Gold Piece Drabbles
Dec. 26th, 2003 02:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zarahemlaI have lots of time on my hands. Therefore, I present my gold pieces, written over three days for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
circe_tigana. There're twenty of them, so I broke 'em up for ya.
I.
He fished the gold out with difficulty -- left hand out of right pocket -- and swiped it across the bandage covering his mangled right hand. After he tossed the coin into the coffer, he spit on it.
His brother, voice thick with hatred, said, "I hope you're happy. For the misery you've caused. Our own mother dead with a teacup in her hand. My ship fired. And the damn foreign devils in our harbors, stealing our opium."
Wu-Tak shot a glance over his shoulder at his captor. It was a slim hope, the yearning for freedom after so long. When their eyes met, Wu-Loh shoved the flintlock deeper into Wu-Tak's side.
"Please," said Wu-Tak. "Brother."
"The eighth court of hell is reserved for unfilials," said Wu-Loh, smiling. Wu-Tak saw death in that smile. And the pistol fired.
II.
Rio de Janeiro: rain lashes the brick-colored road into mud. She huddles in a doorway, shuddering, water streaming down her black hair.
In the shadows, something moves. She peers. "Sir?" It is a man, stumbling and coughing. "Alms, sir?" He makes no reply, coughs once horribly, and falls face down in the mud. There is no more sound.
She crawls over to him, asking, "You are sick, sir? You are unwell?" but knowing the answer already. She quickly turns him over, searches his pockets: vest, trousers, shirt.
As she scrabbles, something gold flips through her fingers and lands in the man's mouth. She recoils and crosses herself, glancing reflexively up at Corcovado where Christ holds out his arms to all the sinners. As the red clay seeps into his open mouth and mixes with blood seeping out of it, she gathers her courage.
III.
"When I die," the Duke tells his son, "I want this piece of eight laid on my eye." He gestures at a small lacquered box laying on his lap. Mark looks down and smirks.
"You'll get only half-way across Lethe with one."
His father just scowls. "I want two: I don't care what the other one is. C'n be a centime, but this one goes into the ground with me."
"May it be soon," Mark whispers. And it is. Two weeks later, the women lay the Duke out for burial. Dryly, the solicitor tells Mark that everything is his.
"Sell it all," says Mark. "Give it to charity. Do what would make him angriest."
"Sir?"
"Sell it! Sell it! I'm bound for the Carolinas in a month." The solicitor, finally surprised, begins to scribble.
Upstairs, he grabs the box from his father's white, cold hand. "Here," he says, dropping two pence on the coverlet. "Put these on his eyes." Then he goes to his club and gets crosseyed drunk.
IV.
I saw whales in the harbor the morning I found the gold piece on the beach. They blew spumes white-gold into the sunrise.
That night the pirates killed me for that gold piece. They kicked my body into a hollow beneath a palm tree. And I rotted there.
I wander the beach and no one sees me. And sometimes I see whales breaching, flirting with the free air.
V.
They had their way with him every night, and why not, for he was nobbut a cabin boy. Even now, when he is tall and strong as a black mountain, he dreams the click of teeth and the sound a wooden eye makes, rolling in the skull.
He cut himself long ago, a ritual. And then he got himself a gold piece. And now he makes them wear dresses. It's been enough revenge but his dark, tribal dreams want more.
VI.
As the coin rolls from his dead hand, he sits up. Watches the pirates snatch it and boot his body down'rd into the gutter.
The woman in black with dark, compassionate eyes watches him. She's folded onto a curb, hair never moving against the wind.
"You didn't want that gold anyway," she says.
He nods. "Just wanted to be a cobbler. Tailor. Something with my hands and a needle."
She smiles and holds out her own perfectly white hand. "I know a place where we can go: you can do exactly what you want."
"What's your name?" he asks.
"What's yours?"
"Daniel O'Brien."
"And you know mine already."
Startled, he realises that he does.
crosses over w/Sandman
VII.
"Please," she says, "don't go."
"I have to." He looks at her with everything she loves in his green-as-Ireland gaze. "I signed my name. They gave me this gold piece. Think how it will be when I return! I'll bring you silks and jewels. Get our own back from the stinking English."
"I don't want those things." She doesn't want to cry but she's crying.
He's too excited to notice, folding a doubloon into her shaking hand. "Take this for starters. I'll be back before you know it."
But he never is. She never spends the gold. And eventually, they come.
VIII.
The wooden-eyed one kicked her in the face so hard that she heard something break. Her brother screamed wildly.
"I *swear*! I gave it to the Jew moneylender! To pay my debts! Please! She's only ten!"
"And she'll be older afore this night's through." The bearded one pinioned her brother's arms and frog-marched him out the door. "We'll just find this Jew and see if'n you're lyin'."
She is nearly forty and on her deathbed when she finally breaks silence, tells her own daughter the story of her brother's disappearance. How the moonlight shone down and showed white on speaking bone.
IX.
Dog tries to warn Mistress but she doesn't hear. And now the black shapes flow over the wall and Dog cowers in the bushes.
"What's going on?" It's barn cat, grotesquely large in the darkness. Dog hates barn cat, but knows she's at least friendly. He replies: "Don't know. Smells bad though. Dead a long time."
"But who'll put out my milk if mistress is dead?" barn cat whines. They cower together, fur against fur, as dead things flow from the house, leaving an orange glow and choking smoke.
Into the garden they go and Dog hears scraping. Digging. They are digging in his treasure spot: he's too scared to bark and they take his treasure and as they slip back over the garden wall, he whines low in his throat.
X.
Dvividha receives forty pieces for a wedding gift. She wears red, the color of joy. Within a year he is dead. The second and third husbands follow quickly.
Then the woman who sold her the fishberry begins to spread rumors. Dvividha stops her tongue, but soon enough someone finds the bitch's body in a charcoal heap. So Dvividha travels to Bombay like a grand lady, spending gold.
She spends the last of it, all but one piece, on a ship. And she becomes a pirate, raiding fat Egyptian merchants and slow Chinese traders. She doesn't believe the stories until the moonlight makes them all come true.
XI.
Twins they were, wild as the devil, with gold sunshine hair. Grew up doin' everything together and when they were eighteen they fought over a girl. 'N that were that: one went east and one went west.
One went and married that heathen Chinee woman and got him a house in Shanghai. Ran opium and such. Was kilt down on his knees, head in the sawdust of a Chinee tavern.
T'other ran around the world and in Tortuga he met a sweet-mouthed pirate boy who gave him blood-stained gold and the clap and which one he died of, I can't say.
XII.
Smoke. Red chaises. Abberline inhales greedily, sets the long pipe on the floor. Spins a copper penny between his fingers, back and forth.
As he drifts, the penny turns to skull-stamped gold, the light to blood. Whispers glide across the room: they're coming. They're coming. They're here.
Snatch of song: the anchor's weighed, the sails unfurled: we're bound to plow the watery world. don't you see we're outward bound?
Abberline exhales. His graceful hand drops. Everything disappears.
crosses over with "from hell"
XIII.
Sometimes they throw gold into the stadium. Women mostly. Strange how women could love the smell of oiled leather and blood.
Today he returns to the cool dressing room after winning a match -- barely. His many shallow cuts sting. He scrapes sand from himself with a strigil, cursing.
The arena slave shows him a shallow basin, almost brimful of gold. On the top is an odd piece he's never seen before: etched with a skull and scored deeply with something red.
Maximus, deeply superstitious, shudders at the sight of it.
"Take it to the temple," he orders.
"All of it?" the boy gasps, wide-eyed.
"All."
As the boy scampers out, Maximus wonders fleetingly how much of it he will steal.
crosses over with "gladiator"
XIV.
Jack takes the coin because the man giving it to him is desperate: eyes full of shadows. "They're after me," comes the whisper. "Have been all my life."
It seems like the right thing to do: clear the shadows away, take another burden on. And the man is right, something was after him. Later, the pirate comes.
They fight. Jack, mouth tight with repressed rage, bruises the pirate up one side and down the other. Eventually he knocks the pirate senseless, drops the coin on his draggled coat.
"I would have given it to you, had you asked," he remarks. He casts a long shadow into the sunset.
crosses over with "Samurai Jack"
XV.
Norrington scowls at Gillette and twists the braid on his fancy hat. "Why don't I get to have a gold coin?"
"You want to be cursed and undead, sir?"
"Well . . . no. But Will got one. Elizabeth got one. And Sparrow did too! What's the matter with me? I'm a commodore!"
"I really have no reply to that, sir."
"Being law-abiding gets you nothing but a fancy hat, Gillette."
"Sparrow has a fancy hat too, sir."
"Does it have gold braid?"
"No, but it does have that lovely tricorne . . . ."
"Shut up, Gillette."
XVI.
HUITZILOPOCHTLI: Gentleman, I'd like to introduce a chap fresh from the Underworld who is joinin' us this year in the Heathen Gods Gold-Piece Acquirance-By-Force Committee.
EVERYONE: Blood And Terror!
MICHAEL BALDWIN: Hello.
HUITZILOPOCHTLI: Michael Baldwin, Huitzilopochtli. Michael Baldwin, Huitzilopchtli. Michael Baldwin, Huitzilopchtli.
HUITZILOPOCHTLI: Is your name not Huitzilopochtli?
MICHAEL BALDWIN: No, it's Michael.
HUITZILOPOCHTLI: That's going to cause some confusion. Mind if we call you Huitzilopochtli to keep it clear?
HUITZILOPOCHTLI: Now I call upon Huitzilopochtli to officially welcome Mr. Baldwin to the Acquirance Committee.
HUITZILOPOCHTLI: I'd like to welcome the newest vengeance-sucking demon lord to the Golden Chamber and remind him that we don't like non-sacrificial-virgin-lovers here.
EVERYONE: Hear, hear! Well spoken, Huitzilopochtli!
crosses over with monty python's "bruces"
XVII.
Zara: ::types furiously:: Dammit! This Heathen God stuff has to stop! Someone should tell them I'm a Christian!
H. Gods: The coins must be returned! And we want more blood! ::line up and begin singing menacingly:: We were here before you rose / we will be here when you fall.
Zara: That's from Coraline! You just stole it!
H. Gods: Fine then. ::begin tap-dancing to the themesong from "Hamtaro.":: Don't make us come over there.
Zara: Aieeeeee! I've done sixteen! Isn't that enough?
H. Gods: No. Get moving. And be funnier.
XVIII.
Maegwin wanders through the dwarrow's twisting Underworld, lost to light. She hums tunelessly to herself.
Suddenly to the right, a lantern flares. She stifles a scream. And a man looms out of a solid wall.
"You have something, poppet?" he asks. He speaks the Underworld language, harsh and not at all like Hernystiri. But Maegwin understands. Dreamily she opens her hands. In the left one -- there -- a glint of gold.
"Here you are," Maegwin says, giving him a dizzying smile. Before her vision blanks, she sees grave pity in his eyes. When she wakes back to herself, only a small cut on her hand can prove her vision.
crosses over with tad williams's "green angel tower"
XIX.
Underwater, you can still talk. It just takes effort. Case in point: Ragetti is about to slit a fish open -- finally -- after chasing it (well, the contents of its stomach) for a week.
As he grabs the fish, it says, "Kind sir! If you will only spare my life, I will give you any wish you desire."
"Ooh." Ragetti eyes Pintel. "I do want me a new eye made of that Venice glass."
"And I needs a new pair of striped stockin's. Mine got caught on that window-frame in Barcelona."
They both turn to eye the fish. "Well? Got 'em or not?" says Pintel to the fish, which rolls its eyes wildly.
"Well, gentlemen, not as such, not on me. . . ."
The small ripping sound carries through the water, as does the peculiar red swirl of fish blood.
"God shouldn't make fish talk if He can't make 'em keep their promises," mutters Pintel, probing about in the guts. "Ah, here it is."
XX.
Jane and Katharine and Martha would have been horrified (and Mark probably fascinated) to know the story of the boy who had the silver coin before them.
His name was Brian. His first wish was for gold pieces and a pirate. Unfortunately he got a gold piece -- cursed -- and a pirate monkey. And they were both very bad. The pirate monkey stole Brian's gold piece and his silver coin and chewed off a big chunk of his hair.
Brian got gypped -- never got a chance with the the whole "half magic" thing. Damn, but some people just have bad luck.
crosses over with Edward Eager's "half magic"
circe_tigana. There're twenty of them, so I broke 'em up for ya.I.
He fished the gold out with difficulty -- left hand out of right pocket -- and swiped it across the bandage covering his mangled right hand. After he tossed the coin into the coffer, he spit on it.
His brother, voice thick with hatred, said, "I hope you're happy. For the misery you've caused. Our own mother dead with a teacup in her hand. My ship fired. And the damn foreign devils in our harbors, stealing our opium."
Wu-Tak shot a glance over his shoulder at his captor. It was a slim hope, the yearning for freedom after so long. When their eyes met, Wu-Loh shoved the flintlock deeper into Wu-Tak's side.
"Please," said Wu-Tak. "Brother."
"The eighth court of hell is reserved for unfilials," said Wu-Loh, smiling. Wu-Tak saw death in that smile. And the pistol fired.
II.
Rio de Janeiro: rain lashes the brick-colored road into mud. She huddles in a doorway, shuddering, water streaming down her black hair.
In the shadows, something moves. She peers. "Sir?" It is a man, stumbling and coughing. "Alms, sir?" He makes no reply, coughs once horribly, and falls face down in the mud. There is no more sound.
She crawls over to him, asking, "You are sick, sir? You are unwell?" but knowing the answer already. She quickly turns him over, searches his pockets: vest, trousers, shirt.
As she scrabbles, something gold flips through her fingers and lands in the man's mouth. She recoils and crosses herself, glancing reflexively up at Corcovado where Christ holds out his arms to all the sinners. As the red clay seeps into his open mouth and mixes with blood seeping out of it, she gathers her courage.
III.
"When I die," the Duke tells his son, "I want this piece of eight laid on my eye." He gestures at a small lacquered box laying on his lap. Mark looks down and smirks.
"You'll get only half-way across Lethe with one."
His father just scowls. "I want two: I don't care what the other one is. C'n be a centime, but this one goes into the ground with me."
"May it be soon," Mark whispers. And it is. Two weeks later, the women lay the Duke out for burial. Dryly, the solicitor tells Mark that everything is his.
"Sell it all," says Mark. "Give it to charity. Do what would make him angriest."
"Sir?"
"Sell it! Sell it! I'm bound for the Carolinas in a month." The solicitor, finally surprised, begins to scribble.
Upstairs, he grabs the box from his father's white, cold hand. "Here," he says, dropping two pence on the coverlet. "Put these on his eyes." Then he goes to his club and gets crosseyed drunk.
IV.
I saw whales in the harbor the morning I found the gold piece on the beach. They blew spumes white-gold into the sunrise.
That night the pirates killed me for that gold piece. They kicked my body into a hollow beneath a palm tree. And I rotted there.
I wander the beach and no one sees me. And sometimes I see whales breaching, flirting with the free air.
V.
They had their way with him every night, and why not, for he was nobbut a cabin boy. Even now, when he is tall and strong as a black mountain, he dreams the click of teeth and the sound a wooden eye makes, rolling in the skull.
He cut himself long ago, a ritual. And then he got himself a gold piece. And now he makes them wear dresses. It's been enough revenge but his dark, tribal dreams want more.
VI.
As the coin rolls from his dead hand, he sits up. Watches the pirates snatch it and boot his body down'rd into the gutter.
The woman in black with dark, compassionate eyes watches him. She's folded onto a curb, hair never moving against the wind.
"You didn't want that gold anyway," she says.
He nods. "Just wanted to be a cobbler. Tailor. Something with my hands and a needle."
She smiles and holds out her own perfectly white hand. "I know a place where we can go: you can do exactly what you want."
"What's your name?" he asks.
"What's yours?"
"Daniel O'Brien."
"And you know mine already."
Startled, he realises that he does.
crosses over w/Sandman
VII.
"Please," she says, "don't go."
"I have to." He looks at her with everything she loves in his green-as-Ireland gaze. "I signed my name. They gave me this gold piece. Think how it will be when I return! I'll bring you silks and jewels. Get our own back from the stinking English."
"I don't want those things." She doesn't want to cry but she's crying.
He's too excited to notice, folding a doubloon into her shaking hand. "Take this for starters. I'll be back before you know it."
But he never is. She never spends the gold. And eventually, they come.
VIII.
The wooden-eyed one kicked her in the face so hard that she heard something break. Her brother screamed wildly.
"I *swear*! I gave it to the Jew moneylender! To pay my debts! Please! She's only ten!"
"And she'll be older afore this night's through." The bearded one pinioned her brother's arms and frog-marched him out the door. "We'll just find this Jew and see if'n you're lyin'."
She is nearly forty and on her deathbed when she finally breaks silence, tells her own daughter the story of her brother's disappearance. How the moonlight shone down and showed white on speaking bone.
IX.
Dog tries to warn Mistress but she doesn't hear. And now the black shapes flow over the wall and Dog cowers in the bushes.
"What's going on?" It's barn cat, grotesquely large in the darkness. Dog hates barn cat, but knows she's at least friendly. He replies: "Don't know. Smells bad though. Dead a long time."
"But who'll put out my milk if mistress is dead?" barn cat whines. They cower together, fur against fur, as dead things flow from the house, leaving an orange glow and choking smoke.
Into the garden they go and Dog hears scraping. Digging. They are digging in his treasure spot: he's too scared to bark and they take his treasure and as they slip back over the garden wall, he whines low in his throat.
X.
Dvividha receives forty pieces for a wedding gift. She wears red, the color of joy. Within a year he is dead. The second and third husbands follow quickly.
Then the woman who sold her the fishberry begins to spread rumors. Dvividha stops her tongue, but soon enough someone finds the bitch's body in a charcoal heap. So Dvividha travels to Bombay like a grand lady, spending gold.
She spends the last of it, all but one piece, on a ship. And she becomes a pirate, raiding fat Egyptian merchants and slow Chinese traders. She doesn't believe the stories until the moonlight makes them all come true.
XI.
Twins they were, wild as the devil, with gold sunshine hair. Grew up doin' everything together and when they were eighteen they fought over a girl. 'N that were that: one went east and one went west.
One went and married that heathen Chinee woman and got him a house in Shanghai. Ran opium and such. Was kilt down on his knees, head in the sawdust of a Chinee tavern.
T'other ran around the world and in Tortuga he met a sweet-mouthed pirate boy who gave him blood-stained gold and the clap and which one he died of, I can't say.
XII.
Smoke. Red chaises. Abberline inhales greedily, sets the long pipe on the floor. Spins a copper penny between his fingers, back and forth.
As he drifts, the penny turns to skull-stamped gold, the light to blood. Whispers glide across the room: they're coming. They're coming. They're here.
Snatch of song: the anchor's weighed, the sails unfurled: we're bound to plow the watery world. don't you see we're outward bound?
Abberline exhales. His graceful hand drops. Everything disappears.
crosses over with "from hell"
XIII.
Sometimes they throw gold into the stadium. Women mostly. Strange how women could love the smell of oiled leather and blood.
Today he returns to the cool dressing room after winning a match -- barely. His many shallow cuts sting. He scrapes sand from himself with a strigil, cursing.
The arena slave shows him a shallow basin, almost brimful of gold. On the top is an odd piece he's never seen before: etched with a skull and scored deeply with something red.
Maximus, deeply superstitious, shudders at the sight of it.
"Take it to the temple," he orders.
"All of it?" the boy gasps, wide-eyed.
"All."
As the boy scampers out, Maximus wonders fleetingly how much of it he will steal.
crosses over with "gladiator"
XIV.
Jack takes the coin because the man giving it to him is desperate: eyes full of shadows. "They're after me," comes the whisper. "Have been all my life."
It seems like the right thing to do: clear the shadows away, take another burden on. And the man is right, something was after him. Later, the pirate comes.
They fight. Jack, mouth tight with repressed rage, bruises the pirate up one side and down the other. Eventually he knocks the pirate senseless, drops the coin on his draggled coat.
"I would have given it to you, had you asked," he remarks. He casts a long shadow into the sunset.
crosses over with "Samurai Jack"
XV.
Norrington scowls at Gillette and twists the braid on his fancy hat. "Why don't I get to have a gold coin?"
"You want to be cursed and undead, sir?"
"Well . . . no. But Will got one. Elizabeth got one. And Sparrow did too! What's the matter with me? I'm a commodore!"
"I really have no reply to that, sir."
"Being law-abiding gets you nothing but a fancy hat, Gillette."
"Sparrow has a fancy hat too, sir."
"Does it have gold braid?"
"No, but it does have that lovely tricorne . . . ."
"Shut up, Gillette."
XVI.
HUITZILOPOCHTLI: Gentleman, I'd like to introduce a chap fresh from the Underworld who is joinin' us this year in the Heathen Gods Gold-Piece Acquirance-By-Force Committee.
EVERYONE: Blood And Terror!
MICHAEL BALDWIN: Hello.
HUITZILOPOCHTLI: Michael Baldwin, Huitzilopochtli. Michael Baldwin, Huitzilopchtli. Michael Baldwin, Huitzilopchtli.
HUITZILOPOCHTLI: Is your name not Huitzilopochtli?
MICHAEL BALDWIN: No, it's Michael.
HUITZILOPOCHTLI: That's going to cause some confusion. Mind if we call you Huitzilopochtli to keep it clear?
HUITZILOPOCHTLI: Now I call upon Huitzilopochtli to officially welcome Mr. Baldwin to the Acquirance Committee.
HUITZILOPOCHTLI: I'd like to welcome the newest vengeance-sucking demon lord to the Golden Chamber and remind him that we don't like non-sacrificial-virgin-lovers here.
EVERYONE: Hear, hear! Well spoken, Huitzilopochtli!
crosses over with monty python's "bruces"
XVII.
Zara: ::types furiously:: Dammit! This Heathen God stuff has to stop! Someone should tell them I'm a Christian!
H. Gods: The coins must be returned! And we want more blood! ::line up and begin singing menacingly:: We were here before you rose / we will be here when you fall.
Zara: That's from Coraline! You just stole it!
H. Gods: Fine then. ::begin tap-dancing to the themesong from "Hamtaro.":: Don't make us come over there.
Zara: Aieeeeee! I've done sixteen! Isn't that enough?
H. Gods: No. Get moving. And be funnier.
XVIII.
Maegwin wanders through the dwarrow's twisting Underworld, lost to light. She hums tunelessly to herself.
Suddenly to the right, a lantern flares. She stifles a scream. And a man looms out of a solid wall.
"You have something, poppet?" he asks. He speaks the Underworld language, harsh and not at all like Hernystiri. But Maegwin understands. Dreamily she opens her hands. In the left one -- there -- a glint of gold.
"Here you are," Maegwin says, giving him a dizzying smile. Before her vision blanks, she sees grave pity in his eyes. When she wakes back to herself, only a small cut on her hand can prove her vision.
crosses over with tad williams's "green angel tower"
XIX.
Underwater, you can still talk. It just takes effort. Case in point: Ragetti is about to slit a fish open -- finally -- after chasing it (well, the contents of its stomach) for a week.
As he grabs the fish, it says, "Kind sir! If you will only spare my life, I will give you any wish you desire."
"Ooh." Ragetti eyes Pintel. "I do want me a new eye made of that Venice glass."
"And I needs a new pair of striped stockin's. Mine got caught on that window-frame in Barcelona."
They both turn to eye the fish. "Well? Got 'em or not?" says Pintel to the fish, which rolls its eyes wildly.
"Well, gentlemen, not as such, not on me. . . ."
The small ripping sound carries through the water, as does the peculiar red swirl of fish blood.
"God shouldn't make fish talk if He can't make 'em keep their promises," mutters Pintel, probing about in the guts. "Ah, here it is."
XX.
Jane and Katharine and Martha would have been horrified (and Mark probably fascinated) to know the story of the boy who had the silver coin before them.
His name was Brian. His first wish was for gold pieces and a pirate. Unfortunately he got a gold piece -- cursed -- and a pirate monkey. And they were both very bad. The pirate monkey stole Brian's gold piece and his silver coin and chewed off a big chunk of his hair.
Brian got gypped -- never got a chance with the the whole "half magic" thing. Damn, but some people just have bad luck.
crosses over with Edward Eager's "half magic"