He climbed the steps up the span to the balcony. His penis, burned as badly as the rest of him, muttered, “You should have asked me, I’d have told you not to touch that robe.”
Meersh’s doubtful response was drowned beneath a great cheer from overhead. A light pulsed from within the palace, its beams shooting out between the rails like a mist, spurring him to climb faster.
At the top he stepped through the rail to discover there in the hall a huge figure wrapped in the robe of the sun god, the robe that should have been his. The incandescence of it had flowed into the figure, whose shaved head glowed now like copper rather than stone. It was only when the figure turned to face him, and he saw the bright pebble eyes, that he recognized what had happened.
“Ah, friend Meersh,” the Stone Man said, his cheeks burnished and smooth. The crowd around him began to laugh at the burned, wild visage Meersh presented, but the Stone Man ignored their caterwauling as he came forward. “You survived, and that’s good. I was going to come resurrect you if you hadn’t, for you do fall under the aegis of the Sun, whether you know it or not.”
“I what?”
“I have to look out for you . . . or, rather, we do.” He turned and gestured back to the robe of the Moon, and who should be wearing it but Akonadi.
“What is this?” asked Meersh, although he’d already gleaned the answer.
“Oh, dear,” said Penis. “I could have told you this was bound to happen while you gallivanted about on the other spans. But would you listen?”
“You?” Meersh snarled at it. “You’re the one led me all about from one debauch to the next.”
“Akonadi has consented to be the Moon,” said the sun god. “I could think of no huntress as skilled.”
“I . . . how could you? You’d take my wife?”
“I’m surprised you remember that she is for all the attention you’ve paid her.”
Meersh glanced about, taking the time to work himself into a state of outrage. He would gain from these events yet. “So that’s how it is. Well, if you’re taking Akonadi with you, then I should be recompensed. It’s only fair.”
The sun god considered him a moment. “All right. Anything you like that I may give you.”
“One thing,” Meersh said, and he reached into the glowing robe, grabbing hold of the smooth copper phallus on the front of the sun god. “I’ll have this.”
The sun god didn’t even flinch. His pebble eyes bored into Meersh, who sensed that they saw all of his plan, and every bit of his scheming soul. “As you wish,” said the god.
“Wait!” cried Penis, the very last sound he made before he was encased. Meersh stared at himself, erect and polished. “Now we’re even.”
The sun god chuckled. “Very well, Meersh.”
Meersh slapped his new member. “This one will do as I say and not taunt me.” The Sun, the governor, and the crowd roared with laughter and taunts of “a suit of armor for his little knight.”
The Sun and Moon stepped hand in hand to the balcony, then opened wide their arms and blended with the evening. The shimmer of their robes hung afterward in the sky as a swath of stars.
Meersh went home. He left behind him a trail of charred bits. He was only mildly dejected by the loss of Akonadi. He had wanted her as he wanted everything he saw, and the wanting had more sway than the having. His spirits were further buoyed by the wine he’d stolen from the banquet in the sun god’s honor. On the way across the spans he strutted proudly to show off his phallus. “Hard as a rock and twice as shiny!” he proclaimed to any women foolish enough to venture near.
Later, seated on his bed, he admired it between drinks of wine. “Now,” he said to himself, “at least I won’t have to put up with the taunts of that evil Penis anymore!” He blew out the candle and settled back to sleep.
A moment after that the candle rekindled as if by magic. The top of the copper sheath rose up like a tiny helmet. Penis peeked around cautiously and, finding Meersh deep in slumber, slipped free of him and scurried off, tittering, in search of more trouble.
“. . . in search of more trouble,” Soter solemnly finished. Leodora turned the lamp to the solid side and