A Cow of Sin

A Cow of Sin
by
Bobby Derie

In the royal stables of Minos, Queen Pasiphaë screamed in her travail. Her husband had set aside two stalls, one with a birthing stool large enough to contain her massive frame, and opposite from it, the hollow mockery of a snow-white cow which had accomplished Pasiphaë’s seduction. She stared in sweaty awe at the craft of Daedalus, the hanging udders and leather canal which mocked her own milk-laden teats and dilation.

In time her screams were answered by a pair of midwives, daughters of Anu, handmaids of gods from the ends of empire to the East, who came bearing water and oil, who did not flinch at the impression of hoof and hand on that monumental belly. They gave her bitter herbs to chew, and walked her round as the pains came to here, yet always their circumambulation returned to the great birthing school, to stare once more at her folly.

“Minos is cruel. He knows the fault, but he can get no revenge on Aphrodite, so the king takes his vengeance upon me.” Pasiphaë said to her silent handmaidens.

“I were Minos had sacrificed the bull sent to him, ever I had set eye upon it. I were that woman were never born to mother Daedalus, who did not flinch at my request, and made his quiet inquiries among whoremongers and stablehands, to view the crude tables of those who took their pleasure from ass and horse, and so to fashion so perfect his machine.” She gasped once again as a contraction took her.

“I were this were the end of my labors, yet if I survive this I know Minos will want another son or daughter from me.” Pasiphaë wept, then grimaced. “Though that coward trembles in fear at what I may yet birth.”

Then the handmaidens mopped her frame with water and oil, and motioned her to harken. In an ancient cadence and with trained voice one of the women told a story in song.

“There was a cow of Sîn, Geme-Sîn by name. Sîn the moon-god found her tempting of shape, he saw her and fell in love with her. The brilliance of Sîn was laid upon Geme-Sîn. She was placed at the head of the herd, the herdsman followed her. She grazed on the lushest grasses and watered first at the wells. Hidden from the herdsman, Sîn the moon god came down, and Geme-Sîn beheld him as a wild bull, and he lifted her tail. When her days and months were at an end, the herdsman trembled at the sight of Geme-Sîn great with calf, and as the child-pangs came, she screamed in her labor, and he trembled.

“The cries of Geme-Sîn were heard by Sîn in heaven, and he sent two lamassu to ease her through the birth. One took oil from a jar, and laid it upon Geme-Sîn’s forehead; the other took water of labor, and sprinkled it upon her whole body. Three times the lamassu did this, and on the third time the calf fell down on the ground.” Here the handmaiden placed her hand on the dome of the belly. “May this woman give birth as easily as Geme-Sîn.”

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Elf Cup

Elf Cup

by
Bobby Derie

They laid her down on a bed of roses, and she did not cry or struggle at the pricks of the little thorns, for then they would catch and tear at her flesh. The bread and the chalice were passed over her, and stood on her slim belly and between her breasts with cold fingers that lingered too long. Then she held her breath as much as she dared, so as not to spill it, for that would be worse.

The king had called her, and sat her down. His brown hair was shot with grey, his knight’s frame gone to blubber with age, drink, and soft food, and his thing when she held it was soft and marked by the scars of old pox. He combed her golden hair and laid his hands on her, a rough callous against each nipple, and he told her she was to be the elf cup.

She had stood by the bed as Nell had died, and saw the strange parallel scars she bore on hip and shoulder and buttocks and back, and wiped her chin when the golden seed came forth from her lips. It burned holes in the floor, and wracked Nell terribly as it worked its way through her, ‘til at last Nell had shat out her intestines upon the floor. All that, she knew, because Nell had listened to the French girl from Navarre and swallowed.

The vizard had called her, and she posed in the morning light, and he sketched and measured her with a crayon of charcoal on paper, alternating questions and instructions, both of which she answered as best she could. She saw the vizard’s paper, as she gathered up her clothes, and the star-signs ray’d round her face, the angles he had measured and the long scrawl of calculations. Later, she saw her face again, on a statue of Mary on the new church.

The ambassadors had brought a dragon tonight, and the king looked on impassive at their sport. She had learned well from the stablemaster, and knelt on all fours before the wheezing thing, flicking out her tongue and slinking in that inching way ‘til it caught her motion. It was old and half-blind, and she had to help and guide it in, and then there was silence in the hall save for the bellowing dragon and the hard breathing of the court’s guests. She woke in her bed reeking of sulfur.

The princess asked for her, after, always after, and she limped to obey. Her highness could not stand to watch, even had she been allowed, but she would listen from behind the screen as the elf cup told her of the night’s events. Behind that silk the gasps would come, faster and faster, and then the aching silence before the cup was released, and ordered to return.

There was an alchemist that asked for a spoonful of fabulous emission, and she took the golden spoon and the golden bottle and the golden coins, and never told him of what had happened to Nell.

There was a scandal amid the attendants of the bath, when the princess grew heavy, and all the servants were sent away save the elf cup, who told her stories with a new relish as her highness screamed in labor.

There was an old king carried to a summer isle by three queens, and the next week when the ambassadors returned they gave her the candle of him to keep, and showed her how best to use it.

And there was Nell’s grave, where no church would have her, and each year when a thorn bore up from there she borrowed a sword and cut it down.

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Dear HPL, Cordially REH

Dear HPL, Cordially REH

by Bobby Derie

The following letter, apparently Robert E. Howard’s answer to H. P. Lovecraft’s meandering missive rescued from Derleth’s typewriter ribbon, was finally pieced together from several fragments and scraps sold by a particularly shrewd and mercenary dealer in California, who rightly reasoned that he could fetch a better price for the whole if they were sold piecemeal. Now, thanks to the generosity of individual purchasers of various fragments, this lost piece of correspondence may be presented whole for the edification of fans and scholars of REH and HPL.

- BD

Dear HPL:

I have finally found time to answer your (as always) interesting letter. Recalling off-hand the charges you have made against me, I remember that at various times you have accused me of being: Exalter-of-the-Physical-Above-the-Mental; Enemy of Humanity; Foe of Mankind; Apostle of Prejudice; Distorter of Fact; Repudiator of Evolutionary Standards; Over-Emphasizer of Ethics; Sympathizer of Criminals (that one broke all altitude records); Egotist; Poseur; Emotionalist; Defender of Ignorance; Sentimentalist; Romanticist. Memory of my heresy is mingled in every attack you make on me and my ideas. Concerning the clippings about the police, etc., I didn’t present them in an effort to show these things were typical. I’m afraid a written statement of affairs wouldn’t do much good, unless signed by some one in authority; even if I dared to publish such a paper.

One market I tried was Spicy Adventure, a sex magazine to which Ed is the star contributor. He’s a good deal bigger than I am—taller and heavier—and only a few months older, but I am beginning to fear that he doesn’t have the stamina and endurance that a man of his age ought to have. They say that the aforesaid giant and I, after the smoke cleared away, sallied forth to visit a young lady, that we got into the wrong front yard, and that I got sick.

I’ve also taken a short run into Central East Texas (to talk to the surgeon who operated [on] my mother last spring) and one into South Texas (to buy some German wine for my mother from Ludwig Borauer who makes the best in the world); I’ve learned to mix a dozen or so new drinks, have renewed an old love affair and broken it off again, developed a new set of exercises with sledge-hammers, read some new books, made some more enemies, learned how to take care of milch goats, so altogether the year that brings me into middle age has been a rather stormy one. That was four days ago, and still the water is gushing over the spillway, in spite of the fact that all flood-gates are being kept wide open, to take care of the surplus.

We are not farmers. Water, brought from dams built on the Pecos, is the reason for the town’s existence. It doesn’t have, for instance, or at least we didn’t see any of those dives so popular in Mexican border towns, where naked prostitutes of both sexes and various Latin races first dance before the customers, then copulate with each other, and then indulge in various revolting perversions for the entertainment of the crowd, which is generally made up of tourists.

I like your “Festival” reprint in the current Weird Tales. I hope you decide to collaborate on the proposed musical drama.

Typical letter from the postoak country.

Cordially,

REH

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Lies Between Us

Lies Between Us
by
Bobby Derie

Mara and Emilie shared the flat, and they shared the bed. Mara would bring home French films and they would curl up on the couch and watch them over dinner on the little square plates Emilie had bought, and Emilie would bring home little apparat novels in Russian and English and line them up on a shelf for Mara to borrow. Sometimes in the night the attacks would come, wheezing and gasping for breath, and they would hold each other until the morning light broke across the frozen river out of the east window. Then Emilie would make tea for them both, and it would be all right.

They never asked each other their real names.

Emilie would leave in the mornings, after making tea, and be away most of the day. Mara’s schedule was more erratic; a life lived on the end of a cellphone, gone sometimes for days and lonely nights, coming back bedraggled and tired, letting Emily strip her out of her clothes and draw her into the bath to wash the scents of airports and foreign places off of her. Sometimes even the nights would be stolen from them, and Mara would return and set her overnight bag down next to the empty spot where Emilie’s should be in the closet, where it always was when they were together. Side by side.

They never asked each other about their past.

Once, Mara had come home to find Emilie in the bathroom with the door open, naked to the waist and picking splinters of bone out of her arm with a pair of tweezers in her left hand and making a bit of a mess of it. Neither said anything when Mara came and took over; Emilie just sat with her breasts naked to the air as Mara’s knowing hands washed away the blood, applied the antiseptic, dug out the bits of bone and other shrapnel and laid them in the sea shell on the sink which Emilie had brought home from the beach to hold their soap, and applied a field dressing. When all was done they kissed, and Mara put Emilie to bed.

They never asked each other who they worked for.

Once, Emilie walked in as Mara was cleaning her handguns on the kitchen table—small things that might fit in a pocket or a purse, each of which could fit in a three inch square. Mara didn’t look up as Emilie went into their bedroom, didn’t look up until Em laid her own weapon down and began to dissemble it. Then Mara raised an eyebrow, and Emilie beamed her slight, tight-lipped smile, and they had something else they could do in front of each other, something else to talk and discuss and laugh about at afternoons and after midnight when neither one could sleep.

They never spoke about what they did.

The week of the embassy bombings was hectic for both of them. The apartment was empty most of the time, both overnight bags gone from the closet. Emilie came home first, when the curfews were over and the alert downgraded, and spent the nights and days watching the news, the manhunts, and hugging Mara’s pillow, smelling her. She didn’t pray, because Emilie had ceased to pray a long time ago, but she hoped. When Mara finally staggered in, haggard and rough, Em cried silly tears and held her on the couch until they both fell asleep. There were sirens in the city that night, and gunshots, but it never broke the peace of the flat.

They never spoke about the future.

Emilie had brought a man home. His scent was in their bed, the condom floating in the toilet. Mara took in the mussed sheets on the unmade bed, the wet spot, the mocking emptiness where Emilie’s overnight bag should have been, in the closet. Mara sat on the bed and did not cry, and did not know if she should wait, or for how long. It was night when Em returned, and she sat down next to Mara on the bed. Emilie took Mara’s hand in hers, and Mara let her. Mara set her head on Emilie’s shoulder, and Em let her. They stayed like that for a long time.

“I can’t.” Em said.

“I know.” Mara said.

“It wasn’t…” Em scrunched up her face. “I should have found a hotel.”

“No.” Mara said. “You needed a place. Somewhere lived in.”

“There was nowhere else.”

Mara squeezed her hand. “I’m glad.”

In the spring the winter thawed and ran fluid again, and they took a long vacation at a cold, pebbly beach away from it all, and laughed at movies and shared their books and cleaned their guns. Then they came home, and Mara’s cellphone rang.

“You better answer it.”

Emilie packed Mara’s going away bag, and gave it to her with a kiss as she left.

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