THE SILVER PATH
(Finished short story)
“I myself am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick .
HANOI 2014
“Have you ever seen a girl on the street and she is so utterly, breathtakingly, unearthly, beautiful that you think she must be a goddess sent down to earth or an elfen maiden or something?” Will wondered.
“No, not really, because I’m not mental.” George replied.
“Ah, my brother, it is because you are not a poet.”
The two acquaintances walked down a crowded alleyway in the twilight. The air was still hot and incredibly humid. The market stalls on the pavement were packing up for the day but the tea shops were still busy.
They stopped at their favourite tea shop. There were a few plastic stools on the pavement under the shade of a potted palm tree, a fan moved the air around lazily. The ‘cafe’ owner, Tuyen, who they knew to be 87 years old, sat on a slightly larger plastic chair and waved a paper fan around as she chatted with Long, who was her favourite customer and possibly her son. Her long white hair danced in the artificial breeze and she seemed cheerful today.
“Hello Grandmother, hello Mr Dragon,” Will greeted them.
George repeated the greeting in Vietnamese because he knew they couldn’t speak English.
Tuyen poured two glasses of ice tea and Long offered them cigarettes. He wore the old army shirt which he always wore. The Englishmen suspected that he was a veteran of the Cambodian war, but no one ever talked about that.
“I need to get going soon, to meet Hien at nineteen hundred hours,” Will said after gulping down his tea and lighting his cigarette.
“She will be late,” George replied.
“Yes, but I will be on time… it’s our 6 month anniversary and we’re going to that old cafe near West Lake.”
“I thought you hated Ho Tay…”
“I despise West Lake, but girls like it.”
“Yeah, I need to go to class in half an hour… has she been painting much recently?”
“Yes, but nothing I understand, it’s all terribly modern.”
“Does she know you spend all your time looking at elven maidens and drinking tea?”
“Yes, but she likes it. She is rich, and one day she will marry a rich man, for now she likes dating a poet.”
“When was the last time you wrote a poem?”
“Christmas Eve.”
“It’s August.”
George chatted with Long about the weather and Long’s grandchildren, then went off to find his scooter.
Will ordered another tea, drank it quickly then walked off to find a motorbike taxi driver.
He arrived on time, but dusty and sweaty from the journey, and picked a table on the pavement so he could smoke. It was now fully dark and plastic lanterns glowed in the anorexic trees. Insects screamed in the leaves (he couldn’t remember what type of insect, something like a cricket).
After a few minutes he got bored of waiting for a waiter so he went inside and ordered a black coffee with ice in terrible Vietnamese.
Hien eventually arrived. Even after 6 months she still took his breath away. For some reason, she had bleached her hair blonde and it went quite well with her bleached white skin. She wore a cream, silk dress which barely covered her petite figure.
She sat on his left (no hugging in public) and roared at the waiter to bring her a drink with lots of fruit and things floating in it.
“Where shall we go for dinner?” she asked in perfect English with an American accent (she didn’t bother with phatic communication).
“I fancy buffalo,” he said.
“You always want buffalo, how about Korean BBQ?”
“As you wish.”
From behind a glowing tree, the Fae watched them, and judged them..
Hien was snoring like a kitten when Will woke. He would let her sleep for as long as she likes because she rarely got the chance. He fumbled on the desk near the bed, looking for a smoke. His cigarettes were easy to find, but his favourite, gold plated lighter was missing. He was sure he had used it last night. Moaning quietly, he found a spare, disposable lighter in the desk draw and lit up. That was better. The lighter would turn up sometime.
He pulled on a pair of white trousers and loafers then went through to his flat’s tiny kitchen to make tea.
Everything was hard to find. The tea, milk, sugar and cups were all in the wrong places. He blamed it on being hungover. Eventually he had a fine cup of English Breakfast tea, and lit another cigarette.
A few hours later, George woke with a terrible hangover and an impending sense of doom. He drank the water beside his bed to quench his terrible thirst, then made coffee and had a cigarette.
He looked at his watch.
Damn.
He had to teach a class in 43 minutes.
Will looked up from his book (a Conrad novel) and watched Hien sleep. She looked so peaceful, he almost wrote a poem about her.
He was not the only one watching.
“We must leave this terrible place an’ go ‘ome,” Fladh insisted.
“First we must take revenge on the one who dragged us here, that foolish English man who brought us here in his mind… he will be weaker now we have his golden fire stick,” stated Cormac.
“I ’ate it ‘ere, there are ghosts everywhere an’ it smells funny. Let’s just go ‘ome!” Fladh continued.
“We do not know the way home and I sense that a vast sea bars our way. Vengeance must come first. Perhaps if he is dead his belief will no longer trap us here”
Will and Hien sat in the small garden on the cafe rooftop enjoying a very late breakfast of egg-coffee and chocolate gateau.
“Come to my studio, I want to paint today,” Hien said. “You could write while I paint. I’m still waiting for a poem about me.”
“Yes, good idea. But first I need meat and beer for inspiration.”
After breakfast, he climbed on the back of her retro Honda Cub, his knees uncomfortably high on the tiny bike, and they set off in search of inspiration.
Under trees with gigantic leaves and electric fairy lights, George and Will sat on plastic chairs at a plastic table and drank cheap beer.
“Life is good!” Will exclaimed.
“It is for you… you don’t need to work and your girlfriend is gorgeous.” George replied.
“How many hours did you work today?”
“Two.”
“How long have you been single?”
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“A month.”
“You see! Life is good. It is a shining path! The Gods are with us…And yet, recently things have been a bit odd… I feel like I’m being watched.”
“We’re always being watched… nosy neighbours, undercover cops, security guards, bored soldiers…”
“You’re right… More ale!”
The next morning, Will sat at Tuyen’s tea shop, enjoying a boiled egg and a pint of tea, and watching the girls go by. No goddesses today… but then the elven maiden appeared.
“Alright? Proper ‘ot today, eh?”
She spoke with the strongest Northern accent he had ever heard so it took him a moment to understand. She sat next to him, staring at him with her huge, icy blue eyes and playing with her long raven hair.
“Alright? Yes, quite hot,” he finally replied. “Would you like a glass of ice tea?”
“Aye, cheers,” Fladh replied, “ ‘’ow long you planning on staying ‘ere?”
“The tea shop or the country?”
“T’ country.”
“Maybe forever.”
“Forever! Shite!”
She stormed off without touching her tea.
He continued sipping his tea, it would probably not be the strangest conversation he would have today.
As soon as she was out of sight, Fladh shifted back to her preferred shape, which was about the height of a cat, with tangled hair down to her ankles and pale turquoise skin.
“We ‘ave to kill ‘im,” she snarled at Cormac.
“Excellent.”
That evening George and Will were drinking beer on the shore of a small lake with Tuan- who was their acquaintance/ brother/ dodgy business partner. Tuan didn’t talk much because he was always on his phone and although he was excellent at Russian and Chinese, his English wasn’t great.
“How was class?” Will asked.
“Not bad… IELTS… High school kids. Today we -”
They were silent for a few moments as two particularly attractive women rode by on a Honda Lead.
“It is lucky that you foreigners have bad taste in women,” Tuan said, then returned to his screen.
“That reminds me, I met an odd lass today, “ Will remarked. “Very pretty English girl, lovely hair… joined me at Tuyen’s, asked a few questions then marched off in a huff.”
“There are a lot of crazy white people around here,” George said.
“Very many,” Tuan agreed.
“What was she asking about?” asked George.
“Something about going home… I wasn’t paying attention, I was distracted by her hair… More ale?”
“I have sabotaged his wench’s bike,” Comrac boasted.
“Alright… ‘ow?” Fladh did not share his confidence.
“With my eldritch, magical powers!”
“What did you actually do, eh?”
“I stabbed the heart of the beast… I put a hole in its fuel bottle…”
In the middle of an enormous traffic jam, Hien’s scooter spluttered and then the engine died. It was lucky that no traffic was moving at the time.
It was an inconvenience for her and Will to dismount and push the bike to the pavement in the blazing sun. It took only a few minutes to find a mechanic, who promptly fixed it with duct tape and a hammer.
Exasperated, Fladh grew herself a pair of wings and spent a day flying around markets and parks looking for poison. She was not familiar with the local flora and could find no hemlock, bluebells or the right ivy, so she picked anything that was brightly coloured or smelled bad. They collected tiny pieces of the most unhealthy looking things she could find and mixed them up in a little bottle.
Hien and Will sat side by side in an overpriced restaurant.
He looked lovingly across at her in between day dreaming. She seemed distracted this evening, and was looking at her phone even more than usual. Yet still beautiful, very beautiful.
Their meal arrived. A salad and noodle soup for her and a curry for him.
“This tasted a little odd,” he commented after a while.
“Indian food always tasted odd, if you want good food get Vietnamese food,” she snapped.
“Are you alright?” he asked her.
“Yeah.. sorry, I’m a bit tired.”
“That’s ok, how’s your salad?”
The next morning Will’s stomach was not great, but that was normal for him. Hotter curries had caused worse problems in the past.
Fortunately for him, years of eating street-food had made him immune to most poisons.
Soon after brunch he received a message on his phone and looked at it in utter despair.
George arrived at the pub, slightly late. Will was slumped in a plastic chair and looked like he had been drinking all day.
“God is dead!” Will announced as soon as his friend sat down.
“Have you been reading Nietzsche again?”
“No.”
“What’s wrong? You look like right mess.”
“Hien… She has left me… for a Frenchman!!
“What happened?”
“I don’t know… got a text this morning, then I asked around in the Old Quarter. She has been seeing this scoundrel for weeks. Apparently he looks just like me, but he’s French and speaks fluent Vietnamese. Bloody Frenchman!”
“Would you like it if we went and beat him up?
“Ah… No… I don’t care anymore… I don’t care about anything, my heart is broken. The gods are dead. I don’t believe in anything anymore. No more pagan gods, no Buddhism, no more elves or fairies. I shall never write another poem, I might even get a job!”
The Fae, Fladh and Cormac, suddenly found themselves beside a misty tarn. There were pine and yew trees behind them, and rugged fells behind those. It was cold and it was raining and they were home.
P.S.
How is the Pusskin?
