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The crowd laughed, as the magician tumbled backwards, his spell backfiring and knocking down the table behind which he had been standing, blatantly revealing the already lousy trick. His head hung, Schmendrick sighed, listening to the laughter without even bothering to give the usual “I meant to do that” smirk; the splitting headache hammering in his temples prevented him to. He could not complain, though, since it was his fault if he had a headache in the first place, having had a tad too much to drink the previous night – or at least that was what he said, since he had gotten completely sloshed.
Had it been for him, Schmendrick would have slept it off, but Mommy Fortuna was not of the same advice. She had unceremoniously dunked his head into ice cold water, urging him to get ready for the upcoming sightseers. Show must go on, apparently, and the fact that a hungover Schmendrick was an even clumsier Schmendrick didn’t seem to bother the old witch too much. The funnier the performance, the happier the visitors… Mommy Fortuna had even more fun upsetting them with her impersonation of Elli, at the end of the tour.
Rubbing his temples, Schmendrick started to pick up his stuff, tired and frustrated. He decided he needed to drink some water and take a break for the moment. With heavy eyelids, slowly sipping a cup of fresh water, he observed the group moving through the cages, and he locked eyes with one of the visitors, a tall, lean young man. Schmendrick rose his eyebrows, as the guy smiled at him and slowly winked. If that meant what Schmendrick thought it meant, good for him; he could use some company for that night…
Schmendrick placed his arms behind his head, leaning with a content sigh back on the blanket laid out on the ground. As he expected, a nice roll in the hay was just what he needed to forget the crappy morning. Adrian rustled in his piled-up clothes and took a flask.
“Some palinka?”
“No, thanks, I hate that stuff.”
“Do you smoke?”
“Occasionally,” Schmendrick accepted the pipe Adrian offered him and took a drag. “It’s good, thank you.”
Adrian smoked quietly for a while, looking in front of him. Then, he snickered.
“What is it? What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” Adrian said, puffing out some smoke. “I was just thinking about that Mommy Fortuna of yours and what you told me about the creatures and,” he cackled again. “Arachne of Lydia… That’s so stupid!”
“For what matters, that was not my idea,” Schmendrick slowly closed his eyes, scoffing.
“No doubt about it. I mean, I understand the “manticore” or the “dragon”, but why would you pretend to exhibit a myth?”
“Aren’t manticores and dragons myths?”
“That’s not what I meant. What baffles me is the idea of putting a narrative on display and having people believing in it.”
“You did believe for a moment.”
“In the dragon. In the satyr. Never once in Arachne. You can find a dragon or whatever creature you want to show off… But you cannot find the protagonist of a myth that is thousands of years old!”
“Why not? Aren’t we all Arachne, in our silly belief in our own pitiful capacities? That spider believes, and that makes it a credible enough Arachne, conceited and self-righteous as all of us are in our constant perpetration of hybris—”
“Hold on, hold on… You are getting way too philosophical and quite a bummer, now.”
“Yeah, it happens to me sometimes, after sex. Being philosophical, I mean, not a bummer.”
Adrian hugged his knees, pensively smoking his pipe. “I get what you were trying to say, anyway. I still find it weird, though.”
“Do you? I find it quite eye-opening. We need myths like Arachne’s and creating a visual of it might help to get the message across.”
“Do you think so?”
“Absolutely. Think about it; the greatest weaver ever existed, and she has ended up, in her cursed form, in a two-penny carnival run by a witch at the death’s door? Not that flattering, if you ask me.”
“I have something to ask, actually.”
“Go on.”
“What’s your favourite myth?”
Schmendrick took another drag from the pipe, blowing out the smoke slowly. “Well, just to stay on topic, I’d say the myth of Icarus.”
“You have a thing for myths centred on one’s limits that can or cannot be exceeded, don’t you?”
“It keeps me nailed on the ground. No pun intended, of course… I—I have spent a long time trying to reach something that it is out of my reach. I’ve tried so many times to go past my limitations and each time I seemed to be on the verge of succeeding, I burnt myself. At first, I thought that I was doing something wrong, so I kept trying, and trying, over and over. Then, I realized that I am the problem. I was trying to fly too high, far beyond how I am meant to fly, if I am meant at all…”
“Is that the reason why you have joined this carnival?” Adrian said, sternly. Schmendrick cocked his head, annoyed and ashamed that Adrian had gotten that so quickly.
“How—how did we end up talking about this, now?” he said, feeling an uncomfortable sensation of vulnerability. Like he had meant to have an open-heart conversation with a one-night fling!
“I don’t know. You were the one in the mood for some philosophical chit-chat, weren’t you?”
“Not anymore, thank you. I’m—I’m more in the mood to get down to business again. How about it?” he nervously nudged Adrian.
“Are you, or do you just need to avoid going deeper into what you were saying?”
“Can’t it be both?”
Adrian took a deep breath. “Alright. I just want to add one thing, though. Remember that Dedalus did not warn his son only about flying too close to the sun. He warned him about how flying too low would have dampened his wings, preventing him to take flight properly.”
“I—I…”
“No need to read too much into it, Schmendrick. I just think that sometimes people use the myth of Icarus to justify their fear of flying, carefully avoiding remembering that part of the myth that should motivate them to stop being afraid of getting burnt and spread their wings instead of caging themselves in situations where they will never have any chance, only because they are too afraid to face their limits.”
“Like me?” Schmendrick said, dryly.
“If you feel like you have been called to account, that’s a problem you should face yourself… But yes, if I have to make my own guesses, you might as well be part of the exhibition as Icarus himself, with the only difference that you do not need to be put in a cage. You are doing fine on your own, keeping yourself low enough to avoid flying-- Hey, what are you doing?”
“I lost my verve, I am sorry. Thanks for the evening anyway…” Schmendrick was fumbling to retrieve his clothes, his gaze low.
“Ah, now, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Adrian gently grabbed his wrist and pulled him back, laying him on his back again and licking his neck. “Besides, we are not done here…”
Schmendrick hesitated for a moment, then decided to just go with the flow, hoping that another round could help him feeling better. He was just starting to let himself go when he sensed something and blinked.
“Uh… wait.”
“Oh, no, no, no… I am way determined to make it up to you by making you beg for more again,” Adrian playfully nipped his ear.
“For real, wait,” Schmendrick managed to sit up straight, a finger pressed on his lips. “Can you hear that?”
Adrian tossed his head, finally hearing something too. “What is it?”
It was a high-pitched screech, distant but upsetting enough to make them pale. It was something they had never heard before, something that made them feel shaken and lost, wakening an instinctive reaction of repulsion and reverent fear.
“It sounds like it’s coming from where you are camped,” Adrian whispered. Schmendrick bit his lower lip, before he jumped up and quickly got dressed. What the hell are they doing? He thought, a dreading feeling of impending doom making him trip on his feet a couple of times.
“Do you—Do you need me to come with you?”
“No, Adrian. Thank you anyway.” Last thing he wanted was someone to get hurt because of the two idiots he was travelling with. “Go back to the village.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“I don’t know,” Schmendrick admitted. “Now go. And thank you. For real, thank you. Go!”
He started to run in the direction of the carnival. As he got closer and the screech got louder, Schmendrick had to make a huge effort to not just turn and leave, whatever was going on. Ignoring that instinct and forcing himself to go on, the magician rushed in the clearing, finding the torches lit, Mommy Fortuna standing in front of one of the two left empty cages, staring at the new creature she must have made up for the show.
“Ah, you are here,” she glanced at him, uninterested, before she turned again in mute, ecstatic contemplation.
“What have you done?” Schmendrick panted, without getting closer, angered by what he was seeing. “Did you turn Rukh into a troll? I was joking last time, you know. I—” he muted, his mouth agape in disbelief when he finally spotted what was trapped inside the cage, screaming and flapping its wings. “You can’t be for real!”
“Ain’t she beautiful?” Mommy Fortuna chirped, raptured. “And capturing her was so easy…”
Schmendrick’s knees were on the verge of dropping, but somehow he managed to crawl by the old woman, his bafflement stronger than his fear. A harpy. A real harpy, unsuccessfully trying to free herself, staring at them with vicious fury.
“She was sleeping,” Mommy Fortuna explained, with the same tone of triumph, caressingly looking at the horrid visage of the creature as if she was looking at the muzzle of a beloved puppy. “She was asleep, and I only had to cast a spell on her. Now, she is mine.”
“Are you insane?” Schmendrick turned so suddenly his neck made a weird, cracking sound, stiff as he was with fear. “Do you realize what you have done?”
“I do! I absolutely do! Isn’t it fantastic?”
“It’s horrifying! You do not mess with a real harpy! The greatest wizards do not meddle with them! Do you—You do realize what we are, don’t you?” he sounded desperate for a moment, pleading, making the witch cackle delighted.
“Of course I know, and that’s what makes it even more grandiose… Think about it, if you can. I am the only witch who dared capturing a harpy, displaying her, keeping her under my thumb—”
“Release her.”
“No.”
“Release her! You are condemning us!”
“I am granting you more than you will ever deserve! I am granting you true immortality. No,” she added, sourly, interrupting Schmendrick. “Not the phony one your master cursed you with. I am talking about the never-fading, real memory of an immortal being. Can’t you think about a higher honour? But no. Of course, you can’t… You would have never dared to.”
Schmendrick stood, panting, glancing at the now silent harpy glaring at them. He could feel her thoughts, and they filled him with a cold, nauseating sense of ruin. Mommy Fortuna wasn’t paying him any more attention, once again lost in her stuporous glee, and didn’t notice Schmendrick slowly dragging himself away.
His legs decided to buckle behind the dog’s cage; he fell on all fours, and not throwing up was quite the task, shaken and confused as he was. Had he hit his head, Schmendrick wouldn’t have felt as woozy as he was then. He sat, covering his face and trying to calm down.
A harpy. She caught a harpy, and she wants to put her on display. One of the most fearsome creatures of the entire, goddamn pantheon of fearsome creatures, and she wants to exhibit it like it’s a rare pet… What did Adrian make me smoke, earlier?!
What sickened him the most was Mommy Fortuna’s elated state. She wasn’t afraid and she knew – she knew – that they were fucked. She knew she could not hold that creature forever, that she would have broken free, sooner or later, and she was happy about it. The witch was welcoming that fate, as a much-awaited reward for her glorious deed…
Flying too high, Schmendrick thought. Mommy Fortuna was willingly flying too close to the sun, melting the wax on her wings herself to plunge earlier into a sea of immortal glory. She was fastening her inevitable demise, only for the sake of being remembered as the second-rate witch that had dared to capture a real harpy.
And what was he doing? Dragging himself under her with his self-contempt-soaked wings, too heavy to allow him to fly high enough to even save himself from that situation. He was feeling like the dog in the cage at his back. That mutt would not even need to be tied, when Schmendrick opened its cage to clean it and replace the dirty hay with fresh one. It simply stood, its head hung, languid eyes peeking around… It could have run away, if it wanted, but it didn’t, not knowing where else to go.
So did Schmendrick. He could, if he wanted, but a tiny, malignant voice in the back of his head nagged him, daring him to start his aimless wandering over again. This is the best you could wish for, that voice, eerily similar to his, would always say. You wouldn’t be fit anywhere else but here. This is what you are good for, this is what Nikos had been working on you for years. The cold misery of that voice would always manage to shroud his wings, and he would have kept himself a prisoner… Why bother running away now, only because a dangerous creature was on the scene? What for? He smirked to the ground, a trembling, sarcastic little smile.
Guess I need to get used to that harpy, then.