Ensemble
Thirteen Stories by S. P. Elledge
(because of Genevieve Ann Elledge)
The Stories
1. Mummified Couple Found in Peatbog
2. Wordblind
3. Mona and the Witchdoctor
4. After Ovid
5. Frog Baby
6. The Last Day of June (The Old Ones)
7. Quintana Roo
8. Impossible Musics I: The Omniphonium
9. Kisses
10. A Fever of Unknown Origin
11. Lazarus Risen
12. Game Over
13. The Flight
MUMMIFIED COUPLE FOUND IN PEATBOG
How could we forget the day we died? It was after the first blush of autumn, on a day that was still and warm—there was no wind; we remember there was no wind. The cloudless sky shone more white than blue, and the cidery scent of fallen apples hung in the air. On the way to our grave we saw a herd of elk grazing peacefully in a meadow. We walked on.
This much is true: our fellow villagers had led us to this lonely place. Here they would judge and then strangle us. They wanted us, this time, to sleep together forever. First our foreheads were branded with iron and ashes; next our clothes stripped from us. We were ashamed. Our children and neighbors looked on. The ones we had married turned their backs. A rope was wound around my neck, then his, and pulled. Our last breaths caught in our throats. Life... life lost us so easily. We fell staring into the sky. Above a raven was poised motionless on the face of the sun, as if the world had stopped.
After the dust blinded us the raven spoke from afar, and it said: Wait. We lay beside one another in the grave they had dug for us, his hand in mine. Soon the earth held us so heavy we could not move even if we had been able. With their picks and shovels our friends flattened the mound above us. Then wordlessly they left. We were alone.
The earth at first was cold, damp, bitter in our mouths. Even so we knew we were next to each other; our souls remained with us. Our own friends had executed us, but we were together in death. For a while we listened patiently for our hearts to begin beating again, as if death, like an illness, would come and go. But our hearts remained silent, and death never left us.
Although we could not tell days, seasons, or years, time did pass, and in time we sank deeper into the softening soil, our bodies pressing closer together. Gradually we became aware that tainted water had seeped over us, and somehow our bodies were kept whole. We did not decay. Instead we seemed to grow stronger as we drank this foul water. Our arms felt powerful enough to burst through earth and reach sky. Our brains, our desire remained intact. Perhaps soon we would throw back the sod like a blanket and rise from our bed. But we remembered what the raven had said. We would wait.
More water came, and it did not go away. We were aware of being at the bottom of a shallow lake. The lake was our fingers, ears, mouth: We felt, heard, and tasted all that which entered, drowned, and did not leave. When a flock of geese landed on the water above, our empty veins seemed to rush with blood.
The idea came to us that there might yet be a child growing within my body. For was it not possible that, although we were dead, our child was alive? When she had grown large and strong enough she would burst forth from our tomb, a miracle to the villagers we had left behind—our gentle vengeance. Nothing stirred within me, however; I realized my womb was barren, and our sleep went on.
We slept, if it was indeed sleep, endlessly, never moving, never changing. And what of the world above? We wondered if the ones we had married ever forgave us, or if our children were able to forget. What happened to them all—whom did they come to love, and when did they too die? But after many centuries their names and faces blurred, faded, and we could not remember. We longed only for the world we had loved apart, yet together: There had been blue flax flowers in the meadow above the pines, the chiming of goat-bells below. There had been windswept fjords and singing caverns along the sea, and the midsummer sun which never left its watch over the earth, just as now we never left one another.
A thousand other things we recalled too and missed: the linden bowing in the wind, the willows, the waterfalls we bathed under, the smooth stones in a brook, the lark at daybreak, food we shared, thunderstorms we ran from, stags locking antlers in the woods... We used to pull burrs from each other's hair and eat berries from out of our cupped palms. When it grew hot among the pines, we cooled by kisses placed on eyelids and ears. When we were shivering on the cliff sides we huddled under one fur. How we missed everything! Even the flies which alighted on our bodies afterward, when we rolled apart and looked down at the pastures and their flocks.
We dreamed of our bodies, of their moist, mossy scent, of the way we tasted, of the veins and muscles and bones we could trace under the skin, of the ways we had slowly twined arms and legs like two old trees which have grown around one another. We had burned into each other with such intensity it sometimes seemed we would forge into one body, one mind.
If ever we were to return the best world to find would be this world we had lost, a world that like us had changed very little. In the world we returned to, however, there would no longer be anyone left to accuse, lie, or keep us apart. There would be no cruelty, no sadness. There would be only us and us only.
The waters of the lake receded, and what we knew to be peat began to form around us, pressing us closer still. Like a bridegroom drawing his bride down for a longer, firmer embrace the peat drew us deeper into the earth and held us there. Roots twisted around us, tying knots in our fingers and hair. Animals burrowed alongside us, licked our faces, and moved on. Otherwise, nothing touched or disturbed us. The peat kept us safe for eternity. We were its secret, like pearls within shells from the sea or crystals inside rocks from the mountains.
After we had waited until we no longer thought or dreamed of anything but white, empty sky boots sounded over our heads and shovels grunted. We awoke. They had come to release us!
We broke into the world again, facing the same sky we had always known. But here were strange new men, and they dropped to their knees when they saw us. Though we were still naked we were no longer ashamed. We had lasted when all else, we knew now, would be changed or gone forever. The field around us was burning, and through the smoke we saw a raven rising with the smoke until it disappeared.
Other men came, whispering in an odd language, as if they did not want to wake us. These men were as gentle with us as mothers washing their newborn children. Soft brushes caressed our faces, and they scrubbed us all over, finding new places to touch and examine like inexperienced lovers. They scraped the mud out of our mouths and combed the dirt from our hair. We were lifted up and carried away, hands still tightly clasped.
Soon we were left in a cool quiet room under a dim white sun. They circled the table we lay upon, pointing and prodding and intoning words like holy men in a ceremony. Our stomachs were opened, our last meals examined, our hearts and livers and the rest cut out. Then we were sewn and sealed up again. Something which stung was painted over our bodies. And lastly, with very delicate tools, they pried our fingers apart and we were separated. Once more we were swaddled and carried away, and this time placed in narrow, padded boxes. There was darkness, and then we were removed to a larger, brighter room.
Now I lie in my cold coffin and he lies in his across the room. Many people come to see us, some to gasp or laugh; others refuse to look. We will last forever, this we understand. We will never crumble into dust. But never again shall we touch one another.
WORDBLIND
The god of the giant silvery oak at the edge of Mar's garden, the god of misshapen and hapless Jack trapped inside his box until you crank the handle just right, the god of the church clock down the hill which pronounces one of its twelve names every hour, the god of the toads and snails and caterpillars and other tiny beings with monstrous faces in Mar's garden, the musty god who creaks inside Far's carefully locked desk drawers, the indecisive god up in the sky who sometimes looks like a pinkish cloud and sometimes like a pearly mist, the god of shoes—the ones that hurt you and the ones that don't, the god who muddies up paint-boxes, the gods of wind and earaches, the god of rainy days indoors, the god of cracks in the ceiling, the whispering gods who gather only behind closed doors, the gods in Mar's unlocked jewelry case with their glittery eyes, the gods under the bed and in the closet and even the silly one who tickles ears from within feather pillows, the gods for everything which has no real name, these gods have all agreed: Don't tell!
Tell what? Nothing! And that is the secret Mar and Far want so badly to know—that one tells nothing because there is nothing to tell. No words could tell. One could hold one's breath forever and still keep breathing and still have nothing to say to them—or anybody else.
From the smallest of gods—the god of dust, who is also the largest, for dust is everywhere—to the oldest of gods, the wise and gnarled oak, who suffers much to bend his branches down for a small child—one has learned this silence, and this is why the words won't, can't come. It really is too bad, for one would like to please Mar and Far now that one is more than six and one has been given everything, as they say, but to break this contract with the gods, even if it were possible, would mean shutting the case of the world upon itself with all its bright colors inside—snap—and then only darkness within.
Not to speak is the charm that holds the world in place.
They say a god lives in the church down the hill—but one has never felt its presence when dragged within on Sundays; the place is too clean and the picture-book windows sealed too tight for any god's survival. The man reads from a book with many gods, though he says they all have just one name. Or maybe three. Anyway, he's a liar, one can tell from the way he shakes hands with no squeeze at all. Oh, someday soon you'll be the loudest singer in our choir, won't you? Even the lilacs in the vestibule shake off their dew with laughter.
Only a phase, concerned aunts and uncles have said, swooping down with sweets and treats, but one-two-three specialists have agreed: cause probably not congenital, larynx perfectly formed, nasal passages perhaps constricted by a slight excess of cartilage, while the maturation of the uvula… After which aunts and uncles nod and smile while their eyes drift away. Mar and Far know whatever the world has said is not sufficient, however, and take as evidence certain words they think they've heard murmured during unwary sleep, when even the gods have left and no one, not even parents, should be listening.
Perhaps, said someone behind a closed door or just a shadow upon frosted glass, perhaps, and yet, unlikely to be improved…
Words exist enough in books, of course, and generous aunts and uncles have given far too many—you really must stop—but of course those are unspoken words, charms which when recited cause magic, and are therefore, however beloved, very dangerous words, even when Mar has snuggled up close on the bed. Don't be afraid, they're all pretend—but one knows she says this only because she's pulled down night along with the window shades. What, you want the windows open? The stories are about gods who perished long ago and myths and other fairy tales remembered only by books—that is, stories of the real world which one's bedside globe insists lies beyond this bedroom, this garden, and this small town down the hill with its church clock and noisy children who have no names. Mar alone is allowed to speak the words in books, for if Far did, the ten-thousand voices in the ten-thousand leaves of the giant oak might awake from their slumber and shout in unison, in a quaking tumult: Silence! One type of magic doesn't like the interference of another, and only Mar has a voice soothing enough to appease these temperamental gods. She still holds one on her lap to read to, though one is becoming much, much too big! and the books are also becoming heavier, with fewer pictures, more words. These make one happier still. Anyone might think Mar and Far would appreciate this—for aunts and uncles have been so attentive and so proud that we have such a little smarty—but they didn't, for the thicker the books and the longer the words, the harder to watch their child mute before such wonders. You must be able to say it to understand it! Far's moustache said once in anger, while Far's cool gray eyes looked over Mar's shoulder and down into a pool of words, and all the leaves on the silvery oak tree in the garden below the bedroom window shook.
Later, when night crouched just at the foot of the bed and the whole world became possible outside the yawning windows, their only child would stare into the dark, and the dark would whisper from within the walls about that other life one was threatened with daily now, where little boys and girls must go to the school far beyond the hill to learn to be grownup, that is, old the way they—Mar and Far and aunts and uncles—were, old and always having to talk in order to believe, always having to say what other people wanted them to say. The world outside the window, whispered the dark, was winter and killing snows that smothered Mar's garden; the world outside the window was summer's silencing heat that stilled even the shrillest insect. And beyond that world, the dark insisted, was nothing but utter whiteness: a pallor of snow, a parched summer.
Doctors may be kind and doctors may even be pretty, but they'd come and they'd go with no real answers—until at last the prettiest and kindest doctor of them all took faith in Mar and Far's fading optimism and held out three playing cards in her elegant brown hands, one right after the other, encouraging a vocal response, any sound at all. But the card showed a bright red trike and the murmured answer was bubba bubba, and another showed a sulking dolly in a polka-dotted pinafore, and the mumbled answer was brrap brrup, and another showed a jolly elf inside a rainbow bubble, and the muffled answer, barely audible, was bup bubbub. At last she fanned the deck across the table, and though she continued to smile out of her beautiful brown face, something inside her gave up with a faint sigh, as surely as the others… and as always, it was a kind of victory, though it really would have been nice to please Mar and Far at last, for they had been so good, so patient.
The tonsils are gone? Adenoids, too? Certainly done a bit too young, but no harm in it, most likely. Pretty and Kind let go of one's chin and stared into the stern face of the office clock. She did know someone else, she said after a full spin of the second hand, someone so far away—she demonstrated by spreading her arms, as if one were a baby or simpleton—someone, she explained, who comprehended ancient mysteries in clear, clean, modern ways—not her exact words, but everyone's understanding of them. Even if there is no cure, she added, we're more than just the words we can speak, aren't we? Mar and Far cast each other exasperated but hopeful looks and agreed with the smiling, all-knowing doctor, though of course it would be very expensive, they all repeated aloud, trying not to look down, across the table and its lovely scattered tractors and trikes and cakes and dollies and elves, into their child's far too solemn eyes.
Sometimes Far's mustache would curl up as he caressed the smooth blue underbelly of the bedside globe. Here, he might say, tracing a line from one pink or yellow island to another, is where they used to color in all sorts of funny dragons. Like in your books? And here—patting an empty ocean—I think this is where the Garden of Eden was, until the dragons gobbled it up. Like this! And then he'd try to tickle one's own belly, but nothing could force a laugh. It was absurd, to think they'd have to fly over such dangerous places. And then Far would switch off the light inside the globe.
The future is like an endless book with blank pages which they—Mar and Far and aunts and uncles and all the rest so much taller than oneself—write in constantly to make things come true. The writing is in indelible ink; it can no more be rubbed out than the past, and so the future must be obeyed just as even the giant oak, though mightiest of all gods, must obey winter's command to throw down all its leaves. So it was no use stamping one's feet, no use breaking apart one's favorite toys bit by bit with teeth and nails when the summons came: a future as certain and as black as India ink. Besides, as usual after a while they will take away one's remaining toys and place them on the highest shelf, as if the closet had any use for them.
One has so many aunts and uncles, and they seem to multiply at parties—nearly interchangeable except that aunts smell so fresh and sweet and uncles somehow sweeter still, like cherry tobacco in a pipe; and their neat beards have soft whiskers that don't scratch when they kiss, while lipsticked aunts when they kiss seem always to be on the verge of disintegrating into mere powder and perfume. They of course must always make it public, quite loudly so even the children down the hill might hear, how well they understand, how very sympathetic they are. As if they were talking about a child who had died, not one they have encircled in the garden. But—and here they might pause, palms to flowery breasts or fingers caressing beards—maybe something dear sister or dear brother had done was, well, wrong. Had there never been just one little trauma? Had dear sister nursed too long or perhaps not long enough? Had dear brother been too unsparing of the rod or had he used the strap too frequently? Not to imply anything, of course—and here there would be a chorus of certainly not, absolutely not! from both parents and their siblings. It was all too maddening, as if one were an idiot or hadn't ears at all to hear.
None of that would matter this time, of course, of course—for the next day would bring the shiny silver plane so like a toy plane and then up—up, up!—they spoke as if to a very small child indeed—above the fluffy clouds the three of them would go, to a magic land across the big wide ocean, where miracles happen just like they do in nursery rhymes. This one already knew—poor misshapen Jack had chattered about it every time the handle was cranked just the right number of times; when provoked, Jack would tell the future, for he could never keep one of its secrets for long in his poor hollow wooden head.
So aunties and uncles—such kind dears, really it wasn't necessary—scooped ice cream high and pressed books and books and yet more books upon one, a tower of them wrapped in expensive shimmering paper that might have been hammered out of gold or silver, until the weight of all those words caused them to tumble right across the carpet—but the god of the oriental carpet with the daintily curled fringes was pleased. It's not as if we're not coming right back, Mar said, looking her party best with saltwater-blue eyes she took from a paint box of her own. Everyone spoke now in a hush, looking at one sideways, as if one were soon to be taken by the trolls, into their labyrinthine caves and secret abysses, the way some stories described things, instead of up, up! into the air to the other side of the blue and luminous globe. Underground, story-books said, clocks ran by whims of their own—they might chime only once or twice in a lifetime—and even a king might take centuries to return to his subjects in the world above. Instead of among trees people lived among their mighty roots, and instead of stars, those were diamonds the trolls mined in perpetual twilight. Everyone beneath the earth spoke in whispers, for a simple cough could cause an earthquake, and so you would be blessed if born mute. The good king lay sleeping in the farthest, deepest chamber, sacrificing speech and action to save the world above, until one day—and now let's put down that book, Mar was saying as she tucked in the blankets. Which she needn't have said at all, for already one had fallen into the great, heavy book and closed the covers after, and already, with belly full, one was half-dreaming, half too tired to dream…
Ah, here's a bonny bright child, the big doctor had sung out in a strange high voice, for already it was clear that these people spoke another language, though they used words one already knew. The doctor's enormous hands, so threatening and so black like the roots of a tree, were in fact girlishly graceful as they dared to prod two fingers big as carrots right into one's mouth. So gentle one didn't even choke, even as he commanded one to make nonsense sounds, now like a pussy-cat, now like a doggy who's quite cross with you. The doctor—who was big and bald, something like a giant and something like a baby—grinned a big toothless grin which really meant a frown, so that one saw right away that nothing he said could be believed at all. And so one didn't: good meant bad, good good meant very bad, and nothing said at all meant you are a terrible beast of a child, why won't you admit you can talk? Still, however, the soft dark fingers caressed even one's most secret parts, still it took a large needle applied to the tip of one's most innocent finger before one was forced to shriek like the Devil's own cat, as Far's mustache apologized and a ghostlike nurse cracked the door to see if she was needed—but still no words were set loose. How could words really express such pain, after all, and why did words have to exist anywhere outside of books? Why should they have to clutter up the world, which was already so full of its gods and treasures? It was better to contain words, make them orderly, in neat rows on crisp white pages, long lines of them ready to be slurped up like noodles. Must the characters that formed words and the words that formed sentences limit themselves to one pronunciation, one meaning? Saying nothing at all, one knew now more than ever, was… somehow… better.
There was a kind of clock on the wall which anybody would have instantly recognized as the nest of a small wooden bird. But the shy creature refused to show itself and time didn't seem to pass in this office with its tropical clouds pressing the windows, grumbling for admittance with the force of a mob, and its many dour books standing by on the shelves—one wondered how very long it must have been since even one of them had last spoken—and the god of clocks did not seem fit to let even one hour pass. One's little left-hand finger was still bleeding. Pitiful martyr, with its ruby solitaire. At last one must suck it, taste that taste which is the essence of oneself, more so than tears or the salt of skin. And one must close one's eyes, make the adults blind so they wouldn't see and would go away. This doctor in the guise of an overgrown baby was different from the rest, however; he had no colorful cards or toy trucks with labels that read Green or Red, but he had promised a lolly if one was good and one so wanted to know what this thing called a lolly was, though perhaps it was the trolls' magic way to break the spell and trick one into talking.
At last one was dismissed to the small adjoining room with its monumental nurse, who was so tall and so dark and had so white of a uniform that she must have been the god of all nurses, and Far seethed through smiling teeth that one must now sit very still and very quiet—as if there were any other way to sit!—and his mustache was so terrible even the towering nurse looked momentarily afraid. Then Far was gone. Doors sealed in the quiet. The nurse sat down again, stealthily embroidering—she, too had enormous root-like hands, so of course she must be the doctor's wife—and one would have to wait on the hard iron bench like this, it seemed, forever, or until the incantory whispers on the other side of the wall stopped and the door swung open.
It might have been better if Mar were here, but she was sleeping—she had said she would, anyway, for a hundred years—on the hotel bed in a hotel pink as the inside of a seashell, with a strange pink beach miles below their balcony. The waves there made the sound one heard inside seashells, and ever since they had kissed her goodbye that morning it seemed she had been left very far away, curled inside the center of an enormous seashell on a vast, barren beach. They should go to her now before she was swept out to sea and drowned. They shouldn't be wasting any more time here.
Putting down her needle and tambour, the nurse smiled a gigantic smile that betrayed nothing except that she could probably read minds and said she must pop out for just a moment to see a man about a unicorn, so one must stay right here or one's father might never come back and then one would have to live with this giant couple forever.
Much more than a moment—however exactly long a moment is—did pass, and tiny gnomish figures, male and female in wooden shoes, came out their old-fashioned house on this room's wall and struck miniature anvils with miniature mallets three times, while a cuckoo answered them from the other side, and the men's voices continued rising and falling, and the clouds rearranged themselves in a jigsaw sky, and it rained and then the sun came out, and still she did not come back… so it was no use but to go find her and tell her that one's mother could wait no longer. For who knew, maybe the nurse had not really just gone to the lavatory, and maybe she, too, was lost in the winding, multiplying hallways which now lay ahead, any one of which might contain white stones leading to a castle and a princess and a real unicorn, after all.
How long one had been in this forest was impossible to guess, for there were no clocks to chime or shriek hanging from the gargantuan trees, which grew so much taller than the ones at home, and so close together one could see just glints of sun shifting among the leaves, like a myriad blinking eyes. Writhing under the trees, in the green and gray half-light, thick roots and vines like great sleepy serpents did their best to trip and tangle one's feet; the sticky heat made everything seem as if it were dripping and melting—and from between mossy trunks, through gnat-clouded eyes, hospital doorways and corridors loomed, and weird birds carried aloft the voices of doctors or imitated precisely the cries of a hundred lost parents. In this country all one's old familiar gods had been abandoned, yet one was not really afraid—and most of all, one had no real desire any longer to go back to doctor giants and doctors' games and doctors' needles. Did much time pass the further one ran and stumbled and ran again? No, for here it was obvious the trolls would stop any clock they might find.
When one first saw them on a sandy rise above cracked yellow mudflats—for the giants' forest was not endless, after all, but gradually dissolved into the reeds of a flooded marsh or marshy cove—it was as if they had always been expecting a stranger to appear suddenly in their midst. And as if one had been expecting them, as well.
The tallest and dirtiest girl spoke first. We all be pirates, she said, indicating the ragged black and brown children trailing her, and now you one of us, or you sorry. Again, although she used words one knew, it was obvious she was speaking a different language where meanings did not match things or actions. Pirates, after all, looked very different in books—and these children's swords were merely pointed sticks. Nevertheless, one followed them without any hesitation down to the muddy bank, where tree stumps stepped right into a watery distance lost in fog. Here, on the summit of a beached and capsized boat, the children surrounded oneself—not smiling, but not frowning, either.
The girl shook muddy locks out of her eyes; she was very skinny and probably far too tall for her age. There was only one boy almost as tall as she, but she would not let him or anyone else speak just yet. Around her waist she had tied some dripping seaweed like a pirate's sash. We want to know, she announced, as if she had consulted the other children, if you be boy or girl. At this, the other children, most of them nearly as muddy and skinny as she was, nodded but seemed too polite to stare. Answer! Boy or girl?
One had no idea how to answer such a ridiculous question.
I think you're girly girl girl, the leader went on as if she hadn't expected an answer, anyway, because those girly girl clothes. Too nicey nice for boy. Here she danced a little on the tips of her mud-caked toes. Huge flies swirled up around her. Everything stank a pleasant bathroom stink. But they think you be boy. Your hair too pretty fine fine for boy, but your face so ugly for girl.
Once more there was no answer, and again it was as if none of them expected an answer, anyway. With some unseen gesture from their leader, the children—there were five-six-seven of them—all sat down in a ring, swords at their sides, and began to debate in their odd, sing-song language. One was aware of their charcoal-like smell and their snotty noses and even of the way they breathed, but for some reason one was not scared; this all seemed too much of a silly game. Two fat little pirates had found several yards of sailor's rope alongside the boat and set about braiding and unbraiding the frayed ends like dolls' hair, waiting for the next stage in the game. The tallest boy, who had so many feathers and beads woven into his long wooly hair he might have been a girl himself, looked to his pirate captain, who rose again and pushed their hostage down, into the center of their circle. The metal hull of the boat was hot through the seat of one's new madras shorts—one was suddenly embarrassed to be so clean and tidy and pale next to these brazen outlaws. Why was one the only person here bothered by the flies and the heat? Next the children were looking at one's new oxblood leather shoes, filthy now as they were, and so without being asked, they were removed and the tall girl squeezed her elephantine feet into them. She made a grimace as if in horrible pain. The tall boy of beads and feathers clapped his hands in joy at her antics. She made an exaggerated bow, whistled loudly through uneven teeth, and swung back her seaweed sash. Looky look at me, she told the rest, teetering again on her tiptoes. Pretty fine lady! Pretty fancy me! At this they all laughed, even the new pirate in the middle, though nobody would guess such a rusty, throaty sound was a laugh.
Listen to froggy! a boy with a just a few matted tufts of hair like marigolds growing from his scalp said—well, it might have been a boy, though it was wearing a tattered dress. This remark too struck them all as very clever—until suddenly the pirate leader swished her sword-stick in the air and then deftly tossed both shoes down below them into the blackish yellowish muck. What your name, froggy face? she then commanded, and all was quiet but for the buzzing of flies and lapping of water beyond.
No answer, and there never would be. Not until this moment did one realize what it was not to be a fellow pirate, but a pirate prisoner.
Froggy fella keeping secrets, one of the smallest of the children testified, and all the rest nodded vigorously. It was only then that one noticed how late the sky said it must be and only then that one began to hurt for Mar, so far away in her seashell hotel, so very fast asleep. One might have begun crying, but it was too hot and there were too many gnats to tell.
The pirate leader was examining her captive so closely one could see the pinkish clouds in her pretty, wide-set eyes and smell what she'd had for lunch—squishy bugs, apparently. Her hands were large and muddy, like her feet, and they seized the collar of the blue shirt Mar had bought just for the trip. She smiled a smile almost as beautiful and genuine as Mar's at story-time. Confess, froggy, you be spy on us! she hissed, tightening her grasp on the shirt. Obviously, this was a game they'd all played before, but not knowing the rules, it might be time to be afraid. It might be better to show them fear, as if to say, I will play along.
They were all waiting for some word, some way for them to know how far they could go. Any answer would be the wrong answer. Through brackish tears, through stinging gnats and encroaching fog, one saw the circle tighten and an anger even they must have been surprised by growing within these dirty half-wild children. Confess! confess! confess! they repeated, now laughing and screaming and punching at each other, trying to get even closer to their prisoner.
And then their leader pinned the captive back against the hot hull of the boat, huge hot hand around choking throat, but all the same gentle, the way a kitten might be held up for examination. You a fairy child, she said at last, all teeth and tongue and lips slobbering into the face below her. You make milk sour, you give baby belly-ache. At this the dried mud on her cheeks cracked, and laughing she gave her victim a little push into the arms of the other children. Swords—no, one must remember they are only sticks—scratched one's chest and belly, and the smallest of the boys dared to pee right onto the brand-new dress socks. The pirate queen pulled the upstart's hair and drew the hostage away from the rest and up close to her again; why couldn't one resist any of this? Give us all your nicey nice, froggy frog, she commanded. Then a sudden slap across one's face—barely more than a pat, however, as if only to see the cheek flush a bit. Nevertheless, this seemed to signal that now all was possible. The rest were already stripping socks, shorts, shirt—though it seemed they were only doing this at first to make it easier to tickle. More amphibian sounds—mixed laughter and pain—bubbled forth, and they all humorously imitated this until it seemed even the forest behind them echoed with a thousand croaking beasts.
The pirate children fought over the meager articles of clothing, trying them on and splitting their seams or twisting them so hard they ripped. All at once they tumbled off the boat and into mud, which meant even more fun. Soon they had torn strips of oxford cloth and madras to bind one's wrists and make an appropriate gangplank blindfold—and they began their march across mudflat to the water's edge, the pirate leader poking one's back with her sword, the rest leading each other like a row of paper dolls unfurling. No one noticed the blindfold had slipped far enough down for one to see easily—to see happy children at their game, to see waves now shoving with more force at their bodies. For now that the fog was lifting, it was apparent that this marshland was a bay of the same ocean that lapped at the hotel where Mar lay forever sleeping—or had she been awakened with a kiss from Far by now, and were they searching up and down the coast for their lost child? Yes, it must be so, and yet… Then one had a thought as clear and cold as ice water, a thought that lasted but a moment, only to be left behind as all thoughts must—that one had never belonged to blue-eyed Mar and gray-eyed Far, that whatever one remembered was just a dream one was only just now awakening from, and that instead one had always been these pirates' playmate, and ultimately the pirates' naked, shivering prey.
Somewhere far away there existed a picture like this in one of those big books of monsters and myths which aunts and uncles had lately been bestowing—a colored woodcut of a tiny figure shackled to a rocky islet in the midst of a churning sea; on the other side of the rocks a winged dragon was just entering the picture—only part of its immense scaly body would fit within the frame. Mar had not yet come to that chapter. Who the figure represented or whether the monster was good or evil was not yet known, though it was clear the tide was rising and no matter what happened the person on the rocks was doomed… With lengths of hemp-rope and strips of cloth the tall wooly boy had tied their hostage to the last dead tree stump in the bay he could reach without having to swim more than a few feet. Lastly, for no reason, he tied a gag around one's mouth, because bad bad little froggy don't talk nice, the shaven-headed girl said from shallower water, shaking her finger like a mother; at that, they all collapsed into giggles. Now that the water had washed off so much mud it was clear most of them were really not much darker than oneself would be in July—and splashing about in the foul water they seemed more than ever like innocent children at play. The tallest girl, their captain, was so happy in her work she sang a song whose words were nonsense or maybe just regular words in that secret language of theirs. For the first time in years one longed to be able to sing along with other children, to run and laugh with them on the beach, in the gathering dusk.
Running and laughing, indeed, they left their prisoner behind, tied securely but not too painfully to the tree stump, with the tide rising and the sun setting and a swiftly approaching twilight already almost caught up to them. The pirate leader turned and hollered from her regained perch on the shipwrecked hull, but what came out of her big wide mouth sounded more like the victory roar of a young lioness than words or a song. Even from this far off it seemed one could still see the pink clouds in her eyes. Several swords shot across the water, falling far short of their intended victim. A rain of mud, seashells, and pebbles followed, but the child-pirates soon gave up, bored already with this elaborate game. Were they still crying for a confession? What could one possibly confess to be set free? By the time the tide was up to one's chest, the blindfold had slipped all the way off, as had the oxford-cloth gag—one wondered if the children could hear their prisoner's strangled laughter above their own—but they were either hiding behind the boat or had already gone back to the forest, where presumably they slept in trees or in caves underground with the rest of the trolls. Or then again maybe they all had nice beds with creamy cool sheets and cotton-candy pillows like one's own, and toys and many books, and a globe that lit up at night, and kindly animals in their gardens, and parents who loved each and every one of them…
And then it was nearly silent on the beach; even the rising tide made just the softest, gentlest of sounds—and after all, the waves were warm, and the sky, all the colors of the inside of a seashell, was reflected everywhere in the water, and somehow one felt warm inside and very much at peace. Whether one had left one's gods behind or they had been first to leave did not matter; the world here must be full of new gods, more powerful gods. One would only have to begin naming them for them to spring into existence and fill up forest and sky and ocean. Already one felt these new gods were burning up the whole world. For just a few seconds a breeze arose from the direction of the sinking sun—as if the great oak at the edge of Mar's garden and its thousands upon thousands of silvery leaves were quivering with one last fit of rage before it, like everything else left behind on the other side of the world, gave up the god within its branches and bark and became, like all other living things, merely mortal. Oddly enough, there was still that taste of one's own blood in the mouth, stronger than saltwater or tears, that essence of oneself that might last even after one has drowned and been swept beneath the ocean, beneath the earth even, into the troll peoples' secret recesses. Instantly the sun was gone in a quiet explosion of fire and flame, and the insects all at once began to chant within the silhouetted trees of a fairy-tale forest.
More water, please. Do you hear me now? I'm ready to confess. Listen, listen! Mar, Far—I can confess now. If that's what you want. Listen to me, please. I want to thank you for making your way through the trees and finding me before it was too late, Far. Thank you moonlight, thank you white pebbles. Thank you for carrying me in your arms and above the waves. I confess, sir. I confess, I always could, I just didn't want to. I—I didn't know how to begin. Didn't think I could, maybe. Listen, Mar, Far… Thank you, Mar, for laying me down in your soft pink bed. Another sip, please… Thank you for waiting so long for the words to come. I will be good from now on, just you wait and see. I always wanted to be good, and now—now I just want to go home. I'm so much better, see? I want to learn to read aloud all the words in books. I want to feel new words in my mouth like something sweet and rich. Tell me what you want me to say. Now, for you and for all the world, I want to confess…
MONA AND THE WITCHDOCTOR
By midmorning there was already a long line of cars from the city parked outside the witchdoctor's camp, and the families who were waiting stared as the three friends walked past. Mona, Abigail, and Naomi were not here to be made well or to find marriage partners or to attract money, as these people were, but just to look around. They were not believers, nor were they much in need of anything. Abigail was engaged to be married, Naomi was happy in her new job at a travel agency, and Mona was enjoying her summer, living at home and taking a photography course. They were young, not too long out of high school (where they had been a clique of three), and they looked and dressed and acted very much alike—though it was Mona who had the highest and loudest laugh. With an empty weekend before them, they had driven upcountry to check out things. Abigail's fiancé had told them where the witchdoctor's camp was (his aunt had gone several times to cure her various ailments), Naomi was bored enough to do anything, and Mona thought the camp might be a good place to take some snapshots, so early Saturday morning they had left in her parents' car.
The camp consisted of a shiny silver house trailer under a canopy of trees, a few sheds, and a dusty rock-garden. An expensive car rested nearby under a carport—it most likely belonged to the witchdoctor, who was said to be very rich, with several houses and wives in the city. Besides the people sitting in their cars, no one seemed to be around. The three young women thought they heard a muffled car radio or maybe a television, but otherwise it was quiet—there was probably a consultation going on inside the trailer. They had sneaked around behind one of the sheds, with some half-dead bushes to hide them, and were waiting for something to happen. It was hot, but the sky had gone cloudy, and Mona was afraid it was going to rain before she got any good shots. Abigail and Naomi were already eager to leave.
Just as they were about to give up, a screendoor slammed. Someone was approaching the rock garden. If it was a man or a woman, they couldn't tell; the person was short, brandished an ivory cane, and was dressed in a funny sort of pajama suit and a multicolored wool stocking cap. He or she had peculiar colorless skin and moved quick and skittish as a bird; Abigail, who was the least clever of the three, whispered that it must be some sort of Chinaman. The client trailed a few paces after—a pudgy man in a business suit, looking very bored and a little sheepish. There was a garland of dried flowers or peppers around his neck, odd against his proper pinstripes.
As the businessman watched from a safe distance, the witchdoctor spun around three times and then took up a handful of white pebbles and scattered them on the ground, making a circle around himself. Next he raised the ivory cane, said a few words the three friends couldn't hear from their position a good hundred feet away, and struck the cane three times in the middle of the circle. The businessman stood back with arms folded, fingering his necklace. The witchdoctor seemed pleased with this brief performance. Mona decided it would be a good time to attempt a photograph. Naomi and Abigail shrank back as she raised the camera.
The camera was old and made a surprisingly loud click as the shutter was released; both of the people in the silent garden looked up, and for a moment all three friends were frozen against the wall of the shed, just as a breeze came up and parted their screen of leaves. The businessman, probably a little impatient for his cure and to get going, hardly looked up, but the witchdoctor shook his cane and shouted something at the three girls who ran off, laughing and trembling and gasping all at once.
They continued to laugh all the way home (Mona higher and louder than the others) as they took turns describing the ridiculous scene, which grew more fantastic with each retelling. Each of the friends had noticed something different: Abigail how the witchdoctor moved his arms and hips like a sort of crazy birdwoman, Naomi how the businessman had stood balancing on first one leg and then another like a child who needs to go the bathroom, and Mona how dull and dusty the whole place looked, with all those shiny cars around it. She hoped the photograph she took would come out; it might be amusing. They all agreed the trip upcountry had been worth the effort, and they would have to do it again soon.
Mona's photograph, however, turned out all black—she was not used to the heavy, old-fashioned camera her teacher made her use—and Abigail's fiancé was angry that they had risked the wrath of the witchdoctor. His aunt had attested the witchdoctor was a very powerful man (he had cured her headaches and lumbago and gout, after all) who was capable of killing an enemy with just a look. The girls should have stayed away, especially since they did not believe. Abigail's fiancé did not really believe, either, but he still thought it was wrong to interfere with other people's magic. Naomi just laughed and called him a coward; they were modern women, and they lived in the real world.
Not long after returning from their trip Naomi lost her job when the agency unexpectedly closed down, so she had to borrow money from her parents to pay her share of the apartment she rented with Abigail. Mona jokingly said it must be the witchdoctor's curse, losing her job right then, and Naomi had to laugh. After all, she already had leads on a few other jobs, and she could use a vacation in the meantime. The same week Abigail and her fiancé broke up; they just argued too much, and she was no longer sure he really did love her. She did not seem too concerned—there were plenty of other men around. Mona agreed but added that she wondered when the curse was going to strike herself. Abigail and Naomi looked at her and laughed low, throaty laughs, but not for too long.
In time the joke wore thin. Everything was going fine for Mona—she eventually quit her photography class, but still expected to go to college in the fall. She lived at home with her parents, who were well enough off, so she didn't have much to be concerned about. But Naomi failed to get the jobs she applied for, and Abigail, who got a small allowance from her widowed mother to live on, couldn't find any men who didn't bore her. Other small disasters were happening with some frequency: Their refrigerator broke down but the landlord wouldn't fix it, Naomi's cat died for no apparent reason, and Abigail sprained her knee. Mona would exclaim Oh God it's the curse! but she was the only one laughing now. She suspected her friends were just jealous because she had nothing much to worry over herself.
When they went out to bars or restaurants together now they seemed to drink too much and argue even more. They fought over men they wanted to dance with, who would pay for the drinks, which bus route to take home. They had been friends since grammar school, but now that they were growing older in different ways they would inevitably have to part. It was not worth even talking about; such things just happened. In a few weeks Mona would leave for college and Naomi had decided to move back home with her parents, so Abigail would have to get a new roommate. Perhaps because they knew everything would be ending soon they spent even more time together, going to the beach, going shopping, making dinners together at the apartment. If they hadn't been arguing so much they might have been enjoying themselves more.
Abigail and her ex-fiancé would talk over the phone occasionally, though he wouldn't see her, and every time he heard about something going wrong he would bring up his aunt and the witchdoctor. The witchdoctor was incredibly powerful, he said, and you didn't have to believe in anything to know that. Just look at all his houses and cars and wives and even his political influence—though he couldn't say where he or his aunt had heard all this; such things were just known. If Abigail wanted her life to go better, his aunt had told him, she better make it up to the witchdoctor somehow. Abigail would listen and hang up after a while and stare at the broken refrigerator.
It's your fault, you know, she told Mona one day as they waited for Naomi outside an employment agency. She said it with a little laugh, but did not smile. You shouldn't have taken that picture, she said, nothing's gone right ever since. But the picture didn't even come out, Mona protested. Exactly, Abigail said.
Naomi was angry, too. She was no longer able to afford the latest shoes and music tapes. It was hard for her to scrape up enough money to go the movies more than once a week, and before long she would have nothing left. And now she had failed to get the job she'd most wanted. She stared at Mona, too, as if Mona were to blame for everything that had gone wrong in her entire life.
After that Mona saw less of her two friends. Anyway, she explained to herself, she had to get ready for college at last, and there was a lot of remedial reading to do. Her parents, especially her mother, wanted her to be around the house more instead of running off with her silly friends, and though she raised a fuss she didn't really mind staying in, watching television, listening to the radio, fighting with her brothers. Sometimes when Naomi or Abigail called she just let the answering machine take the message.
And then everything fell apart for her, too—the college wrote saying they wouldn't be able to admit her, after all—her grades were too low and they were so full up they had others on their waiting list. She should try again next year. It was a small private school, and she guessed they could do what they wanted, but next her parents said she really should get married or at least find a job and an apartment and stop moping about so much. They were angry when they saw how much she'd charged that summer to their bills at the shops downtown, and they decided she should serve as an example to her younger brothers and sisters.
It was more than Mona could bear, especially with Naomi and Abigail angry at her, too. And the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if there were something to this witchdoctor thing. After all, it was a pretty strange world, and though she didn't really believe in anything in particular there were a lot of possibilities she hadn't yet considered. Abigail's ex-fiancé could be right, that it wasn't smart to mess with other people's magic, magic the uninitiated couldn't understand.
She called him and got his aunt's phone number and address. His aunt lived in a high-rise apartment building and was younger and less eccentric than Mona had expected. Her name was Mrs. Moon, a funny name, and she did indeed have a big moon-shaped face and bottom. She had not sounded surprised when Mona called her up, and she smiled when Mona asked if there were anything Mrs. Moon could do to help her predicament. They sat in her crowded living room, which was uninteresting except for some queer dried plants hung from the curtain rods. Mrs. Moon patted Mona's hand and clicked her tongue against her teeth as if Mona were a child who had broken her favorite doll. Mona had out her checkbook to pay Mrs. Moon for her troubles, but Mrs. Moon pushed it away and told Mona that what she had done was very very wrong and she could spend the rest of her life atoning for her misbehavior; the witchdoctor was very very powerful, he was both man and woman, both very very young and very very old, and thus had power over both dreams and waking life. Had Mona been having nightmares? Mona couldn't really remember, but supposed that she probably had.
Download this book for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-24 show above.)