by R. T. Kaelin
Near the end of the Purkawala, a boy who had been pursued and captured by Kala managed to escape the grisly fate everyone else had suffered by tricking the evil god into eating a handful of rice and believing it to be the flesh of the boy. But even though this one boy survived, Kala still devoured the other children of the village, cracking their bones as the gamelan clanged louder and louder.
By the end of the story, even Budi had stopped making jokes, Atin was crying, and Dian was uneasy enough he wished for the dismal duty of wood-gathering once more. But the fearsome story couldn’t really be true, could it?
As people got up to eat, Dian tried to get Atin to stop crying. He bent down to her and gave her a hug. “It’s just a story,” he said, as much to himself as her. “It’s just a silly little story, like the Jesus stories the fat reverend used to tell back in Tjaringin.”
Dian felt the sharp sting of his father’s cane hard across his back. He fell to his knees in pain.
“Foolish, evil boy!” his father hissed. “Do not blaspheme the religion of your people by comparing it to the lies of the Dutch.” Dian cowered as his father hit him again and again, his rage growing with each strike, each word. “You do nothing but long for the foul city of the outlanders, craving the attention of those who stole our land, our sea, our shore, and beat me and killed your uncle. You are a naughty and worthless boy. If you do not like your life, then perhaps I will call Bathara Kala to come tonight to devour you alive.”
Atin, who had been crying even before her father’s berserk rage, screamed and ran away toward the family’s hut. Dian used the momentary distraction to make a run for it, himself. He bolted toward the forbidding jungle, grabbing a handful of chicken and rice as supplies from a food-laden table on the way, thrusting the nourishment into his pocket. He might have to hide from his father for hours.
Although limping himself from the blows he had received, Dian quickly outdistanced his enraged father, who pursued only a few clumsy steps before shaking his cane in the air in rage. “Go, then, go to your foreign masters! Kala will chase you where I cannot.”
Dian spun back toward his father’s voice as he reached the edge of the trees. “I hate you! I hate this place! I’m never coming back. No shadow of a god or a man can stop me!”
“Seize him, Bathara Kala! Seize and devour this worthless, evil child!” his father wailed in supplication.
Immediately as Dian fled into the fetid shadows of the steaming jungle, he heard—he felt through the soles of this feet—a monstrously heavy footfall behind him. The trunks of nearby trees thrummed in vibration. Birds screeched in panicked flight. Insects stopped twittering. Droplets of water dislodged from the canopy overhead, showering piss-warm water on Dian as he rushed away.
The lakon was true! Kala was coming for him!
Dian could not see Kala. He did not know if the evil god could even be seen by mortals. Perhaps Kala would appear only as a shadow. Dian ran into the dank darkness of the jungle, heedlessly at first, but then with a deliberate effort toward the west, toward the coast and Tjaringin. Headway was slow and difficult—he had followed no path, so vines and vegetation grabbed at him, tangling him, diverting him, slashing at his face, arms, and legs. Yet no matter his speed or direction, all through the afternoon and into the evening he still heard the thuds of Kala pursuing. Worse yet, as the dimness of the jungle floor gave way to the creeping blackness of the evening, the roaring of Kala’s footsteps grew louder, more violent, and more rapid.
Darkness increased the God of Evil’s power, while Dian’s spirits and strength waned.
As last light faded, Dian’s senses were assaulted by a fine, powdery dusting in the air, stinking of rotted eggs and acrid smoke, as if of burnt flesh. Dian trembled despite the heat, gagging as he breathed in the foul cloud. He ripped a piece of cloth from his ragged shorts and covered his face with it. Then he retreated into a small depression covered by an overhanging rock in an effort to avoid the falling grit. Moments later, twilight failed and darkness engulfed the land entirely. Dian could no longer see the jungle or the death powder or the rock above him or his hand in front of his face. No moon, no stars shone through the canopy of the jungle forest, whether blocked by vegetation, the foul substance in the air, or Kala himself, Dian could not know.
He cried himself to sleep, the tears mixing with the powder to form a gritty mud on his face. Although the booms of Kala’s footsteps ceased for awhile, Dian slept only fitfully. Some hours later—past the middle of the night by his guess—there was a sudden, heavy pressure in the air, as if someone was clapping down upon the sky itself. Putrid air pushed hard against his ears and his chest, pressing him down and causing the dirt around the overhanging rock to dislodge and tumble upon him. He scurried out into darkness, lest he be buried in his hidey-hole.
In utter blackness, he could not see a thing, but between the thuds of the air and the rumblings in the distance of Kala’s pursuit, he heard something else—the faint sound of heavy surf far away. He inched forward in the blind night, hands flat against his forehead and his bent elbows tucked in to protect his face from the branches and brambles and webs and thorns clawing at him as he moved toward the sound of water. Kala’s thudding steps became less frequent, but more violent, as the giant god stomped in aggravation, no doubt, at being unable to find his tasty prey.
Dian walked for hours, his progress slow and almost unbearably painful to his exposed shins, elbows, and forearms. Suddenly, behind the sounds of the crashing surf, a tremendous, thundering roar erupted, as if a giant sea serpent had surfaced and bellowed a challenge to the roaming God of Evil. The trees shook and Dian fell into the mud of the forest floor. Kala did not answer the challenge, however, and soon all was relatively quiet again, the sound muffled by the disgusting powder still drifting in the air, coating everything beneath it.
Though he had lost track of time, Dian knew dawn could not be far away. But he continued to walk in blackness. Perhaps the dust had destroyed the sun itself, for now rocks, some red with heat and trailing embers, crashed in cascades through the canopy onto the ground, as if Kala were flinging the broken sun about in the hopes of killing what he could not see. Dian could not see, either, only glimpsing streaks of red and orange among the shadows. He hoped nothing would land on his tiny form, alone in the huge, dark jungle. He rested a bit again, now convinced the time for dawn had come and passed and that Kala, intent on devouring him, had conquered the sun, or at least magicked darkness to plague Dian wherever he might run.
He set off again toward the waves, the sound now louder and more distinct. He stumbled onto a path and followed it to what he believed was the west. The trees and thickets were thinning; the air was a touch cooler and tinged with a salt tang beneath the smell of rot and death dust. He began to move faster, the way seeming somehow familiar and intuitive, as he began a slight upward slope.
Finally, he crested the rise and saw light—not the light of the sun rising in the east, but a scattering of lights guttering in the darkness of the swirling death dust on the shore below him. The feeble lights were from the homes and businesses of the harbor of Tjaringin, downslope from his parent’s old house. As Dian peered into the distance beyond the village, a crescendo of lightning flashed far to the north-northwest, revealing the roiling Sunda Strait to be covered by floating detritus. Before Dian could even begin to imagine what could be choking the very sea, he was thrown to the ground by a powerful, buffeting, burst of air. He struggled to get up, but was flattened again and again by more blasts, each one pounding stronger than the fiercest storm he had ever known. The driving force of the air was not rightly wind, but more like being struck repeatedly, even harder than his father had caned him, by a large, iron pot.
A sudden bright glow more north than west drew Dian to look up just long enough to be slapped down yet again by the most earth-shattering clap of thunder he had ever heard. The walloping boom was louder than the guns used by the colonialists hunting game, louder than the canons fired by t
he Dutchmen on ceremonial occasions, louder than the screams of Atin in his ear that time when Budi had pinched her as Dian held her on his shoulder, louder than the last words he would ever hear from his father—words that had rung in his ears all night during his flight from damnation.
Suddenly, Dian heard no more, as sharp pain stabbed his ears. He clapped his hands to the sides of his head and felt something wet and sticky and smelling of iron flowing down the cheeks on either side of his face. He shouted in anguish, he screamed in pain and frustration, he wailed in supplication, pleading and begging to be spared, but no one heard him. Not Kala. Not his parents. Not even himself.
He stumbled toward his house and clambered to where he used to sit on the porch and watch the ships traversing the Sunda Strait in the brightness of the day. He thrust his hands in his pockets, curled up in a fetal position, and cowered in the darkness, knowing the shadows had come and it would never be bright again.
He slept, or more likely, lost consciousness for a short time. A vibrating thrum awoke Dian, one that he could not hear, but rather feel coming from the house’s porch, from the very bedrock of the hill under the home. Fires and now almost constant lightning north and northwest revealed the source of the vibration. A gigantic wall of water surged inward from the sea, overwhelming the docks, swallowing the lower city, crashing through the more elevated and prosperous sections of the village, and reaching for him.
The wave was enormous, impossibly high and fast moving, taller than anything he had ever seen except the pointed mountain. The rushing water towered high enough to crush, perhaps, even the home of his parents, more than one hundred forty feet above the normally placid sea.
Kala had come for him and had killed everyone in Tjaringin to get to him. Destruction surged toward him.
As Dian pulled his grimy fists out of his pockets to stand to meet his death, he also inadvertently pulled out the bit of rice and chicken he had stolen, but had been too frightened and tired to eat during his miserable and chaotic journey.
At the last moment, as the towering wall of water and debris rushed forward, Dian thrust the handful of food up to Kala as had the boy in the lakon Purwakala. The wave of death suddenly broke, crashing down upon itself, covering Dian with spray, but ending its devastation just short of the porch floor. Below him, everything Dian had known of his life in Tjaringin was gone. Behind him to the east, everyone who he loved had cursed and abandoned him. But here, in this place, he was alive and safe.
And slowly, very slowly, the dust settled, the seas calmed, and the bodies of the villagers, Javan and Dutch, floated away to wash up on distant shores, and the light returned to Dian’s life and to Java.
*
Author’s Note:
On Sunday, August 26, 1883, the island volcano Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait west of Java began a series of increasingly violent eruptions which threw ash and pumice at least twenty-four miles high, blanketing the region in darkness, ash, and falling pumice. The eruptions culminated in the collapse and explosion of the entire 2,625-foot-tall mountain. The final explosion at 10:02 a.m. local time on Monday, August 27, is widely credited as the loudest sound made in modern history, being heard three thousand miles away and creating a shock wave in the atmosphere registered through barometric readings as having circled the globe seven times before dissipating. The surging sea was far more destructive than the magma spewing forth from the unpopulated volcanic island. Tsunamis in western Java and Sumatra were up to one hundred and thirty-five feet high. A series of towering swells wiped out scores of coastal villages, leaving nothing standing. More than thirty-six thousand people were killed, most by the crushing and engulfing waves. The bodies of some tsunami victims were found on rafts of floating pumice both at sea and as far away as Africa up to a year later. One wave lifted a gunboat a mile inland. In another village, three thousand died and only two survived. The airborne ash of Krakatoa affected sunsets and temperatures worldwide, bringing color and coolness to people who lived half a world away.
*
Angels of Mercy
by Erik Scott de Bie
Power lines and telephone wires were the bane of her existence.
“Crap!”
Angel pulled up and cleared the low-hanging wires at the last second, the wind of her flight setting a pair of shoestring-dangling sneakers dancing in the air. She wheeled around to dodge another set of wires higher up, startling a pair of crows in the process. The birds squawked their irritation at her as she hurtled into the night sky. When she landed atop of a brick apartment building, she spotted a pair of splotchy white stains on her coat’s hem.
“Double crap.” She brushed back her thick blonde hair, which had irritatingly come loose from its elaborate braid. “Should have stayed in the taxi.”
Not that she’d had the option. Downtown San Francisco was a parking lot tonight, with the opening gala of the opera she was supposed to be attending. Traffic was especially terrible because of construction that had closed the Bay Bridge. No one knew where to go except into one big traffic jam.
Angel had dismissed her agent’s advice about allowing extra time, saying that “fashionably late” was better, but he hadn’t been kidding. She’d abandoned the cab down by the pier and flown the rest of the way, but the night wind had wreaked havoc on her dress and hair. Those who said it must be so convenient to be able to fly everywhere had obviously never tried it.
She picked at the crows’ stains with her nails before she realized that was really gross. “Parker will kill me if I show up like this.” A resigned sigh slipped from her lips. “But he’ll kill me more if I bail.”
Her phone buzzed in her coat pocket, and she saw her agent’s face on the readout. Parker Frazier never looked happy, exactly, but her caller ID image caught his face at a particularly bad moment: all shriveled like he’d just bit into a lemon. Angel hit “decline,” but a text came through a moment later: “Where are you? B.S. is totally there. He looks lonely. ~parker”
Sent without irony.
She was supposed to meet Tom at the gala, a “date”/photo-op Parker had managed to arrange only with a week of wrangling with Tom’s equally fierce personal assistant. In addition to a love of her celebrity pseudo-boyfriend that bordered on the creepy, Parker insisted Angel appear in public with him as much as possible. Because after all, he was Tom Pierce a.k.a. “Blue Steel,” superhero of the stars. (No one ever seemed to notice the unfortunate configuration of his codename’s initials.) And he needed his superheroine ingénue girlfriend, Angelica Cruz, a.k.a. “A-Girl,” to stand beside him and look pretty.
The name Parker had come up for her still seemed weird. “What does it mean?” he had explained, with a level of enthusiasm not entirely appropriate in a grown man. “A for Awesome! A for Astonishing! A for Amazing! A for Astounding! A for Alpha! A for A plus! A for Uncanny!”
“Uncanny starts with a U,” she had said. “And why ‘girl’? Why not ‘woman’?”
“’Girl’ tests better with tweens,” Parker argued. “Roll with it.”
Which left her here, on a drizzly San Francisco night, perched on a building and seriously considering bailing on the whole America’s Sweethearts crock.
“Hmm,” she said. “Go be arm-candy for a rich playboy and get to see an opera, or screw it and go catch a movie. Decisions, decisions.”
Then her enhanced ears picked up the sound of a scuffle in the alley below. Some guy was hassling a woman: “C’mon, baby—you know you want it. C’mon!”
“Or duty might call,” Angel said. “Totally groan.” She swooped into the alley, taking care to avoid lurking power lines. “Pain in the ass.”
* *** *
“Pain in the ass.” Vivienne Cain idly twirled her empty shot-glass on the greasy wood of the bar. She lost control of the glass and it skittered into a dozen or so of its cohorts, all gathered in a clinking mass in front of her. She wasn’t sure which was worse, the sweaty pot-bellied man trying desperately to interview her, or having to orde
r another shot. Both, probably.
“C’mon!” the skuzzy man said. “You’re Lady Vengeance, right? Say it. Say you’re her.”
Of all the bars in all of San Francisco, including her own over in the Mission district, why did she have to find some photo gopher who actually recognized her? She hadn’t been active for twenty years, at which point she’d intentionally vanished (and was widely presumed dead). And she absolutely did not dress as slutty as she had back then. Well, mostly.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, random guy.” Vivienne fiddled with the touch screen on her smartphone, trying to get it to do something other than load cat pictures or record her voice and play it back to her. Honestly, it was like she hit forty and suddenly everything technological seemed like it belonged in a sci-fi movie. “But you are seriously way too close. Back off.”
His response was to edge closer, the asshole.
“Just give me a comment, and I swear I’ll go away,” he said. “Just a brief interview. ‘The elusive Lady Vengeance, back from the dead.’ That’s my headline. C’mon!”
Vivienne knew the type. Give them an inch, and they’d demand a mile. Back at the bar, Andre called them trolls, which seemed like an apt description. She couldn’t, however, resist feeding him a little. Probably, it was the alcohol talking. “What am I supposed to say? I don’t know this Lady Vengeance person. ” She waved, fingers curling like talons clicking together. “I mean, she sounds hot, but I don’t know her.”
His eyes lit up. Great.
“I knew it was you,” he said. “That’s something only Vivienne Kretikos would say. Even that little thing you did with your hand. Like you were wearing your silver claw.”
“What are you, a fan? Stalker?”
