Tourist Season

The rambling account of a visitor to a legendary port city.

The legendary port city of Phoenix Gate is more than everything you’ve heard, and not, all at the same time. I spent more than three years of my life searching for something that existed right under my nose, and now that I’ve found it, I’m never going to leave it.

 

Three weeks ago, I made port in Temple Harbor, docking my ship in an oft-neglected hub for the continent’s pilgrims, for all their various faiths. The center peninsula puts out into the middle of the bay, greeting you with twin pagoda towers and natural stone arches coming from every direction out the ground. The first sight, beyond those rock arches is the Watershed Phoenix that other explorers dismissed as a peacock, “a very elegant kind of oriental turkey,” (I jest not, that was a quote from a manuscript I studied while looking for Phoenix Gate) or some other bird, making assumptions about the culture from the sculpture.

 

After they made the mistake of missing that phoenix, since it didn’t look much like the expectations of our colonialist brethren, it was ignored. Too many pilgrims or too many faiths, and too little interest in ours made them unsuitable for our own missionaries. Poor pilgrims and fishermen also are of no interest to people seeking spices and silks and gems of the East. The mapmakers declared the city “Temple Harbor” on all their drawings, because they’re painfully unimaginative, and never bothered to learn the language and talk to the people.

 

The language is rich, as are the people here. As I docked Shadow Hornet, I found that out first-hand. Even the harbormasters are rich, having bracelets made from jangling gold and jade coins on their wrists, as well as various other lesser metals. Purses and pouches get stolen, as anyone back home can tell you, but coins tied on a sash inside your clothes or on your wrist? It’s a brilliant idea, but the idea would never catch on back home. As much as some of the turned-up noses love displaying their wealth, their frail wrists would never be able to support the weight.

 

So, I paid the harbormaster in pieces of Andean gold. He gave me a quizzical look, but I just shrugged and he accepted it. The less you say, the more is assumed, and the harbormaster assumed I was a ship captain and perhaps even privateer - - I never learned their word for that concept - - for the region. It didn’t hurt that my first mate, Kaito, had yellowed my face and used spirit gum to mock me up a moustache and beard that could pass well enough at even five paces, as long as no one looked too close, and clothes befitting a merchant sailor of a nearby region that Kaito claimed as home. He also had taught me enough of the local language over the three years with me that I could hold a passable conversation, assuming the people at Phoenix Gate spoke the same dialect I was learning.

 

If you want to see a city, see it like a local would. Especially if the legends say they’re incredibly insular and xenophobic. I would never find what I was looking for, looking like myself.

 

They didn’t. But, I would learn, there is enough commonality between the dialects that I could eat, offer prayers at shrines, and find a room for any nights I would be remaining off the ship, as well as other comforts and amenities as a man may want while in port, of course.

 

Kaitos, being the only other crew member who spoke the language, was to remain onboard to mind the ship while I explored the harbor city, in search of the legends and magics and treasures that were supposed to be the hallmarks of the mythical Phoenix Gate. Someone had to, because it was never meant to be a final port-of-call. After all, when you find a mythical city and all its treasures, you need to brag to someone about it.

 

So, it was on the pier side, set off and away from the central peninsula that I disembarked from the Hornet with Barabbas, a thieving little monkey. Literally, a thieving little monkey. He had found myself and my crew, or rather the gold myself and my crew had secured, while we were in the Andean ranges. The little b*****d is lucky I didn’t sell him to the harbormaster instead of the gold, for all the trouble he had, and would, cause me.

 

The walk was amazing in the closing hours of the day. Lanterns along the waterfront were just being lit, and the dying sunlight practically illuminated all the stone arches, as well as making the fountaining waterfall the jutted out from the center of a building on the center of the peninsula, and across the wings of a giant golden bird, shine like falling diamonds. If you saw it in person, you would know how apt the name Watershed Phoenix actually was.

 

I was able to appreciate it for all of a moment before Barabbas began his mischief.

 

Beneath a lamppost, stylized at the top in wrought iron as a phoenix and hanging three lanterns, was a richly-appointed man, whose crimson robes draped across the ground as he walked, and pearl-trimmed sashes bunched about his waist. And also about his waist and person was an eagerly ambling monkey who was lifting what he could and tugging on jingling coins inside sleeves that a person could fold both their arms into and still have room.

 

I instantly went after Barabbas, and pulled him bodily off the man, tail first, bringing him crashing to the ground. The man had already pulled a wicked dagger, almost long enough to be called a sword, and began threatening in a dialect too fast for me to understand. I obeyed the cardinal rule that Kaito taught me: if someone is mad, and they look rich, grovel. It’s a ritual of apology and humiliation they recognize from one of lower station, but I thought it was just Kaito mocking me by making me look a fool on my own ship.

 

Down I went, on my knees and hands, mashing my forehead to the pavement, and forcing the dazed monkey to do the same. In my loudest voice, for I was projecting from my lips against the paving stones, I begged forgiveness from the rich and powerful man. At home, it would be something I’d be forced to defend myself in a duel over, but that doesn’t seem to be the tradition here. A scraping, bowing apology is enough most of the time, unless you screw up really bad.

 

We had. I had literally scraped my forehead into the stone, drawing minute beads of blood that I would later hope didn’t mar the face yellowing of my disguise, and it wasn’t enough. The man placed his foot, still hidden under those crimson robes, and pinned Barabbas arm to the ground at the shoulder. In a single flawless movement, I watched that blade separate Barabbas’ hand from his wrist. It was all I could do to keep him in place after that. He kicked gravel in the face of that thieving monkey, and in my face as well, but I never looked up. If I ever knew the sight of his face, I would walk the earth until I saw it again and put him in a grave.

 

Disguises and apologies and keeping secrets is one thing, but a man has his honor. Cultures be damned, you do not treat a man like this. You probably also shouldn’t treat monkeys like that, either. I cannot say that he didn’t have it coming.

 

My pride quickly vanished as I searched for help from anyone, but everyone in the streets walked by as if I was invisible. It was the goal of my costume to do just that, but they were being obvious about this. Whoever that man was, he was the last man in Phoenix Gate I should have offended. In less than five minutes from my feet touching shore, I had becoming an untouchable to anyone who had seen the incident.

 

The man waited at that phoenix lamp as I walked off. One of the many gondola-like boats pulled to the shore and let him board. These boats have covers here, canvas or oilcloth over the passengers, and it was a transport across the channel to the peninsula for anyone who can afford the convenience. I allowed him that convenience because my primate companion lay dying in my arms.

 

A pilgrim monk found us a few streets down. I was barely able to communicate with him, as he spoke a different dialect than my first mate had taught me, and the one used in Temple Harbor. Barabbas had passed out by that point, and that made conversation easier, but not communicating. The nature of my problem was clear enough that he was able to help, though. That help came in the form of a walk to a monastery on the peninsula, where a significant number of his order came and went, as Temple Harbor gave way to the mainland, and the pilgrims’ eventual destinations.

 

A pair of them came and took Barabbas away. They seemed more concerned than even a zookeeper would at the sight of an injured animal. He clung to me one last time, regaining brief consciousness, as the monks pulled him off of my purse and my tunic. He was taken off to be attended to in a side room. They brought a simple worked-silver bowl for me to wash my hands and dab at my own clothes to clean monkey blood from me. That would turn out to be the last time I saw Barabbas. Sometimes I regret it, and sometimes I’m glad to be rid of him. But that wound is still fresh, and my tale still unfinished.

 

Let me tell you first of these monks. They are not like the monks we know. While they may be bald and wear robes, and some of them fat, that’s where the similarities end. These monks and spiritual pilgrims are martial in their character, and can fight with weapons and bare knuckles than I’ve seen some of the best sailors of my day when repelling boarders.

 

In their training, I thought I saw something I recognized. Back in the Andean ranges, where blood sacrifice is common, I witnessed Kaito do something as terrifying as their sacrifices. He saved my life, and paid a life debt I never said he owed me, by spearing his hand into a high priest’s chest and removing his heart, before I had mine removed. He called it something like “Grasping Talon of the Eagle” or some name that took longer to say than it took to do. These monks were performing something very similar in their practice to that very thing. That’s what I mean by martial.

 

I once asked Kaito where he had learned that, and all he told me was that it was taught to him by a ghoul of a man, and didn’t want to talk about it again. And for fear of a fall out between the man I’d come to trust as my first mate (and who I now owed a life debt to), I let the matter drop. Kaito would later teach me some of the fundamentals of his unique pugilism, but he never came close to divulging anything like what I saw on that altar.

 

While they tended to me, I learned about the city and its origins. The language made some of it unclear, but for the sake of posterity, I recount the broad strokes. The city is built on an energy path, called a “dragon line.” The dragon wanted to have the phoenix for his mate, and the phoenix would have none of it, or should was being difficult for the purpose of encouraging the dragon. That part is lost in translation to me. She had him chase her, and she dodged and ducked through the mountains and valleys, making him wind himself in arches and ribbons (for the dragons here are long and snake-like, while ours resemble lizards that have legs; their also don’t breathe fire) until he tangled himself up in himself. She had proven her point, and then conceded to be his bride, and flew through each of the knots and arches of his body, immortalizing the conduits of his power in the stone, creating a nexus of power here, which would make it a holy place to any number of religions.

 

Cleaning me up and bandaging my minor scrapes eventually ended, and the monks sent me on my way, robbing me of my opportunity to learn any more. I was not allowed to stay if I was not a member of their order. That’s another difference, in the hospitality that they are allowed to extend. The charity of the monks back home would include at least offering a pile of straw in some room’s corner. I will not claim to understand a militant spiritual path. Not even the stories of the Saracens a few centuries back, had I heard of a religious people so able to do violence.

 

I had suffered minor scrapes, my pride had suffered a major one, and I was fairly certain I had seen my monkey friend die, all before I had been under the Phoenix Gate for a watch’s length. At that point, I did the only thing that made sense to a man of my unique and capable virtues: I went whoring and drinking.

 

That, my lady, is how I ended up here. Wherever here is. A beautiful woman plied me with drink and an equally beautiful pipe of a unique tobacco. It left a cloying and sticky sensation in my mouth that colonial tobacco never does, but it erased all of my aches and pains from the hours after landing in Temple Harbor. How long have I been here easing my aches and pains with you now? My bracelet feels lighter than it should. You wouldn’t steal from me, though, I’ve paid you too well to stay here. And it is so good to be here. You have made this whole awful quest worthwhile.

 

As soon as I run out of coin, you’re going to kick me out. I know, and I find that an agreeable end to our time. Such is the nature of all relationships with women, don’t you think? But let me pay you something special. No, not that. Well, that, if you want more of that. But no, some special gold just for you, and not the house master. This is just yours, so keep it a secret. Remember the generosity of that great foreign lover of yours, one L. Reed, captain of the prized frigate Shadow Hornet, and how he promised to come back for you.

 

A ring? Yes, but it’s not mine. Or yours. It must be Barabbas’ ring! The ring of a monkey with no hand to wear it anymore. Probably belonged to that b*****d on the dock. Fellow thought he was pretty important, didn’t he? Well, now he doesn’t have his ring, and we do, and - - and - - where are you going? Come back. That was a short trip. Was my pipe out? It still smoulders some, but a fresh one should never be too far away, you are right.

 

You did not bring a new pipe, you brought men. I have sampled many pleasures in many ports, but that is not to my taste. Send these hulks away and let that fall off your shoulder again as you help return that pipe to my mouth. We do not need an audience, either. And put the ring on or put it away. My gift to you should be properly displayed or safely hidden. Those men don’t need it. And even if you think you know who it belongs to, these men cannot possibly the gendarmes - - look at them! They do not look like men you could return stolen property to, and, in fact, they look like men you would get stolen property from!

 

Oh. … Oh. I see.

 

F*****g monkey.

 

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Author's Note

PHOTO CREDIT: Fan Ming (http://conceptartworld.com/?p=23328)
PHOTO CONTENT: concept art illustration of fantastical oriental city

2,713 words.

ABOUT THE PROJECT:
Every piece was written before I knew who or what the image was about. Credit and attribution was revealed only after completing the story for each picture.

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