Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird

by Jesse James Freeman

  Billy found that this teacher understood English perfectly well. The teacher didn't call it English though; he called it Americana.

  “Everyone speaks Americana here. It is the language of enlightenment.” The teacher called up a toast to enlightenment.

  The teacher then looked to Billy in the darkness. “Whatever you are looking for, it is not here.” He took another drink.

  “I know she's not here.”

  The teacher said it was good that Billy understood that in his most stoic Americana.

  “Listen,” assured Billy, “I didn't come in here for none of your witch doctoring or singing. I just came in to dry off.”

  “Good. Good.”

  “I'm chasing a ghost, and I got that part all figured out already, so you can meditate on passing me that bottle back.”

  “I like that you chase the ghost anyway, Billy Americana.”

  Billy was passed the bottle by the teacher, who pushed it along the floor with his foot.

  “Ghosts have nothing to say.” The teacher listened in the darkness a moment. “I only hear them laughing. They seem a happy sort. Being dead suits them.”

  Billy liked the drink much more than the conversation.

  “I'm only looking for her trail. I just want to know where she came from.”

  “She might tell you if you listen,” guided the teacher. “The best thing about ghosts is most of them don't know they have worn out their welcomes.”

  “You're an old dude -” and the teacher was surely old “-You lived here your whole life?”

  The teacher nodded. “Oh yes. For many years, I met many of your fathers and grandfathers when I was a younger man.”

  “That how you learned, ‘Americana'?’

  The teacher shook his head and Billy passed back the bottle. “No, Billy, all Americana learned from Archie and Jughead.”

  “My Pop was over here in the war.” Billy looked down. “Sorry about that.”

  The teacher shook his head. “It's groovy.”

  Billy nodded. “Anyhow, Pop was looking for a lady named Medusa, and he met my mom looking for her.”

  The teacher grabbed his gut then pointed over Billy's head with his left hand and laughed. “Medusa, they said she used to live out that way, past the Ox yard.”

  “Pop said it was around here, yeah.” Billy pretended that Pop had ever been more specific that 'Laos'. “You ever remember seeing any blonde ladies? Maybe a little shorter than me and about two heads taller than you.”

  The teacher used his hand to draw comely curves into the air.

  “She was full and popped in the right spots like Eva Marie Saint?”

  “Dude, this is my mom.”

  The teacher drank and nodded. “Sword Witch.”

  Billy sat up; he'd never heard those words before but they made sense. “What did you say?”

  “Your mother, she was the Sword Witch. Medusa's sister.”

  The teacher seemed as convinced of this as the fact that he was drunk and fat.

  The teacher passed the bottle back with his foot, and Billy slid the sword scabbard across the floor in trade. The fingers of the teacher's left hand ran over the raised golden totems on the end.

  “Flower, moon, owl and broom…” The teacher ran his finger back down them, pausing for a long time on the symbol of the Moon.

  Billy was up on his knees and leaned forward, cursing that the old man wasn't allowed anything flammable anymore so Billy could get a good look at his fingertips running up the scabbard.

  “Yes. What does that mean, old man?”

  “Do you have the sword?” inquired the teacher?

  Billy shook his head, then figured the old man couldn't see him doing that and said, “No.”

  “Pity. I would love to see it again.”

  “You knew my mom? You saw her sword?”

  “No one ever really saw much of the Sword Witch. I knew her for several days long ago.” From what Billy could make out of the old face, it held nostalgia in its lines. “The hair like sunshine, very unforgettable in these parts. Not many blondes.”

  Billy tried desperately to move the words along. “Yeah okay, you already said you had a thing for my mom. What about her sword?”

  “This was not her sword.” He ran his fingers over the designs again. “Moon.”

  “Moon?”

  The teacher looked up from the floor, “This scabbard and the long lost sword it was once married with belonged to Moon.”

  “Okay, who is ‘Moon’?”

  “She is one of the FIVE.”

  Billy was starting to get it. “Flower, Moon, Owl and… wait, with Broom that makes four.”

  “There is another, not part of the riddle.” The teacher shrugged and drank.

  “So you knew this Moon?”

  “Moon was a woman,” the teacher filled in the blanks. “Probably is a woman still.”

  The teacher held forth his right arm and crawled close across his mat so that Billy could see that a right hand wasn't something the teacher had to offer. Billy looked at the stump. “Moon did that?”

  The teacher chuckled. “Of course she did. With the sword you're looking for.”

  “I'm not looking for the sword, I'm looking for my mother. Emelia.”

  The teacher pushed the stump in well past Billy's comfort zone. “Zip! Right off.”

  Billy backed away. “Even though Mom didn't do that and that Moon chick did; sorry, dude.”

  “There is no need for apology, Americana. The day she chopped it off, I watched it fly across the steps of this very temple and my eyes followed the blood that left the wound and it was in this I achieved enlightenment.”

  “Oh, well good, I guess.”

  “Besides,” assured the teacher, “your mother wouldn't bother with chopping off a hand; she cut off heads.”

  Billy and the teacher were both holding the scabbard. Billy felt a little queasy at the words. “Heads?”

  “Lots and lots of heads. The pikes and skulls are still down the valley by the river.”

  Billy clutched the sword. “This conversation has been…”

  “Enlightening?”

  Billy nodded to the dark, not worrying about Old Stumpy's eyes. “Very. You know what this means old man?”

  The teacher held the bottle to his belly with his one good hand. “You have learned that beauty and cruelty are one in the same.”

  Billy pushed himself up on shaky legs. “Hell no. It means my Mom was even more of a badass than I could have ever imagined.”

  Billy started walking towards the door, no longer caring about the rain or the price of heads in South Asia. “Which way are those skulls?”

  The teacher laughed, and Billy realized that it wasn't a sharing of elation that brought the hee-haws out of that fat drunk belly behind him.

  “Don't say it.” Billy was firm.

  “You are more convinced she is alive than ever now, aren't you?” The teacher continued with the giggles.

  “I told you not to say it,” Billy said quietly. “Don't ruin the only good news I've had ever.”

  “For your mother to have had that sword it means one of two things. She either stole it from the FIVE or she killed Moon. Even the Sword Witch is not powerful enough to kill the Moon.”

  “Dude, my mom was a tiger.”

  “Hopefully you will be fast enough to run with her ghost.”

  “Nobody is faster than me.” Billy wasn't going to listen to anything more, save the answer he sought. “Now where?”

  “Look for where they pen the oxen and then walk into the valley. Just keep walking; none will go with you or point you the way beyond that.”

  “They're all scared, huh?” Billy didn't fight the desire to hide pride. “They think Mom is out there slicing heads still.”

  “Maybe she is.”

  Billy was at the doorway, and the rain struck the cobbles and splashed from pools near his feet. “How come Moon cut off your hand?”

  The teacher di
dn't have to consider his reply. “To prove a point.”

  “A one-handed monk still doesn't know when to shut up?”

  The teacher laughed again, but this time it was colder than the rain. “If she should ever find you she will want her things back. Moon is driven by the old ways when faced with the prospect of revenge.”

  Billy walked into the rain towards the oxen to the words of the teacher, “What way is that, old man?”

  The Teacher pointed his stump at Billy and spoke. “For you, the old masters would change the words of their lesson.”

  The Teacher laughed deep, “If you meet the bubbha, kill the bubbha.”

  Chapter 29

  Island Of The Damned (or Something Like That)

  Resonate grim echoes of longing along the path to Hades carved in bone and darkness. Light wouldn't follow the Hero into this place - he hadn't even been able to light a torch with a pig fat drenched tip.

  The Hero had never regretted anything in his short life until then. The sailing and slicing and laughing at the battlefield in perfect chaos about him. He would have traded all of it then for a candle flame.

  For a firefly.

  “Leave me Hero. My hell is mine.”

  He had a sword in each hand - they weren't extravagant swords; they were perfect bronze short stingers with a ruby at each hilt. He could still remember ripping the ruby necklace from the woman's cold hand.

  They looked much finer on his swords than they did around her neck. Not that she needed them for decoration any longer - he had left her with a new and deeper red.

  One more fitting of the fallen.

  The Hero's beard was cold. It twitched and burned as if ice crystals climbed up the hairs. He kept licking his lips. There was sweat dripping off him. He knew because of this that the cold he felt could not be real.

  He couldn't taste the salt from the sweat. He couldn't smell his own filth, which was considerable after the journey and the climb up to her, the monster's, caves.

  “This must be what it's like to be dead,” the Hero thought.

  He kept to his advance. Either way, what more could be lost to him? Far better to bring her head down the mountain with him. Their cheers would be overwhelming if he won and their taunts would be worse than death if he failed.

  Maybe it wasn't sweat. Perhaps tears.

  This was when he remembered - she was already on him.

  Trickster-mother of the damned.

  She was strong and pushed his armored shoulders into the rock floor. It was passionate, but dire. A lover's final repose.

  He hated how much he liked it.

  His eyes were shut tight from her. He knew the stories all too well of the cockatrice gaze.

  Her fingers were the cold he felt and though he could not, would not, see her breath intermingling with his in the air, he knew that she was so close.

  His own fingers had opened long ago and let the swords fall. He couldn't even remember if he brought them into the cave with him.

  She felt better than any woman ever had. He couldn't stop crying, just like a baby in the arms of a mother wolf.

  He cried as the woman he had taken the rubies from had cried. She had wept fully and openly until the slash he opened on her neck took over.

  Blood traded for tears.

  “Look now,” Medusa said. “It is ended already.”

  He pressed his eyes tighter. “I will not.”

  “It is better for you this way. Ares has many soldiers; they will not miss your boasts about the fires.”

  “No.”

  “The river will not miss the blood which would have been washed from your blades.” She sang to him like a temple girl.

  “I am not to know this. I was to find love in your death, Gorgon.”

  Medusa laughed. “You came all this way to impress a woman?”

  “Her father is a king. To win her heart means a trade in your foul head.” The Hero wept thinking of the Princess in her far away tower, dropping flower petals to the ocean and praying for his return.

  How soft her smile had been in the morning of his parting for adventure. How soft the monster's fingers on his face now.

  “She will find another; women of that sort always do. You have my love now. I give it as a gift to you. There is no bounty for it. You need not impress me for my wicked dowry.”

  “I am afraid.” And he was, for the first time ever.

  Medusa kissed his lips. “You should be. There are always fears at endings.”

  She kissed him again. Her lips tasted of the sea. He was happy to taste anything again.

  “Open your eyes now. See your lover and embrace.”

  She kissed his neck. He felt her hair coil about his face. A hundred tiny forked tongues.

  The Hero's eyes gave and he stared into her. “You are so beautiful.” He was shocked, for he found not a monster, but a wild girl of the caves, this banished nymph of the temples of Athens. Even Helen was a hunched serving wench if to compare.

  He felt the thirst first, and the skin about his bones began to tighten. The river in his body was re-directed from within.

  The tightening overtook as that of a lame god's vice and he had never wanted for anything more than a drop of water.

  He still longed for that candle flame - if only to better see the gold flecks of her eyes.

  “How can this be?” His throat coughed up dust with his words. “You are not ugly? You are no monster?”

  Medusa rose from his death-rattle coronation.

  “It is not seeing me which deals the blow, Hero. It is the seeing of yourself through my eyes.”

  She ran her fingers along the cave walls, fleeing from the dust of her latest lover's corpse, “Your own gaze at your true form is an ugliness no monster can match.”

  II

  Emilia had found the entrance to the cave. It wasn't difficult to reason that it was the right one from the glyphs, the calls for protection from the Goddess who had abandoned them both. As the wind and cold rain did their erosive act to vanish them from the stone, Emelia almost laughed.

  She could hear Medusa move and her rasp breathing from the other side of a stone pillar within the far chamber. There was a tiny fire beyond her, and it felt surprisingly warm and inviting within. Yet to reach Medusa, Emelia would have to make her way over the bones of the fallen men who littered the cave. The petrified frightful who had been sent to Tartarus by the gaze of her monster sister.

  Drying bones and skin mixed with leather armor and rusting sword and shield. They were mummies wrapped in no cloth, their life drained out of them.

  All of the God's heroes loved to play this game, and Medusa played it best.

  “Leave me to my fire and silence,” Medusa whispered, her back to the pillar and her gaze staring into the deep bowel of her new world, her Hell. “Toss down your sword.”

  “I have no sword.” There was silence from Medusa as Emelia spoke and crept over the dead.

  “This is no woman's place. It is the house of monsters.”

  “You are no monster, Medusa.”

  Silence, mixed with anger too. “How do you know my name?”

  “I was your sister.”

  Medusa almost looked around the pillar of rock and salt, but did not and the fire cracking was the only sound as she held herself at bay.

  “My sister…?”

  “Yes, now more than even before.”

  “Emelia is your name.”

  “Yes.” Emelia tried to sound slightly delighted in the revelations. To not think of the death her hands mingled with as she crawled.

  “The goddess sends you?”

  “She has cast me out.”

  Emelia felt in darkness, her fingertips helping to guide her way.

  “Why are you cast out?”

  “I would not stand for what she did to you.”

  Medusa tensed and writhed and her hair flowed wild.

  “What YOU did to me! I felt your touch upon my wrappings. You cast me to my death, all al
one onto Poseidon's sea.”

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “I am dead.”

  “You live.” Emelia's words could not fully ring true in the cold air of the cave as she climbed down a legion pile of rotted dead men.

  Yet Medusa's words were fierce and showed the hiss of her serpent spirit. “If it is forgiveness you seek here then you are forgiven. Now leave me before I kiss you with my witch eyes. My love and forgiveness when begged upon too much these nights bring forth horrors.”

  “I cannot leave.” Emelia moved ever closer. “Artemis has made it so as we are joined.”

  “I release you from that as well. The Gods have no hold on me any longer. I am not their chirping bird. I am beast to the cave manger.”

  “I will not leave, Medusa.”

  “Go, girl. I have death work to cobble. They come always to slay what's left of me.”

  Emelia stole upon the cave floor, and her hand was cut then, sliced upon a hero sword. She pulled her wound to her lips as instinct; her tongue tasted her own blood. Perhaps this was best for her then, something to prove to herself that her heart still beat and her spirit lived. A proof that this was not truly hell or a simple act of defiance against the storm world the gods no longer cared to cavort within.

  Taking the sword with her in her wounded hand, Emelia closed bloody fingers about the hilt. Her journey continued, and she again felt her heart pulse and the freezing wind enter her lungs. Medusa's fire was the only ember to light her way.

  Medusa laughed, or perhaps began to cry - Emelia could not say. “All is blood here,” called the Gorgon sister. “You see now how easily it flows. How can my heart be made whole again within such a place?”

  Emelia put her back to the pillar now, staring into the rain and then down to the sword she lay in her lap.

  “You drag the blade to me now and stare into the mouth of a world without me. The rain will wash the blood from you. In the morning, a life free of monsters, gods and devils could be yours.” Medusa's words were colder than the rain.

  “I swore a promise. To a Goddess.”

  “Kill me sister. I beg you. I am done with this world.” Medusa cried then. “Kill me, please. Swear that as your new promise. I am done with murder.”

  “Sleep now, Medusa. Your sister is here. You'll commit no more murders.”