“You are in my light,” he said.
“You are in my dark,” she replied.
“I have come to ring your bell,” he said.
“But my door is open already.”
He looked to the sky and into the sea, then leaned in close: “You’ve longed for a ring to band that lonely finger.”
He pointed to the satchel with his eyes.
She blushed and, patting her chest, hurried him inside.
“You are in my heart,” she said.
“I am on my knees,” he replied and flung the satchel open.
She put a shaky hand to her lips to stifle the cry.
“Never, in all my dreams,” she said.
And he gestured for her to retrieve her prize.
+++
It was a curio, said to be from an island where the flowers were larger than elephants, and plants feasted on living flesh.
It was fashioned from a vine that could be induced to fuse itself into a seamless ring.
It was a stunning artefact, but it was also exceptionally hostile, its surface studded with fine, oily spicules that dealt agony to the touch.
Yet here was a surprise: the blistering assault was suffered synaesthetically, as a great chorus, crying out in strange and unexpected harmonies.
Children of a certain age would gather in groups to hunt for the vine, goading each other into grasping it with bare hands, and laughing hysterically at those who tried.
Instinctively, they’d throw their hands up to shield their ears from a clamour that rattled the insides of their minds.
+++
She couldn’t hear what he was saying.
She had thoughtlessly caressed the ring, and the blast nearly threw her into the sink.
He pressed some ice into her hand.
She shook her head in wonder.
“It’s never as good as the first time,” he whispered.
She let the ice fall to her lap, and the rising chorus drowned him out again.
+++
There existed on the island a local cult who revered the plant and made it the centre of their rites.
Initiates could be recognized by the hoops that ringed their wrists and the scars that covered great expanses of their legs and arms.
Like Pythagoras, their master had developed an esoteric theory of the tones and intervals of the cries and their correlations with the parts of the body that made contact with the poisonous spines.
They believed the chorus communicated sacred truths and that every touch propelled them toward the sublime.
Their scars were a sign of faith but also a source of relief, as they resisted the oils and muted the more histrionic of the cries.
But the lure of the upper registers was impossible to deny, and the scars invariably colonized ever-greater stretches of breast and thigh.
+++
Lights flickered and voices joined, one after another, in a raucous blare of hoots and cat calls.
And they entered the room, a parade of ghouls, spinning and circling around her.
Every gesture was fraught with significance, every utterance a rejoinder to the chorus that resounded in their minds.
“The ring needs a home,” they repeated, one after another.
“The home needs a ring,” she replied each time.
And they lined up, solemnly, to tug at her hair and slap her across the face.
Some needed assistance as the scars had frozen their limbs and thickened their hands.
Some, indeed, were confined to crutches and wheelchairs.
And one — the master himself — was delivered to the kitchen in his bed.
He had long since lost the ability to slap or tug at anything.
And she was obliged to approach him and slam her face into his stony trunk and pull her own hair at his side.
And it was understood by the whistling that blew from the hole in his face when he was satisfied.
+++