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By Ethan Stevens
Six was a girl with blue skin highlighted in violet and sea green.
Kine was a satyr with one ear round and one ear pointed.
And this is what they did in a week.
On Monday, Six and Kine went wandering through the moonlight till they came to an old dry well that led down into a secret government bunker. They wandered through it, charming the locks into opening and killing what security guards they came across, till they came to a tiptop security door that led into an abandoned mine. They wandered through it, lighting their way with stolen flashlights and scaring off what goblins they came across, till they came to an obscure little side tunnel that led down into a complex of catacombs. They wandered through this, whistling echolocation tunes when their flashlights died and laying to rest what ghosts they came across, till they came to the tomb of a silver age queen. In the center was a shaft leading down into the depths, so they made a rope from their cloaks and lowered themselves down. It wasn’t nearly long enough, and, laughing at themselves for thinking it would be, they let go and swan dove down. They plunged into a pool of crude oil at the bottom and, once they had crawled out and blessed each other with protection from fire, cleansed themselves by burning it off. They made new clothes with webs they bought from spiders, paying with the blackened coins that had been in their pockets. They went on in darkness till they came to a city forged of electrum with a locked vault at its center. There, they bought gold axes from beetles, paying with locks of their hair, and silver saws from the worms, paying with drops of their blood, and chopped down and sawed into lengths long dead mushrooms tall as trees. These they used to stoke a furnace and forge an iron crowbar, which they then used to open the vault at the center of the city. In the vault lay a man of iron, silver, and magic, whom Six awakened with a handshake, and who accompanied them from gratitude. He showed them a great staircase down, hidden in that city, and the three of them descended it past where it reversed gravity in the middle and emerged at its end on the inner side of the hollow earth. There they found all things gentle and sleepy in the darkness, with no sun within the center and life moving to the rhythm of the faintly felt tides. They journeyed on until they found a mountain, at the top of which they built themselves a tower from the timbers of gently humming trees, and then they killed thirteen restful pumas and thirteen lazy tigers, stitched their skins into a balloon which they filled with levity, and sailed to the empty center of the world. There, they balanced the balloon full of less-than-weightless levity, spinning slowly at the center of gravity. Then Kine sang a song of the sun, and Six sang a tune of the stars, and the man pronounced “let there be light,” and the three sparked moonlight in the center of the world. It caught and burned cold in the levity, shining through the tiger skin side of the balloon and making a sun’s little sister to shine on a world that needed just enough light to do things by. Then Kine and Six left the man of iron, silver, and magic to be the new moon’s man-in-the-moon, and let themselves down on bat-wing parachutes to the underside of the north pole, where they kissed so passionately they melted their way to the surface, sailed home on an iceberg, and slept that night on beds of cloud-pine needles.
Six was a girl with blood that turned gold if you stirred it.
Kine was a satyr with a tattoo of a blackbird on his right arm.
And this is what they did in a week.
On Tuesday, they dug up the roots of a mountain and sawed them into boards, killed twenty bears and twisted their sinews into ropes, and shaved the beards from sixty maidens and wove them into cloth. From all these they made a ship for two which they launched from a mountaintop and sailed in upon the clouds. They made their way through fog shallows, over rolling stratocumulus billows, and through some choppy altocumulus, before anchoring in a cumulonimbus head. There, they dived for hailstone oysters and stumbled upon a military outpost of cherubim men (who, being male, were therefore wingless), who immediately took them prisoner and locked them in a lightning cell. There, Six and Kine summoned first a tern, whose spit they used to make themselves invisible, and escaped their cell. Then they summoned a cat, who lent them the silence of its footfalls, to attempt to reclaim their ship, which they found burnt. Last, they summoned a flying fish, whose water breath they breathed into their own lungs, and sneaked into a water-filled sea-floor biplane that the cherubim used for sending messengers. When the outpost had drifted out to sea, they flew it down a rainsquall and into the ocean. There, they cruised across the great empty plains, skirted along the edges of deep trenches, wove through forests of black smokers, and finally put to at the edge of an undersea mountain. There, they swam up to look for useful things in the garbage patch on the surface and discovered a bunker of mermen (who have legs, unlike their wives and sisters), who treated them much as they had been treated before, locking them in a coral cell. But this time, they were wrapped in a sea-iron chains and so they had not their hands free to summon with. They had, however, each only a single chain about them, wrapped and not fastened. Each was, also, just able to reach their hand to the other, and by biting off each other’s right hand they had room enough to wriggle free and make it to the surface, mermen in pursuit, and each still with the other’s hand. At the surface Kine invoked a life-debt owed him by a great wolf of the storm, who came across the ocean, turning it to ice beneath her feet, and carried them to the house of a Martian doctor known to Six. The doctor repaired their injuries, and as a token of their love, each had the hand of the other attached to their wrist. Then they went home and slept on beds of red pine boughs.
Six was a girl with two scars across her right shoulder.
Kine was a satyr who spoke fluent Portuguese.
And this is what they did in a week.
On Wednesday winter they raised an island up from the sea. It was a small island, and they found a firm place to stand, tossed a rope round the moon for a pulley, and hauled it up from its place just beneath the water. Then, walking upon its slick and dripping rocks, they blessed it with land blessings, changing its fish into birds, its worms into beasts, its crabs into insects, and impregnating its sand with rich black soil. In the spring of that day, they went about with bags of pits, pips, kernels, grains, fruit stones, burrs, spores and seeds of all kinds, scattering them over the island and watering them from a cauldron of rainwater mixed with their own blood, mead, and Miracle-Gro. Then Kine brought out his fiddle made of slow quicksilver and played while Six danced, calling all growing things up from beneath her feet till the whole island was green and blooming. In the summer of that day, each bound a cloth over their left eye, which called the sun shining down. Then Kine bound himself to a tree in the center of the island, which bound the harsh winds with him, while Six slipped one gold bracelet onto one arm and eight onto the other, then went about touching each green fruit as it slowly ripened in the sun and was not troubled by the wind, till each fruit was full and heavy. In the autumn of that day, they gathered every richly colored orb, sphere, globe, oblong, and lumpy knob that hung on every branch, vine and bramble, hid in every husk, pod, and shell, and lay beneath each bush, stalk, and stem. Then they brewed them into wines, cordials, whiskies, sours, brandies, beers, ales, lagers, rums, gins, vodkas, tequilas, bourbons, juleps, schnapps, champagnes, and hooches. And, bottling it all up, they stored it in a cellar hidden just beneath the edge of the world. Then, with one small glass of rowan berry gin for Six, and one small glass of mango julep for Kine, and a snifter of clementine hooch for both of them, they went home and slept on beds of white pine boughs.
Six was a girl who played the zither.
Kine was a satyr who collected jeweled chess sets.
And this is what they did in a week.
On Thursday, they went to the moon. It was quiet and empty and coated in dust that lingered long in the air as their feet kicked it up. At a place where the earth was framed on the horizon by a stone circle at their backs, they found a tower. The tower had a door depicting two snakes, so they forced the lock. At the center of the tower was a well lined with shells, so they wove a rope of Kine’s beard and went down it. At the bottom was a lake full of submerged spears, so they made a balloon from their cloaks and sailed across it. At the shore of the lake, they found a princess made of glass with a heart made of leaves. After they had picked the lock on her chains, she agreed to come with them and they went to the sun. On the sun, they wore dark glass spectacles against the glare and robed themselves in shadows against the heat. There they found a great metropolis made of pewter and populated by old women who carried hammers of flint and young men with swords of lightning by their sides. There, they were arrested for drinking from a sacred fountain and condemned to be drowned in a pool of oil. Six changed herself into a mermaid and stayed at the bottom; Kine breathed cunningly through a tube; the princess faced her death with courage, then found she didn’t need to breath; and all three were followed in by a young soldier of the sun who had fallen in love with the princess and who found a secret drain at the bottom of the pool. They fled the city through a wilderness of fire and cloth, and when they were safe at its heart, they went to Uranus. On Uranus, they walked over hills of earth and blood until they came to twelve houses inlaid with platinum. In the courtyard, between a house bearing curved horns and a house bearing spiral horns, a woman with hair of green wheat fought a troll made of ice. Kine and the young man rolled dice against Six and the princess for whom they should favor, and Six and the princess won. So, the young man drew his sword and gave it to the princess, who threw it and pierced the troll’s heart and then called it back to her hand. The woman thanked them and accompanied them to Neptune. On Neptune, they walked through a desert of bones and dry grass, and at the edge of the desert, they found a hall with a roof of aluminum. From the hall, they were attacked by a serpent and by a knight on horseback. Six and the young man killed the serpent, and Kine killed the knight’s horse. But, when the woman had disarmed the knight, she did not kill him, for he had fought with skill, and she took him to love, for he had lost with grace. Then they buried the serpent, who had been the knight’s brother, and they went together to Pluto. On Pluto was a monastery built of obsidian and set with gems. There the frere of the monastery married the young man to the princess and the woman to the knight. For their wedding gifts, Six and Kine gave them each a mask: a wolf of cloth to the princess, a cockerel of ruby to the young man, a panther of ivory to the woman, and a goblin of zinc to the knight. In return, the young man and princess gave Six a mask of a woman made of beeswax, and the woman and knight gave Kine a mask of a stag made of ash wood. Then they went home and slept on beds of blue pine boughs.
Six was a girl with bone hoops through each ear.
Kine was a satyr who wore gold-rimmed spectacles when he read.
And this is what they did in a week.
On Friday, six took Kine with her to visit her half-sister, a sea puss who lived with the mermaids. They covered their faces with living masks so as to breathe, and they went down into a bright city of coral, where Six gave her half-sister an apple made of red gold and her half-sister gave Six a hand mirror made of iron. They had a lunch of anemone stew and young immortal jellyfish, then rose to the surface. There, Kine made them dove’s wings out of sea foam and they flew up to a mountaintop to visit Kine’s uncle, a cloud tom living with the seraph women. His uncle was entertaining six dwarves to each of whom Six gave a lock of her hair. In return, the dwarves made a belt of copper for Kine and a necklace of tree-light gems for Six. They had a dinner of wind-flower salad and roast mayflies, then descended to the plain. There, both Six and Kine road a scallop-shell of glass into the depths of a hurricane to visit a boar who was kissing-cousin to both of them. Kine engraved a suitable love poem on a sword the boar had forged to give to a maid favored by him. In return, the boar gave Kine a bundle of arrows made of alchemical tin, Six a quiver made of alchemical copper, and for both to share, a bow of divine bronze. Then they went home and slept on beds of juniper boughs.
Six was a girl with star-shaped birthmarks on the soles of her feet.
Kine was a satyr who cast church bells for a living.
And this is what they did in a week.
On Saturday, Six and Kine went out to tend to the cattle and the goats. Kine drove the cattle over a plain of high grass, cutting the way for them through the thick spots with a scythe. Six took the goats to a bramble patch, leading them through the swamp with skirts hitched and face covered, so the water washed her feet instead of muddying them. When noon came, Kine hitched skis to his hooves and skied down to where Six was. Then, they both turned themselves into insects, Kine into an ant-lion and Six into a damselfly, and they went through a hole in a wall and into a private garden. Once there, they resumed their forms and Kine combed the horns from his hair and put on feet over his hooves, while Six scrubbed her skin a rich brown and both dressed in the skins of sacrificial beasts. In the garden’s gazebo, they ate a lunch of life-fruit salad and deep-fried rattlesnake, washed down with a chilled bottle of apple cider punch they had seen the owner of the garden stow there for his garden party that night. Then they both turned themselves into dust and drifted through the hole in the wall, and Kine drove the cattle home and Six drove the goats home. That night they had a bonfire of fig tree wood and called all the creatures of the earth to come and tell ghost stories. The only ones that came were the eagle, who told the story of the four girls in the four rivers who drown the unwary, the lion, who told of the man with a body full of eyes, and the ox, who told of the hourglasses full of ashes which countdown each being’s life. And when the fire had burned down, they went home and slept on beds of Douglas fir boughs.
Six was a girl whose best dress was of linen and white gold.
Kine was a satyr whose best tie was silk embossed with electrum.
And this is what they did in a week.
On Sunday, Kine got up and went and bathed in the river, then put on his dark suit and put gold hoops in his goat ears, while Six went and bathed in the tide pool and put on her dress and best sunburst hat, and they went to the church on the hill. In Sunday school, Six taught the girls how to die gallantly and to be honest, while Kine taught the boys how to persevere in the face of betrayal and not to be bitter, then they went into the service. There they sang hymns in worship of God, and each placed an emerald in the collection plate. Then the Hierophant stood before them and preached. He spoke of Job and Ehud and Judith and Jesus the Christ; he called them to love their enemies and to respect the dead and be generous to the misfortunate; and then he blessed them and all living things, and asked the Lord to grant them no hard testing of their faith upon that day. Then the congregation went to the house of Mare Jessica, whose week it was to host, each bringing a dish. Six brought chocolate moose, Kine brought hyacinth potato chips, and the Hierophant brought loaves of unleavened bread and good dark wine, and all ate and were satisfied. Then they went out and played skittles and touch rugby in the churchyard in honor of the dead. Then Six and Kine went to the house of Sara and Manfred on their invitation. They played backgammon and talked mathematic, politics, paper dolls, meatpacking, and buttons over spice coffee, then went outside and watched the fireflies. Then Six and Kine went home and slept on a bed of hemlock bushes.
Six was a girl with a voice like the third sound.
Kine was a satyr who composed sonnets for each continent.
And that’s what they did in a week.