Chương 192: [2.20][???] Through The Grapevine

A raven's croaking wakes you. You groan, swat blindly at it, and roll over in your bed. You were in the middle of a positively bizarre dream, and if you give it up for even a moment you know that it will be gone for good. It is not often that you sleep this deeply. Down here in the chthonic dark, separated from the burden of your body and the sufferance of your soul, your dreams are all that you are. The only thing that you must be. It is very nearly pleasant. But the bird is still there.

You pull the sheets over your head and try to block it out. It croaks again, louder. You wrap the pillow of black-feathered down around your head, crushing it against your ears, and the croaking becomes as muffled as everything else. Slowly, you relax. You drift back into the void where dreams linger, letting it all fade, so that even when the raven gives up its croaking entirely, it is only a dim satisfaction. Ting. Your eye cracks open. It is only a sliver, of course, and only the left eye.

You are still astride that line between oblivion and dreams. After a long, tense moment, your eye drifts shut again. Ting. You growl a curse into your pillow. Ting… Ting. You will not give it the satisfaction. Ting-Ting. You will not surrender your first good night of sleep in an age. Not for all the wine on earth, and certainly not for a single covetous bird. … Good. You let yourself drift, though you tuck this little irritation away in what remains of your thoughts, to be addressed properly when you awaken.

A pet should know its place— Ting-Ting-Ting-Ting-Ting-Ting-Ting-Ting-Ting-Ting— You rip the blanket off your head, glaring across the courtyard with half a bloodshot eye. The raven cocks its head, its beady gray eyes staring unrepentantly back at you. It sits perched atop one of the nine columns enclosing your innermost courtyard, nestled among the creeper-vines. It is a grotesquely large, overfed creature. You can see in that beady stare that it wants something from you.

"Begone." Speaking is a reluctant effort. The dream is trying to slip away from you now, slicker than oil and lively as a fish. You hold tight to it. The raven cocks its head the other way. Its feathered bulk suddenly heaves—once, twice, like the bird is about to vomit up the contents of its stomach.

"Be-ee-eee-gone," it croaks. It shudders, beating its unreasonably wide wings in discomfort. Then it snaps its beak at the air, as if it's tasting the word.

"Begone." Finding it to its liking.

"Begone."

"Wretched bird. I'll kill you."

"Wrrrrrrr." Another gag.

"Wrrrr-etched. Wretched." Another shudder.

"Ooh. Oooooh. Y-oooh. You." Your right eye cracks open a sliver in disbelief.

"Excuse me?" The bird cocks its head again.

"You. Wretched. Begone." For a long moment, the shadowed courtyard is silent.

"Are you mocking me?" The raven considers you. It is only an animal, of course. More intelligent than the average bird, perhaps, but low cunning and a bit of simple pattern recognition are all it has behind those beady eyes. You may as well be talking to yourself— Ting. In response to your question, the raven slowly and deliberately lowers its head and taps its beak against its adamant perch. The resonant chime cuts through every sound barrier, including the black-feather down of your pillow.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. You contemplate a great many terrible things in that moment. Contemplation begets awareness, and to your displeasure, you begin noticing again. Processing. Hearing. By the time the whispers start filtering in, you know that there are only moments left before the dream is gone for good, and you are stuck in this place with this irreverent raven, sober and awake. A fate worse than death.

Can't get out of bed to kill the raven, but neither can you leave it be.

"What do you want?"

"Waah. Waaaaaah. Wan—!" The bird suddenly stops speaking altogether, sitting motionlessly atop the adamant column. Then it spreads its wings and launches itself into the air, circling around the perimeter of the courtyard. It swoops low at random intervals, only to struggle back up into the air and repeat the process again. Finally, it lands in the gap between two columns, wings and tailfeathers pooling like black blood on the floor of your courtyard.

It stares up at the cypresswood trellis bridging the gap between the two columns, and the riot of vines that have grown through it.

"Wuuuh. What." the bird croaks. Then, more insistently, " What?" Ah.

"You hear it, do you?"

"Iiiit. What?" If you weren't so murderously irritated, you might have been amused.

"Idle words, from aimless people. Just the usual nonsense that one hears through the grape vine." The raven hops across the room. You let your eyes droop, feigning greater fatigue, but the feathered bastard isn't fooled. It skirts a wide berth around your bed on its way to another trellis. It listens intently to the voices drifting in, before moving on to another. Finally, it stops and listens to one of them for so long that your play-act is made true.

You doze, resigning yourself to the bird's presence and the encroaching whispers. It isn't pleasant, but little is. So long as they stay quiet… Ting. You sigh.

"Speak."

"Want. Werrrr— words. Frrrrrr— from. V—v— vine." Now that is almost interesting enough to warrant waking up. Almost.

"And then you'll leave?"

"Begone," it croaks. You snort.

"By all means, then. Choke on it." You pluck a grape from the wreath upon your brow and flick it in the raven's general direction. The beast snaps it out of the air and swallows it whole. It takes wing, flying up and up, returning to the heights it came from, where light and life disturb all truly good sleep. A few moments later, it plummets back down and hits the floor with a meaty slap. You roll back over in bed and close your eyes in contentment. Won't be long now.

The raven spasms and lurches, beating its wings against the floor in vain. It tries to vomit up the grape, but it's too late for that. The seed inside the grape has already sprouted. It grows and grows, winding itself root and stem through the fertile loam that you have given it, as is its nature. A fitting end for such a gluttonous animal.

"Wretch," it chokes.

"You. Kill."

"I certainly have."

"Hear you. Mock you. Kill you." It's an amusing beast, you'll give it that.

"You managed two of three, at least. Good night, raven." In the end, it wasn't the worst distraction. Perhaps next time you wake up you'll try to find yourself a similar bird, teach it to repeat the things you say and torment the little kings and queens in your absence. There are worse things to waste time on— Your eyes snap open, and behold a golden light. The raven stares at you from across the courtyard with beady, burning eyes.

It croaks balefully, and blood mixed with burnt grape vines spill out of its beak and onto the floor.

"Good night, wretched Dionysus." Nights on the Nile are never quiet, but this one has ended up louder than most. In a slow-flowing offshoot of no particular note, a raucous concert has sprung up from nothing around a pair of cultivators from the north. Smaller ships have gathered round the bobbing Eos in their multitudes, drawn to the sweet sound of the bright one's voice, and the soulful thrumming of the dark one's lyre. Ships and their sailors from all walks of life cluster around the Eos.

Poachers lash their little skiffs to the lumbering pleasure barges of upper crust crypt-keepers, foreigners mingle with native sons of ancient Aegyptus, children meet new friends while cavorting across the impromptu city of ships, and adults swap between new dancing partners as often as they do drinks. Each ship carries its own torches, but the bulk of the light comes from the dazzling lightshow of grasping hands that hang like a cloud above the Eos.

Hands of crackling lightning war against hands of rosy light, moving with sublime coordination to act out the contents of every song — the polar opposite of a shadow puppet play. Every time one song draws to a close, another is plucked from the waves of eager suggestions offered up by their audience.

Some try to board the Eos directly, early on in the performance, but the ship's crew makes a swift example of them, beating them over the head with the ship's oars and paddling their asses for good measure when they retreat back to their own vessels. It is a lively, confusing, inexplicable atmosphere, conjured up from nothing by the simple joy of good music. And then it is over. The strings of the ivory lyre snap so loudly that it rocks the boats anchored closest to the Eos, and everyone freezes.

Even the boisterous singer stops in the middle of his verse, the lightshow above his head pausing eerily in the air. The broken lyre clatters to the floor of the crow's nest. The string-breaker stares down at his hands, motionless. The singer gives him a puzzled look. The young woman sitting up there with the two of them lays her hand on his arm with sudden concern, asking him an urgent question. The string-breaker says nothing.

Instead, he rips the jar of liquid lead out of the golden lush's hand and points the bottom of it up to heaven. And drinks.