Clutching faded towels and enamel jugs, the children first encircled the sleeping pig, exclaiming in whispers, before dividing shyly on either side of Sachiin like an ordered chorus, united and unblinking in their intent.  Their hands made hesitant forays to his hair and shoulders and the smallest of them squatted by him, staring with dark eyes, like inquisitive frogs.  

​They began a randomized interrogation, the girls lapsing into hill dialect when he delighted them with his parochial replies; as he came to the end of his washing, one of the eldest produced a Hindi celebrity magazine and suggested that he read an article aloud, longing to be party to the text accompanying the brilliant images.  The younger cohort objected loudly,and he compromised by offering to relate a story of his own selection.  His court of miniature vassals ceased their clamouring and seated themselves about him, slim hands shading their eager gazes.

​"This is about a princess, and is a very old story from a very, very old kingdom that was once part of India, but is now buried under a desert."  

"There was a wicked king, more wealthy than all of the other kings around him put together, and so vain that every morning he insisted on being carried to do puja on an enormous white elephant, dressed from head to toe in silver with a tikka made of ruby juice.  If he saw a grain of dust on the elephant's harness, he called the sice, and had him lick that dust off with his tongue, and then the elephant squashed his head on a stone with its foot.  And the very worst thing about all of this was that the part of the garden he rode that white elephant over was from here..."  He patted the stone of the ghat and then pointed at the far side of the street.  "To there."  The girls expressed their wonder and disgust on cue, and fell silent again.  ​

"His kingdom was absolutely huge, and if you had taken ten of Kathmandu and laid them out together, it would hardly fill the royal shikar jungle where he hunted animals for pleasure, and not one of his subjects was allowed to gather a twig of wood or a single mango.  The king gave orders every day, turning into laws all the crazy, evil things that popped into his head... no smiling during Teej, no admiring of peacocks, and if anyone had something special, something that was the best of all its kind, they must report this wonderful object to his jamindars, in case he decided he would like it for himself.  In this way, the king had gathered in his palace the finest carpets, the most beautiful and lifelike paintings, his great white elephant, the silkiest goat that ever lived, and shoes made of mirrored glass so that he could always see his own reflection, even when he looked down at the ground." 

​The silent audience were visibly struggling to digest this new, expanded definition of largesse.

"One night a jamindar came running into the palace and threw himself before the king... he had found something the king did not possess, and he agreed to hear what this prize could be, sitting on his throne while a dozen brahmins fanned him with punkahs made from phoenix feathers.  'I have found, oh King, a girl who is the most beautiful in not only this kingdom, but twenty others.'  The king demanded to know what he would do with a girl such as this... 'I am told that they are costly to feed, and that their voices can be disagreeable.' he complained.  'You can marry her, oh King, and once she if your wife, you can do with her exactly as you wish.' promised the jamindar.  'She is as beautiful as a deer and a bauhania flower, if those two things could be squashed together.'  'Well,' said the king... 'I certainly don't want anyone else marrying her... bring her to the palace, and make sure she doesn't give me any trouble, or it's the elephant's foot for you!'" 

Sachiin paused, anticipating interruption.  Several of the older girls conferred, and one of them asked him to quantify the cited maiden's beauty, watching him closely as he formulated his reply.  They queried him extensively on the precise amount of jewellery worn by such a heroine, necessitating a lengthy digression.  Susan eased her legs out before her at the edge of the stone and rolled herself a cigarette.

​"So the jamindar returned to this girl's village and told her to pack up her things and say goodbye to her parents, which she did, because she didn't want the cruel king to be angry with her family.  She set off to the palace in purdah so that no one else could enjoy looking at her, now that she was to become the king's wife."

​"As soon as the king saw this beautiful girl, he felt jealousy stab him all over his body like a thousand thieves with knives, and when the wedding ceremonies were over, he ordered everyone who had spoken to the bride be put to death.  To that wicked king, the thought of sharing her with anyone was as disgusting as eating rotten lizards.  He commanded that from that moment on, if he should hear of her talking to another person he would kill them and most probably her as well, if he could be bothered, with his own sword.  The princess was terribly sad, and told the king that such a fate would be preferable to the great loneliness she would feel, and the King replied that she was forbidden to be lonely because it bored him greatly.  She agreed to do what her husband commanded, but she could not give up puja, because she loved Krishna and Durga Ma more than anything.  The king agreed to this, but only in case Durga Ma struck down his elephant and forced him to walk somewhere."

in misshapen, reflect'd beast form.
Pedicure is the fucking shit, though.  Feet creases courtesy of special expensive athletic torture socks.

​It was a lovely afternoon at the reservoir; total isolation, surrounded by hundreds of dragonflies and nesting birds.

David Austin rose Lady of Megginch.  That's her on the left.  Though it's frequently described/sold as a red, it is not. It is in fact a deep fuchsia with slightly silvered outer petals, the colour almost in the Bourbon style as far as this rich, saturated pink is concerned.  For me after a year and a half as a grafted plant, she is low and slightly tentacular in that tall canes are emerging from a squat shrubby foundation and her bloom has good upright Hybrid Tea sort of form and really decent rain resistance.  These pictures are quite accurate on my monitor.
​
Not as fragrant as I had hoped from something with this sort of colouration, although I have found some roses take a couple of seasons for their perfume to really emerge so I'm withholding judgement.  Currently I'd describe it as a low-medium tearose scent with a hint of dusty fruit, about 4/10.

Darcey Bussell, also a DA job.  No complaints about the vigour of this nice little doer; in half a year it's gone from a slightly wimpy graft to a prolific competitor to a too-close and fucking monstrous Golden Celebration.  The small galaxy of close-set buds have started popping to reveal flattened and button-eyed blooms in this deep, dark dimensional magenta purple which is very Old Garden Rose to my eye; images above use natural indoor daylight while below is obviously on the bush in some morning shade.  There is some scent- warm, slightly plasticky fruit, which I'd rate around 5/10.  But it's a nicer plant than the sum of its parts.

Below left: Sulcorebutia Krainziana orange form       Lobvia ancistrophora buds

​Last of the first round of Princess Victoria Louise (?) oriental poppies; they were especially vivid this year, perhaps because of the cooler temperatures.  Thought I'd try and make something of it.
​

Two miles from the end of Commoriom Drive, along a paper road intended for the monstrous vehicles that would one day denude it, a fir plantation had displaced the forest clothing the surrounding hinterland.  Rain from the fat, dirty clouds of a stalled low dropped onto the black roof of the muscle car parked beneath the trees, the candy-red flames on its flanks defying the gloom.  Its windows ran with the condensed breath of the pair writhing in the front seat, their panting audible even over the babbling radio and squealing complaints of the suspension.  The woman stripped off her tiger-print dress, hands striking the ceiling light; her partner flipped back the sweaty fringe of his coif and frowned up at her when she had ceased to move astride him.

"Christina, one day I'm gonna make you fuckin walk home." he promised, slapping her rump.  

The woman lowered her dress without shifting her gaze from the back seat.  A stranger watched them from the rear, female, bereft of clothing, her pallid torso glistening with rain.  Her filthy black hair was matted with leaves and needles and clung to her cheeks and shoulders, following her arms and pooling with the water on the vinyl.  She dropped her chin and looked from the woman’s face toward the man with eyes of slanting nephrite green, like some satanic merrow awaiting the souls of the drowned.  Beside her the door hung ajar.  

“Do you wanna get the fuck outta my car?” the man sputtered, offloading his companion into the driver's seat.  He kicked open his door.  “Junkie bag-brides all the way out here now?  What the fuck’s wrong with this shithole of a town?”  The woman in the print dress shuddered under her orange backcomb at the intruder.  A glossy substance flowed from the latter's stare and coursed over her cheeks, down her throat and between her high, pale breasts, meeting the dark line of tattoo that began at the base of her neck and ran almost to her navel.

“Don’t be an asshole, Jonah.” the woman called softly.
"You wanna come do this?” he snapped, leaning down to glare at the intruder.  “Bitch, get out.”  

A moment of perfect inertia passed them by as he stood at the door.  In her own time and without warning the nameless female began to slide toward him, white chin drawing level with his forehead as she emerged.  Her mouth held the faint, spoiled colours of dying spring blossom.

“Jonah, get in the car...” his partner hissed; he stumbled backwards, teeth bared as she advanced on him; the stranger brushed away the blow he swung at her and snatched at his neck, the fingers of both hands working deeply into the stubbled flesh and closing until they met, while the woman's screams blasted white mist onto the car window.  The stranger crushed his cartilage and vertebrae together, the tissues collapsing as they might have done in the jaws of a carnivore; oblivious to his icthyoid struggles and the nails that gouged the cold skin of her arms, she watched the spittle splutter from his swollen lips while in his throat the great vessels ruptured in unison, their blood escaping his nose in pulsing concert with the shuddering of his dying limbs.  Claws as clear as the scales over a snake's eyes slid from the ends of her fingers into the throttled flesh.

The corpse fell heavily when she let it go, rolling twice over the needles.  The woman had screamed herself silent by the time the stranger bent at the window and opened her mouth into something between a lizard's gape and a lunatic's rictus.  Remembering the keys, she worked them desperately, sobbing as the mechanism refused her and the creature found an unlocked door.  

Buried stones and arching tree roots tore at her muddied legs as she was dragged over them, though having hauled her so far from the vehicle the looming creature released her hair and let her lie against the ground.  The woman gasped beside a blue-grey trunk, thunder rolling slowly down the hill like something that could crush her, slowly regaining her wits; hearing nothing, she lifted her head from the ground and reached for a hooped root.  Only when she had climbed onto all fours and begun to crawl away was she flattened again by a foot stamped on her back, cold hands lifting and tossing her stiffly against the tree.  Her head cracked hard on the fissured trunk, harder still a second and then third time, and at first she lolled amid the circling sparks and bubbling black fade of failing consciousness while the tang of cushioning fluids leaked into her throat.  She hacked a mouthful into the stranger's face and was flung back again in retribution, her assailant succumbing to the shrill delights of battery, the woman's head leaving a soft confusion of torn hair and slick, dim colours on the snagging bark. 
                                                            
                                                
                                                                                                                




Sachiin tried to dismiss the memory of his brother's banishment as he sat amongst the insects that danced in a shade scented by ice and broken stone.  Two thirds of the day had already passed while behind him the Tien Shan lay in awesome, shimmering repose, veiled in dusty white heat that lofted under their scant banner of cloud.  Waiting alone at the edge of their attending plain, he burnt out his gaze in the fata morganas of its restive horizon.  Though the altitude was too great for human comfort, it was to him of such sunken weight and density that it oppressed with the insistence of a grave; bored, he weighed the rumour that had solicited him, finding little to assure him that his brother was not as far away as the world allowed.  

A lammergier circled in the haze, its shadow flashing over him.  Sachiin knew the cool taste of the air that it enjoyed, his eyes following its pale shape until they were drawn landward by a visual disturbance of the horizon.  An animal came at speed toward the mountains, into the burnished rays laid down by the sun's descent, trailing a long tail of dust.  Closer still, and it was more substantially revealed, a four-legged beast devouring the distance remaining between them like windblown flame, a long, self-coloured plume tracing the arch of its neck, the blasting of its breath sounding even as it threw its weight onto its haunches and slid to a halt, circling tightly before the boulders.  

A figure sat astride its back amongst trappings of red, sweat-darkened wool and swarthy felt.  Sachiin climbed down from the stones toward the surmounting stranger in visible anticipation of his identity, though only his breeches and the muffling cloth about his head were of bai'issātva homespun, a shocking display of perfunction beside the deep blue silk of his tunic.  He spoke no word of greeting but looked first to the comfort of his red horse, taking a goat skin trimmed with sunbleached tassels of human hair from its neck and allowing the animal to slake its thirst from the bulging reservoir.

Passing his eyes over the alien array stowed in its harness, Sachiin wondered at the shape of a great knife in its tanned sheath, one half of a pair, at a dark coil of plaited rope, a black, furled blanket of piled wool and a felt bag enlivened with shamanic abstracts, secured to the rear of the saddle.  He feasted on their strangeness until he became conscious of the survey to which he was himself subjected; satisfied or wearied by it, Kala'amātya spoke to his horse and left it to rest, sitting down on a length of slate cast by the hill above.

The face and hands revealed as he unwound the black cloth from his head were heavily scarred, new damage supplanting that earned previous to his expatriation.  Sachiin set himself down on the other half of the broken stone, immediately regretting the confronting nature of their respective positions.  If he had been distant before exile his brother had returned as something incalculably remote, vastly extending his knowledge of the concept; when he spoke, the sound of his voice had changed to conform to the shape of the plain itself, flat, arid and comfortless.

"What did you tell them?" asked Kala'amātya.  

"That there were snow lotus on the hills, and I would return with them..."  Sachiin's reply sounded too loud and eager but the visitor scanned the slopes as if his assurance counted for nothing.  

"I rejoice that you can now lie on your own behalf." he murmured, sitting in his dispassion like a spectre humouring the living with a mortal shape.  His companion’s dismay slid into shame.

​"Kala'amātya... I am sorry, every day, and every day I have no brother." he vowed, the words leaving them in silence while the day went gladly to its death around them.  The visitor leant back to rest his head against the slab, closing his eyes in a private moment of weary, melancholic concession, a gesture so unprecedented that Sachiin almost started at it.  "Are you well?" he demanded impulsively. 

His brother did not reply for a long time, speaking only slowly when he finally did.

"I would ask something of you, if you can swear on your own eyes that you will answer plainly, and not to please me, nor any other.  You must speak only for yourself."

The respondent sat poised in grave anticipation.

​"I swear it."
"Are you content, Sachiin?  With life, as it is?"

The latter's confusion, so gradually realised, was as much an answer as anything he could have consciously supplied.  In his heart he ran as though on tilting ice, gaining nothing, while his brother took something from the amulet bag strung around his neck and placed it in his upturned palm.  Intensely cold and perfectly smooth, the object proved a polished disc on which the brightness of their skin reflected.  Some noble species of stone, Sachiin guessed, like that which he had seen upon the priestesses, its extraordinary hues recalling ice calved from a glacier, its glassy whiteness clouded around fingers of dense pine green.  Its beauty and alien artifice pressed him back into silence, leaving no words to question or give thanks for the inscrutable endowment.  Together they became aware of an approach from the far side of the ridge, executed with more care than stealth.  

"Sis'thle bai'in." said Kala'amātya briefly, and wound the cloth around his head, catching his horse and returning to the saddle while the beast spun, tail lashing.  At his bidding it sprang away across the dusty ground, working hard to gain speed, and they were lost to the thickening dusk, the sound ushered away by the evening wind that began to sweep out over the plain.

High on the ridge, the arrival followed his retreat with her own eyes, knowing that her eldest child had likely blessed the fleetness of the animal bearing him away from her.  The little she had seen of him gave her a moment of rueful gratitude; he had seemed as impervious as she could have privately desired, an able denizen of hell, if nothing more.  With his brother lost to him again Sachiin concealed both the jade and his disappointment.  She slipped her hands into her sleeves and spoke to him.

"When we were created, the Mother in her great wisdom gave to us this high place, so that all that lies beneath the clouds might trouble us not.  This was the greatest of her gifts to us." she told him, as he began the climb toward her.  
                                                                               
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
​© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce                         ​

While I grew up cooking both Indian specifically and Asian food in general, I'd never done black rice at home.  Perhaps because I've tried almost every other variety known to man and found they generally don't live up to the hype, because they're all just... rice, really; Oryza sativa, that ancient friend.  An exception to this blanket dictum is a good montane basmati, which is truly distinct in both flavour and texture from your long/medium-grain standard commercial varieties.  

Today I'm using an organic Thai black rice.  Some black rice is glutinous but I did not find this one particularly sticky even though I overcooked it, so I'm assuming it was one of the less gluggy varieties.  I don't personally consume much cereal any more; when we do, we eat wholegrain (non-hulled or brown) out of a (probably half-superstitious) belief that less processed = better.  According to Wikipedia, black rice is fucking loaded with anthocyanin, iron and vitamin E, however the page sort of reads like something issued by the Black Rice Hurrah Ambitious Growers Association, so my critical faculties are toning that shit down by half.  Whatever.  If you're going to eat rice, black wholegrain is probably the way to go.

Whole rice of all persuasions is the shitty and distracted cook's friend, retaining an acceptable texture waaaay beyond the point when white rice collapses into blown-out pasty mush because you forgot about it in your narcissistic self-absorption.  I soaked this rice overnight as per recommendations and found it fast-cooking and tender, to the point where a wholegrainphobe would possibly overlook the fact that they were actually consuming fibre and nutrients.  It's also very beautiful, retaining all those inky ochre copper eggplant tones through the cooking process and lending even boring bumfuck not-again dishes its undisputed aesthetic advantages.

I can report that all that rhapsodical flavour hyperbole around black rice is exactly that- confabulated hipster bullshit.  It's not going to take your tongue on a magic carpet ride as-is so forget any notions of lingual psychedelia.  It just tastes like a mild high-quality brown, with maybe a five-percent swing toward bland, slightly smoky sweetness á la basmati, rather than hitting you with those hard, grassy notes sometimes present in coarser wholegrain varieties.  But this laid-back, neither/nor aspect is what makes it such an eminent vehicle for other flavours; it really did come out swinging as a fantastic absorber and projector of condiments and sauces.

 Fire and ash emissions spew from Mount Etna’s Voragine crater.  Marco Restivo/Demotix/Corbis  More in the G

While he could still feel his blackening hands, the Bon shaman reached out stiffly through the cold for the glittering furs wrapped around his general’s shoulders, shaking the man awake.  The wind slapped away any words spoken at a distance, so he leant over the mounded rime between them and directed the soldier’s thin, ice-crusted gaze toward the end of the shallow white valley.  Daylight had already fallen to the storm that had rolled up over the high pass and pressed the exhausted detachment to the ground; though they huddled in a desperate throng, the shrieking gale ripped the warmth from their flesh and froze their legs and feet to the black rock beneath them.  While the bodies of the dead had stiffened under their felts and hides the general had heaped rueful imprecations on the head of the Qijia prince who had ordered them into the mountains, on the fatal creatures he was to have subdued, and onto the shaman he had paid to locate them.  The latter stared, wide-eyed, and shook him again, urging him to throw back the bear hide from his head and behold the black shape that came toward them through the snow.

New agonies stabbed up through his legs as he rose, scuffing ice from his face and warning the babbling magician to be quiet.  Black homespun wreathed the approaching creature like the shrouds enrobing the dead of the general’s own tribe, filling him with a pious dread that almost overcame him.  From his tattered cloak of felt the shaman drew a bird-bone rattle and began to shake it at the visitant with a hand browned by a forgotten sun.  Without preamble or introduction, it ceased its advance and addressed them, speaking in the magician's own tongue, the narrow stripe of skin between the windings of its veil so kindred to the snow that its gaze appeared to float amid the storm itself.  The shaman stuttered an imperfect version of the creature’s address.

“This shaitan will lead us over the pass.  For this kindness, it will accept all of the gold that your chieftain has given you to...”  He turned to his companion, clutching his rattle.  At last beholding a member of the race he had been commissioned to destroy, the general took a measure of its form, from where its feet stood bare upon the snow to its golden eyes, seeing nothing he could recognize, not honour nor loathing, compassion or impelling greed.  

“I did not march from the Blue Lake to be murdered like an old woman.” he muttered.  The creature received the news phlegmatically and gave a swift reply.

“The shaitan says that it will go back onto the mountain, and wait... wait... until we are all dead, then it will take the gold!” the shaman cried.  Behind them those soldiers still sensible began to struggle to their feet, clutching their blankets and crying out in support of the shaman.  Their leader pulled his hide about him and lowered his short frame to the ground.

​“Look at this beast for yourselves and ask what use it has for gold.  It does not come down from the Tien Shan to hunt coins.  I am old, the snow will take my legs, and I will not waste my last breath haggling with demons.  This shaitan will have nothing from me.”  The figure in question recognized the unblenching finality of the general’s judgement and turned from their party, heading back toward the west.

At the urging of the shaman the detachment surged after it, stumbling into each other in their desperation, the blown snow flying from their heaving shoulders as they toiled through the drifts.  The stranger led them down a slow incline and onto the floor of the valley lying between two ice-collared peaks of fractured stone where the snow thinned, blown to the sides of the cirque by the gale, and where the footing became firmer, allowing the men to coalesce.  Their squinting gasps became rigid grins as they began to credit their good fortune, turning to each other behind their guide.  It was in the midst of their hysterical acclaim that some saw the black-garbed creature disappear before their streaming eyes, swallowed as if by some drape of snow; they shuffled forward, discovering a shallow hole piercing the ground on which they stood, no wider than a swan's wing.  Black water slopped from its jagged margins.

A sound like cracking stone and tearing flesh flew with the faults that opened across the frozen lake in three directions, its surface tilting with their weight.  Beneath them, the solitary creature waited in waters thrumming with the supple groaning of the ice then glutted with their hapless bodies, plunging and thrashing as they were dashed into the lake, their flooded garments and leather cloaks binding their limbs like sheets of lead.  The ice righted itself, clashing and merging on the surface and crushing their clawing limbs, sealing them under the floes while their screams belched silver and they drowned, struggles fitfully degrading, their hair and clothing rising as though blown behind their sinking forms.

Their guide stroked back slowly through the drifting bodies in a blue haze returned once more to silence.  At the eastern shore of the lake he stood his feet on the silty bed and cracked the frozen surface with his shoulders, stepping out onto snow that had already overwritten the ploughed tracks of his victims.

It gave the general no joy to see he had been proven wiser than the rest, and he fell ponderously sideways in his effort to meet his end with a modicum of dignity, struggling up onto his frozen knees.  Despite the twinned blades sheathed on his back, the creature raised a hand only to stroke the water from his face as he walked on past without a glance toward him, heading north into the snow. 

                                                                                 




Susan leant through the kitchen door into darkness, turning her head in search of the ringtone rendition of Ave Maria's opening chords that had exhausted her patience while she sorted laundry in the adjacent garage.  The blinking flourescence overhead revealed three paper bags stuffed with groceries on the formica table, her own name blocked in black felt pen on top of each; the bottom of one had darkened with some internal mishap and she pushed through the manga-branded pot noodles and pillowy bags of marshmallows until her fingers found a carton of gourmet ice cream from which the contents had escaped.  It had drowned a clutch of croissants and begun to leak onto the table.  Employing both arms, she made a careful attempt to shift the sack toward the sink, exclaiming loudly as it gave way and dumped melted dairy down her legs into her mary janes.  The forgotten telephone began flashing brightly on the bench as it replayed the offending jingle.

William responded neither to his name nor title in any portion of the ground floor.  Clutching the telephone in her determination to visit it upon him, she sighted movement through the drawing room doors; the damp grass swept the icecream from her shoes as she marched out through the cricket song and darkness toward the pool, where a figure swam laps in the fresh charge of water.  He alternated between its surface and the unlit depths, undulant motion rippling the motifs on his back amid his unremitting toil.  Susan stood on the tiles and frowned for a moment before leaning over with the telephone chiming in her hand.

"Mr Lamb... Mr Lamb... I think this is yours.  You might want to answer it." she called.

The swimmer abandoned his trajectory, stroking through the water until he broke the surface almost at her feet.  Grasping the stone with both hands, he hauled out swiftly, the element he departed sliding back over his shoulders, falling from the black shorts at his waist and the long white arms he lifted and shook out in a gesture of startling, whiplash violence.  Astonished, Susan stepped backward as he took the phone from her hand.

"This is private property." he told her, his stare like a fist to her face.

"I'm sorry..." she offered; he arrested her retreat, his white hand cold on her wrist while he examined the appliance.  She exclaimed and tried to pull free, which he did not allow until William stepped down through the French doors and waved to catch his attention.  She looked between them, startled by the resemblance that had inspired her mistake, imperfect though it proved in actuality. 

​"Hey, Edward Lamb, meet Susan Christabel, la déesse du foyer." his brother called, though his intervention was rendered redundant, Susan hurrying back toward the house without acknowledging him.

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
​© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce