The Best of Talebones

by edited by Patrick Swenson

  “So, Heracles, you return with the fire-thief!” Apollo sang, holding his radiant arms up, teeth shining. I’d never liked his smile. There was always too much of the sadist on show.

  “He came,” Heracles said.

  Apollo turned to me without, it seemed, actually seeing me, preoccupied by the lovely sea daughters who flirted with him in the water language. One drew the back of her hand across my cheek and beckoned me to follow her to the beach; I recognized her from a night we’d spent in a bar down in Greenwich Village. Apollo’s lust and jealousy were apparent; he’d gone over the edge of his own carnality where the others had merely shifted to the masochistic. Which did Jupiter prefer?

  Apollo’s smile gnarled into an aloof sneer as he regarded me. “So, thief, you’re here to undo the harm you’ve caused?”

  “I paid my debts,” I said. I was repeating myself and didn’t like it. I raised my fist to the sun, the brilliance burning in my hand, the flames rising from my palm. He grimaced and gritted his teeth, the rage working through him like the fire he no longer owned. He screamed and ran past the nymphs, who laughed and rushed after him. I said, “If there’s a pyre to be built, let’s get on with it.”

  On the floor, mad Amphitryon reached out to Heracles and called, “Son . . . my son . . .”

  Heracles turned away from him and glared at me, the scapegoat of all heavens and hells. The ichor rained down his forehead. He stared at Amphitryon for a time, the king who might have been his father had not Jupiter loved to spill his seed in human vessels quite so much.

  “Come on,” he said. “We must find the judge of the dead.”

  It took most of the morning to walk to the nine mile lake Avernus. Minos, former King of Crete, was made a judge of the lower world upon his first death, where he now sat beside the river Cocytus. It had been twenty centuries of Christ since any souls had passed this way, but Minos remained at the post he was charged with.

  The war had ravaged the underworld as badly as it had the mount. Pluto’s domain had fallen around his ears, and the throne on which Proserpina once sat six months out of every year lay tumbled at the bottom of a chasm. Yet Minos, the man, still stood his watch, even while the gods went insane. He’d taken to wearing a black hood and cloak, a far different apparel from his amber-lit morning robes in his former palace of Crete. Sitting in judgment of souls had worn creases deep in the shadowed flesh of his face. He’d once offered me my choice of his wives and daughters, proclaiming me the hero of mankind, having stolen and given them fire. He raised statues in my likeness at the gates of the city, and held feasts in my honor, the bonfires burning all day and night. Perhaps that was why Jupiter damned him to his fate.

  “What do we have to do,” Heracles asked him, “to appease my father? How many pyres must we build?”

  “None,” Minos croaked. His voice was hardly a voice anymore, so guttural from non-use.

  “Good,” I said. “Then I’m out of here.”

  Heracles went to his knees; it was the first time I’d ever seen him kneel. He’d never been driven to his knees, not when battling Atlas, not even when he first put on the robe soaked in poisonous blood and voluntarily ascended his own funeral pyre. “By Chronos, have we not suffered enough! What more sacrifice can mighty Jupiter want!”

  “More than has been given,” Minos said.

  Of course. Wasn’t that the way of the pantheon? Disgusted, I turned to leave; I’d had enough of this two thousand years ago and needed to hear no more divine rhetoric. The practices of the mount were beyond my ken, beyond any man’s or god’s, certainly beyond their own. I wanted to go home to New York. At least there I could fathom the insanity. I could even join in.

  Minos held up a fist. “Fire-thief, you are not innocent in the affairs of the heavens.”

  “You’ve learned to talk like the gods, Minos. I liked you much better when you were just a normal guy.”

  He almost smiled, and I didn’t know why. The half-grin that skewed his mouth made my hackles rise. “Be that as it may, it is you who are responsible for the fall of Olympus.”

  I, too, felt I deserved a little respect, and I had my own well of pain and rage to draw from. The black river Cocytus lapped at the shore, bone-meal scattered over the banks. I spun to face what had once been a man, a king, and my friend, and shouted, “How so? Did I loose the thunderbolts into the foundation of Mount Olympus? Did I eat my own children out of fear and greed and jealousy? Was it me who pushed down the pillars of the sky and called my brethren back from their myths, to leave them rotting in the ruins? Was it me, Minos? Or was it Jupiter?”

  His non-voice filled with lamentation. “Mankind rose from the mud of Gaea, created and birthed by mighty Jupiter, who loved and cherished humanity with all his heart, because he was not of them. You stole that love from him and were rightly punished.”

  “I don’t accept that. I only stole fire.”

  Minos made a sweeping, obscure gesture. “You still believe yourself to be the hero of the world, Prometheus. In fact, you stole humanity’s innocence and set them on a course they were not destined to go. You gave them fire and the will to follow their own path, taught them to spurn the fruits of Jupiter’s favors. Can any father be as damned as he who would lose an entire world of children?”

  “I can think of a few of us who were more harshly damned than that. He was the king of all the gods. Couldn’t he live with that?”

  Heracles spoke, his chin dropped to his chest in supplication, squeezing acid from the robe and rubbing it in his flesh as an act of penance. “No,” he said, “my father could not.”

  “Now you must make good for your theft, Prometheus.”

  “I spent two hundred centuries chained to that rock,” I screamed, “my liver ripped from me each day!”

  “It was not enough. You must return to Caucasus.”

  “You’re as insane as the rest of them, Minos.”

  He actually nodded at that. “It is the only answer.”

  The anger that had been building up inside me suddenly evaporated, replaced by a fear, despair, and desperation that no one could ever hope to understand. “Ciao,” I said, wheeled, and started to run, but Heracles was already in motion. This time he broke my legs.

  *

  Jupiter stood on the rock Caucasus, facing East where the vultures flew. The shackles remained rusted in the cliff. His war with me had not ended, and neither had his love for humanity. I didn’t realize just how much he could hate, never for a moment thought of his loathing of me could equal mine for him. For twenty centuries I did little besides fantasize about one day trading our existences. When Heracles set me free, he’d betrayed his father’s wrath. Now, to see Jupiter standing upon the rock, I thought how foolish I’d been to ever dare steal from him.

  Turning, Jupiter first gazed at his son, letting his eyes wander inch by inch over Heracles’s burned and bleeding poisoned flesh. Again Heracles went to his knees, and held up his arms the way a child will reach for his father after awakening from a nightmare. I crawled forward and tried to stand on my shattered legs, failing and falling against the rock I knew so perfectly.

  I screamed and pleaded to no avail. Heracles cried, too, as he chained me. “I will return to free you,” he sobbed, “as I did before.”

  I howled. “When, Heracles? When?”

  Jupiter’s eyes held no answer; the war might never end, his love for his lost race of mankind might go on until the end of eternity.

  He removed Heracles’s robe, his son’s penance at last over. They held each other and together they wept. And — as if somewhere inside thrived a portion of humanity that the king of gods had forever spited — Jupiter found at least an instant’s worth of mercy. He leaned forward and, with the barest glint of pride in his eyes, he kissed me. I watched them walk down the rock Caucasus together, both of them, at least, unchained at last from another’s sins, free to rebuild the mount and regain their rightful heavens. I begged and shrieked but neither turned back as the hungr
y shadows flew down out of the clouds and began to feed.

  Bluebeard’s Fun House was a popular attraction during the 1940s at Revere Beach, once a premier seaside resort outside of Boston. Sandra sent us “Bluebeard by the Sea” for our 28th issue, telling us that although the fun house was long gone, a picture of Bluebeard’s in its heydey hung in her office. Another alum writing novels, Sandra has a science fiction trilogy that begins with The Outback Stars that you must check out.

  BLUEBEARD BY THE SEA

  SANDRA MCDONALD

  Bluebeard longs for the sea. The great glittering blueness fills his vision but remains tantalizingly out of reach beyond the boulevard, the seawall and the stretch of sand that swells and recedes with the tide. He cannot turn his gaze from it. He cannot reach it with his hand. He imagines that the sea tastes like salt, sand, melted sunshine, rainbow colors, and lush underwater plants. If he could stretch his tongue and dip it into the water, he would be a happy man and not so restless with his imprisonment.

  “You’re not a man,” the seagull tells him. “You’re not imprisoned.”

  “Are you Omar?”

  “No. Who’s Omar?”

  Bluebeard searches his memory. “I don’t remember.”

  The gull circles lazily in the air.

  “If I’m not a man imprisoned, what am I?” Bluebeard asks.

  The gull lands atop the roof of the bathhouse, her feathers ruffled by the cold winter wind. Behind her, the sun has just risen from the sea to send streaks of red and pink along the horizon. The red looks like fire. Fire frightens Bluebeard. The great ocean is mostly dark, but the whoosh of waves as they break on time-worn pebbles is like the beat of Bluebeard’s own heart, if he had one.

  “You’re nothing but wood, paint, and nails,” the gull says. “Twice as tall as a man, but with half the mind of a child.”

  All Bluebeard can see of himself is the splintered tip of his nose and the casual repose of his right arm. His chin rests neatly on his fingers, which are long and beige and weathered by the elements. He has no knuckles. On his wrist are two gaudy bracelets, one painted red and the other painted gold.

  “Who made me?” he asks.

  The gull stretches her wings. “Who made any of us?”

  “What does the sea taste like?”

  “Tastes like dead fish. Tastes like rotting whale carcasses and diesel oil and men’s sewage.” The gull takes to the air and sweeps in to land on Bluebeard’s arm. “I prefer frozen custard, candy kisses, clams dipped and fried in batter.”

  “Will you help me?” Bluebeard asks. “I must taste the sea, or surely I will die.”

  “Do you have a plan, a scheme, a strategy? Have you learned a magic spell, did an old gypsy tell you how to break a curse?”

  “No.”

  “Silly piece of wood. Don’t ask me to help if you don’t have a plan.”

  The gull flaps away to find breakfast.

  Bluebeard longs for the sea.

  Winter drags on. The only people Bluebeard sees are a few brave souls swaddled in coats, hats and gloves as they take their daily constitutionals. Automobiles glide by but rarely stop. Bluebeard spends the long nights sniffing for the fearsome odor of smoke and listening to the wind rattle through rafters. Creaks and groans fill the air so loudly that he imagines himself at the bow of a great clipper ship steering its way to uncharted lands.

  Spring comes and the vista before him stirs to life. Beachcombers appear, their limbs pasty white from the confines of the season past. Workmen arrive to repair bathhouse damage caused by too much snow. A cigar-chomping man stomps through the rooms behind Bluebeard’s eyes and calls for brooms, mops, a screw to fix a railing, a new flag to hang from the tower.

  “What tower?” Bluebeard asks the gull.

  “The one behind your head. Bluebeard’s Castle, ten cents admission, full of crazy mirrors, moving stairs, and secret passages. You’re one of the oldest attractions on the beach.”

  “Attractions?”

  The gull flaps her wings. “Ride the thrilling roller coaster! Dance all night at Nautical Gardens! Visit the exotic Turkish Bazaar, be amazed by Howard the Lobster Boy! Penny arcades, mermaid shows, bumper cars, swan boats, diving horses, and Bluebeard’s Castle.”

  “Am I popular?” Bluebeard asks.

  “You’ll see.”

  Summer comes, bright days filled with the smell of hot dogs and crowds that throng the boulevard day and night. So many people stake claim to the beach with their chairs and blankets that often not a square foot of sand remains unoccupied. Hundreds wade into the waves and emerge shivering, their lips blue. They eat bologna sandwiches and swill down bottles of Coca-Cola. Bluebeard decides that he is indeed popular. Sailors in white uniforms purchase tickets for themselves and their lipsticked sweethearts. High school boys with slicked-back hair follow, jostling each other as they vie for the attention of giggling girls. Parents with little kids traipse up and down Bluebeard’s innards, the children squealing with delight. If he listens hard he can hear the screams from the roller coaster and the music of the carousel, where wooden horses chase each other all day long.

  At midnight the crowds thin and lights dim and Bluebeard is left alone with the sea, which taunts him from across the boulevard, the seawall, and the sand.

  “Does it taste like the stars that fall into it?” Bluebeard asks. “Does your mouth tingle, do you want to swallow more and more?”

  The gull says, “It tastes briny and sour and would make your tongue curl, if you had one.”

  “I don’t have a tongue?”

  “No. But you have a blue beard and a blue mustache and several bright white teeth.” Illuminated by moonlight, the gull pecks at a trashcan that has not been emptied. “Your turban is bright yellow, and there’s an enormous red jewel pinned squarely above your eyebrows. Be happy with what you are.”

  Bluebeard nearly weeps. How will he taste the sea if he has no tongue? Perhaps the wash of it against his lips will suffice. He gazes east and longs, longs, longs for what he does not have.

  Summer ends. The children disappear first, sent back to school, and soon the bathers in their daring costumes no longer come to brave the water. The roller coaster ceases operation except on weekends and then, shortly thereafter, closes for the season. The carousal’s organ music falls silent. The sea darkens into a dozen shades of blue but continues to call to Bluebeard.

  “If only I could move my lips,” he thinks. He tries very hard, but earns only an occasional creak of wood. The gull, her feathers gone thin, tells him that he is foolish.

  “Foolish I may be,” Bluebeard says, “but what else can I do?”

  The storms of winter whip at his eyes with sleet and salt, and he has no option but to endure. The gull disappears one dark, howling night and does not return. Bluebeard misses her keenly. An elderly man passes by each morning with a small gray dog, but neither of them answer Bluebeard’s greetings. An adventurous rat races along Bluebeard’s forearm, similarly unresponsive. On a gray morning Bluebeard hears footsteps in his tower and calls out a cautious, “Hello?”

  A pause, a flurry of steps, and then a scrawny, knock-kneed boy appears on the sidewalk below. “Who are you?”

  “Bluebeard. Who are you?”

  “Cubby,” the boy says. He has poor teeth and a dirty face. “You can talk!”

  “So can you. Will you bring me a cup of seawater?”

  “Seawater? What for?”

  “I want to taste it.”

  “Tastes awful,” Cubby says. “Gets up your nose and makes your throat all slimy. How come you can talk?”

  “I don’t know,” Bluebeard says.

  “Does the magic genie at the arcade talk, too? How ‘bout the dragon at the roller coaster?”

  “Go ask them, if you must.”

  The boy sprints away. Bluebeard wishes he had not been quite so curt. Cubby returns the next morning, shivering in the breeze.

  “You’re the only one who talks,” he says. “You got
anything to eat?”

  “No. Didn’t you have breakfast at home?”

  “Ain’t got a home. I ran away.”

  Bluebeard thinks he would like to run away. First to the sea, of course, and then to whatever lays on the other side of it.

  “Would you like to stay here, with me?”

  “Maybe. But just for a little while.”

  Cubby takes up residence in the tower. He spends most of his time foraging for food or searching for treasure. He returns bearing broken candle stubs, dirty magazines, a broken yo-yo, an army blanket, and stolen apple pies. He lights the candles for illumination.

  “Don’t set me on fire,” Bluebeard warns.

  “I won’t. Promise.”

  Cubby often cries himself to sleep at night. Bluebeard pretends not to hear, but some inexplicable protectiveness makes him wish he could fold in upon himself and keep the boy safe and warm. One day Cubby disappears until dusk, and just when Bluebeard begins to worry, he returns carrying a flask of something brown and pungent.

  “Found it stashed behind the carousel,” Cubby says, and lets out a loud burp.

  “Can I try some? “ Bluebeard asks.

  Unsteady, Cubby crawls out along his forearm. The evening is dark and bitterly cold, the sky above the sea filled with twinkling stars.

  Bluebeard says, “Don’t slip.”

  “I won’t.” Cubby reaches Bluebeard’s chin and pauses to peer down at the sidewalk. He leans back, shivering, and pours a cap full of the liquid into Bluebeard’s mouth.

  “Not like paint, but like the stuff that peels paint away,” Bluebeard says. “I’d rather taste the sea.”

  Cubby takes another swallow from the flask. “This makes you warm inside. The ocean makes you cold.”