Free The Apprentice's Masterpiece by Melanie Little Page B

world
can pronounce.

Whip
    I head South.
    My only companion, the sun.
By mid-morning, it’s no longer welcome.
    I have always loved its kiss on my back.
But today it’s the bite of a whip that won’t quit.
    I daydream of water.
When the caliphs ruled here in al-Andalus
they tapped rivers’ gifts the way Orpheus
could draw songs from a reed.
Wells and fountains bordered every path.
    The Christians believe that bathing
too much is immoral. What’s more,
so they say, it makes a man lesser.
Weakened in combat, unlikely to win.
    What a stink those battlefields will be!
I almost laugh as I think it.
    My mirth is short-lived.
A young wraith on a sweating horse
comes charging at me from out of nowhere.
    He yanks the cantina from my sagging neck.
Its buckle catches the cloth on my head;
he wrenches it free and is gone.
    That vessel was empty. The joke is on him.
But what will I fill when I find the next stream?
    If ever I do?

Shades of Brown
    I am walking so weary
I can’t lift my head.
    I play at analogies,
as I often did with Papa.
He loved to compare
two different things, to find
their shared ground.
    So: a likeness for each separate shade—
there are many—of brown.
    There’s the brown of my feet peeking out
from their sandals, as brown, you might say,
as two sun-baked bricks.
    There’s the brown of a grouse in the thicket
just there, lighter, like oven-warmed bread.
    And then there’s the heartbreaking brown
of a bare riverbed, rusty red like dried blood.
    There’s the golden-hued brown of these endless wheat fields
—a sunset, maybe, that has fallen to Earth.
    There is–—
I just about trip
right over the men.
    A roar of laughter goes up, a lion of mirth.
They must have been watching me walk
for an age.
    â€œWhat’s the matter, young thinker?
Have we not enough gear to merit your gaze?”
    What parched breath I have
dies quick in my throat.
I have never seen so much steel in one place.
Five—no, six—cartfuls of weapons.
Crossbows and maces and long, glinting swords.
Behind those, two pipes much the size of large bears,
things I’ve seen only in pictures, in books.
But I know full well what they are.
They spit fire.

Numbers
    This whole grisly stockpile for a handful of men?
What kind of army is this?
Or do their companions
lie crouched in ambush, expecting
a thousand more versions of me
to stumble among them?
    I brace myself, ready to flee.
Nothing happens. I’m exhausted.
The men see it, laugh once again.
    â€œGo ahead—run. We won’t chase you!” says one.
“But how about something to eat?
You look like a twig that’s ready to snap.”

Ours
    The men explain it: they’re Jews.
From Toledo, where Jews, years ago,
were not all expelled.
    â€œAnyway, there remain many Jews in al-Andalus,”
one tells me. He frowns. “Why shouldn’t there be?
We’ve been here since the Romans.
A thousand long years.”
    I grope for my voice. “I don’t wish to fight, friend.
We’re all of us worthy wanderers here.”
    He nods. My answer was good.
“We’re off to the city of Malaga.
The King is conducting a siege
on the Muslims who rule it.
It is we, Jews of the realm, who must
carry the arms.”
    Will they fight?
They will not. They support neither side.
Then they’re free? (I must ask.)
“As free,” says this man, “as can be
when a King and a Queen call you ours .”

The Captive
    â€œEnough questions for us, little thinker. You’re the
mystery here.
Let me see. Escaped slave? Your master’s a prick?
You slept with the lady of the house?
Or the daughter? Or both?”
    I smile. I’m too weak for banter.
But my eyes are drawn
to a man in their midst.
He’s chained to the wheel
of a cart by the ankle.
    â€œOh, him?
He’s a Christian. You’d think him
fortunate, yes? And yet
he’s an unfortunate Christian indeed.
He’s wanted by them