Tale With An Unknown Collaborator
TALE WITH AN UNKNOWN COLLABORATOR
If I recall correctly, this was written around 2000 through the auspices of Jon Hodges (who then masterminded blind collaborations between writers).
I really don't remember if I ever found out who I was collaborating with and now I would like to know. I'm not sure even if it's finished, although it does seem finished. A rather impressive piece if I do say so myself!
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The sitting-room, with a large looking-glass on one of the beetle-green walls, was gradually crowding up with various relatives. Christenings were times of happiness - but most of the old dears were as glum as mythology.
The proud parents weren't able to attend this reception (nor the newly baptized baby), a fact which, in Margaret's discerning eyes, seemed to defeat the whole object. She was tantamount to a child herself, but none of the foregathered maiden aunts would own up to owning her. The sitting-room was a small one. A particular aunt called it a "lounge" and would defend this name to the death. Others proposed "the front room" as better. Yet others, "reception room," something which, at least, seemed appropriate today of all days. "Drawing-room" was smartly discarded. "Living-room" given scant regard. "Parlor" was not even considered!
Little Margaret, always a one with words, had christened it the Belfry because there were a lot of a old bats in it today - but that was her secret.
Indeed, Margaret had a literal wealth of words and little did the aunts realize how richly her eyes saw them from between buzz-browed frowns. If they had, they would have deemed her "rude" - their vocabulary failing to stretch to the more colorful expressions often generated by such exceptionally irritating precocities as Margaret.
Yet, now settled in the sitting-room, the various aunts decided it was time to light up. They tugged cigarettes from their persons (some to be stuck into mouths, others into elegant holders), whilst a few were fetched from slender silver cases with springy metal straps holding the cigarettes in place. An aunt or two even fingered their smokes as if they were prime cigars, listening to the crinkle as they roll-pressed them near highly ear-ringed ears. Eventually, with all finally poised for lighting up, they motioned to Margaret to begin her duty. And, indeed, the girl lifted a box of heavy-duty Lucifers from the coffee table - and struck the first splint against the box's sand-papery edge. A huge plume of flame engorged and, one by one, she walked amid the aunts and ignited their ciggies. There transpired a rhythmic drawing in of breath as the curdly gray began to circulate around several wrinkled lungs. Prongs of smoke emerged from nostrils. Some inhaled so very deeply, Margaret wondered if some evil magic was afoot when the smoke assumed bat-like or wayward demon shapes. Then, the room began to fill with a choking fug, mystifying even the china ornaments.
Margaret's throat felt scratchy and her chest raw. In those days, nobody had ever heard of passive diseases but, if nothing else, the room kept its thoughts to itself, with no words to muster except empty ones. The mirror on the wall, though, may have boasted a smoking-room within its pales.
Margaret did actually smile, as if memories were too forward. The past, she thought, was not even in its infancy, the present had hardly yet been blessed and the future surely ripe with expended time. So - as she sat balancing a precarious sandwich plate on her lap and trying to blot out the argumentative angst of aunts - she dreamed of older times when rooms would fill with a silkier smoke in the shape, not of demons, but of elves and fairies. Rooms where the paintings on the walls were real enough to emanate the sounds and smells of the worlds they depicted; rooms where miniature civilizations flourished beneath the crab-wood tables and unicorn-fur beds; rooms where every shaker of pepper, every melted gob of candle, every crumpled piece of diary paper within the wastebasket was utterly saturated with animation. Objects were alive enough to even speak to you at times, or sing soft hymns on early Sunday mornings before dressing properly for church.
Margaret quivered as she came back from her thoughts, interrupted by a claw of smoke snaking up a nostril. She sneezed and rubbed her wet nose with the icy backside of her little finger, attempting to avoid any eye contact with the old women suffocating the room.
Dropping her vision to her knees, Margaret discovered a miniature dragon-like creature perched upon the sandwich plate in a solemn, statue-like manner. However, it seemed to be made of wood rather than the scales of a normal dragon. And instead of wings, the little creature had two collections of live mosquitoes, dozens of them huddled together to make their mini wings form larger ones.
The small oddity was just sitting on Margaret's lap like a kitten, almost purring, and shifting its tail slightly within the demon-smoke surroundings. Margaret's lips curled a thin smile as the dragon cocked its puppet-like neck in her direction, slip-slithering its long aluminum tongue at the mushroom and cheese sandwich between them. Her thumb involuntarily smoothed against its polished breast as it snatched a mushroom from underneath the bread. Her face lit up amazed, her eyes wandering every delicate feature of its wood-patterned body, as it gobbled the mushroom down.
She looked to the aunts in smiles, bright red cheeks, and back to the pet dragon. Postponing the future was just a few seconds away. Meanwhile, the room, with all the smoke generated by maidenly lungs, changed shape or setting - becoming, paradoxically, more claustrophobic and larger in apparent size. Framed at the door, one of the rarer male relatives stood, gripping his pint-pot of beer: a stripling of barely sufficient age to be indulging any approach towards alcohol. But the Christening was his scapegoat, no doubt. Margaret had recognized within herself a certain attraction towards this individual, although she knew that he was strictly. . .
"Uncle Tim," she shouted into thin air, interrupting her own thoughts. He smiled and withdrew into the hall. She wondered if she would be permitted to follow him . . . to test out that smile. But, no. One of the aunts was pointing at her empty plate, as if she required Margaret to fetch it from her. There were also vague calls to empty the ashtrays and other less determinate duties. Placing the dragon upon a vacant cushion - where it proceeded to preen - she caught a glimpse of a hairy or furry face at the lounge window. It smiled and vanished. A withdrawn future often played tricks with her fancies, she found. Only at certain stages of youth was it possible to dwell for any length of time at such turning points. There was rarely an optimum moment to think thoughts she was too young to think.
She wavered through the throat-tickling haze, feeling as if she waded. Picking up the proffered plate, exchanging small talk with a forgotten cousin (who sat under the dining-table), returning a lost ball of wool to a toddler who had been allowed free range despite the precariousness of health apparent in its pinched face - Margaret cast a worried backward look at the dragon which was now cleaning tiny dead wings from its underbelly with a forked tongue.
"Want a breath of fresh air?" asked Tim who had returned to the door.
"Yes, go for a walk, Margaret," said one of the aunts, a kind-looking one who only smoked to be sociable.
"Fetch some more mushrooms," said another, not wanting Margaret to waste the trip.
To reach the outside, she needed to negotiate the hall where a number of home-lovers had congregated. That was her own name for them. She often christened things in a language that was indeed English but rarely with the same meanings most others would have understood. In any event, these home-lovers parted to let her pass. One playfully tugged at her ponytail. Some said naughty words in devilment. She ignored them, her glance, though, indicating, in no uncertain terms, that she'd tell on them later, when back re-lighting the aunts in the smoking-room.
A burst of sigh-emotions vibrated through her blood as Margaret stepped into the sunlight, taking in a deep breath to clean a fist of weight from her lungs.
"That's better," said Uncle Tim, twisting his limbs as if he'd been in a coffin all day.
The courtyard overwhelmed Margaret as usual, the colors so brilliant she could taste them and hear what they had to say - something dreadfully important mixed with things meaningless. Scorpion-designed walls smeared across the sky, creeping with spider vines and secret panels. The vegetation on a variety of levels, textured to resemble dancing party couples swinging around each other, the roots swimming through red soil.
And in the center of the courtyard, taller than the dancers and walls, a scraggy coff tree resembling a bearded old man who Margaret christened "the wizard," and she swore it was full of magic.
"Do you want a bone pear?" Uncle Tim asked Margaret, picking two white orbs from the old wizard.
But the girl took back steps. "I'm not allowed to."
Uncle Tim had a bite of one of the strong-goo fruits, smile-saying, "Don't worry about them. Bone pears rot to the ground if you don't eat them right away."
Margaret still hesitated, turned to read the time on clocks growing from a rose bush.
"Come," Tim said, stepping from Margaret. "I have something to show you."
She dropped the already rotting marrowfruits with a sigh of disgust. Uncles were meant to be responsible when in charge of their nieces and Tim had squandered any trust she might have harboured simply by this silly promise that things only rotted after they hit the ground.
She was determined, however, to give him another chance. She mooned up her face, imagining a smile for him to share. He seemed temporarily ill-footed by her forgiveness but, shrugging off any finer feelings, he took her by the hand towards the huge glass aviary which, instead of containing the flutter of birds, seemed, from the outside, full of smoke – interlacing cylinders of pipework blurring and bifurcating in increasingly crazy patterns more in keeping with Hallowe’en bonfires than strict geometry lessons at school.
Tiny bat-like creatures speckled in and out of existence with the ghostly interference of uninvented screens -- reminding her that the aviary was madder than a belfry. It had a mind of its own. Thoughts were pixels. Dreams were tree-like flower-fairies between whose tresses flickered the wings of the selves that had yet to become full-fledged bodies.
Tim steadied her by the shoulder as if she knew he knew that a young child’s mind was far more precarious than that of a new-bearded loafer like him.
He was a full-blooded home-lover, too, she guessed -- never to go on adventures away from this their communal past. Margaret felt him lead her from the aviary backwards to the house; neither of them, it seemed, could tear their eyes from what they’d never have.
Yet there was a further vital stage in their rite of passage. Margaret somehow knew that they had to explore all the rooms in the house, one by one, name by name, till they found the only flue that the future could coil back along towards their past.
She knew Tim was short of Time … that they were racing against it. Only an avuncular such as Tim could combat the aunts in their own territory. Bravery proudly sat upon his face but she wondered – in an unchildish yet child-like way – if anybody could ever feel that their own life had room enough for the future. She sensed a smoking dragon beneath his clothes.
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