The Alehouse at the End of the World

by Stevan Allred

  He thrust his chin forward, and he was about to speak his mind when the crow pecked at the fisherman’s eye, plucking one out and swallowing it. The fisherman screamed, and he fell to the ground, half blind and moaning. Blood ran down his face. He clapped his hand over his empty eye socket.

  “You puttock,” the cormorant cried. “You filthy mouldywarp.” He pointed a wingtip at the crow’s gullet. “Give it back.” The crow spread his wings and flapped them at the cormorant. The two birds faced off, puffing up their chest feathers, circling each other like pugilists, though the cormorant looked frightened—and overmatched. Their heads bobbed, but before they started jabbing at each other with their nebs, the pelican opened his wide wings and stepped in between them. All the while the fisherman writhed in pain, his blood staining the sand.

  “Must you?” the pelican said to the cormorant. “The last thing we need here is scuffling and name-calling while this man lies here half-blind. And you,” the pelican said to the crow, “please, give back the man’s eye. It is ignoble of you to treat a guest this way. What would Raven say?”

  The crow, at the mention of Raven, cocked his head to the side. “Aw aw aw aw aw,” he laughed. “Not here to tell us, is he, now?”

  The pelican regarded the crow steadily, his yellow eyes opened wide. “Then we must all rise to our best selves in his absence,” he said. His bird voice was calm, though his tail feathers trembled. The crow gazed back at the pelican, obstinate until the cormorant stepped up with his wings spread, the two birds together crowding the crow with their wingspans.

  “You are better than this,” the pelican said. “Please, give it back.”

  Thus was the crow persuaded to yield.

  The crow folded his wings and stepped back. “Bullies,” he muttered, but they paid him no mind. He hurked the fisherman’s eye up from his craw, and he opened his beak wide. The fisherman screamed again, horrified, and dug his fingers into the sand.

  The cormorant’s long bill reached in and took the eye from the crow’s mouth with the careful touch of an alchemist’s pincers. He tilted his head, and he looked a question at the pelican.

  The pelican bobbed assent, and brushed a gentle wing across the fisherman’s brow. “Be still,” he soothed, “be still, still, still.” The fisherman’s mouth gaped, he was sweaty with pain, and his remaining eye, looking up at the birds, was wide with terror, but he nevertheless fell still.

  “Pull your hand back from your face,” the pelican cooed, and the fisherman did so. Blood flowed down his cheek from his empty eye socket. The cormorant stood over him with his plucked eye at the ready. All his years as a sailor he had avoided the surgeon’s gruesome kit, and now he was in a surgery of birds.

  The cormorant put the fisherman’s eye back in its bloody socket and regarded him for a moment. The fisherman began to grimace and to twist his head about, as if he were trying to see upward and backward and side to side all at once. The pelican clucked, and shook his head, and the cormorant nodded. “My apologies,” the cormorant said, “It’s upside down.”

  “Be still,” the pelican cooed again, and again the fisherman was momentarily soothed and fell still. The cormorant righted the wronged eye, and stood back to admire his work. The pelican dug into his feathers as if he were rooting around for a particularly vicious feather mite, and then pierced his own breast with the sharp tip of his neb. When he drew forth his bill, a drop of blood glistened on the tip. He let the blood drip onto the fisherman’s wounded eye. The pain the fisherman had felt was now something tiny and far away. And so the fisherman was healed.

  “You’ve won that round,” the crow said, “but this is no guest.” He pointed at the fisherman with his beak. “This is the troublemaker who put out the sacred fire.”

  The fisherman was standing again. “What fire?” he said. “I see no fire.”

  “You pig-widgeon, of course you don’t,” the crow said. “You put it out.”

  The fisherman looked all around, up and down the beach, across the inlet, and into the trees beyond the high-tide line. “Where?” he said.

  “Ah,” the cormorant said, “you’re an empiricist. Let me show you what this place looks like at night. Cousin Pelican, will you assist me?”

  The pelican removed the spectacles from the cormorant’s neb with his bill, and he gave them to the fisherman. “Put them on,” the cormorant said, “and they will translate from the unknown to the known.”

  The fisherman did as the cormorant bade him, perching the spectacles on his nose. The sun disappeared, and the sky with it. In their place was an enormous cavern, so vast that the fisherman only sensed the walls and the ceiling. It was dark, yet he could see, as if he had been given the night vision of a civet cat. Phosphorescent waves lapped the beach. A low throb sounded in his ears like the beat of his own heart. There was a faint glow to the sky, as if the shine of the moon had been scattered all across it, but there was no moon. The three birds stood next to him, just as they had before.

  “That was the sacred fire, which has burned since the beginning of time,” said the crow. He pointed with his wing at a blackened mound some distance closer to the forest from where they stood. “Then that clotpole of a whale showed up and shat you out onto the beach. And then he turned around and swam away, but before he left, he slapped his fat flukes on the water and sent the biggest wave we’ve ever seen up here.”

  “There are always complications,” the pelican cooed, “when someone from the material world finds their way here.”

  “Why do you blame me,” the fisherman said, “if the whale did it?”

  The pelican plucked the spectacles from the fisherman’s face, put them back on the cormorant, and it was daylight again.

  “Do you see a whale here?” the crow demanded. “If you can’t be with the one you blame, then blame the one you’re with, that’s what I always say.”

  “Calm yourself,” the cormorant said. “In difficult times, always seek a solution that is new.”

  “Kiaw,” the crow said, “spare me the platitudes. I say we skin this one alive, and cut out his fat to start a new fire. That’s my idea for a new solution.”

  “What we have here,” the pelican said, “is an exception to the rules.”

  The three birds began arguing amongst themselves. It was the whale’s fault, said the cormorant, naw, naw, naw, it was the man’s, said the crow, the whale’s, the man’s, around and around, their necks stretched up, each trying to be the tallest, the pelican imploring the other two to please stop bickering. The fisherman stepped back a pace, and they paid him no mind. The rules are the rules are the rules, said the crow, oh shut up, who made you the King of the Dead, you’re nothing but a crow, said the cormorant, friends, friends, let us make peace amongst ourselves, said the pelican. We’ll see who’s nothing but a crow after the sun goes down, you little chickadees, said the crow, stretching his neck taller so that the cormorant stretched his neck taller. They circled each other like that, the both of them with their wings spread wide, the pelican with them, cooing and clucking and suing for peace, and then the crow bobbed his head down low and pecked a vicious peck at the cormorant’s wingpit.

  “Auk!” cried the cormorant, a bare patch of red skin showing blood beneath his outstretched wing. The pelican tried to step between them, but the crow gave him a savage peck as well. The crow seemed to have the better of them both now, as if he had somehow grown more powerful since the last time they fought.

  The fisherman stepped back another pace, and then another, until he was far enough away to turn and walk off. If these birds were truly the gods of this place, then the gods must be crazed.

  §

  High in a tree, as light gathered on the far horizon, just outside the lanai where slept Dewi Sri, Goddess of Rice, the first crow of the day called out, caw, caw, caw. Dewi Sri awoke, a cold feeling of dread beneath her breastbone brought on by the remnants of a dream. For a hundred times a hundred years there had been peace in all of her realm, and all was
well. But of late her sleep had been vexious, and though she went about her duties with serenity, and found joy in the fecundity of the rice paddies, and peace in the multitudes of fireflies who gathered over them after the sun set, she felt something coming her way. Something dark, and inescapable.

  In the dream she stood before the stone statue of her long dead brother, Sedana, and there was a warning in his gaze. Her brother’s lips moved, and she wept because she could not hear him. Now her tears fell on a copper dowsing rod she held in her hands. She knew her brother wanted her to find something with it, but she knew not what. She walked into the forest, dowsing as she went, hoping her rod would pull on her arms and reveal her purpose. A shadow passed over her as if a great bird flew above, and then she heard her brother’s voice, speaking quietly, telling her to clear her mind. She stood still and banished all thoughts, and as she did so, the dowsing rod turned in her hands, and pointed at her face.

  Thus it was that she awoke with such a chill inside her. She was the last of her line, and nearer the end of her days than the beginning. Her family had many things for which to answer, and it was her fate to pay those debts.

  Again the crow called out, caw, caw, caw. Dewi Sri formed the abhaya mudra with her right hand, banishing the little-death of fear from her mind. Her hand was upright, and palm out. Her fate was her fate, and nothing more. Where fear had passed through her, there was nothing now.

  She opened her eyes, and rose to face the day. The great festival of the rice harvest was coming, and she had much to do.

  §

  The fisherman headed down the beach toward the sea. Let the birds argue. He must get far enough away from them that he could clear his thoughts.

  To begin with, where was he really? Was he dreaming, or bewitched? It was the pelican who’d said this was the Isle of the Dead, but could he trust a talking pelican? The crow claimed to rule the dead, but the others said he was an imposter. And where were the dead? When they had shown him the great cavern (what manner of sorcery was that?) there was nothing but a pile of smoking bones. If that was all there was to the afterlife, he might have found all that was left of his beloved in her grave.

  The crow had said there were so many here, and that it would be difficult to find her, but that made no sense. There was no one here but himself, and the three birds. They might be gods, or they might be monsters, but in either case, they were tricksy varlets, and not to be trusted. And what about himself? Was he alive, as the pelican said, or was he a dead man still walking? He felt alive enough, his heart beating as always, his lungs drawing breath as ever. Had he simply gone moon-barking mad, and all of this was phantasmagoria? His mind had slipped its moorings when he was in the belly of the whale and left him floating in an awful confusion. But here he walked the sand on sturdy legs, and his mind was sharp enough. What he lacked was not sanity, it was facts.

  And what was this about a canoe? They hadn’t answered his question—it was possible they were hiding something from him. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like these monstrous birds were scoundrels and liars. Even the cormorant, who had put his eye back after the crow plucked it out, was a scoundrel, if only by his association with the crow.

  He was nearly out to the point where the inlet met the sea. By the look of the wet sand the tide must be going out. The breeze off the ocean had the smell of salt air and sea life. There were small holes opening in the sand, clam holes if he knew anything about clams, which he did. The three birds were too far away to pay him any mind, and he knelt and dug around one of the holes. It was only a moment before he felt the hard shell of a clam. He scooped it out of the sand, a buff-colored, oblong shell the length of his hand from heel to fingertip. His stomach growled. He had no idea how long he had been in the belly of the whale, but it was enough time to nearly die of thirst, so it was no surprise that he was hungry. His growling belly gave him proof that he was yet alive.

  The clams were plentiful, and easy to dig. He gathered an armful of them, and then he made his way to the high-tide line, looking for a place to build a fire. He found a spot behind a large driftwood log that was sheltered from the wind. He gathered the driest of the wood around him, and he laid a careful fire made of twigs and wood shavings he made with the cuttlefish beak. But before he lit it, a series of loud squawks came to him on the shore breeze, and so he walked down to the water, where he could see around the curve of the beach to the spot where the birds were.

  They were still there, still circling each other, still arguing. The crow appeared to have gained the upper hand, or beak, as it were, for the other two bowed their heads even as they kept on squabbling. The crow passed a wing in front of his face, and it seemed to the fisherman that he grew taller then. The other birds fell back, and the crow flapped his wings, and cawed an especially screechy caw, and he shooed the pelican and the cormorant down the beach.

  Well and good, the fisherman thought, for he was in no hurry to speak to them again. He went back to the fire he was building, and knelt. He took from round his neck his beloved’s silver chain, and held it for a moment with his eyes closed, feeling the weight of it in his hand. The sun, having burned through the overcast, made the silver glow, and he brought the chain to his lips and kissed it. On it were the several pitch balls he had made for this very purpose before he left his shack by the sea. He took one of the pitch balls from the chain. It was still sticky inside its kelp wrapping, and it would catch fire easily. He reached for his flint and steel, hanging in their pouch off his belt, and there was the magician’s glass. He had forgotten about it, but now he drew it forth.

  Once, in Shedet, a large port town on the coast of the Nubian Sea, he had chanced upon a magician who had such a glass as the one he now held in his hand. For a small price the magician, who called himself Melquiades, allowed anyone, the credulous and the incredulous alike, to peer through the glass into the windows of a tiny castle. Inside the windows there was room after room of tapestries and paintings, of banquets and armories, of bedchambers and dungeons. A great horned beetle in royal attire held court with lesser beetles in lesser attire, and all of them were served by ants in matching livery. Truly a wonder of the world, but what the fisherman remembered now was how the magician, again for a small price, made Archimedes’s fire burst forth from the invisible rays of the sun.

  Now the fisherman held the glass so that it shone a bright white light on the pitch ball. A dragonfly hovered in the air, watching him, its body shining iridescent blue, the gaze of its black eyes unreadable. The insect plunged in the air, hovered again near where the focused beam of light hit the pitch ball, backed away some inches, and then rose and hovered by the fisherman’s ear, as if it had a secret to tell.

  It took some patience, but patience was one thing the fisherman possessed in abundance, and after sufficient time had passed, the pitch ball began to bubble, and then caught flame. He blew ever so gently, transferring the flame from the pitch ball to the wood shavings and twigs, until he had a small fire. He might have done the whole task more quickly with his faithful and familiar flint and steel, but the magician’s glass held the delight of novelty, and of a skill newly acquired. The dragonfly, having witnessed the miracle of fire drawn right out of the air, flew away, driven off, perhaps, by the smoke.

  Gradually the fisherman added larger and larger pieces of driftwood to the fire, and he found himself cheered by the whole enterprise. The ordinary crackle of it was a reminder of home. He lay his head back against a driftwood log, and he let the sun soak into his skin. While he waited for the coals to burn down enough to put on the clams, he thought of his beloved, and he pondered when he might see her. Difficult, the crow had said, but he’d not said impossible. There was hope, and there was the pleasure of imagining the look, when she first beheld him, of joy on her face.

  Or would it be horror? His skin was a deathly white. He touched his arm, which had the dry texture of parchment. The hair was gone entirely from his head, his arms, his legs. His face felt s
moother than his beloved’s breasts. Even his eyebrows were gone. He looked around, and seeing no one, he lowered the fall front to his breeches to examine his nether parts, and they too were smooth and hairless as a young boy’s. All this made his tattoos the brighter, as if they were freshly inked rather than older than the gray in his hair. The hair he no longer had.

  A shadow passed over him as he marveled at this, and in the next moment, he saw an enormous frigate bird perched on the limb of a dead tree, above his fire.

  “Ahoy there,” the frigate bird said. “Caught you with your pants down.” The frigate bird puffed up his bright red throat pouch, and he laughed a rattling laugh. He wore a belt with a pirate’s pistola stuck into it on one side, and a brass spyglass on the other.

  “Ye gods,” the fisherman muttered, “what now?” He pulled up his breeches and buttoned them. “Ahoy there, great bird,” he said. “What brings you here?”

  “Why, the smoke from your fire,” the frigate bird said. “Only fire around here is the sacred fire, but that seems to have gone out.”

  “So I am told,” the fisherman said.

  “Bad business that,” said the frigate bird. “Don’t know what the crow will do when the next canoe full of the dead shows up.” Again the frigate bird puffed up his throat pouch, and again he laughed his rattling laugh.

  “How’s that?” the fisherman said. “What’s this about a canoe full of the dead?”

  “You’re new around here, aren’t you?” the frigate bird said. “The dead arrive from the far shore every night at midnight. The crow harvests their souls, and he throws their bodies onto the sacred fire to keep the Kiamah beast warm.”

  “The Kiamah beast?”

  “Yes, the Kiamah beast,” the frigate bird said, “who is monstrous large, and in whose belly lie the lands of the dead, and the realms of dreams and visions, and any number of other fens and hollows too numerous to mention here. Have you never heard it said that in the belly of the beast lie many mansions? Did your elders teach you nothing at all?”