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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 1848991" data-attributes="member: 2">JabberwockiesAutumn 2004 Round 1-8: SteelDraco vs. PiratecatCarol hummed a little tune to herself as she wrapped the present just so. Their tenth anniversary. Twenty five years would be silver, but tenth is the tin anniversary. Tin. Tin. Biting on aluminum, licking a battery. Tin. Ten years of joy, seven of them here at the dig site on the Côte d'Ivoir. The present whiffled under her hand. Less tissue paper, perhaps, to stop the rustling? Bracing the box between her knees, she lifted the lid and gazed inside. The present was -- -- beside herself with so many wedding gifts! Then someone plucked on her sleeve, and she spun around joyfully. This mingling was fun. “Carol, I hope you know what you’re doing.” A familiar birdlike hand let go of Carol’s lacy sleeve. With her other hand, Aunt Frances clutched a martini glass like it was a life preserver and the wedding was a sinking ship. Frances had cornered the bride next to the cake, in the corner at the reception. Around them the DJ played inoffensive big band music, Charles’ favorite, and on the dance floor elderly relatives did their best to keep up with the beat. “Oh, Auntie,” said Carol dismissively. “Of course I do. Charles and I love each other very much. I’m going to enjoy a life on the move. Charles is finishing a dig in Turkey, then I think we’re on to western Africa. After that, who knows? Maybe Europe or South America. He goes where the university sends him, and he really is very good.” Carol tried to catch her new husband’s eye from across the room, but he was talking to some colleagues and didn’t see her. “Wherever we go, I’m looking forward to teaching.” “Not many of his friends here,” Aunt Frances slurped her martini. “Not many of yours, either.” Her dentures slipped slightly as she gave Carol a humorless grin. Her skin tone was gray under the fluorescent lights. The bride shrugged. “The important ones came. Charles doesn’t have time to make many friends, he’s moving around too much. Anyways, he doesn’t get along well with all of mine. I think if he had his way that we’d have just eloped. That would have been romantic, but I’ve always dreamed of this!” Carol spread her arms and pirouetted, laughing. Aunt Frances just watched her, eyes like a fish, and finished off her ---- drink of water. It was warm in here; the tissue paper now removed, Carol put down her glass and used a handkerchief to wipe the sweat (perspiration glow dew but ladies never sweat) from her forehead. Even at this altitude in the highlands, a hot breeze was blowing in from the Gulf of Guinea and up the Ivory Coast. She studied the present and realized that it was not (never never) good enough. Carol reached in to the boxpinned down the gift, and deftly knotted a purple ribbon with one fashionably gloved hand. She had sent for the ribbon from wasteful extravagance England four months ago. Charles had known about the expense and said never never never does nothing.Lid on, paper and tape, then Carol walked out onto the porch. Her critical eye picked out all the dust specks that Charles would also always see and say nothing about, and she paused in the hot golden breath of the sun for only a minute before heading back inside to find her scrub -- -- Brushing his thinning hair back from his head, she stood next to him within their rough-hewn new home. Charles had paid builders from the city of Gagnoa to come all this way and construct it. He must love her very much. “It’s a little rustic, darling,” she hazarded.  “And chilly at this altitude.” Charles’s eyes turned sharp, but he said nothing. He just watched her, and watched her, and then turned abruptly to walk out the door onto the mountain path. Carol followed, trying not to let her voice take that pleading tone. She wasn’t used to the altitude yet, and her breath caught in her throat. They had been married three years. “I do love it, darling. It’s just different than what I’m used to. After all, I grew up in Baltimore.” Charles’s eyes began to warm, and Carol felt relief rush through her. He was so distant when he was focused on work. “You’ll grow to love it here,” her husband said. “I always love wherever it is I’m working. You learn to tolerate the bad. It’s much better than the alternative.” He took a deep breath of the thin mountain air and wheezed as his asthma took hold. A swivel of his head and he was looking right at her. “I know you’re far from home. I know you had hoped to have school children to teach. I’ve always focused on work. You should too, my dear. There’s quite a bit to do around the house. Or you could write about some of those little stories that you studied in university.” She wished he would call her by her proper name. He never did. “You mean my thesis on the comparative allusions to violence in Lewis Carroll’s works?” Her voice became slightly sarcastic, and she immediately knew that she had erred. Charles made a little grunting sound deep in his throat and walked away from her down the mountain towards his current work site. The conical stone tower with its massive arched entrance loomed over them like a <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17178" target="_blank">stone God</a>. She rushed to catch up, but his back was towards her. “I may just do that,” she said. “I have all my library. It’ll give me something to do while you work.” He didn’t even grunt this time as he disappeared into the -–-- Darkness. There was only darkness outside and no sign of her asthmatic whiffling husband. He’d been at home less and less since he had discovered the lower level of the work site five years ago. Carol had been left with only her well-worn books and the housework, but that was a wife’s duty. When Charles did come home late late late husband burbling when he came she hated the look in his eyes if she hadn’t been a good wife. Her cooking was the best she could manage considering their delivered supplies, and she had grown to live for that rare moment when his gaze would alight on her and he’d give that cherished little nod. She hadn’t polished her conversational skills, no not so much, but there wasn’t really anyone else to talk to so that was hardly a problem. When you loved somebody biting on tin on tin, silence was a way to communicate too. She had read that somewhere. But tonight he was working late down in the dig, tonight on their tenth tin-th anniversary. The present was wrapped but dinner might be ruined and she was unseemingly hungry for a proper lady. She looked past her stack of Lewis Carroll manuscripts towards the dining table, its tum-tum wood polished to a rich oily glow, laden with food and carving ----  “<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17177" target="_blank">Utensils!</a> Absolutely ancient. Made from tin I believe, but coated with silver! They’re the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen, and they’ll look almost modern once they’re polished up and restored.” It was the most excited Carol had ever seen her husband, their wedding night included. “This is the way out of my trap!” Carol didn’t want to think about what he meant. “Come on, girl!” He grabbed her hand and dragged her out and down the mountain path. He’d never once let her see the dig site in the four years they’d been there, he’d never even asked her to visit and both times she had asked she had been treated with icy silence.  But now Carol was pulled in under the ancient arch and down a makeshift ramp beneath the African stone. It was dark inside, almost pitch black except for faint golden sunlight reflecting down from the open three-pointed roof above. They dropped through a stone trapdoor and the light died away entirely.  “One moment, there. I’ll light a candle.” Charles’s voice quivered with excitement. The light flared, and Carol stared down straight into the sunken eyes of a mummified corpse.   Something insectile scuttled out the wrinkled skin and away into the darkness, and Carol was horribly ashamed that she screamed aloud. It wasn’t her own weakness that embarrassed her. It was the sharp disapproval and disappointment she’d see in her husband’s eyes if he hadn’t already turned his back. I had my one chance and now it’s gone I had my one chance and now it’s gone. The words ran like a sharp carving knife through her brain. Charles was lecturing as they walked, saying something about the indigenous people who once built this warren, but she blocked out everything other than his pedantic tone. What will he think if I’m a failure to him?  Then he pointed down into a black grave and held out the candle. She looked in. In thrilled horror she saw only colors and shapes at first; the pale belly of a fish, the tincture of fresh bruises, feathery pale legs and a coil of intestines. Then the hideous millipedes all squirmed in the unaccustomed light, jaws biting and claws catching. There must be dozens of them, each one as long as my forearm! her brain yammered.  Carol bit her tongue hard to stop another scream, took a half step backwards, and felt her heel come down through the papery chest of an ancient corpse. Another millipede squirmed across her foot. Hot coppery blood flooded Carol's mouth from her injured tongue, and she looked towards her husband for support. “Shoo,” Charles said to the insects as he waved the candle back and forth over the grave. “A variety of Arthropoda Myriapoda. They live inside the corpses. Poisonous, you know, probably paralytic. But shy.” He shot Carol a look. “And quiet, unlike some.” He turned and gazed down into the grave with eyes gleaming. “You can see the utensils. Now come look! Look at that!” “Charles,” whispered Carol in a choked voice, “I’m afr...” He grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her over the grave. In the candlelight she had a <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17176" target="_blank">vision of Charles’ face</a> superimposed with the wrinkled faces of the dead who lay all around her. Even in the moment of his professional triumph, Charles's face was full of disgust and embarrassment for her obvious weakness. Just like that, she knew what he would look like some day as he was dying. “Look at them!”  His normally frail voice rose. And she ---- Slipped into the pocket of her linen dress was her handkerchief, but this time she used it to blot tears of weakness from her eyes. He did such hard work for the two of them, and she could never repay him for his many kindnesses. It wasn’t was was wasn’t his fault. Maybe even now he was galumphing back to her from the lowest level of the dig, thirty feet and oh so many toves deeper than even she had seen. He had never invited her back down again, of course; she was uffish, and couldn’t be trusted. But she had gone down on her own. They had gyred and gimbled in the wabe, but she had brought one back, and <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=17179" target="_blank">now it waited</a> for its manxome foe in a box with a purple ribbon tied about its head. Waited for her husband to open it and find the coiled surprise within, waited for its jaws to bite and its claws to catch and its poison to take effect. She glanced over at the ancient utensils on the table, the vorpal blade gleaming brightly between the forks and spoons.  Oh, she knew what to do. She picked up the tin and silver knife and waved it experimentally, rattled the present and felt the living thing inside it shift in anger.She could hear him coming up the path, tired from a long day and coming to their Tin Anniversary celebration. This year she’d gotten him what she had always wanted.Snicker-snack.-- o --Note: my thanks to Lewis Carroll for the use of <a href="http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/jabber/jabberwocky.html" target="_blank">his poem</a>.stylite.jpg, the excavated archeological dig.tableset.jpg, the tin and silver utensils.detail.jpg, the vision of Charles and the mummies as one.coil.jpg, the gift-wrapped surprise.</blockquote>

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