learned to lie.
"Orem. Do you want your four coppers back?"
It had not occurred to him that it was possible. "Yes."
"Then you must entertain us."
"How?"
"Tell us a tale of two sisters, who were both twins of the flesh, joined at the face, and who by magic and prayers and surgery were separated, the one with a single eye, and the other with no face at all except a mouthhole that drools constantly and leaves a trail of spittle between her breasts down to her belly."
"I - I don't - I can't tell you that tale - "
"Oh, we won't believe it, mind you. Such a thing could not be. Tell us what these pathetic
women are doing in a whorehouse."
"They - sit. In a room upstairs."
"And what do these women do while they sit?"
"They - listen."
"And what do you think they hear?"
"The sounds of - of - "
"Love?"
Orem nodded. The one-eyed sister shook her head.
"Not love," Orem said.
"What then?" "The sound of - of birds."
What was above the birds? What was this tale supposed to mean? "The sound of wind across the roof of the house."
The blank one moaned, and the other hooted with laughter. "Yes, he knows, he knows, he has many many ears inside his head, yes, and what else do they hear?"
He understood now. It was a game, like the riddles and puzzles of the manuscripts. "The sound of the sun rising and falling. The sound of the stars as they pass overhead. The sound of God closing his eyes upon the world. The sound of the Hart as it shakes its head and tosses the planets."
The one eye opened wide; the hole of the mouth emphatically stopped drooling for a moment, so that the mucous spittle broke in midstring, and the top of the thread was drawn up into her mouth like the body of a dangling spider.
"The mouth opens and it speaks," said the one-eyed sister.
"Nnnnnnng," said the other.
"We are bound about with magic," said the one-eyed woman, "yet he speaks with our tongues. Beauty has silenced us, yet our own gifts come from the boy's mouth. Ah, Hart, you have more wit than we."
"What does it mean?" Orem asked.
"Nothing to you, forget, forget, tell no one what you have seen, for it is no favor, you are just an ordinary boy."
His stomach clenched with fear at the force of her words.
"We are whores, too, did you know that? We left our father's house and came here because we knew that without faces we had only our bodies. Do you know what it costs to take us? A thousand of gold or a hundred acres of farmland. For a single night. And we are busy twenty nights a year. Oh, we are rich, we twins of the flesh, we sisters of beauty. We are blessed. And not all who come to us are men. There are women who come and spend the night exploring us, trying to discover what makes us so beautiful. They cannot guess. But you know, don't you?"
"No. I don't."
"That's right. You cannot know if you think that you know. We hear another thing, we listen to another thing, not just the stars. Not just the heartbeat of the great thousand-horned Hart who holds the worlds on the points of his horns. Not just the great eruption of the sun that ejaculates its gusts of light to inseminate the world. We hear this also:"
And she stopped. And after a long, long silence, in which Orem heard nothing but his own heavy breathing, she said, "Did you hear it, too?"
"That is why they pay so much to have us."
The one with the eye opened a small chest beside her. It was filled with jewels that glistened in the torchlight like a thousand tiny fires.
And the one whose face was as featureless as fog, she stood and made a single motion with her hand. Abruptly she was naked, and her face glowed like the sun itself; there was no hair on her body, and her skin was deep as amber, and she was so beautiful that Orem could not keep his eyes from flowing with tears so he could no longer see.
"It is as I thought," said the one who could speak. "His eyes cannot be closed except by his own weeping and his own trust."
The blank-faced woman was sitting again, as suddenly as she had stood; how could she have clothed herself so quickly?
"Hunnnnnnng," she moaned. "Ngiiiiiunh."
"Four coppers, says my sister, and a kiss."
It was