a demonstration," Monkey says equitably. "I am not bothered by poking. There is a lot of fur."

"You should not be afraid of coconuts, either, anyway. They are tasty, and have milk you can drink. You just have to be careful about telling the difference."

"Ah, all right," says Hektor. And then frowns. "I did not see an udder on the monster. Where does the milk come from?"

"The female coconuts."

Duh.

"Oh," says Hektor. "All right. I'll remember that, then."

He hasn't heard of male and female plants, but then there are many things here that he has never heard of before, and in a kingdom with such monsters as this, who knows what the plants may be like?

"Oh, good." Monkey seems pleased.

"What kind of monsters do they have in your part of the world?"

"Sometimes there are giant boars in the mountains," Hektor says. "Great wild pigs so huge you would think they are from the ages of the Titans; if they once get a spear-head in them, they hate men ever after and are more dangerous than wolves or bears. The Kentaurs are like men above and horses below- I mean that you would see a man from the waist up, and all the body of a horse, and all four legs, and the tail, if you met one. Giant serpents, too, that you would take for dragons from the stories about them- although they cannot fly. And sea-monsters, fish as long as boats, with armor plates and teeth in their snouts such that you can only hunt them with spears, because no net can hold them."

"That sounds like my pilgrimage," Monkey says thoughtfully. "There is Pigsy, and the horse who was a dragon, and Sandy Priest was a river monster. And Tripitaka is a horse's ass often enough."

Hektor thinks of this, chewing at the inside of his cheek for a while. "Your pilgrimage was to recover holy writings," he says. "I don't think it would have been in our lands; someone would have heard of that..."

"No, we are not monsters," Monkey says hurriedly. "Well. We're not bad monsters."

"Sandy Priest has a necklace of human skulls, though," he adds after a moment, because it doesn't due to overly minimize your scariness.

"... he must be very tall," Hektor says, because he is trying to picture this and it is not very easy to fit more than one or two skulls around someone's neck before it starts to look all wrong.

Monkey hops off the table and changes shape again, this time becoming Sandy Priest; Sandy Priest looks like someone dredged the river bottom and poured into a vaguely man-shaped mold. There is a lot of mud, and a lot of hair, and a lot of teeth, and a lot of skulls. And a saffron robe, and prayer beads, and an earnestly brain-dead pious expression.

"Ai hyessou!" Hektor exclaims, one hand starting to come up in a sign against evil; he stops himself before he can start. "You are good at that."

He flicks back into his normal shape, but forgets to be small this time. "I have mastered the seventy-two transformations," he preens. "It is easy, really. Anyone can learn to do it, with practice and discipline."

Which does not explain how Monkey learned it.

"Who was your teacher?" Hektor asks curiously. "It doesn't seem the kind of thing to learn all by yourself- but I may be wrong, of course," he adds hurriedly.

"No, I had a teacher," Monkey says. "But I swore to never reveal his name. For some reason, he did not want people to know he had taught me such wonderful abilities."

Hektor nods. "I suppose all places have their mysteries," he says. "There is always something wonderful of which someone cannot speak."

"He was a very famous teacher," Monkey says. "That is why I went to him. It's very strange."

He shrugs. "Don't people do things like that in your place?"

"Oh, there are great and famous teachers," says Hektor, "but when they say 'you may not speak', they scarcely ever mean you must not speak their names. They will teach you some great thing that you must not tell any other person of, not unless they have been initiated the same as you. Apollo, the god whose temple I serve in one month in four, is said to know every mystery there is, even the mysteries that only women are supposed to know. He doesn't teach them, though, except in dreams or to his priests; so we have to swear oaths and such before gods' altars and be initiated into the mysteries if we want to learn the truly marvelous."

"I do not know any mysteries about women. I am not even sure what they are for," Monkey confesses.

"Well, someone has to have the babies," Hektor says. "I don't think the men are suited for it, really."

Monkey shrugs. "It would work just as well, I think."

"Babies are also something I do not understand. Stone monkeys do not have children."

"There is that," Hektor admits. "There is always somebody around the Palace having a baby, whether it's my mother or one of the serving-women. It takes a long time and looks very uncomfortable. I would rather go to war, really. At least then if there's blood, it comes of a spear or a sword or something, and not because something is trying to come out of you from inside."

Monkey makes a pained face.

"Ick."

"As I said," says Hektor, "better the women should do it. I'm sure they're better suited for it."

"You never know until you try," Monkey says, with redoubled cheer. "Maybe you should have a baby and see."

Hektor shakes his head. "That would be stealing some of the power from the women, and then I would never hear the end of it," he says. "Probably the Mother would turn me into some animal or something and make me serve her all my days, since she does that to men who displease her sometimes."

He pauses.

"Maybe my brother should have a baby and see what it is like."

"Okay!" Monkey is enthusiastic. "Do you want me to help?"

"I have a lot of brothers, but none of them come here," says Hektor. "You would have to come to Troy to help."

He thinks for a time, running over his brothers in his mind.

"It would have to be one of the older ones, I think. Girls don't seem to have babies until they're thirteen or fourteen."

"I can do that," Monkey agrees. "Do you want him to be a girl, or just a pregnant man?"

"None of them are old enough to be men," Hektor says. "I will have to think about it, and tell you when next I see you."

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