by Jeffrey Ford
That night they cooked the brain and ate it—the taste, something like oysters in chocolate sauce. Vasthasha claimed that the thought organ of the Wamlash, when devoured, was supposed to increase the clarity of one’s own thought process. He abstained. The hunter later dreamt of the civilization of the O deep beneath the waves of the inland ocean.
The violet sea was wild, huge waves breaking against the shore, and the wind blowing down from the north threatened to snatch Cley’s hat with every gust. The sun was high, but the day was very cold. They walked along a wide swath of beach, huge sand cliffs to their right. For the past two days, Vasthasha had been unable to keep pace with the hunter, and Cley found that he had to wait after every half mile or so for the foliate to catch up.
Above the crash of the surf, Cley heard Vasthasha’s voice yell to him, “Keep going.” When the hunter turned back to look, he saw the foliate pass into a small whirlwind of sand. In the blink of an eye, his vegetal friend came apart, everywhere at once, and existed for a moment as nothing but a swirl of dry, brown leaves. A gust blew from the north, and the makings of the foliate flew off on the wind, carried up over the cliffs toward the forest.
Cley ran back to where Vasthasha had stood moments before. All that remained were a few dry, brown lengths of branch and vine, a few rotten leaves, and the cover of the book. Wood whined as he lifted the leather binding between his jaws. The hunter felt the wind of the coming winter pass right through him. With an overwhelming sense of resignation, as if this lack of emotion was an emotion itself, he continued on along the shoreline.
It was in the middle of the following afternoon that Cley spotted, at a distance, a ship run aground on a sandbar. At first, he thought it was another enormous sea creature drowning in the cold air. Then he made out a scrap of tattered sail and the cracked spire that was the mainmast.
To get to it, he had to wade through an ankle-deep tidal pool of frigid water. Wood was reluctant to follow but did so after leaving the book cover on the beach. They walked out along the wide sandbar, the surf rolling in to their left. As they drew closer to the vessel, Cley spotted a gaping hole in the front end of the hull. The ship’s stern still sat in the surf, and the whole structure moved slightly from side to side as larger waves broke against it.
“A ruined ship of the explorers from the western realm?” Cley wondered. He hoped to find useful items to scavenge within the wreck.
As they drew up next to it, he saw how large the vessel really was. The deck towered above him, but he could still gain access where the hull had been staved in. As he approached the splintered opening, Wood hung back and barked as if in warning.
Cley climbed through the hole and looked inside the long, dark expanse of the innards of the ship. Enough light was let in behind him so that he could make out barrels and tools lying all around as if the ship had been lifted by the hand of a giant and shaken madly before being smashed down on the sandbar. Toward the back of the ship, the deck had rotted away and the sunlight beamed in to illuminate the chaos. Cley could still hear Wood barking outside as he stepped through two inches of bilge. There was the pervasive smell of the sea, everything encrusted with salt and barnacles.
Just after he found the remains of a dead sailor, who obviously had had his chest crushed by a flying keg, the fractured rib cage now a home for tiny crabs, the hunter noticed something standing in the sunlight at the far end of the hold. He took a few more steps toward this large block and saw that it was clear, like a man-sized cube of crystal or ice, and then he realized that the ship did not hail from the western realm.
This ship, he now knew, had sailed from a port called Merithae. Embedded in the heart of the block of unmelting ice was the naked form of a beautiful, dark-haired woman. He placed his open palms against the boundary that was as warm as the touch of a lover’s hand. The imprisoned woman stared out at him, and he sensed that she was still alive.
“Anotine,” he whispered, and the merest corner of her lip turned up. The past rushed back upon him and brought him to his knees in the stinking bilge. He did not leave the hold until the sun had set.
That night in the dunes, next to a crackling fire, the hunter held open the covers of the missing book and recounted for Wood the story of his time with Anotine in the imagination of Drachton Below. Although the wind blew cold, he did not feel its sting, for he was heated from within by the constant feverish schemes to release his dream woman from the unmelting ice. Nothing was resolved, because he had no tools with which to work. Then he considered that the ship itself might hold an ax, a cask of gunpowder, that could be employed in her release. This blizzard of thought gave way to his trying to understand what it must be like for her, unable to move but still alive and seeing only the shadowy hold of the wrecked ship for years upon years.
He took the spirit of this frustration into his sleep, and the force of it shattered the ice. Anotine stepped forth, and he held his hand out to her.
“I dreamt of you,” she said to him.
“I dreamt of you,” he said, and when he put his arms around her, he woke suddenly to a cold, gray day. There was a light snow blowing down from the north.
Although he and the dog had eaten nothing, Cley headed immediately back to the beach. When he came over the last dune, he cried out in an anguished tone that might, itself, have drilled through ice. The sandbar had disappeared beneath the waves, and the wrecked ship, lying low in the water, was being drawn by an inexplicable current toward the horizon.
The snow fell in large, wet flakes and began to gather on the forest floor. The sound of the ocean was ever present, the crash of the waves like a distant summer thunder coming to them from over the field of dunes. The hunter and dog were exhausted and hungry, not having eaten for two days. Through the curtain of blowing white, Cley saw ahead the outline of a building—a large, white fort with parapets and a tall wooden door. He walked up to the structure and, slinging his bow over his shoulder, began pounding on the oaken barrier with his fist while Wood barked repeatedly.
“Who is there?” asked a voice from above. A man’s face appeared over the top of the white wall.
“I am from the realm,” shouted Cley.
“Who are you?” asked the voice.
“A hunter in the Beyond.”
devil’s dog
Since I have already twice interrupted this record of Cley’s travels through the Beyond, I see no reason not to continue the practice, especially in light of the portentous changes that are occurring in my own life. I am more certain than ever that my investigation as to the hunter’s fate is intrinsically bound to my own recent growth. In the same manner in which the sun draws upward the stem of a flower, I have been drawn from my own insular seedpod of the ruins toward the warm glow of community. I have been to Wenau to visit my friends, and, here, I will tell you about it while I wait for the needle of my compass, sheer beauty, to stop spinning and point the way back to the Beyond.
I could do no writing since my last installment, in which Cley meets the foliate Vasthasha, for I was so filled with nervous tension from the thought of taking Feskin up on his invitation to go to the schoolhouse in Wenau. During those days, I did not even bother to lift the pen, but spent the first two or three deciding if I should disregard the obvious issue of my vulnerability, both physical and emotional, and extend myself those last few increments that might result in my becoming completely human.
Of course, I was going. I knew it from the moment he had asked. But I had to weigh it in my mind, worry about it, lose sleep over it, in order to draw the last delicious drop out of the decision. Once this foolishness had been thoroughly squeezed dry, I remembered what the young man had told me about the importance of clothing. I intermittently laughed and shook my head in confusion over the idea that the citizens would be more likely to accept what they saw as the symbolic representation of evil as long as it wore trousers.
“The demon must be clothed,” I said aloud, finally breaking the spell of inaction. With that, I
went in search of the perfect outfit.
In living alone for many years amidst the aftermath of a monumental disaster, I have come to know the corpses quite well—where they reside, what postures they ended their lives in, what they are wearing. Among this static community of the skeletal, I knew of one quite large fellow, well dressed, who met his fate with feet trapped by fallen debris and a bullet to the rear end. He stood upright at the ravaged entrance to the Ministry of the Territory. I had always marveled at his undiminished dignity, even in the face of a conspicuous lack of flesh. His monocle still rested between cheekbone and brow, and he was decked out in a charcoal gray with pale pink pin-striped suit and vest. The stately black top hat with pale pink band was a crowning monument to his fashion sense.
Through past research, I had come to know that this large person was none other than Pennit Dresk, the father of the young girl who, in Cley’s own “Case of the Unseeing Eye,” was convicted of producing subversive stick figure drawings and sentenced to having her eyes removed. Other documents made it clear that Dresk had become part of the conspiracy to topple Drachton Below’s beneficent rule. My wardrobe had a fitting lineage.
I scrubbed the outfit thoroughly, then read a book about sewing. Threading the needle with clawed hands was more difficult an exercise than having a camel pass through its eye. The opening for my tail was not so much a problem, for all I had to do was widen the bullet hole and sew around it. The jacket and vest, in order to fit comfortably around my wings, took real planning. I was more an architect than a seamstress in this matter. I forgot about the shoes. Wing tips and hooves are an impossible union. The white shirt was too much to conjure. “They will have to do with demon hair instead of linen in this case,” I thought. The hat nestled smartly between my horns. I put a twig of leaves from the tree that bears the fruit of Paradise in my buttonhole, checked a mirror eight times, and was ready.
After circling at a considerable altitude for over an hour, I landed at dusk in the street outside the front entrance of the schoolhouse. The lanky schoolmaster, Feskin, was waiting to greet me. He wore only shirt and pants, and I instantly worried that I had overdressed for the occasion. I moved toward him in as dashing a manner as possible.
“You look incredible,” he said, and laughed.
At first his mirth stung me, but I quickly overcame my embarrassment and laughed, too. “We always dress formally in the evening at the ruins,” I said.
“Very good,” he said, smiling. He shook my hand and motioned for me to come inside the already lighted schoolhouse.
I went up the steps, my hooves clunking against the wood. He stepped aside, allowing me to enter first. When I did, I was met with a shout that nearly blew my top hat off. I immediately crouched in attack mode with my claws out, my horns lowered, the hair on the ridge of my back rising. It was in this posture that I met my supporters in Wenau. Slowly, I realized that the shout had been their collective voice, yelling the word “Surprise!” I rose up to my full height and then I saw them, gathered around in front of the small desks and blackboard. On the board was written, in large chalk letters, “Welcome, Misrix!”
Quite a surprise it was, too. Feskin took a huge risk in startling me, for I might have just begun slashing the air in self-defense. This proved to me his faith in my humanity. Men and women and children were crowded into the building. There was a table full of food and drink. My neighbors came forth to greet me, and, closing my wings in tightly, I instantly became one with the crowd. I again met some who had come to the ruins, and it was a great pleasure to relive old memories, even though they were not so old and there were not many of them.
Of course, Emilia was there, and she jealously stole me away from a conversation I was having with a man whose brother was part of the expedition that had gone to retrieve Cley from what they considered his self-exile in the Beyond. She took me by the hand and showed me her desk. I told her how much I enjoyed the gift of the orange candy, and said it was the sweetest thing I had ever tasted. She laughed at this, very pleased, and the sight of her innocence and joy was staggering to me. Then she told me that she had another gift for me, and she led me over to the wall, where papers were hung in a row. It soon became clear that these were samples of the students’ work. We walked along the row of documents—labored testaments of cryptic penmanship illustrated with drawings. She stopped in front of one written in a beautiful looping style. On the cover was a portrait of me. The title of this piece was “My friend, the Demon.”
I read the pages as carefully as I could through tear-filled eyes. More than once I had to take off my spectacles and brush them against the exposed hair of my chest. I need not go into detail here, but it was a history of our meeting, a testimony to my good character, and an affirmation of our bond.
“Why are you crying?” she asked.
“I am a mawkish old demon, for sure,” I said, and laughed for the first time in a new way.
Someone began calling for order, trying to draw everyone’s attention to the front of the classroom. Before turning away, I handed Emilia the small, carved wooden dog that had sat for years on a shelf in my Museum of the Ruins.
“Here’s a pet for you,” I told her. “Take good care of it.”
“What’s its name?” she asked.
“Wood,” I said.
She got half the joke and smiled.
It was Feskin who was calling for everyone to pay attention. He motioned for me to come to the front of the classroom and take a seat. I did as was requested. Then began an explanation, I suppose for my benefit, as to how and why this group of brave souls had decided to make the proverbial leap of faith and invite a demon into their midst.
I learned that night that after Cley and I had originally struck out for the Beyond, the town of Wenau almost came apart by reason of introduction of the drug, sheer beauty. The citizenry who were able to keep their wits about them had a hellish task of restoring order. Many died as a result of the effects of the drug and many more were left mentally depleted. Below’s newer, stronger strain of the narcotic was taken by some without any caution or knowledge of its ultimately debilitating properties. Cley was seen as a deserter and a scourge because of the chaos he had wrought.
For a long time, his name was a curse among the survivors of Wenau. They never took into consideration how many more would have died had he not put a halt to the sleeping disease with which Below had infected them. The complexity of that thought lay beyond their grief. Then Feskin found the two manuscripts that Cley had produced, sitting in a back room of the schoolhouse under a stack of old books deigned too mature in their content for the children to read. He sat down one day in the middle of a snowstorm, having let the children go home early, and began reading. As he told it, he read through the night and finished the two manuscripts by morning. It became clear to him then that Cley was really a hero, and that I, the local scourge, was something of a hero myself
It took the schoolteacher a number of years to convince a goodly amount of people of his discovery. Once the idea began to catch on, some of the older inhabitants, whose children had been delivered by the healer, or who had personal dealings with him, came forth to admit that what Feskin was saying was probably true.
Funds were eventually raised and an expedition mounted to bring Cley back to his rightful home. As Feskin said, “It was the least we could do, considering how we had for so long spurned his very name.” A young fellow named Horace Watt, whose father had been a personal friend of Cley’s, led the expedition. They had already been gone three months and were expected back in two years’ time.
When I heard that part of the tale, I had to hold up my hand and stop them. I could not speak at first, understanding how my words might dash their hopes, but finally I found my voice out of a sense of honesty.
“My good people,” I said, “I would love to give you encouragement for your plan, but you must understand that the Beyond is a tremendous expanse. It is a place of continents. Even if they should escape all
of its myriad dangers, which I pray they do, how would they possibly hope to find him?”
“Bloodhounds,” said a woman from the back row of desks. “They took with them the best bloodhounds ever born and a few of Cley’s items from his home. If he is there, those dogs will find him.”
At hearing her words, I wanted to laugh, but seeing the seriousness of all of my friends’ faces, I nodded as if such absurdity sounded reasonable.
“Have no fear, Misrix,” said Feskin. “Cley will be back among us in no time.”
“Very well,” I said.
Someone in the crowd said, “Let’s eat,” and the meeting was adjourned.
I gorged myself on pastries and produce, and drank more than I should have of the rum punch. My third stomach had begun to gurgle when one corpulent old man shoved a slice of bloody beef in my face and told me the cow had come from his farm. I almost lost my balance from dizziness. I told him that I never touched red meat.
“Well, in your case, I won’t take that as an insult, if you know what I mean,” he said, and patted me on the shoulder.
I spoke to him of the weather instead and found him to be a fine gentleman.
The hours I spent there were the most glorious of my life until our attention was drawn to some commotion in the street. Feskin was immediately at the window.
“It’s Lengil,” said the schoolteacher.
“Who is that?” I asked the young lady to my right.
“He is an agitator against your visit. He and a few others do not trust you and want to see you dead,” she said.
“They are mostly the religious who are unable to extend their love beyond the mirror,” said Feskin over his shoulder. “You are to them what they see in their books. I tried to explain it to them, but they will not listen.”
