K j bishop, p.2
K J Bishop, page 2
The vein on her forehead has become a lode of white gold: often swollen, but sometimes flat, so that the gossip about Prince November drinking from her has gained more currency amongst those who go to see her. But not so many do these days. Unthinkable as it is, she has changed. She is nearly always queer now. I never know whether she will be distracted or depressed or silly when I come with the lovely motes for her to inhale. She wears the ring I coughed up, and when she’s in her whimsical mood she steals admiring looks at it, as if it were a real ruby on her finger.
I would not have believed it possible, but since the emptying sickness has been in the world the old game of murdering treasure animals has fallen out of favour. Ball games and swap cards are popular now, and pageant games.
In the pageants, a character called Grinning Horse has for some time been a playground hero. He is the one who saves children by breathing in the smoke before it can reach them. He is also the one who, by the laws of the games, is the bold opponent of a certain Prince No-Never, and his old nurse, the Wheat Mate, and defeats them (as he defeats policemen, schoolmasters, and other vile enemies—often in rough and bloody ways, children being what they are). For months, I could make no pretence to having an explanation for this, but eventually I began to hear things. It seems that the Treasure Children themselves started the invention of Grinning Horse, Prince No-Never and the Wheat Mate. If what I have heard is true, the Treasure Children dream of these characters after the smoke visits them, and they say the smoke gives them the dreams in exchange for their lives. The dreams, and the part played by the smoke, they confide about to friends and siblings before they are seized by the silence that comes with the hollowing effect of the illness, and the accounts are reinforced by others who fall sick.
I remember the White Ma’at’s words concerning the future, and how my never-finished tale of the Gleeful Horse sounded true when I tried to tell it.
So perhaps it will all be just as I imagined.
K.J. Bishop lives a degenerate life in Bangkok. This life is not hers, but rented. If poked she sometimes emits ink, which has appeared in magazines including Aurealis, Subterranean and Electric Velocipede, and anthologies including Last Drink Bird Head, The New Weird, Leviathan 4 and Album Zutique. Her first long squirt of ink, The Etched City, received the William L.Crawford Award and the Ditmar Award for best novel, and was nominated for a World Fantasy Award.
Anonymous, K J Bishop
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