Shem the Penman
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TALES FROM THE GOLDEN FEATHER XI
An Unexpected Tale, or The Last Word
another one of those stories
IF YOU ARE UNDER 18 AND HAVE READ THIS FAR, WELL, THIS PROBABLY WON'T STOP YOU, NOW WILL IT?
For a moment, there was a blank silence in the Golden Feather's common room. Then the soldier jumped to his feet. "I knew it!" he exclaimed, bringing a fist down on the table and setting the breakfast dishes a-rattle. "You all doubted, but I was certain there was something going on! The game's over, whoever you are -- so come out of hiding and account for yourself!"
"Not hiding," said the faint voice. Heads turned this way and that, trying to locate its source. I thought it might be among the roof-beams, but there was nothing there but a small spider web. The harper had bent to look under the table, our hostess had turned to look back at the kitchen, but the voice had sounded almost as if it were coming from in the room with us. But that was impossible...
"Who are you and how long have you been spying on us?" the soldier demanded.
"Spying?" The voice sounded subtly different now, deeper and more resonant. "I...have been here a long time. As long as this inn has stood."
"But the Golden Feather was built nearly a hundred years ago..." our hostess pointed out, then trailed off when she realized what she was saying. There was one of those pauses that is only a few seconds in reality but seems to stretch to infinity, and then the harper put words to what we were all thinking.
"A ghost!"
We all flinched as if the table had suddenly burst into flames. The summoner made signs against evil and began to intone a prayer in his heavy iron voice. The maid shrieked, dropped a fistful of mugs, and fled into the kitchen. The soldier and the lady-brigand drew their swords as if they could strike a ghost down with them, and the forester clutched his knife. The physician and I stared at each other, disbelief and dread warring in us.
"Stop it!" The webster clapped her work-callused hands hard for attention. "We've been snowed in a week and a half. If this thing meant us harm, it would have acted long before now. Let's hear what it has to say, and if it gets threatening, our holy man can exorcise it."
"I'm not a priest," the summoner muttered, but he left off his praying. The weapons found their sheaths again, and everyone sat down slowly once more. The physician coughed and took great interest in wiping the lenses of his spectacles. I said nothing, but I suspected he, like all of us, was feeling sheepish that we had let panic overtake us while the plain, pragmatic webster saw what should have been immediately obvious.
Since no one seemed immediately disposed to talk, our hostess took it on herself. "For what purpose do you wish to speak with us?" she asked.
The voice shifted to a higher pitch. "You were telling stories. They pleased me. They made me remember and laugh; our memories are all I am now. I remember our stories, and I will tell them to you."
"How many of them are there?" asked the summoner, but he was quickly shushed, for the voice continued, becoming stronger:
There was a wall, a high strong wall that even the tallest man could not see over. Outside the wall was the forest, and inside the wall was a house and garden. Many people lived in the house, for it was large and proud, and one of them was named Bethany.
She was beautiful, with warm, clear brown eyes and hair the color of polished cherrywood, soft of voice and gentle of touch and with a smile that had a light of its own. But for all her grace and kindness, she was not weak, though some occasionally thought her so -- she had a sharp mind and a fiercely strong will, though the peaceful life in the house rarely called on her to use them. She had only been outside the house a few times, and then only to go straight to town and back. On those occasions, she watched the forest pass by with great interest, and thought to herself that she would like to see more of it. And sometimes she would look out her window in the house, at the green tops of the trees, and watch the birds fly, and wonder.
The others told her fearsome stories of the brutes, ogres, and cruel spirits who roamed the forest, and while Bethany listened to them, she thought to herself that if those things really existed, she should have seen or heard some sign of them before now. And the more she heard those stories, the more certain she was that she wanted to see the forest for herself.
Now it so happened that one day, she was wandering at the bottom of the garden by the wall, looking for a rabbit she had seen among the rosebushes, when she saw a curious heap of vines against the wall. Pushing them aside, she beheld some old blocks of stone piled in a rough but sturdy heap. They did not shift when she set a foot on them, nor did her full weight disturb them. Bethany climbed to the top of the pile and discovered that she could see over the wall now. In fact, she thought, it might be possible for her to swing herself over the top of the wall and let herself down the other side. And as she thought that, she looked down and saw that there was a nearly identical heap of stones at the base of the wall on the other side. Someone, long ago, had piled these stones in a rough stairway, by which he or she could climb over the wall and return. Here was what Bethany had been hoping for for so long. She hurried back to the house, the rabbit forgotten and her heart beating fast, and told no one of what she had found.
Several days later, when many of the folk of the house were away at the market fair, Bethany put on an old dress of hers and a pair of sturdy slippers, tied her hair back with a ribbon, and hurried to the bottom of the garden, taking care to let no one see her. The stones were where she had left them. She climbed atop them again and then, taking a breath, seized the top of the wall, swung her legs out, and pulled herself onto the narrow top of the wall. She paused there for a moment, then dangled her legs over the pile outside and slid carefully down the wall until her feet touched the stones. Carefully she stepped down, and then she was outside and in the forest, for the very first time.
It was a gloomy and overcast day, and as Bethany looked around, she began to wonder if perhaps the stories might not have some truth to them. The trees cast twisted, dark shadows in which strange things moved. The air was cool and damp and smelled of rotting things. Branches rattled, though there was no wind. Bethany took a few steps, wondering if perhaps it would be safer to return to the garden. Then she saw a dark shape moving under the trees, footsteps crunching, and heard a peculiar music on the wind. Fear gripped her, and she rushed back to the stones, clambering up them and seizing the top of the wall, pulling herself up and almost over it with strength borne of terror—and then something grabbed one of her ankles.
"What's this?" a voice said. "Sneaking out of the house?"
Bethany realized then that the shape she had seen was only a man, and the music had been his whistling. Before she could feel embarrassed at her irrational fear, the man who was holding her ankle pulled her slipper off her heel and ran a fingertip down the sole of her foot. Startled, Bethany giggled.
"Your mistress would be upset," the voice went on, its tone teasing. Just as teasing was the fingertip that brushed the edges of her now-bare foot. "Servants aren't supposed to run off when they feel like it..."
"I'm no -- heeheeheehee -- servant," Bethany protested, and tried to pull away. It was no use; in her strange position, half of her over the wall and half on the other side, she could not bring much of her strength to bear, and the tickling finger sent distracting, weakening quivers all through her.
"You're dressed like one," the man pointed out.
"Surely you can tell from how I speak that I'm educateeee -- " Bethany broke off in a strangled yelp as the man's finger crossed the pads of her toes, wiggling for a moment beneath the smallest one. Her leg kicked reflexively, but the grasp on her ankle never wavered.
"All I hear is a ticklish girl." Nails scratched rapidly for a second on the ball of her foot, where the skin was slightly tougher but still exquisitely sensitive. She gasped and laughed, rocking atop the wall as her body shook with giggles. "See?" Without giving her more than a second to recover, he began tickling her there again. Bethany giggled frantically, then tried to seal her lips. Her fingers writhed frantically on the gritty surface of the wall, seeking something to hold on to, as the pressure mounted inside her. The tickling fingers began to move, sliding down toward her toes with infinitesmal steps, touching her swiftly as her heart pounded in her ears. She could almost feel him tickling her toes already -- and with that thought, the laughter could be held no longer, and burst out in one long squeal. "Stop it!" she shouted amidst her laughter, and the tickling obediently stopped. "Why are you doing this?"
For answer, she got a fingertip tracing neat figure-eights in the space of her arch. Bethany, her resistance by now worn down to almost nothing, broke into fresh giggles immediately. The figure-eights became faster, became an up-and-down scratching, became a multi-fingered scramble -- and Bethany's giggles likewise mounted to peals of laughter, to a hysterical eruption, to a howling that she thought they must be hearing all the way to the house. How could such a little touch on such a tiny area of her body drive her so insane, make her legs kick and her arms flail and her lungs laugh themselves empty -- and go on laughing, an airless, soundless screech that went on and on? It was as if her brain was so busy dealing with the endless tickling on her foot that it had completely forgotten the rest of her body, leaving it to mindlessly howl and thrash on its own. "STOP IT!" she screamed again.
"You only get one," the voice of her unseen tormentor said, raking his fingers down her foot and drawing an anguished screech from her, sliding straight into the soft channel beneath her wildly flexing toes. Bethany gasped and screamed and laughed all at once, beating her palms on the wall and shrieking as her legs kicked straight out like a mule's -- but her ankle was still firmly held, and the tickling under her toes continued uninterrupted; all she accomplished was to send her other slipper sailing off into the woods like a stone from a catapult. Before she had quite realized what happened, her tormentor had hold of both ankles, transferring them to the grasp of one hand so he had both bare feet under his control and a hand free.
Bethany was at first just grateful for a relief from the tickling -- and then, suddenly, realization of her position fell on her with crystalline rapidity. Her soles felt very bare and tender, as if they could feel every wisp of breeze that curled the air around them. In fact, everything she felt seemed magnified -- the warm sun on her back, the dusty stone under her hands, the racing of blood and breath inside her -- and oddly, it was a pleasant sensation, like waking from a long dull sleep. But more than anything, she felt the bareness of her feet and even his gaze on them. Her toes curled tight. His fingers could be a fraction of an inch from her skin -- how long before the tickling started? "No...please...don't..." a voice said, and she realized it was hers.
"But I will." A finger tapped in the middle of one of her soles, and Bethany started, making a sound not unlike a sheep's bleat. Another tap on a different spot brought a fresh bleat. And then a sudden cascade of taps down the length of one sole, making Bethany giggle madly. It had barely tickled, but as keyed up as she was, she couldn't tolerate any touch on her feet.
"You deserve some punishment for sneaking away..." He began to lightly tickle along the curled tops of her toes. Bethany shuddered, giggles spilling out of her as her feet twitched and fluttered helplessly in a futile effort to escape the teasing. When that didn't work, she jerked her ankles up harder; fingers swiftly raced up the backs of her bare legs and she eeked, wriggling in an effort to throw them off before they reached too high. Almost immediately, they were replaced by the same fast, light tickling circling around the rim of the smooth bowl formed by her two arches. "Noooo! Stohh -- " She bit off the words, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of hearing the words again, but the effect was spoiled when she instantly dissolved into helpless, girlish laughter. Around and around he went, fast and then slow, while her feet flapped and twisted madly as if she were dancing a peculiar step and her mind emptied of everything but laughter. The sensation was weirdly pleasant now, for all that her body was still shuddering in a hopeless effort to get away. And then his fingers dipped suddenly through the center of the bowl, the tender hearts of her arches, and she shrieked anew, bucking so hard on the wall that she nearly went headfirst over it, saved only by his grip on her ankles.
Still holding firm, he ran his fingers over the smooth tops of her feet, and she shivered and gasped at the intensity of the feeling that seemed to slam straight up her body and into the depths of her brain. Then she gulped as he nearly touched her toes again, but instead his fingers swept to the side and began to trace the outline of her captured feet, a feeling both tender and still squirmingly ticklish. She squirmed again in earnest as he reached the heels and began to scratch downward. "No..." she groaned, giggling, but the only response she got was a swifter scratching that turned her giggles to peals of laughter. Was everywhere on her feet so infernally ticklish? And he was moving down toward softer skin, so it could only get worse. Even knowing it was coming didn't prepare her for the moment when his fingers slipped from heel into her arch. She gave a great shout of laughter and jerked her legs hard, nearly sliding off the wall again. She did not break his grip, though, and he only smoothly slid his fingers down her soles to begin tickling the pads of her toes at random, first one toe and then another.
"What are you doing this for?" she demanded amidst her laughter, grabbing hold of the top of the wall to steady herself and at the same time surprising herself with the thought that she hoped he wasn't about to stop.
"Why not?" the tickler asked. "Seeking amusement is its own reward..." He tickled along both sets of toes. Bethany giggled, wrenched an ankle free, and tried to kick backward, but encountered nothing but air. The thrust took her off balance again, and the man chose that moment to start tickling the arch of her still-trapped foot again. Bethany howled, her other leg jerking, lost her balance entirely, and fell backward off the wall. Fortunately, she overshot the piled stones, and her fall was broken by something more yielding than the ground. Dazed, Bethany shoved her hair off her face and raised her head, and met the blue-eyed gaze of an astonished-looking young man who seemed vaguely familiar. He stared at her for a moment, not speaking, and then twisted out from under her with an expression of great alarm, jumped to his feet, and ran off into the woods without a second glance back. Bethany, rising, started to call after him, and even took a step in the direction he had gone, but in her dress and bare feet she had no chance of running after him. With a sigh, she bent to collect her fallen slippers and contemplated the climb back into the garden once more. Her soles tingled as she put the slippers back on, her cheeks were warm, and she felt pleasantly flushed. She knew it would be a long time before she forgot this peculiar experience.
In the Golden Feather, there was a silence. "An interesting -- " I began politely, but then the harper jabbed an elbow into me, for the ghost was speaking again. Its voice sounded slightly rougher and deeper now, which seemed strange -- how could something without a throat get hoarse?
The man who had tickled Bethany lived just outside town, where he was a partner in a cloth-maker's shop. His name was Christoph, and he was often to be found wandering the forest, looking for the herbs, flowers, and mushrooms he used to make dyes; he was better suited to this sort of work than the hard-nosed business of dealing with the customers. For Christoph was basically a good fellow, kind and polite in a vague way, but he had a way of getting lost inside his own head and not finding his way out for a very long time. And he often did peculiar things for reasons no one, not even he himself, quite understood. Tickling Bethany had been one such thing. He normally paid little attention to women, being far too busy thinking to notice if any of them found his dark blue eyes and rather messy hair intriguing, but when he had seen Bethany hanging over the wall, the impulse he felt had been too strong to deny. And for days after that, he often thought back to that time and the look on Bethany's face, and wondered if he should have stayed.
But there were dyes to mix, patterns to choose, and drying to oversee, and after a week's time Christoph had to concentrate to remember her. Until the day he came out of the back room and there she was with another woman, discussing the merits of a bolt of linen with his partner. Bethany glanced up at Christoph, her fine dark eyes unreadable; she might not even have recognized him. Christoph, ill at ease around women on most occasions, was even more so this time. Hastily, he retreated into the back room, feeling her unsettling gaze on him.
Once there, he took a breath and listened to her voice from the front room. She spoke little, allowing the other woman to do most of the bargaining, but when she did her voice was level: no questions, no accusations. Christoph sighed, gathering his scattered wits, and his eye fell on a barrel standing in the corner. He'd promised his partner to make up a small pot of dye in a particular shade of violet to demonstrate to another patron, and it was about time he got to work on it. The barrel held nuts whose shells, when crushed and mixed with water, produced the color needed. Leaning over the barrel, Christoph was annoyed to see it nearly empty; he had forgotten to buy more. There were still a few at the bottom, though, enough for his purposes. Stretching out an arm, he found the bottom of the barrel out of his reach. With an angry grunt, he stood on his tiptoes and stretched out both arms, his fingers just brushing a nut. He strained harder, his weight pressing down on the rim of the barrel...
And then a floorboard creaked behind him. Startled, he jerked, and the barrel tipped. Something smacked him between the shoulderblades, sending him sprawling breathless. As he hit the floor and rolled over, gasping, he saw curving staves above him and dizzily realized that the barrel had fallen on its side, pushing him down with it. Scowling at his own clumsiness, he started to push himself out of the barrel, wondering what had surprised him. And then he was surprised once again as a soft but solid weight plunked itself down on his stomach.
Christoph's breath caught in his throat. "What are you doing?" he asked.
"I asked you that before." The voice was only too familiar. "Do you remember what you answered?" Before Christoph could say anything, she laid her hands on him, fingers pressing gently into his ribs through his shirt. He let out a gasp. Her fingers moved up and down in an irregular pattern, and the gasp became a chuckle, then -- as her fingers moved toward the sensitive sides -- an uncontrollable giggle. He pressed his lips together, trying to stifle it, but his body would not deny the effect of her touch on those particular spots. The giggles burst forth again despite his efforts, and his body twitched sideways, seeking escape but finding no relief, for she would not stop tickling.
"What do you want?" he demanded. "An apology? I'm so --" He broke off in a bleat as the tickling suddenly accelerated, Bethany's fingers kneading the skin over his ribs fast and hard and just short of unpleasantly rough. The tickling sensation leaped straight from distracting to overwhelming. He heard his own scream of laughter echo inside the barrel as his arms slapped against the staves, trying to find some way down and out. But the barrel was too narrow, his desperate flailings too uncoordinated, to allow any easy release. His hips bucked upward, trying to throw her off, but she was solidly planted; she didn't even pause in the maddening rhythm of her fingertips. He'd been half-hoping he could get used to it after the initial surprise, but every tiny shift in her position seemed to start the torment afresh, provoking a new wave of wild laughter from him.
"I see why you did it now," she announced brightly. "This is fun." Without warning, the tickling leaped from his ribs to his armpits, a nest of wiggling fingers probing each hollow. The fresh shock made Christoph yell again, the shout cascading into hysterical yelps. His elbows pushed against the barrel as he fought to get free and protect himself from the merciless tickling, but all he could do was bring them down a little, nowhere near enough to close his armpits. She could and did tickle all around them at will, worming her fingertips into the soft centers of his armpits until it seemed the force of his howls would be enough to split the barrel by itself. She spread her fingers then, scratching the entire interior of each hollow in exquisite, never-ending patterns, so that his body shook with demented giggles like a pot kept on a steady boil.
"But then...it could be even better...." She suddenly pulled his shirt open, laying his chest bare, and traced its contours with her fingertips and nails. He let out a shuddering sigh, and heard her low, warm laugh in response. The sound of that laugh, and the delicate intensity of the sensation, somehow turned his muscles to water, turned him into something trembling and passive that wanted only to feel where the teasing touch went next. Even the knowledge that she could now -- would now -- tickle his bare skin seemed not so much alarming as vaguely pleasant. His body still twitched and squirmed reflexively, but his mind was melting, and he dimly wondered if she had felt the same way when he tickled her feet.
Then she began to lightly scramble her fingers on his bare stomach, and the passivity abruptly lifted as shuddering laughter racked his body. She laughed along with him, running the points of her fingernails slowly from his waist up to his ribs, drawing lines of ticklish sensation that seemed to linger behind as if she were putting a mark on him. To his distress, the helpless squirming only made her fingers slide over his skin, spreading the tickling over an even larger area. Laughter burst from him once again as she worked her fingertips into his belly, kneading the flesh and muscle that trembled with mirth beneath her touch. The harder her fingers dug, the more it tickled, as if she were burrowing in search of the source of laughter itself so she could tease it directly. His hips twisted, but pinned by her weight, he could barely move his midriff, no matter how much she tickled.
A wild thought flashed through his head, and he threw his arms up, hoping to touch the bottom of the barrel so he could push it off him. He realized the mistake a second too late as she struck, tickling first one invitingly opened armpit and then the other even as she continued to work his belly with her other hand. He howled, managing only a barely coherent "Stop!" amidst the flood of laughter, as the overwhelming sensation of being tickled in two sensitive places at once crashed down on him. He might have saved himself the effort for all it got him. Her fingers did not pause for a second, dancing over his stomach and switching from one armpit to the other. Apparently pleased at the reaction, she began to skip from spot to spot, making it impossible for him to anticipate where the tickling would come from next. Ribs, hips, stomach, waist, armpits -- his squirming grew even more frantic, always a second too late to help him as he laughed hysterically, every fresh tickle sparking the laughter anew. His sense of time had disappeared with the rest of his mind, and all he knew, had ever known, would ever know was being tickled.
"I think I took it better than you are," she said when she finally paused to let him catch his breath, idly running her fingers up and down his sides and making him twitch and yelp with quick unexpected tickles.
"Let me up and we'll see about that," he responded.
Her nails crossed his chest, traced his collarbone and the sides of his neck, making him cringe and goosebumps ripple his skin. "Another time, maybe. I'm not quite done with you..."
She began to tickle ruthlessly, fingers working as rapidly as a great harpist's on the strings as they whirled down his body. Christoph was nearly paralyzed with shock for a moment, then he let out a bellow of laughter that, even muffled by the barrel, made his partner in the front room put down his measure and frown. Bethany was far beyond worrying that he might be overheard; she was enjoying her work too much. And Christoph, of course, had no choice as to whether he wanted to be silent or not. Bethany reached behind her, grabbing the great muscles of his thighs and kneading them in a way that tickled unbearably, and his legs jerked, nearly throwing her off. Laughing at the sheer pleasure of it, she cried out, "Here it comes!" and pounced. She bore down on his ribs fast and hard, all ten fingers digging and probing so quickly that the sensations blurred together into one single tickling all over his exquisitely sensitive ribcage at once. Christoph would have laughed even louder had he not exhausted all his breath on the first shout, but inside the barrel his mouth was wide open, even though only a faint squeak came out. With a mighty heave born of desperation, he pitched Bethany off him, sending her sprawling on the floor, and then scuttled out of the barrel crabwise, collapsing on the floor himself as he gasped. A sudden silence fell over the back room.
Eventually, Christoph sat up wearily, his clothes disarranged, still panting for breath. Bethany pulled herself upright, shaking her tousled hair and giving that warming smile. Her eyes sparkled as they looked at each other. Which reached for the other first, neither could say, but their kiss was shared equally.
A few days later, Bethany disappeared from the house forever, and Christoph from the cloth-makers'. Where they went from there, they went together, and together they stayed to the end of their days and beyond.
When the ghost had finally fallen silent once more, the soldier was the first to speak. "A fine pair of stories, but I still wonder...which one are you? Bethany or Christoph?"
"Both," the ghost said. "As in life my souls were inseparable, so afterward they truly became one. I am Bethany and Christoph, their memories, their emotions, their lives, and above all, and most of all their love, which in its strength gives the rest the strength to last."
Our hostess shook her head in wonder. "I remember Karl telling me about the old couple his father bought the Golden Feather from -- but they were long gone when I came here. To think they've -- you've -- still been around all this time -- it's amazing."
"Not so," the ghost said. "It is a natural process. What is true endures. And truths are found more often in the soul than the body."
The physician smiled. "With your permission, I will continue to consider it amazing. And, as old a man as I am, it does give me a certain hope to know it. Thank you for revealing yourself, sir -- and madam, of course. I can think of no better note to end our acquaintance and resume our journeys on."
"I know I will not forget this," the harper said, and the forester nodded at her side. As did most of us.
"In fact," I said slowly, "it seems a pity that the stories told here will never have any audience beyond us ten -- and the ghost, of course. As a scrivener, it is my work to spread stories of interest and value as widely as I can, and our stories seem to me worthy of the effort. I bid you all good journeys, but I have decided to stay -- at least for a few days." I turned to our hostess. "May I trouble you for paper, ink, and a supply of pens?"
She smiled back at me. And when the last of the travelers had filed out the door, calling their farewells, I was seated at the now-empty common table, setting pen to paper. "The Innkeeper's Tale..." I wrote, and after a moment's thought, continued, "...or Persistence Rewarded."
The Golden Feather still stands where I have described it, in the deep mountain valley, on the road connecting --------- and ---------. And travelers still stop there. Some find only excellent meals, good drink, and warm beds. But some are moved by a certain spirit, and they find something else there, something that sends them on their way with a smile and a renewed joy in the pleasures of the world. The keeper of the inn knows what that spirit is, as does the maid. As do I, who have set these stories down for all to read in the hopes that those of similar spirit will recognize them and be entertained by them.
To those of that spirit, I say: Come to the Golden Feather if you like, but there is really no need. If you know how, you can make your own Golden Feather around you, a place where laughter and friendship and pleasure unite your soul and the souls of those who are with you. Make this your work, and you will know joy and contentment.
These have been the tales of the Golden Feather, and this is their end.
An Unexpected Tale, or The Last Word
another one of those stories
IF YOU ARE UNDER 18 AND HAVE READ THIS FAR, WELL, THIS PROBABLY WON'T STOP YOU, NOW WILL IT?
For a moment, there was a blank silence in the Golden Feather's common room. Then the soldier jumped to his feet. "I knew it!" he exclaimed, bringing a fist down on the table and setting the breakfast dishes a-rattle. "You all doubted, but I was certain there was something going on! The game's over, whoever you are -- so come out of hiding and account for yourself!"
"Not hiding," said the faint voice. Heads turned this way and that, trying to locate its source. I thought it might be among the roof-beams, but there was nothing there but a small spider web. The harper had bent to look under the table, our hostess had turned to look back at the kitchen, but the voice had sounded almost as if it were coming from in the room with us. But that was impossible...
"Who are you and how long have you been spying on us?" the soldier demanded.
"Spying?" The voice sounded subtly different now, deeper and more resonant. "I...have been here a long time. As long as this inn has stood."
"But the Golden Feather was built nearly a hundred years ago..." our hostess pointed out, then trailed off when she realized what she was saying. There was one of those pauses that is only a few seconds in reality but seems to stretch to infinity, and then the harper put words to what we were all thinking.
"A ghost!"
We all flinched as if the table had suddenly burst into flames. The summoner made signs against evil and began to intone a prayer in his heavy iron voice. The maid shrieked, dropped a fistful of mugs, and fled into the kitchen. The soldier and the lady-brigand drew their swords as if they could strike a ghost down with them, and the forester clutched his knife. The physician and I stared at each other, disbelief and dread warring in us.
"Stop it!" The webster clapped her work-callused hands hard for attention. "We've been snowed in a week and a half. If this thing meant us harm, it would have acted long before now. Let's hear what it has to say, and if it gets threatening, our holy man can exorcise it."
"I'm not a priest," the summoner muttered, but he left off his praying. The weapons found their sheaths again, and everyone sat down slowly once more. The physician coughed and took great interest in wiping the lenses of his spectacles. I said nothing, but I suspected he, like all of us, was feeling sheepish that we had let panic overtake us while the plain, pragmatic webster saw what should have been immediately obvious.
Since no one seemed immediately disposed to talk, our hostess took it on herself. "For what purpose do you wish to speak with us?" she asked.
The voice shifted to a higher pitch. "You were telling stories. They pleased me. They made me remember and laugh; our memories are all I am now. I remember our stories, and I will tell them to you."
"How many of them are there?" asked the summoner, but he was quickly shushed, for the voice continued, becoming stronger:
There was a wall, a high strong wall that even the tallest man could not see over. Outside the wall was the forest, and inside the wall was a house and garden. Many people lived in the house, for it was large and proud, and one of them was named Bethany.
She was beautiful, with warm, clear brown eyes and hair the color of polished cherrywood, soft of voice and gentle of touch and with a smile that had a light of its own. But for all her grace and kindness, she was not weak, though some occasionally thought her so -- she had a sharp mind and a fiercely strong will, though the peaceful life in the house rarely called on her to use them. She had only been outside the house a few times, and then only to go straight to town and back. On those occasions, she watched the forest pass by with great interest, and thought to herself that she would like to see more of it. And sometimes she would look out her window in the house, at the green tops of the trees, and watch the birds fly, and wonder.
The others told her fearsome stories of the brutes, ogres, and cruel spirits who roamed the forest, and while Bethany listened to them, she thought to herself that if those things really existed, she should have seen or heard some sign of them before now. And the more she heard those stories, the more certain she was that she wanted to see the forest for herself.
Now it so happened that one day, she was wandering at the bottom of the garden by the wall, looking for a rabbit she had seen among the rosebushes, when she saw a curious heap of vines against the wall. Pushing them aside, she beheld some old blocks of stone piled in a rough but sturdy heap. They did not shift when she set a foot on them, nor did her full weight disturb them. Bethany climbed to the top of the pile and discovered that she could see over the wall now. In fact, she thought, it might be possible for her to swing herself over the top of the wall and let herself down the other side. And as she thought that, she looked down and saw that there was a nearly identical heap of stones at the base of the wall on the other side. Someone, long ago, had piled these stones in a rough stairway, by which he or she could climb over the wall and return. Here was what Bethany had been hoping for for so long. She hurried back to the house, the rabbit forgotten and her heart beating fast, and told no one of what she had found.
Several days later, when many of the folk of the house were away at the market fair, Bethany put on an old dress of hers and a pair of sturdy slippers, tied her hair back with a ribbon, and hurried to the bottom of the garden, taking care to let no one see her. The stones were where she had left them. She climbed atop them again and then, taking a breath, seized the top of the wall, swung her legs out, and pulled herself onto the narrow top of the wall. She paused there for a moment, then dangled her legs over the pile outside and slid carefully down the wall until her feet touched the stones. Carefully she stepped down, and then she was outside and in the forest, for the very first time.
It was a gloomy and overcast day, and as Bethany looked around, she began to wonder if perhaps the stories might not have some truth to them. The trees cast twisted, dark shadows in which strange things moved. The air was cool and damp and smelled of rotting things. Branches rattled, though there was no wind. Bethany took a few steps, wondering if perhaps it would be safer to return to the garden. Then she saw a dark shape moving under the trees, footsteps crunching, and heard a peculiar music on the wind. Fear gripped her, and she rushed back to the stones, clambering up them and seizing the top of the wall, pulling herself up and almost over it with strength borne of terror—and then something grabbed one of her ankles.
"What's this?" a voice said. "Sneaking out of the house?"
Bethany realized then that the shape she had seen was only a man, and the music had been his whistling. Before she could feel embarrassed at her irrational fear, the man who was holding her ankle pulled her slipper off her heel and ran a fingertip down the sole of her foot. Startled, Bethany giggled.
"Your mistress would be upset," the voice went on, its tone teasing. Just as teasing was the fingertip that brushed the edges of her now-bare foot. "Servants aren't supposed to run off when they feel like it..."
"I'm no -- heeheeheehee -- servant," Bethany protested, and tried to pull away. It was no use; in her strange position, half of her over the wall and half on the other side, she could not bring much of her strength to bear, and the tickling finger sent distracting, weakening quivers all through her.
"You're dressed like one," the man pointed out.
"Surely you can tell from how I speak that I'm educateeee -- " Bethany broke off in a strangled yelp as the man's finger crossed the pads of her toes, wiggling for a moment beneath the smallest one. Her leg kicked reflexively, but the grasp on her ankle never wavered.
"All I hear is a ticklish girl." Nails scratched rapidly for a second on the ball of her foot, where the skin was slightly tougher but still exquisitely sensitive. She gasped and laughed, rocking atop the wall as her body shook with giggles. "See?" Without giving her more than a second to recover, he began tickling her there again. Bethany giggled frantically, then tried to seal her lips. Her fingers writhed frantically on the gritty surface of the wall, seeking something to hold on to, as the pressure mounted inside her. The tickling fingers began to move, sliding down toward her toes with infinitesmal steps, touching her swiftly as her heart pounded in her ears. She could almost feel him tickling her toes already -- and with that thought, the laughter could be held no longer, and burst out in one long squeal. "Stop it!" she shouted amidst her laughter, and the tickling obediently stopped. "Why are you doing this?"
For answer, she got a fingertip tracing neat figure-eights in the space of her arch. Bethany, her resistance by now worn down to almost nothing, broke into fresh giggles immediately. The figure-eights became faster, became an up-and-down scratching, became a multi-fingered scramble -- and Bethany's giggles likewise mounted to peals of laughter, to a hysterical eruption, to a howling that she thought they must be hearing all the way to the house. How could such a little touch on such a tiny area of her body drive her so insane, make her legs kick and her arms flail and her lungs laugh themselves empty -- and go on laughing, an airless, soundless screech that went on and on? It was as if her brain was so busy dealing with the endless tickling on her foot that it had completely forgotten the rest of her body, leaving it to mindlessly howl and thrash on its own. "STOP IT!" she screamed again.
"You only get one," the voice of her unseen tormentor said, raking his fingers down her foot and drawing an anguished screech from her, sliding straight into the soft channel beneath her wildly flexing toes. Bethany gasped and screamed and laughed all at once, beating her palms on the wall and shrieking as her legs kicked straight out like a mule's -- but her ankle was still firmly held, and the tickling under her toes continued uninterrupted; all she accomplished was to send her other slipper sailing off into the woods like a stone from a catapult. Before she had quite realized what happened, her tormentor had hold of both ankles, transferring them to the grasp of one hand so he had both bare feet under his control and a hand free.
Bethany was at first just grateful for a relief from the tickling -- and then, suddenly, realization of her position fell on her with crystalline rapidity. Her soles felt very bare and tender, as if they could feel every wisp of breeze that curled the air around them. In fact, everything she felt seemed magnified -- the warm sun on her back, the dusty stone under her hands, the racing of blood and breath inside her -- and oddly, it was a pleasant sensation, like waking from a long dull sleep. But more than anything, she felt the bareness of her feet and even his gaze on them. Her toes curled tight. His fingers could be a fraction of an inch from her skin -- how long before the tickling started? "No...please...don't..." a voice said, and she realized it was hers.
"But I will." A finger tapped in the middle of one of her soles, and Bethany started, making a sound not unlike a sheep's bleat. Another tap on a different spot brought a fresh bleat. And then a sudden cascade of taps down the length of one sole, making Bethany giggle madly. It had barely tickled, but as keyed up as she was, she couldn't tolerate any touch on her feet.
"You deserve some punishment for sneaking away..." He began to lightly tickle along the curled tops of her toes. Bethany shuddered, giggles spilling out of her as her feet twitched and fluttered helplessly in a futile effort to escape the teasing. When that didn't work, she jerked her ankles up harder; fingers swiftly raced up the backs of her bare legs and she eeked, wriggling in an effort to throw them off before they reached too high. Almost immediately, they were replaced by the same fast, light tickling circling around the rim of the smooth bowl formed by her two arches. "Noooo! Stohh -- " She bit off the words, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of hearing the words again, but the effect was spoiled when she instantly dissolved into helpless, girlish laughter. Around and around he went, fast and then slow, while her feet flapped and twisted madly as if she were dancing a peculiar step and her mind emptied of everything but laughter. The sensation was weirdly pleasant now, for all that her body was still shuddering in a hopeless effort to get away. And then his fingers dipped suddenly through the center of the bowl, the tender hearts of her arches, and she shrieked anew, bucking so hard on the wall that she nearly went headfirst over it, saved only by his grip on her ankles.
Still holding firm, he ran his fingers over the smooth tops of her feet, and she shivered and gasped at the intensity of the feeling that seemed to slam straight up her body and into the depths of her brain. Then she gulped as he nearly touched her toes again, but instead his fingers swept to the side and began to trace the outline of her captured feet, a feeling both tender and still squirmingly ticklish. She squirmed again in earnest as he reached the heels and began to scratch downward. "No..." she groaned, giggling, but the only response she got was a swifter scratching that turned her giggles to peals of laughter. Was everywhere on her feet so infernally ticklish? And he was moving down toward softer skin, so it could only get worse. Even knowing it was coming didn't prepare her for the moment when his fingers slipped from heel into her arch. She gave a great shout of laughter and jerked her legs hard, nearly sliding off the wall again. She did not break his grip, though, and he only smoothly slid his fingers down her soles to begin tickling the pads of her toes at random, first one toe and then another.
"What are you doing this for?" she demanded amidst her laughter, grabbing hold of the top of the wall to steady herself and at the same time surprising herself with the thought that she hoped he wasn't about to stop.
"Why not?" the tickler asked. "Seeking amusement is its own reward..." He tickled along both sets of toes. Bethany giggled, wrenched an ankle free, and tried to kick backward, but encountered nothing but air. The thrust took her off balance again, and the man chose that moment to start tickling the arch of her still-trapped foot again. Bethany howled, her other leg jerking, lost her balance entirely, and fell backward off the wall. Fortunately, she overshot the piled stones, and her fall was broken by something more yielding than the ground. Dazed, Bethany shoved her hair off her face and raised her head, and met the blue-eyed gaze of an astonished-looking young man who seemed vaguely familiar. He stared at her for a moment, not speaking, and then twisted out from under her with an expression of great alarm, jumped to his feet, and ran off into the woods without a second glance back. Bethany, rising, started to call after him, and even took a step in the direction he had gone, but in her dress and bare feet she had no chance of running after him. With a sigh, she bent to collect her fallen slippers and contemplated the climb back into the garden once more. Her soles tingled as she put the slippers back on, her cheeks were warm, and she felt pleasantly flushed. She knew it would be a long time before she forgot this peculiar experience.
In the Golden Feather, there was a silence. "An interesting -- " I began politely, but then the harper jabbed an elbow into me, for the ghost was speaking again. Its voice sounded slightly rougher and deeper now, which seemed strange -- how could something without a throat get hoarse?
The man who had tickled Bethany lived just outside town, where he was a partner in a cloth-maker's shop. His name was Christoph, and he was often to be found wandering the forest, looking for the herbs, flowers, and mushrooms he used to make dyes; he was better suited to this sort of work than the hard-nosed business of dealing with the customers. For Christoph was basically a good fellow, kind and polite in a vague way, but he had a way of getting lost inside his own head and not finding his way out for a very long time. And he often did peculiar things for reasons no one, not even he himself, quite understood. Tickling Bethany had been one such thing. He normally paid little attention to women, being far too busy thinking to notice if any of them found his dark blue eyes and rather messy hair intriguing, but when he had seen Bethany hanging over the wall, the impulse he felt had been too strong to deny. And for days after that, he often thought back to that time and the look on Bethany's face, and wondered if he should have stayed.
But there were dyes to mix, patterns to choose, and drying to oversee, and after a week's time Christoph had to concentrate to remember her. Until the day he came out of the back room and there she was with another woman, discussing the merits of a bolt of linen with his partner. Bethany glanced up at Christoph, her fine dark eyes unreadable; she might not even have recognized him. Christoph, ill at ease around women on most occasions, was even more so this time. Hastily, he retreated into the back room, feeling her unsettling gaze on him.
Once there, he took a breath and listened to her voice from the front room. She spoke little, allowing the other woman to do most of the bargaining, but when she did her voice was level: no questions, no accusations. Christoph sighed, gathering his scattered wits, and his eye fell on a barrel standing in the corner. He'd promised his partner to make up a small pot of dye in a particular shade of violet to demonstrate to another patron, and it was about time he got to work on it. The barrel held nuts whose shells, when crushed and mixed with water, produced the color needed. Leaning over the barrel, Christoph was annoyed to see it nearly empty; he had forgotten to buy more. There were still a few at the bottom, though, enough for his purposes. Stretching out an arm, he found the bottom of the barrel out of his reach. With an angry grunt, he stood on his tiptoes and stretched out both arms, his fingers just brushing a nut. He strained harder, his weight pressing down on the rim of the barrel...
And then a floorboard creaked behind him. Startled, he jerked, and the barrel tipped. Something smacked him between the shoulderblades, sending him sprawling breathless. As he hit the floor and rolled over, gasping, he saw curving staves above him and dizzily realized that the barrel had fallen on its side, pushing him down with it. Scowling at his own clumsiness, he started to push himself out of the barrel, wondering what had surprised him. And then he was surprised once again as a soft but solid weight plunked itself down on his stomach.
Christoph's breath caught in his throat. "What are you doing?" he asked.
"I asked you that before." The voice was only too familiar. "Do you remember what you answered?" Before Christoph could say anything, she laid her hands on him, fingers pressing gently into his ribs through his shirt. He let out a gasp. Her fingers moved up and down in an irregular pattern, and the gasp became a chuckle, then -- as her fingers moved toward the sensitive sides -- an uncontrollable giggle. He pressed his lips together, trying to stifle it, but his body would not deny the effect of her touch on those particular spots. The giggles burst forth again despite his efforts, and his body twitched sideways, seeking escape but finding no relief, for she would not stop tickling.
"What do you want?" he demanded. "An apology? I'm so --" He broke off in a bleat as the tickling suddenly accelerated, Bethany's fingers kneading the skin over his ribs fast and hard and just short of unpleasantly rough. The tickling sensation leaped straight from distracting to overwhelming. He heard his own scream of laughter echo inside the barrel as his arms slapped against the staves, trying to find some way down and out. But the barrel was too narrow, his desperate flailings too uncoordinated, to allow any easy release. His hips bucked upward, trying to throw her off, but she was solidly planted; she didn't even pause in the maddening rhythm of her fingertips. He'd been half-hoping he could get used to it after the initial surprise, but every tiny shift in her position seemed to start the torment afresh, provoking a new wave of wild laughter from him.
"I see why you did it now," she announced brightly. "This is fun." Without warning, the tickling leaped from his ribs to his armpits, a nest of wiggling fingers probing each hollow. The fresh shock made Christoph yell again, the shout cascading into hysterical yelps. His elbows pushed against the barrel as he fought to get free and protect himself from the merciless tickling, but all he could do was bring them down a little, nowhere near enough to close his armpits. She could and did tickle all around them at will, worming her fingertips into the soft centers of his armpits until it seemed the force of his howls would be enough to split the barrel by itself. She spread her fingers then, scratching the entire interior of each hollow in exquisite, never-ending patterns, so that his body shook with demented giggles like a pot kept on a steady boil.
"But then...it could be even better...." She suddenly pulled his shirt open, laying his chest bare, and traced its contours with her fingertips and nails. He let out a shuddering sigh, and heard her low, warm laugh in response. The sound of that laugh, and the delicate intensity of the sensation, somehow turned his muscles to water, turned him into something trembling and passive that wanted only to feel where the teasing touch went next. Even the knowledge that she could now -- would now -- tickle his bare skin seemed not so much alarming as vaguely pleasant. His body still twitched and squirmed reflexively, but his mind was melting, and he dimly wondered if she had felt the same way when he tickled her feet.
Then she began to lightly scramble her fingers on his bare stomach, and the passivity abruptly lifted as shuddering laughter racked his body. She laughed along with him, running the points of her fingernails slowly from his waist up to his ribs, drawing lines of ticklish sensation that seemed to linger behind as if she were putting a mark on him. To his distress, the helpless squirming only made her fingers slide over his skin, spreading the tickling over an even larger area. Laughter burst from him once again as she worked her fingertips into his belly, kneading the flesh and muscle that trembled with mirth beneath her touch. The harder her fingers dug, the more it tickled, as if she were burrowing in search of the source of laughter itself so she could tease it directly. His hips twisted, but pinned by her weight, he could barely move his midriff, no matter how much she tickled.
A wild thought flashed through his head, and he threw his arms up, hoping to touch the bottom of the barrel so he could push it off him. He realized the mistake a second too late as she struck, tickling first one invitingly opened armpit and then the other even as she continued to work his belly with her other hand. He howled, managing only a barely coherent "Stop!" amidst the flood of laughter, as the overwhelming sensation of being tickled in two sensitive places at once crashed down on him. He might have saved himself the effort for all it got him. Her fingers did not pause for a second, dancing over his stomach and switching from one armpit to the other. Apparently pleased at the reaction, she began to skip from spot to spot, making it impossible for him to anticipate where the tickling would come from next. Ribs, hips, stomach, waist, armpits -- his squirming grew even more frantic, always a second too late to help him as he laughed hysterically, every fresh tickle sparking the laughter anew. His sense of time had disappeared with the rest of his mind, and all he knew, had ever known, would ever know was being tickled.
"I think I took it better than you are," she said when she finally paused to let him catch his breath, idly running her fingers up and down his sides and making him twitch and yelp with quick unexpected tickles.
"Let me up and we'll see about that," he responded.
Her nails crossed his chest, traced his collarbone and the sides of his neck, making him cringe and goosebumps ripple his skin. "Another time, maybe. I'm not quite done with you..."
She began to tickle ruthlessly, fingers working as rapidly as a great harpist's on the strings as they whirled down his body. Christoph was nearly paralyzed with shock for a moment, then he let out a bellow of laughter that, even muffled by the barrel, made his partner in the front room put down his measure and frown. Bethany was far beyond worrying that he might be overheard; she was enjoying her work too much. And Christoph, of course, had no choice as to whether he wanted to be silent or not. Bethany reached behind her, grabbing the great muscles of his thighs and kneading them in a way that tickled unbearably, and his legs jerked, nearly throwing her off. Laughing at the sheer pleasure of it, she cried out, "Here it comes!" and pounced. She bore down on his ribs fast and hard, all ten fingers digging and probing so quickly that the sensations blurred together into one single tickling all over his exquisitely sensitive ribcage at once. Christoph would have laughed even louder had he not exhausted all his breath on the first shout, but inside the barrel his mouth was wide open, even though only a faint squeak came out. With a mighty heave born of desperation, he pitched Bethany off him, sending her sprawling on the floor, and then scuttled out of the barrel crabwise, collapsing on the floor himself as he gasped. A sudden silence fell over the back room.
Eventually, Christoph sat up wearily, his clothes disarranged, still panting for breath. Bethany pulled herself upright, shaking her tousled hair and giving that warming smile. Her eyes sparkled as they looked at each other. Which reached for the other first, neither could say, but their kiss was shared equally.
A few days later, Bethany disappeared from the house forever, and Christoph from the cloth-makers'. Where they went from there, they went together, and together they stayed to the end of their days and beyond.
When the ghost had finally fallen silent once more, the soldier was the first to speak. "A fine pair of stories, but I still wonder...which one are you? Bethany or Christoph?"
"Both," the ghost said. "As in life my souls were inseparable, so afterward they truly became one. I am Bethany and Christoph, their memories, their emotions, their lives, and above all, and most of all their love, which in its strength gives the rest the strength to last."
Our hostess shook her head in wonder. "I remember Karl telling me about the old couple his father bought the Golden Feather from -- but they were long gone when I came here. To think they've -- you've -- still been around all this time -- it's amazing."
"Not so," the ghost said. "It is a natural process. What is true endures. And truths are found more often in the soul than the body."
The physician smiled. "With your permission, I will continue to consider it amazing. And, as old a man as I am, it does give me a certain hope to know it. Thank you for revealing yourself, sir -- and madam, of course. I can think of no better note to end our acquaintance and resume our journeys on."
"I know I will not forget this," the harper said, and the forester nodded at her side. As did most of us.
"In fact," I said slowly, "it seems a pity that the stories told here will never have any audience beyond us ten -- and the ghost, of course. As a scrivener, it is my work to spread stories of interest and value as widely as I can, and our stories seem to me worthy of the effort. I bid you all good journeys, but I have decided to stay -- at least for a few days." I turned to our hostess. "May I trouble you for paper, ink, and a supply of pens?"
She smiled back at me. And when the last of the travelers had filed out the door, calling their farewells, I was seated at the now-empty common table, setting pen to paper. "The Innkeeper's Tale..." I wrote, and after a moment's thought, continued, "...or Persistence Rewarded."
The Golden Feather still stands where I have described it, in the deep mountain valley, on the road connecting --------- and ---------. And travelers still stop there. Some find only excellent meals, good drink, and warm beds. But some are moved by a certain spirit, and they find something else there, something that sends them on their way with a smile and a renewed joy in the pleasures of the world. The keeper of the inn knows what that spirit is, as does the maid. As do I, who have set these stories down for all to read in the hopes that those of similar spirit will recognize them and be entertained by them.
To those of that spirit, I say: Come to the Golden Feather if you like, but there is really no need. If you know how, you can make your own Golden Feather around you, a place where laughter and friendship and pleasure unite your soul and the souls of those who are with you. Make this your work, and you will know joy and contentment.
These have been the tales of the Golden Feather, and this is their end.
