Breathless from running through the desert night--

--it is now noon, and we have broken onto a plain of soft grass and curious striped horses. Some of them speak passing-fair Arabic, but their parsing of Persian is abysmal, as is their command of Khazar, their telling of Turkic tall-tales, and their yapping of yarns in Yemeni.

One curious animal, however, did tell me and the few loyal men who stayed with me after the [long description of escape, mutiny, adjudication via hand-games, reconciliation, re-mutiny, capture by confused anti-Klemizonian Quozites, re-escape, mutiny x3, etc., missing --ed. Chronolectus] at length concerning the history of Babylon, which my favourite chair-crafter is always going on about. The little animal even had a pointed quotation for me:

But if he were actually to have barley poured into carrying-nets, and to have it loaded on the pack-asses at whose sides reserve donkeys have been placed, and were to have it heaped up in a pile in the courtyard of Aratta -- were he really to heap it up in such a manner; and were Inana, the luxuriance of the grain pile, who is the "illuminator of the lands," the "ornament of the settlements," who adorns the seven walls, who is the heroic lady, fit for battle, who, as the heroine of the battleground, makes the troops dance the dance of Inana -- were she actually to cast off Aratta as if to a carrion-pursuing dog, then in that case I should submit to him; he would indeed have made me know his preeminence; like the city, I in my smallness would submit to him.

Ha, what a laugh! It cheered me up to stay and talk to the little animal all night, even though its asymmetric arms and lack of teeth disturbed me greatly.

Who knows what the starry skies hold for us? Does the Mullah? No--I think he doesn't. Does my (spit on him!) camel? No, though he speaks so well of the Future, as if we were certain to grow into seasoned old men with interesting hobbies, and not to die, utterly desiccated amongst weird fauna in a weird land.

The Quozite war-howls are not far off. I will write again, in further detail, of our escape soon. For now, I merely enjoy a pear...

[Here the bark breaks off...]

The Deadly Cat-Warriors Of Klem & The Appreciative Gladiators, Or Glad-Glads

12 Raby` al-awal 1328 A.H.

Portentous last journal entry, you scoundrel, Tariq! O ironic Humps...

Jiji finally returned today, with a new message carved in her side:

"SCOTS [heart symbol] KLEMIZONS"

We were chatting up the sand-sellers in the Bazaar Of Veiled Men, hoping to score a bevy of free sand-sandwiches, when we were surrounded by... The Deadly Cat-Warriors Of Klem!

Strangely, they weren't huge women in cat-masks, but actual cats, mounted one-upon-the-next, up and up into the strangest, deadliest configurations and combinations I've e'er seen in all my years of general-ing.

We were taken--all six hundred of us, to a man--down into the Gullet Of Fear, or the Klemizonian (that is the proper adjectival form of "Klem," we have learned) version of a gaol-house, which is nothing like our Enlightened Rooms For Better Thought And Increased Communication With The Friend, back in the Caliphate. No, these are not perfumed or filled with chanting old beggars or friendly spider-monkeys (or monkey-spiders), but with arbitrary spike-lined pits and asp-grottoes...

(They let me keep my journal and quill so that I could write, but now I must use poor Jiji's blood for ink. I fear, if she succumbs to septicemia, I'll be forced to employ Fariz's instead...)

On the morrow, we are to face the Appreciative Gladiators, Or Glad-Glads, in deadly combat.

So relates the one masked Klemizonian Tribune to whom we've spoken:

"The Cat-Warriors are made this way: We feed the bodies of defeated foreign manlings (like you) to the Glad-Glads, to make them strong. They defeat more foreign manlings, making themselves stronger. At some point, a Glad-Glad--who is so insanely happy to fight for his City that he never stops smiling, even in sleep--becomes too old to defeat foreign warriors. The ignobly old Glad-Glad then inserts himself into the Cat-Pit, or 'Pit-Of-Cats,' the latter way being how the unlearned men-folk say it. The cats, or Cats, properly, rip apart the Glad-Glad, gladly devouring his tiny... dink, as we say. Then the Cats lustily sleep, dreaming of Death-In-Crimson, our goddess here.

"When the Cats awaken, they are as one: One unit of Hateful Death. That is how the Cat-Warriors are made." [Long, clever pause...] "Any questions I might answer now?"

The Mullah looked like he had a question, but I tackled him, his scratchy beard clawing at my red tired eyes...

"EVIL BITCH TRIBUNE! LISTEN ME!," I said calmly, cleverly ellitizing the unnecessary preposition. "You must let us go. Our fight is not with you and your pussies, but with the Scots! who ambushed us at Sibani!"

The Tribune's mask shook for a long time with what I hoped was sympathy.

"Our... what?" She stammered. "What is your fight not with?"

The Mullah again began to speak, but good Savage Robbert put his hand into the old man's mouth, preventing information-carrying noise from disrupting my subtle diplomatic foray.

"With your... Cats, Tribune."

The Tribune's clean, bright eyes darted up and down from behind the kohl-rimmed eyes of her mask. Judging. "Okay. But let me warn you--all of you--you should not waste your words trying to argue. We do not believe in diplomacy. And besides, to whom would you diplome?" (I snickered--that's not a word.) "Tonight, the Tyrant of today is already stepping down from the Dais Of Crazy Beautiful Marble and returning to her job as a slaver of men-folk and children... The Scots? Huh. You will not find Scots unveiled in our City. Your camel is the only one of you worth anything: He has learned to endure."

We were all silent a long time, until Jiji sniffled... Some months ago, upon first arriving in this spiteful Lost Land, I had personally liberated Jiji after Gibreel came to me in a dream in the form of a little girl with no arms who said, "Slavery is wrong--even of pets. Let Jiji go." I had tried to return Jiji to the wild, but he wouldn't leave. We negotiated, via Mysterious Shamz (who knows how to sign Animal), that Jiji would work for his food, in exactly the same capacity he occupied as a slave-pet, but with his pride restored, his hump held high...

I narrowed my eyes, as the Tribune turned to leave, and tried to squint through her, meditating on the fly across the wall--the free fly, swinging itself like a little sling-stone between the bars of our cell.

The day already dawns, it seems, and we must be glad to see it.

O sun! Would that you could fight, in free Tariq's, or free Jiji's place, against these Barbarian-Women with their City of impossible, self-abnegating bureaucracy and storms of Cats...

On Loss, & The Noble Zwei-Humped Camel...

9 Raby` al-awal 1328 A.H.

As we sit in the Empty Square of Inner Klem, awaiting judgment (I think) by the day's Tyrant (for what crimes?), I think back to our last Glory Days, before we wandered far from the Fang Coast and into these blasted, wasted drags of heath/desert in which we've found twenty-seven goats, two lovely Cave Girls (Bee'eed and Baa'ahd, spelling non-standardized), and one, and only one, Red City Of Woman-Archons. In those Glory Days, we found green pasture after pasture, strange and beautiful new culture after culture, and military victory after victory... after victory...

[This is discounting, of course, our route at Moab-Moab (Pett. Lt. Fariz's name), when the Auxiliaries from North Quoz turned against us because they said my nose cast "The Shadow," meaning The Shadow Of The Gyrosphyrinx, which they believe is... let us say, "very unlucky." (Actually, one man shat himself rather profoundly upon seeing my nose mark out a clear, claw-like shadow on the map we were consulting.) We lost ten men that day, including Mullah Shaj's brother, Breath-Of-Piety (I forget his real name, something with a Y), and my best horse, Safir.

After the battle, Dink The Shit-Eating Dog wept on the lap of his dead master, Breath-Of-Piety, until the Mullah had to drag him away. We all quoted the dog various beatific passages from the Hadith and the Story-Sea, hoping to cheer him up and show him that, despite hardships, Love of The Friend prevails. The dog did not grasp these hard-but-consoling truths and decided to become a drunk instead. We applauded his resolve and all drank a half-cask of nonalcoholic fig-wine to show our Love. The dog died a week later of a fragile kidney-gasket.]

NOW A RETURN TO SERENER DAYS:

...the Straits of Sibani, near the Firth of Farouk, we hounded down a small corps of Scottish Imperial Spy-Sailors, dressed in blue livery and gold-and-green Scotch-Bangles. The captured Spy-Sailors claimed to be fishermen, but we knew better. We did, however, realise the benefits of keeping some secrets just for ourselves (myself, Dr. Sabbatai, the Mullah, Fariz, and our pets, foreign wives, tent-makers, shoe-blacks, and soup-makers-of-renowned-gusto), andso released this (laugh!) announcement to all six hundred of our men:

"The boarding party has completed a successful inspection of a merchant ship and escorted the vessel into our territorial waters."

These "waters," of course, being the Waters Of Death.

Some time later, we received this missive, written in hog-juices and palm-ointment so that it was the stickiest possibly, upon the back of a shaved camel (my former camel, Jiji The Brave):

"We are urgently pursuing this matter with our authorities at the highest level and on the instructions of the Foreign Important Person, the Scottish Ambassador has been summoned to the Foreign Office. The Scottish government is demanding the immediate and safe return of our people and equipage."

All the boys were angry, but the Mullah and I at once pierced through the missive's bluster and understood its truth: The Ambassador is powerless, because he does not know where the land of the White Apple is. No one does. Even people who live here do not know how to get here! So the Scots have no reinforcements arriving. Ever. They were lost, and we inspected them, and they failed our inspection (because, after all, the boys have to eat!, the tent-makers need cloth!).

Yet just in case... Just in case the Scots really were amassing armies to descend on Khilbreen-at-Sibani, where we were then camped, we sent the following one line, carved into poor Jiji's hide, scampering back to the recondite Spy-Sailor Scots:

"Fish prices rose above 62 dinar a barrel after the incident."

[good laugh]

[stain]

The Parable Of The Chati, Now Seen, Child-Like, In Full Glory In The Wood-Land, Or Heath, Beyond The Vortex-Desert

30 safar 1328 A.H.

A chati (Felis mitis) was seen recently dragging a squid up a cliff, paw by paw, delirious with hunger but unwilling to consume its prey until entering the sufficiently mysterious, obfuscating bosom of darkness afforded to the cliff by a low-hanging bank of snapper-junipers, which are like normal, non-White Applean junipers, except they snap at you as you walk past. (The vile trees ignore, of course, the chati and its dumb aliment.)


Good-Dredging Samuel, a strongman and Jew with whom I have had many a laugh, told me that spotting a chati dragging a squid--or any impossibly juicy sea-life--is a sign of extreme good luck.

But Oliver Hadith, a despicable Angle who converted to Islam in order to marry my cousin, who is named Quite Pretty Sala, says that spotting an animal drag another animal up a cliff is bad luck. (Down a cliff, good luck, but only to sailors; to the rest of us, it is ambivalent or even ornery, stupid luck.)



...envious of this chati and his squid. Recalling a parable told us by Mama in the Early Days of existence, when we had not yet set off to pyrate ourselves a world from the Savages, Heathens, Pagans, Cross-Bearers, Monstres, Vampyres, Rivals, and Unlicensed Vintners. Mama told me that a chati once asked a djinn to explicate the origin and justification of Evil in a world created by awesome, limitless Good. The djinn told the chati to ask the prickling pear or Opuntia littoralis. The chati ran off and spoke to the pear, but learned nothing. Returning to the djinn, he asked what he'd done wrong. The djinn laughed and told the chati that pears are very hard of hearing, that he must lean closer and speak louder.

The chati leaned closer and closer to the pear, finally rubbing his face into the trunk of the plant, whereat the spikes guard the juicy organs inside. The spikes, of course, rubbed back!, burning into the cat's face, making it leap up in fright.

When the poor chati returned to the djinn to eat him, the djinn had turned into a kindly-smiling old man, who offered the wounded animal a dish of milk. "Do you see, chati," the djinn-man said, "to eat the fruit's juices, you must know the evil of its hair!"

...which always struck me as something crazy only a Mama would say, since fruit doesn't, generally speaking, have hair.

Still, the problem of Theodicy remains.

As we welter in the tall heat of the mountains above the dry hinter-plains, we can see a City loom in the distance, some days' travel off. The sun sets, and the city's russet, stone towers glitter like evil teeth on the sun's lowest jaw. What it holds for us, whether its inhabitants have heard of Law and Light, what they think of the Gyrosphyrinx and her beautiful but deadly song--we do not know.

But we know, thanks to a fleet vire from Savage Robbert, that roast-of-chati with pickled-squid-lips-and-sand delights the tongue, nose, and eyes (and who can say, perhaps the ears or lower manhood as well).

The Teething Vortex...

25 safar 1328 A.H.

...left our dog, Hot-Swabbing-Peter, a German Setter-Punter (not Pointer) mix, with some Brobdinag in him, with a bleeding tail.

It came from the sand in the shape of a sand-storm, but had surely teeth, and what teeth! The vortex, or, properly, Vortex, deposited sand in our nostrils, mud in our pants, and hate in our hearts. We began to suspect one another of thievery and overly-harsh-scolding...

The fantastic geography of the White Apple lands still amazes Small Lt. Shamz ali Khan but no longer amazes, surprises, or even particularly registers with Large Lt. Shamz bin Mirza (from the Indus-city Port-Of-Peacocks, whereat we conceived first to seek the Gyrosphyrinx, one day, after not-crashing not-here, but after landing somewhere else, preferably Lemuria).

We tried to catch the vortex but could not. Leading us to suspect treachery. After having Large Obul cane some of the men I'd yet to meet (Mysterious Shamz, Grotesque Boy Whose Name I Don't Know, and Old Aziz, for three), we did root out an apple-thief (G.B.W.N.I.D.K., naturalich, as the barbarians say).

But no vortex.

The Golden Vulture-Headed Exarch Is Covered In Oil...

15 safar 1328 A.H.

...because we dumped him there, accidentally. We were mid-parley regarding the recent spread of civil discourse in the White Apple region, discourse regarding some conversations had by the Zu-Priest (Gyrosphyrinxian) of the hamlet of Loha and the "Mad Hunter," who was once one of our men, when we first landed here. Their discourse, apparently, is quite polemical, recalling those dialectics of Plato and Socrates that have fueled the thought of the Greeks and their heirs (the Romans, the Byzantines, and now ourselves, the Saracens) for some centuries. We know of our traitor's talks with the Zu-Priest--a candidate for Grand Zu-Priest, I am told--only thanks to an owl that has learned to speak from a Maronite whistling champion named Zim.

All this is hearsay, of course.

I auscultated the sea-sounds for a while before leaving the coast to return to the War Tent, which had been erected hopefully by young Brevis, a Basque we stole from his parent's rotten shack along the way to ship-wrecking on this wretched magickal continent. Brevis wants me to declare War on the traitor and command the horsemen to ride out, on their mules (the natives ate the horses), to seek the traitorous "Mad Hunter" and his supposedly brass-nippled chattel-girl. To render un-done his slight against us: His leaving an empire of God to seek a barbarian's throne.

But this tent and my sitting here and writing this before my eager crowd of men, who press smellily upon me like so many blood-wet haunches at the butcher's... [they back away] Has no bearing. The bearing has been had by fault of Clumsly Rashid, who tripped and knocked himself into the Golden Vulture-Headed Exarch of the nearest-by village, the village of Ouxoakum, whilst they were haggling over olive prices.

Thus we are at war, whether we wish to be or not. We must go forward, and we will win. Unless, perhaps, the Zu (the Gyrosphyrinx--the slinking, baby-chewing hell-cat) strikes first...

...

I eat an apple here now in dusky contemplation, my men having traveled to town to get drunk before attacking. This is a preemptive attack, of course. The Golden Vulture-Headed Exarch has not ordered his men to attack my men. But if my men do not attach his men, what will my quavering blood hear in the morning? The sound of itself choking itself... The ear travels forward in time and hears a certain tinny rush; it is not un-delightful, and everything is a bag of positives and moodinesses and embraces with the sleeping realisation that death becomes us. And that we have not long to glory ourselves in this life. Really, the only justification we need to go to war with peaceful Ouxoakum is... brevity of mortal coil.

...

The apple core is spindle now, no longer flesh-encased.
And midnight soon embraced despoils all need for sword or plow.

...

[Margin, in blood: (But dry cider-wine, we still need that!) ]

Where We Are For Now, As We Seek Lore Re: The Monster's Whereabouts, Activities, Weaknesses, Proclivities, And Favourite Passages From The Hadith

11 safar 1328 A.H.

The villagers in Xrum raise pigs; they live in in an arid valley where most alimentary plants will not thrive and cattle grow over-lean and suffocate in the heat. The pigs fatten off stone-moss, which they root out, blindly, like infants to the dug. The Xrumi call the pigs "blatgolo," or, "wonderings," because they provide for humans so faultlessly: Their pig-milk sustains children and the elderly or infirm, especially when mixed with pig-blood; their pig-ears are worn as necklaces by proud, pig-hunting warriors; their pig-entrails serve, meanwhile, as garlands for the warriors' beauteous women, some of whom are merely failed warriors, pretending to be women, because, as they say, "to wear the pig-garland is easy / for one who has no nose."

At night, we steal into Xrum and try to determine which garland-wearers are women, and which dispensable men; then we steal the women and take them back to our camp, to teach of the Highest of High, and to delight with our manliness and weaponistic keenness. Frightening noises erupt in the arrid night, where stars cannot thrive, due to the clouds coming from the higher, much be-jungled plateaus whereon the Gyrosphyrinx dwells... The garlanded girls are taught from youth to wear their garlands at certain jaunty, smellier angles, whereby the men-folk root them out, gradiently, trying first one then the other in a sociable communion of trial-marriages (their word translates, weirdly, to "partnerships") and eventual love-bonds, which are strengthened by a Wine Dipping.

The wine of the Wine Dipping, of course, comes from distilled pigs'-blood and -juices, mixed with "alleviated dirt" (Petty Lt. Fariz's translation) and the rust of the Holy Nail, that thing stolen from the Xrumi's paramount enemies, the Xkuth.

The Xkuthi, meanwhile, have learned to instruct their women and faux-women to wear their garlands of pig-intestines (and, in the cases of Princesses and Baronesses, garlands of hams and medallions and other more savory elements) at exactly un-jaunty angles, to infuriate the Xrumi warriors. The more infuriated the Xrumi, the happier the Xkuthi, and so in Xkuth it is now fashionable--at the root of all fashion--to wear the most un-jaunty garlands conceivable, thus making them jaunty, in fact, to their Xkuthi wearers and considerers.

The garlands are not very tasty. Reports Savage Robbert, the gigantic Scot we picked up at sea after his galleon-mates threw him o'erboard for "rind-thievin', bummy-pinchin', and song-ruin'n'," as he puts it, that the garland-wearers are much tastier. (We chastised him for this, Al--h knows; but we reconditely wonder if his theories and strange, Savage manners are worth greater investigatory gusto than I have yet shown. Have delegated thinking on this manner to our most godly Friend, Shamz-of-Tashkent, brother in spirit of Shamz-of-Ishtifar, who passed on last week due to Guinea Dragon-Worm of the gut.)

The garland-wearers are also good at rooting out certain things for us about ourselves: Though they know absolutely nihil concerning the Beast and her Voice, we all sleep later and better when they are by, and they seem to prefer sleeping in our beds than sleeping in the beds of the warriors of Xrum, who tire them out with long-winded explanations of pig-hunting.

Since the women of Xrum don't speak a word of Arabian, Berber, Turkic, Grecian, Romani, Spanish, Yemeni, Axumite, Hebrew, Semitic, Armenian, Persian, Aramaic, Babylonian, Ethiopic, or Ge'ez, and since we speak neither Xrumi, Xkuthi, Xpang!h, X!sho#, Z!X@a, Quoz, nor "Applic," as we've come to call the flittering almost-language of the whirling White Apple People who worship their terrific, human-eating Gyrosphyrinx: Since we've no lingual commonality at all, for the nonce, we get along very well. We coo love-things and address our stolen bed-mates with physicalities. The interposition of "thievery" or "adultery" does not bother them, for every couple in the Land of the White Apple is a freely-loving one, and we are thieves, pirates, and monster-seeks, if we must be to complete the Word of the Friend.

...

I must now go to attend to a tragedy, which is a Captain's duty. Second Chief Warrant Sea-Lad Raqiq Gratha has been strangulated, fatally, by the intestinal cord of the beautiful Zarella'um, who resisted his use of her friend Zbaid as a second thieved-wife. O Jealousy, were that humans here were really immune to your wiles and painted charms! But, eventual reader who finds my vellum, realise this is not the work of sexual-envy, love-envy, or the envy of the stolen or the foreign or the friend--but envy of meat-garland! For Zbaid had the prettiest pork-roundels worn in the whole dusty Valley Of Hanging Sky-Birds, as Q!th-Woa-Zqaz roughly transliterates to, and Zarella'um could not stand to think that, of all the men who had loved her or her loved her great wide-hipped femaleness, of all the men she had loved, it would be the--to her eyes--indisputably wonderful Secn. Chf. Warnt. SL R. Gratha who would pick a "mere dangle of chopped shoulder-and-butt" over a "fortress-gate's chain" of "tend'rest, delicat'st inter-woven ankles-and-eye sockets..."

(Let it be said, Zarella'um, who we will have Mullah Shaj metaphorically garrotte, then exile back to boring Xrum tomorrow after morning prayers, is here wrong; her garland was in no way as juicy or praise-worthy, we think, as Zbaid's, not that it matters: We are universally repulsed by the garlands and demand the Zrumi lovelies take them off when the bed us!)

This whole affair reminds me...

[A small stain, probably of jackfruit, here obscures the Qu'ranic parable quoted as envoi. --Ed.]

It was a Woman, would swear I, save for her Wings, Lyon's-Haunches, and discombobulating, Nightingale's Voice...

8 safar 1328 A.H.

The island of Symi was our object, but this strange land, full of luscious-leaved, white-trunked trees that bear white apples, is our reality. What we have left behind to seek our fortune varies with our names and faces; our commonality is now Wonder: at the fruit, the blazing ruby-coloured tea, the strange Queen of this land, who flits from branch to branch at night, as the natives dance their spinning ode to her (a love ode, I am sure).

My name is Tariq. The lady of the land is the Gyrosphyrinx, like a Grecian sphinx or Babylonian Zu, the anti-griffin. She is a beautiful, stunningly-coiffured woman in her middle years, with a round face and soft eyes--one brown, one chalcedon. But she is also a man-eater and a fornicator-with-wolves and beasts. My governor, Al--h bless him, has bad me capture her. For the glory of the Everlasting Peace.

I will not fail.