LUMP'S
ADVENTURE
Lump came from far away. Some said one place, some another,
but they all saw the far-away look in his eyes. That look and his quiet calmness, gave him a soft maturity that a few of his peers found highly attractive, if
at first only because he was so different from the other boys.
The local boys were a quick, sharp, deft pack of brutes who loved the alleys. Lump was taller than most, and softer, with warm hands and a firm, round
belly. He had come to their city to study an art with one master. The master
had no other pupils: The only arts that inspired the local boys were boasts and
seductions and fist-fights.
They resented Lump, when they took any notice of him. He was
a pot-bellied sissy in their world, but his very existence seemed to be
a rebuke to their coarseness. He was an easy mark for them when they felt like
playing the bully or showing off in front of their girls. All he ever got from
the local toughs was a humiliating insult followed by a belly-full of knuckles.
In this place, men had to be eager
to flash a fist or swing a stout club. The town prized tough aggressive boys who brought a bigger foe to his knees, and Lump was bigger and easier than most all of them. But he walked
everywhere and dutifully took part in the local life.
Yet Lump seemed always half lost in his own world, unaware of the local toughs as they clouded around him with cruel intentions. Even after they had jumped him or challenged him and their fists began to clout into him, he suffered terribly from their plunging blows but he seemed never to expect them. Or to see that more were coming.
Instead he stood bewildered, absorbing
the violation. A blow that any other boy would anticipate and block, he took
wide open. And his blatant aching reactions — he made no effort to mask his
suffering with manly toughness — only seemed to inspire his tormentors.
THE BOY BRAWL
Lump's first exposure to the cruel attentions of his new home had come a week after he arrived, when he was barely in his teens, at the town's annual Boy Brawl. This was a spectacle in the high springtime: A mandatory public mass brawl for all resident boys of Lump's age, in the sand arena at the edge of town.
Lump read the announcement carefully to see if he was excused as a stranger. He wasn't. "Maybe they won't notice me," he thought, but his heart sank.
The fights took place under the eyes of all, and the girls
talked of it eagerly for weeks beforehand, speculating on the likely fortunes
of their favorites. Even the matrons got a gleam in their eyes when they
reminded each other it was nigh.
The citizens filled the arena grandstands, arriving early
for the best views. The boys strode onto the sand at the appointed time. They
stood in a row and bowed stiffly, 40 or 50 of them stripped down for combat. At
a signal from the Master of the Arena, it began. Young men hurled together and
scrummed in a mass in the middle, elbows and fists flying, each lad seeking to
put another in the dust at his feet.
Each one lunged first for a particular rival. For days
leading up to the fight they had taunted and goaded one another. No two fought
as a team; that was considered unsporting.
Lump had no rival, and all the other youths dismissed him and his visible curve of belly as too weak and soft to be a threat. But he knew he was expected to make an effort and he wanted the girls to approve. So after a few minutes hopping from foot to foot at the edge of the action with his fists raised and feeling ridiculous, he got his nerve up.
He took a deep breath and stepped determinedly to a knot of fighters on the edge of the swirling mass and tried to latch one of the boys around the neck from behind.
The boy never even turned around. As soon as he felt the
grip from behind he instinctively jerked his arm back with a fierce elbow-jab
that rammed full into Lump's belly. It was meant as a mere warding off, and a real fighter would be out of range, but Lump
hadn't braced himself and all but ran his belly into it. The jam caught the soft boy high in the gut and wide open.
It drilled him deep in his stomach-curve.
Lump staggered back and blurted a loud grunt, clutching his
gut, and he blundered in place, howling, for a long time until he got his
breath back. His antic performance was comic relief beside the tight, seething
mass of the fighting, and it drew laughter and mockery from the onlookers.
Above the noise a lusty laugh rang out from the woman who taught dancing to the
girls near the temple, and she finished with an emphatic judgment: "What a
big-belly oaf!"
Lump blushed, and avoided looking up. He slowly pulled
himself upright, and approached the mass again. This time he kept his big belly
out of elbow range. He got as close as he dared, reached in, gripped one boy by
the shoulder, and tried to turn him around. But the lad merely shook him off,
then turned to see who was after him.
When he saw Lump he sneered. But Lump quickly squared off in what he must have thought was a
fighting stance. His fists were up close to his face. He couldn't help it.
Lump swept his arm in a wide swing toward the boy's face. The boy, a lanky youth with wiry muscles, easily shied back and let the blow whiff past. Then he grinned and punched Lump hard in the stomach. The blow sank deep in his flesh before Lump even began to react. The punch rippled his middle and drained his air again with a deep-bellied "OOFF!" and Lump fell and rolled, kicking and groaning in the sand.
By the time he was on his knees and breathing right, the mass brawl had broken up into scrapping pairs. Each boy took up with a rival equal to his skill and strength. But some had no peer handy.
So they went after Lump, to bide their time waiting for a worthier foe and to build reputation with the crowed and have some fun at the expense of Lump's potbelly.
Lump didn't have to go in search of suffering now. It was
delivered to him in heaping helpings. They abused his belly mercilessly with
their knuckles. busting the breath out of him with jabs and chops and yet keeping him on his feet, helpless, for a long dose of stomach-pounding humiliation.
The first boy who deliberately made him a target was a short sparkplug of a lad. The smaller fighter merely menaced Lump with a
fist cocked as if to strike Lump in the mouth, and Lump quickly raised his
hands to protect his face. The eyes in the crowd were on him now, lusting to
see his pain, and his innocent reaction made the dancing mistress smile
wickedly and mutter, "yes, protect your face, you soft-bellied fool!"
while some of the girls who had crowded close to the rail gasped and gripped
the arms of their friends in anticipation.
The smaller boy delivered. His blow packed all his weight. He torqued his arm and stomped forward and rammed the jab-punch deep in Lump's helpless belly. The strike had all the
effect the slugger could have hoped. Lump flew back, arms windmilling, eyes
bulging wide, mouth open round to sound the low, loud "OOOOO" that
announced his gut-suffering.
He tripped and sprawled in the sand, writhing, and turned on his side, lost in the pain and panic of a breathless bellyache.
His smaller
opponent rushed up to him and gave him a firm kick in the stomach. That spilled
Lump onto his back, arms flung wide, in mindless agony, and his tormentor
responded with a firm heel-stomp into his belly. Then he looked down at Lump and
spat, "get up, so I can beat you again!"
Lump, now beside himself in the throes of suffering and
humiliation, nonetheless managed to obey his tormentor as best he could. He got
to his knees, but was too breathless to stand.
The boy grabbed Lump by the hair. Lump's hapless hands flew
to his head. "I said, stand up, SOFT BELLY!" he shouted and as he
said it he delivered a swift boot to the belly of the helpless boy. Lump
collapsed again in the sand.
The merry dancing mistress led the applause and shouts of
approval.
It was not to his credit that Lump lasted more than half of the contest. He never managed to land a single blow, and he survived only as a punching bag, not worth the trouble of any one boy to take him out completely.
They wouldn't knock him out, and he couldn't defend himself or fight back. All
he could do was take his beatings under the eyes of the whole town. Until at
last he was too deflated to get back on his feet, and crawled on his belly to
safety out of the arena. When he could stand again, he staggered home and up
the stairs to his room, too beaten and exhausted and ashamed to do anything but
throw himself on his bed.
HAPPY
RETURNS
Lump stood at the crest of the hill and took in the view.
The ribbon of road ran in one long curve down into the dingy town that
straggled between the headlands. The green sea rolled beyond. He could still
name the larger buildings: the academy, the dance mistress's school, the
mayory. Off to the left stood the round stump of the arena, with its flag, where
he had suffered such a beating on his introduction to the town 18 years before.
The memories -- and there had been so many beatings dealt to
him in this place -- moved him in no way. He merely remembered them. They left
no mark on his body or mind. His purpose always was elsewhere, and his own.
And now the path led back to this place. He thought of how
his new friends had shuddered or frowned when he told them where he was bound
-- they had heard his stories -- but he had set out with the same calm good
nature he brought to every task.
His first purpose here was to again find the one friend he
had made in those years. It was an odd friendship, even he would admit, but he
had kept up his correspondence with her, though they seldom talked of their
realities. She, like he, had lived for the future, in hopes and ideals.
When he had come here first, a young stranger innocently
walking into a den of menace, he had taken work as a serving boy in a tavern
down the alley from his room. To call it seedy in a place where all had gone to
seed was redundant. But he never saw things as such. It was work done for
silver he needed, and he did it dutifully. Even if on many nights he seemed to
serve more as the sport of the patrons than their server.
Alise Miral had worked the taps and rinsed the pots in the
cellar. She was an orphaned distant cousin of the owners', a little younger
than Lump but already a tall, strapping, strong-minded girl. She was bound for
better things than this scullery work, she would let you know. When she had got
Lump to speak of his own ideals and desires, she instinctively latched on to
them as if they were her own. Some days he felt she was the only other person
in that town with a heart.
So he would stand at the tables, with his large belly
looming out at eye-level, inviting the attention of the roughs who took the
place for their pleasure den, and patiently take their orders for drink. And he
would go down to Alise and help her pour or prepare what was wanted. The space
for their work was cramped and tight, and close contact simply was part of the
job. It would be nothing odd for Lump to find himself answering her questions
about his destiny, or listening as she described the art she would make
someday, with her pressed up to his belly by the wall behind her, one hand
resting on his upper stomach, the other pointing or gesturing in front of his
face.
They passed hours in each other's company for two years.
When the owners first noticed, they grumbled that there would be trouble from
such intimacy, but though they watched, nothing ever "progressed," as
they could see it, and soon they lost interest and forgot the pair of oddities
in their employment. Invisible to the world, Lump and Alise in their way had
formed an intimacy all their own.
Often when he came out of the cellar to deliver his orders
his mind was still back with her, formulating the answer to a probing question
Alise had asked, intending to continue their conversation in the cellar. And
often that conversation had to wait.
Some customer, with gnarled fists and a cruel eye, would
have marked him for prey. They resented him for so many reasons -- his quiet
intelligence, his superior manners in an inferior position, the way he casually
wrote what they could never read.
As Lump walked across the room, the man would veer into him
and bump him hard, then turn on him.
"What do you mean tripping me, you big-bellied
clown?"
Lump would pull himself up and answer mildly, "but I
didn't ..."
"So you call me liar, too?" the thug barked.
"So you think to make an ass of me here in front of all these fine
gentlemen?" A flurry of laughter from the house, where every eye had
turned to get a view of the coming scene.
"No, sir, I merely would point out that
gl-UUUNGHHH!!" which was not at all what Lump had intended to point out,
but which was the sound he was forced to make by the ruffian's bare fist
clomped firmly into his unsuspecting belly.
Lump would flop back into a post or table, instantly helpless
and hurled deep into agony, cradling his belly and making faces. It was his
nature to feel intensely. It was his nature to always be abstracted from the
immediate moment. And sudden attacks froze his mind to the core, left him
unable to anticipate or control anything. He became a mere body -- the big wise
kid had become a tall dummy with a round moon of a belly that pleasingly soaked
up their fists.
The open room, with its hard, stained wood floors, became Lump's
torture chamber, where the tight-fisted fighting man measured up the rage and
resentment of his day, his week, his life, and paid it out in harsh pummeling
fists, plunged one by one into poor Lump's soft belly.
He'd gore one up into him that hoisted Lump to his toes,
then wrench it out and leave the helpless man leaning forward, mouth hung open,
and before gravity brought Lump down again, the thug would spear the other fist
into Lump's helpless stomach, jiggle his loins and drive him clear across the
room and back to the wall.
And as Lump stood there sucking air, eyes unfocused, the man
casually strode up to him, looked him up and down, and pronounced his judgment:
"Soft-bellied wimp." Then he walloped Lump in his belly with his
fist, a kettle-drum thump of a stomach-punch that produced another robust
bellypunch grunt.
His punch was like a hot iron in Lump. The pain and
violation were intense, but the shock went right to his core. He doubled far
over. The crowd laughed richly as they watched Lump do another suffering
stagger-dance, dissolving into softness in front of them.
"Lift him up," someone called out. "Let's see
your fist-mark on his belly."
He reached down and hauled Lump up by the collar. Lump's
mouth gaped and he whined, but he had no voice. His hands hung useless at his
sides. The defenseless curve of his belly thrust out, with a visible fist-stamp
pink on his pale flesh.
The thug spun him around and quickly bashed the flat of his
fist against Lump's open belly. When the suffering boy started to fold over
from that, he swung an uppercut under him, caught Lump right in the stomach
with it, and knocked him back upright for more bread-basket punishment.
He gave Lump a hard uppercut jab high in his stomach. Lump
barked out a sharp "UUH!" and jumped up and backward, smitten with a
wicked belly-ache and breathless lungs. He took the thug's next bellypunch with
his gut pushed out. He doubled over completely, jack-knifed at the waist. His
hands went up under the fold of his body, gripping his stomach where he had
been hit. His mouth gaped open, but no sound came out.
The thug casually tripped him, and he fell to his knees and then
pitched himself forward to the floor in agony. Lump flipped flat on his back,
his manhood flayed. His legs kicked like a coward trying to run away, but they kicked
only air. His mouth made nothing but gaspy, loud, mindless sounds.
The ruffian had had his fill. Sated, smiling, he sauntered
back to his table and returned to his drink, hardly even casting a glance back
at the ruin he had made of the serving boy.
Lump stayed down a long time, but the calls for drink began
to ring out. He fought to his knees, crawled to a post, used it to right
himself. He wobbled to the table and straightened his shirt as best he could,
though his lower belly still protruded, and took the order. Then he shuffled
painfully off to the cellar.
While this happened, he noticed, the cellar door had stayed
open a crack, even though he always shut it. When he came down the stairs
moaning, he found Alise busy at something. But her hands trembled, and she
could not look him in the eye for some time and her voice had a deeper, quieter
tone. She never spoke a word to him of his frequent beatings and abuse. But he
noticed, too, that after he had gotten his stomach pummeled in the tavern she
found more occasion to have her hand on his bulging belly, and he often felt
her palm rest there, trembling fingers touching him undercurve or upper curve.
OLD FRIENDS
Lump and Alise were to meet at the tavern where they both
had slaved, long ago. This was her idea. He knew she had moved on from the
tavern shortly after he left the town, but she still lived in its neighborhood.
Alise had written him, however, that he wouldn't be able to find her house in
the town's labyrinthine streets. "Meet me in the tavern. Be there in the
morning, before there's a crowd," her last message said. Lump thought his
memory for such things was excellent and he easily could find her new home, but
he went along with her suggestion.
He found the tavern little changed outside; the same wood
and plaster, only darker and dingier, if that was possible. He stood there lost
in harsh memories as clouds and sun passed over him, with his hand against the
battered door. He remembered Alise's hand laid on his stomach in just that way.
He sighed and pushed inside.
The warm, stale air of the place hit him like a remembered
perfume from hell. He stood blinking in the dim interior. A young girl he did
not recognize stood nearby with a broom in hand, dully sweeping the boards. She
glanced up at him then resumed her work. He tried to place her, but then he
remembered, of course she wouldn't even have been born yet when he last was in
here. He began to hope the town had forgotten him entirely.
No sooner had the thought come to him than he heard a harsh
cackle and a man's voice said, "Well look who's back in town! The Belly
Wimp himself!"
Lump knew the voice, and at once remembered the sneer of the
man's lip and the force of his punches. The speaker stepped out of the gloom
into the space in front of the door. His black hair was salted with gray now,
but he had the same sinewed arms and he looked every inch the the horny-fisted
brawling sailorman he had been when he dealt Lump a dozen beatings in this very
room.
But now he smiled, held out an open hand, and offered,
"here, shake." Lump innocently accepted the grip, which instantly
clamped hard and pulled him forward into a harsh jab in the stomach from the
man's other fist. Lump doubled right over with a gagging groan.
The serving girl, broom in hand, watched wide-eyed and said,
"oooh!, right in his belly!" It seemed to inspire the bully.
"Just as slow-witted and pot-bellied as ever, I
see," he said to gasping Lump, who simply stood bent double, as if submitting
to the man who had just stomach-punched him.
All Lump could manage in reply was "oooooooaah, my
belly!" He had never known to restrain his reactions; when he got hit, his
mind entered a sealed world of his own and whatever flooded his thought spilled
out his mouth, if he had breath to speak it.
The thug grabbed Lump by the scruff of the neck and hauled
him deeper into the place, then threw him forward into a wall. A wooden shelf
jutted out from the wall for patrons to set their drinks on as they stood, and Lump
hit it belly-first. It jutted right into his stomach. He took it with an OOF!,
wheeled breathlessly, and sagged back against it, his knees buckling. The old
tough caught him by the throat and held him up. Lump's big moist hands flew to
the choking grip around his neck, forgetting entirely to guard his round belly.
The sailor made something of the occasion.
"Somebody said Belly Boy was coming back to town,"
he hissed. "Did you expect a parade? Here, I'll give you a fireworks show,
right in the gut."
With one free hand he gave Lump a cruel belly-whomping.
Uppercuts, jabs, chops with the side of the fist -- his knuckles did a slam
dance on Lump's poor belly. Lump himself called out in time to the punches,
OOF! UUH! OOUGH! HUNNH! The thug clouted him over and over, bouncing fists off
his big belly with hollow drum-thump sounds.
The serving girl stood transfixed, forgetting her work. The
other patrons shouted encouragement. "Give him another one!"
"Yeah, that's it, right in the stomach!" "Knock the wind out of
him." "Look at his belly!!"
At last Lump's tormentor let him drop. Lump squirmed on his
knees, bobbing his body, both hands cradling his punched stomach. The bully
grabbed the broom from the serving girl's hands and said, "watch what I do
to him now. Just for you." He blew her a kiss. "I'll give him a
belly-ache to remember you by."
He stepped behind Lump, pulled one of Lump's arms back
chicken-wing, and slid the broom-handle under it, then forced it under the
other arm, at the shoulder. Now Lump's arms were pulled back helplessly. He
tried to clutch his stomach, but could only reach to his flanks.
The brute pulled him up by the hair and made him stand. Lump
looked ridiculous as he tried to writhe himself out of this horrifyingly
vulnerable position, but he couldn't find a way. He gave up and simply hunched
forward, gasping, his arms pulled back, as defenseless as if he had had another
foe behind him, gripping and holding him open.
The brute chuckled, eyed him, and then went to work. Act Two
of Lump's Bellyache. The belly-beating that followed was twice as long and
sharp as the first performance. Fists seemed to pummel Lump's open belly from
every direction; he lost himself in the suffering and felt himself
drowning under attack from a swarm of
enraged disembodied fists, clouding him like hornets, clouting his soft flesh.
The jabs sank to his core and demolished his self-control.
Somehow he became aware that it had ended. The thug wrenched
the handle out of his arms and handed it back to the girl, who was watching the
sailor with a gleam in her eye. Then he bullied Lump back to his feet and
shoved Lump back against the door.
"Come back any time you want your belly beat up!"
A woman rose quietly from the dark booth at the far end of
the place. You never could see who was in that booth. At first Lump saw only
her silhouette. Then she stepped into a shaft of light. It was Alise; Lump knew
her at once by her face and shape and by the style of her clothes.
The thug gave Lump a standing kick in the gut that tumbled
him out the door and onto the street, flat on his back. He lay there under the
sky, suffering. After a minute Alise emerged. Her face was blank, tight,
expressionless. She helped him up to his feet. He wanted to say you look the
same, you're still yo, I missed you. All he could manage was a croak:
"ooh, my belly!"
She replied, "come to my place. I will help you."
THICKENING
Her house was a short walk away (he could have found it
easily), small but elegant. But as they reached it she gasped: The wood had
been splintered at the lock, and the door hung open.
Lump stepped ahead of her, but as soon as he passed the
doorway he met two men charging out. The first held a two-handed sledgehammer.
The one behind him carried an iron-bound wooden chest on his shoulder. They
hardly paused to size him up. The one with the hammer swung it at the waist and
mashed the heavy head of it smack into Lump's large belly, flattening him
against the wall with a pitiful OOF!
He held the iron mass firmly in place while Lump squirmed
and flailed breathlessly, to allow the other man to pass him and run off with
the chest.
Alise tried to grab him, but he shook her off, and the
hammer-man then dropped Lump on the floor and took off himself, deliberately
knocking Alise hard to the ground as he passed. In a second, they were both
gone.
Lump, still breathless, got to Alise and helped her up. She
tried to run after the men, but he restrained her. She was sobbing and
breathless herself, but not from the knock she had taken. "They got
everything," she wailed, "they got it all! They knew, they knew just
where it was."
She sank to the ground and he sat beside her. She looked at
him guiltily. "Your object, what you came back here for is gone. It was in
the chest. They took it, I'm sorry." Then she seemed to panic again.
"And I ... they took from me ... oh!" she broke down in tears.
"Who were they?" Lump gasped.
"I know those bastards," she wept. "They sulk
around the temple. They did this for the priestess, Sonia, I am sure. She is
behind this. But they don't know about my ... But now they will ..." She
wept again.
Lump steered her inside, made a hot drink for her, tried to
calm her. In flurries, between her rage and sorrowing, he tried to piece it all
together. She admitted she had told ... certain men ... that Lump was coming
back to town. But nothing more. "All I said was that you wanted something
important to you and that I had it and that we were meeting in the tavern.
Thar's all, I swear. I said it was valuable only to you, it had no worth
here."
"That would be information enough, if it got to
Sonia," he told her. During his first time here, Sonia had been a junior
in the sodality of the temple, as well as a prima among the dancers. And she
had taken an unusual interest in him, though hardly a kind one. She, of all the
people in the town, seemed to guess that Lump was more than he seemed, that his
secret was bigger than this place and worth stealing. That he allowed himself
to be beaten and abused by these louts because he had his eyes on something
big.
"She never learned it, but I doubt she ever forgot that
it existed," he thought. "Not her. She would have spent the years
spinning her powers, guessing and testing, keeping her spies on all the roads.
She would test her theories, dancing closer to the truth."
"What did they take from you?" he asked Alise.
"Nothing ... everything," she said mournfully.
"I kept only secrets in that box. Your object. A few personal things. And
my art. There was art in it."
"Your art? But your art isn't ..."
"It was not the art anyone sees. It was only for me.
Deeply personal. I didn't want anyone ever to know, but now ..." her tears
welled again.
"I will go and deal with Sonia," he said,
standing.
She looked at him doubtfully. But what other hope was there?
"Promise me one thing. If you do recover what is mine, don't look at it.
Promise me?"
"I do."
LUMP'S
GAMBIT
He did his best to put her door back in order. Then he
rummaged her kitchen and made dinner for both of them. She ate glumly. He tried
to distract and cheer her with questions. Alise showed him her art, hung on her
walls. He wondered at the beautiful scenes full of light and the lovely forms
she created that never could have come from any inspiration in this dingy town.
Then she pulled out the pillows and he made himself a bed in
her front room, while she retreated into the back with the lantern. He lay with
the moonlight on him and tried to think of a plan. Surrounded by the joy and
beauty of Alise's art, and with her sobs seeping through the walls behind, his
heart felt like breaking.
No plan came to him, so he slept. He awoke before dawn, and
slipped out the door, with his hood high over his head, before Alise awoke.
Better this way.
The thing that had been stolen from him was a small piece of
a large creation. It had been something he carried with him from his home, and
he left it in the care of Alise. But over the years, more and more of that
larger creation had died or been destroyed. The little piece now loomed large.
Much of his own hope and destiny was wrapped in it. At any minute he expected
to feel a piercing sensation, like an icicle in the heart, when it fell into the
hands of Sonia, who knew well how to turn any magic against a man.
Yet that moment did not come, and as he walked the streets
he drew a little hope from that, though it puzzled him. He made his way by side
streets, always in the direction of the temple.
As his mind groped for a plan, it also filled with Sonia.
The sun was rising. With every step he drew closer to her. He knew well the
ways and rituals of the high priestess. She and he might be the only two in
this lazy town awake and active at this hour.
She would have risen from sleep in a state of mind unlike
his. From the second she opened her eyes she would be whole, complete, knowing
herself in full, never a doubt. Unlike him, Sonia lived in entire
self-assurance.
Now she was stepping into the ritual bath in the temple
omphalium. Now she was rising from it, glistening; now the acolytes were
toweling her gently. Now she was performing the ritual ablutions, now perfuming
her dark and elegant navel with the sacred nectar. Now she was sliding her
delicate arms into the gown, of finely-woven, well-wrought stuff, colored over
with arcane designs and open at the center to bare her belly; now she was
strapping the golden sandals to her feet.
And now he stood in the shadow of the temple itself. He had
expected to meet the two thugs standing guard, as usual -- Alise had told him
to expect that. But there was no guard, only a girl's face in an open panel of
the ancient double-doors. She stared at him, expressionless.
"My name is Lump, I would like ..."
"You are expected. Follow me."
The panel snapped shut, then the door opened. The girl
walked down the hall, not turning to see if he followed. As she led him deeper
inside, the heat and the perfumed air grew stronger. He followed her into the
sanctum, and then she bowed and left.
He took a deep breath in the warm, damp air. It was as he
remembered, from when another woman had reigned here and Sonia had been just
one of the sodality. The red and gold; the lotus pool bubbling quietly in the
center of the room, the canopies and pillows around the walls. The acolytes sat
cross-legged by the pool, four on each side.
And between them stood Sonia, tall, lithe, regal,
aquiline-nosed. Her black eyes flashed at him under the arches of her brows.
Her face was lined and her waves of inky hair bore streaks of gray, but she was
the same lightning bolt of a woman. She wore a crimson gown, and her sensual
slit of a navel seemed to mock and beckon him, as ever.
"So kind of you to answer my summons, Lump," she
purred.
"Sonia, I ..."
"Yes, I was Sonia to you once," she raised her
voice. The acolytes exchanged furtive glances. "Now you may address me
correctly as Regina Umbilica -- Lady Belly-Button, to you," she added with
a turn of her lip.
She walked slowly toward him, around the ring of girls. Her
every move and gesture called constant, if subtle, attention to her bared
navel, the core and source of all her power and magic. "You remember me, Lump?
You remember how I once held you here? With this?"
She flourished her hips and her long, elegant belly, He
swallowed hard and took the chance. He had only a guess, but it was all he had.
"You haven't got it," he said. "They didn't
bring it to you. The louts ran off with it themselves."
"You pot-bellied FOOL!" Her voice rang out. He had
guessed right, but now he knew he would pay for it. "Do you think I need
anything from YOU?" And she flung her arms up high, and as she did the air
flickered around her and out of it congealed eight slender fists, a fan of four
at each side of her, magically conjured. Each one was her hand, painted nails
and all. Lump knew this magic, and he startled. He had never seen this from
her. She had grown so strong.
Sonia turned her wrists and wreathed her fingers, and as she
did the conjured hands fell into formation and swam through the air toward him.
Four darted forth and grabbed him, wrists and ankles, and held him in a grip
unexpectedly strong, an open X. But the others came soft-handed. One tousled
his hair, two caressed and teased his belly.
The fourth reached low and stroked him hard in an instant,
as Sonia took a seductive step toward him and smiled.
"Your will-power is still as weak as your soft belly, I
see."
"Sonia, I ..."
Her eyes blazed and she scribbled in the air with her
fingers, her lips set tight, and the caressing hands quickly clenched. The one
in his hair turned to a grip and held his head upright. The three below arced
out and torpedoed back into him, one after another in rapid succession,
plunging their knuckles into the meat of his belly. "OOF!"
"UUH!" "OOGH!"
The small, sharp hands hit as hard as the sledgehammer. They
circled quickly and lunged at him again, hit him again, an uppercut bellypunch,
a pounding clomp down into his stomach curve, and a furious jab right in his
core.
"OOH! UUFF! h-OOUFF!"
The sub-priestesses stared transfixed as Sonia punished him,
writing out her wrath on his belly. Sonia flicked her hand, and the fists
paused. "Would you like to try again?"
He gasped for air. When he found enough he croaked,
"Yes, Lady Belly-Button."
"Better." With a clap of her hand she dismissed
the acolytes. They filed out with a swish of perfumed silks. When the last of
them had vanished down the corridor, she said, "Ariadne, join us."
The young girl who had admitted Lump into the temple stepped out silently from
a door behind one of the tapestries and came to Sonia's side.
"Those stupid geese have no skills suitable for a
priestess," Sonia said. "Only the wealth of their parents keeps them
here." She turned her glance to the girl beside her, still watching Lump's
reaction to her.
"Aria, here," she said slowly, "will be my
heir and successor as Regina Umbilica. I have begun to instruct her in the
finer ways. Her power is formidable, but raw. As you shall see."
PLOTTING
"Explore him, darling," she said to Aria.
"He's mine now. Someday perhaps he will be yours."
Aria walked a slow, precise circle around the hanging man,
eyeing him up and down. As she stepped out from behind him she laid a cold hand
on his flank and let it follow the curve of his round stomach. She rested it on
him, then gave a sharp shove with the heel of her hand against Lump's upper
stomach. He let go an involuntary "OOF!"
"His belly is just as you described it to me, my
queen," she said at last. Sonia smiled.
"Firm as a pillow and taut as a sponge," Sonia
mocked. "Every time he gets a real man's fist slammed in his gut, the wimp
loses all his breath."
"What a soft-bellied wimp," Aria said.
"And ideal for our plan, isn't he?" Sonia smiled.
The priestess herself now walked a circle around Lump, a
hand on his belly the whole time, one then the other touching him there; he
felt her heat.
"I don't even want your magical trinket, bellywimp. Not
now. All I want is my revenge on those two louts who think they can thieve from
me. Do you know how furious it makes me?" Lump could feel the tremble in
her touch. He pictured the eight floating hands, each armed with a sharp knife.
"Frankly it was only ever curiosity that drew me to try
to steal it from your painter-girl. But my former captain of the guards, and
his idiot sidekick, think I would pay a queen's ransom for it. Of course,
they're just smart enough to not trust me. They demand that I send Aria, alone,
with the gold."
She stopped in front of Lump and locked her eyes onto his.
"And so I shall. But you'll follow her."
"Why," he said. "I'm not good at spy work.
They'll find me."
"You want your precious object back? You will do as I
require. I told you I don't need it any more. You can have it, and whatever
else is in that chest. I want those men."
"They will discover me."
"Of course then will, you big-bellied oaf. That is what
I intend. Your capture will allow Ariadne to delay their flight, long enough
for me to snatch them up."
"I don't understand."
"Understanding is my business. Your business is
blundering into a trap. Something you do quite well. I will need time, and your
weak belly is going to buy it for me."
"What if I refuse?"
"What other hope do you have?" she said,
scornfully. Then added, with a cruel flicker of a smile, "And what will
your Alise say if you fail?"
He hung silently. Then he drew up what strength he could
rally. "I need to know more. Now. If I am to play my part properly."
Sonia ignored him, turned and walked to her desk, reached
into a drawer, her back to him.
Aria spoke. Her voice high, angelic, and cold as crystal:
"They will beat you up. For me. The captain is very desperate to please
me; he has tried again and again to gain my favor ever since the day I arrived.
He is a fool to desire so; he has no notion of my power. I would freeze his
heart. But he is a man. I have shown him nothing but the coldness he deserves.
That is why he intends to take me with him, along with the ransom and the
magical secret."
Lump looked at Sonia, at her desk still. She answered
without turning. "Do you wonder why I want my revenge on him? But he is so
transparent, so ... male. Why else would he ask for exactly Ariadne to bring
him the gold? He is beautifully sadistic, but very simple, even for a man. He
is the one who plunked his hammerhead into your belly last night. Yes, I know
that, too. I know many things, Softbelly."
Sonia flourished one hand; the magical grip finally relaxed
and Lump fell heavily forward to his hands and knees. The magical floating
hands melted into nothing. He knelt, rubbing his wrists.
"Go now," Sonia commanded. Lump rose unsteadily to
his feet. "Aria will show you out and tell you what you will do
tonight."
TIME TO MOVE
He approached Alise's house from the back alley, and stood
beneath her studio window and tapped. "Alise, it's me," he spoke low
and hurriedly. He heard the back door latch rattle, and he slipped inside.
"Have you got it?" she asked breathlessly.
"No, but I will tonight. At least I think I will."
She dropped, crestfallen.
"Sonia doesn't have it, either."
"Then who --"
"I can't tell you, but there's a plan to recover
everything, and I must play a part in it, it seems."
"Whose plan? You tell me nothing. I have a stake in
this, too, remember? You owe me the truth!"
He looked away from her gaze.
"Lock the door. Come in to the middle room and I will
tell you what I know."
At the end of half an hour, she still had many questions,
but Lump was out of answers.
"First, Ariadne will go to the rendezvous," he
explained again. "If she is alone -- and they will be watching -- she will
be told the meeting place."
"And you will be on the next street or alley, watching
her," Alise said, repeating what he had told her. "And you will
follow her to -- wherever the deal is to be done. And they will capture you.
And I still don't understand how you get my chest back. I am going with
you."
"No you are not," he shot back. "It is a
trap, I go to be captured and beaten. If Sonia fails, there's no telling what
they will do to me."
"If Sonia fails, I won't. I am going with you. You said
sunset? There's no time to argue. Get on your feet. Let's go."
They tracked Ariadne as she made her way to the east end of
town and down a blind alley between two shops.
"I can't see her," Alise whispered to Lump as they
stood at the end of the row. "She could be playing a trick on us."
"This is part of the plan," Lump assured her.
"There's an old well back there. She'll find a scrap of parchment under
the stone curb of the well. It will tell her where the deal is to be done. She
has to move quickly after that; they only gave her a short time. And she has to
signal to Sonia."
Ariadne soon stepped out again on the street, pulled her
cloak tight around her neck, and walked quickly down the road toward them.
Alise ducked into a darkened doorway and grabbed Lump around the waist and
pulled him in with her. There in the tight space he felt Alise's heart pounding
against his back as her hands held his stomach. Ariadne passed without a
glance.
When the echo of her footsteps on the cobbles had faded, the
peered out. They saw her ahead. "Going toward the docks," Alise said.
They had to walk quickly to keep up, and carefully to keep
their distance. When they got in sight of the water, the moon had risen and in
the white light they saw three hukling merchant ships, fat and dark. And at the
far end a trim-keeled two-master with a full cloud of sail, straining like a
hound on the leash and ready to bolt for the open sea. And Ariadne had just
gone up the plank and stepped aboard.
Alise and Lump hurried from shadow to shadow till they stood
by the ship, and they read "Falcon" in gold paint on her taffrail.
They listened. A man's voice, from below decks, the words indistinct. Then
Aria's clear laugh.
They crept up the plank and onto the ship's wooden deck.
They crouched behind a coil of rope and peered in the direction of the voices.
Through an open door, lantern-light shone.
"I can see my chest," Alise whispered. Lump
looked. Through the doorway he saw a wooden box. Its lock had been smashed, but
the lid was closed.
They heard the man's voice again. "Now let's have a look
at that gold."
"Wait here," Lump said; "you don't want to
fall into their hands. Or Sonia's."
Lump crept toward the door.
DANCE of
PAIN
Alise saw the dark shape leap down from the spar and land on
Lump's back, knocking him to the deck. The thud of his body dropping shook the
slender craft, and with growls and curses the captain of the temple guards
surged up the stairs, pulling Ariadne with him by the wrist. Lump was on his
knees, rubbing the back of his head.
Alise shrank back as far into the shadows as she could.
Evidently the captain's henchman, up in the rigging, had not seen her. His view
was blocked by the spread of the sail, and he had seen Lump only when he
approached the door.
"Found your spy," the other man growled to Aria.
"Caught him lurking."
Ariadne pulled away from the captain 's grip. "He's not
with me. He's a pot-bellied fool who thinks this magical treasure is his. And
he thinks I should be his, too."
"Oh, is that so?" The captain said, grabbing Lump
roughly by the collar and hauling him upright.
Then he paused and looked around. "Where's the girl?
That painter-slut. She was with him, following you."
That wasn't in the plan, but Aria took the news without
missing a beat. She shrugged. "Ran off. Got cold feet. Who knows? She has
no spirit."
The captain looked suspicious. "Ran off to tell Sonia,
perhaps? When you double-cross a witch, you trust nothing."
The other man said, "too many spies already. I don't
like how this is going. Let's kill him quickly, bind up your wench, and be
off."
Ariadne ignored him and turned her body to the captain.
"You think you're worthy of me, captain? Prove it and I'll go
willingly."
The captain hesitated a second. It was all she needed.
"I hear you're a handy man with your fists and a
staff," she cooed. He straightened up and held his chin out. The captain's
henchman stood with his mouth open. She gestured with a white hand to Lump.
"I don't care what you do to this big-bellied oaf here. But before you do
it, I'd love to see you give him a belly-ache to remember me by."
In one gesture the captain flung Lump away from him and grabbed
up his fighting-staff from the rack where it hung in the cockpit. Every man in
town had such a weapon: They were cut from saplings, six feet long, with a
rounded club at one end six inches across and tapering to three inches wide at
the base. The base, too was rounded; the whole was polished and hard as bone.
Lump remembered well what that thing could do to his soft
body. The captain took down another staff and threw it to Lump. He fumbled it,
dropped it, picked it up again, held it awkwardly.
"Hans, get below and guard that damned box with your
life," the captain said. "The artist-bitch may be hanging about yet,
and who knows who else."
"We should be ten minutes out to sea and headed for the
Southern Isles by now," Hans muttered, but he obeyed.
"This won't take but a minute," the captain said,
spinning his staff deftly in his hands, twirling it in front of him, and eyeing
Lump hungrily.
Alise feared the thumping of her heart would give her away.
She stilled her breath.
Ariadne stood staring at Lump with a serene smile.
"Look at his belly," she said.
Lump shifted his feet. The captain laughed. "His belly
is the perfect target, my dear lady. Let me show you what I do to such
worthless men as this. En garde!"
The captain took a menacing stomp forward and poked high
with the small end of his staff. Lump took the fake entirely, raising his arms
up, holding the staff crossways, as if to block a blow to the face.
The captain, laughing, clacked his own staff against Lump's
knocking it clear out of his hands, then he spun on one heel and with his back
to Lump jabbed the thick butt of his staff firmly into the other man's curved
out stomach.
"Ooooh!" Aria cooed approvingly.
"UUUUUH!" Lump bellowed miserably. He tried to
draw a breath, but nothing happened. Another involuntary moan let out the last
of the air in him, and he stood now breathless. The captain was still in
motion. He pivoted away from Lump's helpless bulk, jabbed the small of the
staff on the deck with a hollow thump, and lept into the air still gripping his
weapon. His momentum carried him in a full rotation around the rod, and as he
swung around he lashed out his leg and rammed his boot-heel into Lump's
stomach.
The force of it flung Lump back into the rigging ropes, and
bounced him forward again. But the captain was on his feet again, with his
staff stuck out like a lance and Lump got it right in his round gut. Really it
was his own force that impaled his weak belly on the thing, but the captain got
all the credit for it in Ariadne's eyes.
The thudding force of the blow pushed Lump back into the
rigging ropes, and he clung to them, suffering horribly from the breathlessness
and the withering belly-ache he had. The captain punched the staff into him
again, high in the stomach, and that dropped Lump to his knees, huffing and
sobbing.
The Captain stood over him a long second, to see if he'd
rise. Lump only bent over further and moaned.
With a laugh, the captain turned and walked to the dock side
of the ship, and began to loosen the rope. "That was easy." He made
as if to kick off the gangplank that led to the shore.
"Get up, get up, you weakling," Ariadne hissed at Lump
through gritted teeth. But he was too winded. He looked like he was trying to
find his stomach, somewhere up inside him.
She wheeled to face the captain and the furred hem of her
robe slapped Lump's face.
"Oh, but surely you can do more? I have seen such
skills often in the arena. Surely you know more than one way to beat a belly so
... deserving as his. Show me how you use your bare fists."
The captain grunted doubtfully, but he obeyed. He walked up
to Lump and began prodding him with his boot. "Up, Softbelly; the lady
commands it."
Lump wanted nothing more than to stay down, but he knew he
had to perform his part. There was no other way. He found a grip on the
foremast, just a few feet from Alise's hiding place, and slowly pulled himself
up. His breath was coming in long gulps now, and he could not help himself from
bleating pitifully, "my belly! my belly!"
The captain took his proper fight stance and raised his
fists. Lump tried to mimic what he saw, but the attempt was woeful.
Aria threw in a taunt: "Lump, dear, did you really think
I would want to be the mistress of a man with a soft stomach?" And she let
her icy laugh ring out.
When he heard that, the captain flew at Lump. He threw the
first punch at him overhand -- swung his arm, and POW! socked him near the top
of his belly, on the stomach-curve. Poor Lump said "OOPh!" and froze
in place.
Ariadne let out a lusty "Ooooo, right in the
belly!"
The captain really was an expert at this art. He hoped
Ariadne appreciated the subtlety of this strike. The punch had been a
"stunner." That is, it left his opponent helpless, but with his back
arched and his belly wide open. It was a set-up punch.
The captain stepped in and jabbed his fist straight into Lump's
gut. It mashed his stomach, and the force of it drove him back against the
mast, suffering and bellyaching. And the captain followed that up with a
two-punch combination, straight in the stomach.
Lump folded in half with another "OOPh!" and stood
there clutching his belly with his tongue hanging out and a sick look on his
face.
The captain straightened up and put his hands on his hips.
"Yes, my lady. Right. in. his. belly!"
Four belly-slammers in 10 seconds. He hoped she'd been
counting. Lump had no breath in him, and his knees began to buckle.
"You're not going to let him go down so easily, I
hope," Aria teased.
The captain slung his fist in an uppercut motion and socked Lump
in the belly. The blow caught Lump's body in the act of sagging forward, and it
connected with enough force to drive him back upright. It also made him say,
"OOP!" in a way that made Ariadne laugh.
Pain rose up visibly in Lump like a shock wave. He turned
away, grimacing, but the captain whipped the other fist and caught him with it
as he turned, right in the stomach. "OOP!" By then he was in a
complete bellypunch-panic.
The captain gripped his collar, pulled him out, then shoved
him into the ropes again. Lump bounced back and the captain just let him ram
into his fist. The punch got Lump -- again -- right in the belly. It stopped
him in his tracks and dumped him on the boards. He rolled around like a
scorched bug, kicking his legs and cradling his belly and moaning.
The captain wiped his hands like a man at the end of a job.
Aria grabbed his forearm. "More," she purred. "For me."
The captain was a raging bull. He hauled Lump upright and
bullied him some more. Lump's hands never left his gut. Then the captain pulled
him up in front of Ariadne, and said, "Never offer yourself to a real
woman if you've got a soft BELLY!" and with that last word he rammed it
into him again. From close range this time. Lump's hold on himself had sunk
low, under the belly-button, and that gave the captain a perfect window of
stomach. He hit that pot belly right where it counts.
The punch drove another satisfying OOF! out of Lump's
humiliated belly. He backed away, bobbing and making pathetic sounds.
But the captain stayed with, him, swinging when he saw his
chances. He jutted one up into Lump's doubled-over belly. That made Lump pop
upright in shock. Alise saw his big-eyed agonized face for a second, then the
captain swung his arm and gave him a side-of-the-fist bop in the stomach. It
was just a rap, but it hit him right on the solar plexus and there went Lump's
breath again.
He put that pot-bellied wimp through his paces. He
thoroughly humiliated his belly. Took him apart slowly, sadistically. Tortured
him with wringing bellyaches and long, gulping bouts of breathlessness. All the
while the captain poured a torrent of verbal abuse on him. He called Lump a
"pot-bellied wimp." Even if he had had breath to speak, Lump couldn't
have denied it.
Ariadne was openly cheering the captain now. "That's
it! Shove your fist in his belly!"
In the end, Lump was on his hands and knees again, staring
at the rough boards with his belly hung down, pulsing out and in, as he moaned
-- "oooooh! ... oooooh!" with all the wind knocked out of him.
"Kick him in the stomach!"
The captain obeyed. The boot-whomp lifted Lump into the air,
flipped him over, and dumped him flat on his back in the middle of the deck.
The captain planted a heel on the bulging curve of Lump's stomach, and ground
it down to pin his victim to the boards.
Just then a flight of eight fists surged over the gunwales
and before the shocked captain could react, three of them took him by the arms
and hair and gripped him and slammed him back against the mast.
REVENGE
The captain hung eight feet off the deck. Another Sonia-hand
closed tight around his throat. Hans, who must have been watching from below,
ran up and three more disembodied hands flew at him and held him helpless while
a fourth began choking the life out of him.
Sonia strode regally up the gangplank and boarded the
Falcon.
"Get the chest," Sonia commanded, but Ariadne was
already in motion, hurrying down the steps.
Her chest! Alise's heart jumped in her throat. She dashed
forward, toward the open door, after Aria, but Sonia caught her by the hair.
"What have we here?"
Lump saw Alise stagger back, hair pulled, mouth twisted in
pain, and his heart roused itself. He could suffer anything himself, but this
was too much for him. He willed himself to lunge out at Sonia's leg, to try to
trip her, but before he could move a sharp jolt cleaved his body. A pain that
seemed to come from within him. His vision dimmed and purpled and he felt
himself without strength.
Sonia hardly noticed him. She was focussed on Alise.
"Why did you come here, slut! You could have spoiled everything."
"You took what was mine!"
"You! Miserable bitch, you had something too good for
your feeble soul to ever comprehend. I took what was MINE. Whatever else is in
that chest is trash to me. But if it is so secret to you, we'll have it all out
in the open soon enough."
She turned to the doorway. "Aria, come!"
Ariadne already was emerging, stiffly, eyes gleaming. Sonia
flung Alise down beside where Lump lay prostrate.
"Where is it? Aria?"
Ariadne flicked her hand and the captain's discarded staff
flew into it. Sonia stared, open-mouthed. Then, with a lunge of her arms Aria
plowed the staff-head into Sonia's elegant belly.
Sonia folded and fell with a sharp "OOF!" followed
by a long, wailing moan. Lump and Alise lay still. They saw Sonia's hand
scratch on the deck in front of her bent head. Her other hand was pressed to
her navel. She wailed like an animal.
Ariadne threw back her arms and shed her cloak and revealed
herself richly arrayed in a full gown, shimmering gold and silver in torchlight
and moonlight, radiantly bare-bellied, her navel deep-set, her curves
goddesslike. And clasped at her throat was the magical object from Lump's
world. All the power of that lost place funneled through that artifact and into
her. Lump could feel it at once.
Sonia's magical hands melted into air, and the limp bodies
of the two men sed to the deck of the Falcon. Now it was Ariadne who flung her
arms high and spun out eight forms of her own hands into the night air. They
pounced on Sonia and rifled her body as she sobbed "no, no, no." They
took rings, bracelets, necklace -- every magical element and ornament. Two
hands brought them to Ariadne, who donned them one by one.
And then the gripping fingers raised Sonia and held her
upright in an open X.
And then the free hands started punching her hard in the
belly. Aria seemed to have no need to direct them with her fingers, as Sonia
had done. They obeyed her mere thought. She turned from Sonia's torturous
"OOFs" and looked down at Lump and Alise.
"I have appropriated your item. It was the final piece
of power that I required to gain mastery over Sonia. Poor Sonia, who never
could rule herself."
Sonia gasped out half a curse as Aria, but a fist in the
stomach silenced her.
"You have proven useful," she told Lump and Alise.
"I have no further need of you. You may go."