“Understood.” The fisherman bowed deeply in front of the crow, the crow’s threats rolling off his back like storm water off an oilskin. “Thank you, Lord Crow,” he said. “I am in your debt.”
The fisherman backed away on the soft, dry sand, his head lowered, the very picture of an obsequious courtier, save for the fact that he was dressed in nothing but his breeches. Like most petty officials, the crow could be flattered, and the result was better than he had hoped. Surely he could find a young mother amongst the newly dead who arrived on the midnight tide. Surely a young mother, just separated from her suckling babe, would be willing, perhaps even eager, to offer her breast to his beloved’s soul, wouldn’t she? And, in spite of what the crow had said, surely he could find a way to escape this dreadful place with his beloved. The frigate bird had told him there were many places within the Kiamah’s belly. Perhaps they could escape the crow’s influence and live out their lives in peace.
§
Breast milk indeed, thought the crow. Now there’s a good chuckle. He might as well send that sailor fellow off to hunt for a wing-backed ziphius, the oft-rumored but never-seen flying whale, or the fabled two-pronged unicorn, with two heads and no tail. Still, he was perturbed by the cormorant’s intrusion into matters of state.
“Cousin Cormorant,” said the crow, “We’d like to have a word with you.”
“Must it be now?” said the cormorant. He was busy with his bill, rooting around in his feathers for feather mites.
The crow leaned in and plucked a tail feather from the cormorant’s arse.
“Auk!” said the cormorant.
“Thank you,” said the crow. “We are pleased to have your attention. We should like to remind you that We will solicit your advice when We need it, and that you should not offer advice for which We have not asked.”
“Must you use the royal we now that he’s gone?” said the cormorant. “There’s no one here but us, and this charade you play grows tiresome.”
“Tiresome?” said the crow. “We shall show you what tiresome is.” The crow passed a wing in front of his face, and grew himself taller by a cubit, and he seized the cormorant by the neck, his cruel beak nearly strangling his hapless royal advisor. He lifted the cormorant up until his feet dangled, the cormorant gasping for air.
The pelican flapped her wings and squawked. “Stop that,” she said, “you’re hurting him.”
The crow let go of the cormorant, who flopped to the sand and lay there panting. “Listen, you pribbling, prabbling pair of flap-billed scuts. This is no charade. We are the King of the Dead, and We shall have your obedience, or We shall have your lives.”
He brought his beak to the pelican’s ear hole, and he snapped his beak shut. The noise made the pelican startle. “You’re next,” said the crow, “should you choose to oppose me.”
The pelican cowered, her shoulders up and her head down to protect as much of her long neck as she could. “I am your humble servant, Lord Crow,” said she.
“Excellent,” said the crow. He put his wing round the pelican’s shoulders, and drew her aside. “We are most gratified to hear you say so. And We have a task for you to perform, so that you might prove your usefulness to Us.”
“Yes, Lord Crow?”
“Indeed,” said the crow. “We grow weary of feeding treats to the Kiamah. From this moment hence, it shall be your task to gather such morsels and take them to the beast.”
“Yes, Lord Crow.”
“He favors crunchy bits. Ears, nipples, noses, that sort of thing. Also he is fond of tender bits, lips, both nether and upper, zibiks, scrotums, and so on. Also eyeballs. You must gather them from the newly dead after We have sung their souls free.”
“Yes, Lord Crow.”
“And one more thing,” said the crow, “you must always include a goodly number of conaria, for it is the conaria that keep the Kiamah beast drowsy.”
The pelican, who had kept her head down and her eyes averted, now dared in her desperation to obey the crow, to look up at him.
“I fear, Lord Crow, that I do not know where to find the conaria.”
Now the cormorant gathered himself together, and regained his feet. “The conarium is an organ,” said he, “located in the brain. Some call it the pineal gland, and some the third eye.”
“Oh,” said the pelican. “How does one get at it?”
“We use Our beak,” said the crow. “It’s a puny thing, but not so hard to harvest once you’ve cracked the skull open.”
“Ohhhh,” said the pelican. “Is there no other way?”
“There is not,” said the crow. “You must do this every night, without fail, for trust Us, We do not want the beast to aw-aw-awake.”
And so it was that the pelican was given the ghastly task of keeping the Kiamah beast sedated. Cracking open skulls and rooting around inside the brains of the dead made her bilious, and she did so only because she feared the wrath of the crow, and because it was her nature to keep the peace. But each time she filled her basket with handfuls of ears and eyeballs, navels and nipples, and always a goodly number of conaria, she felt, deep within her, a recoil, as if her very soul cringed.
§
The frigate bird crouched one-footed on a perch in the roof of the world, his position precarious, his spyglass to his eye, held there by his other foot. This was the curse of having no hands, but his foot was his only means of holding the spyglass, and the spyglass his only means of watching the Turropsi. They had summoned him from a brothel in Qali, where he had struck up a friendship with a madam, a tickle-tail who was broad minded enough to play at rantum-scantum with a feathered brigand such as himself. She was adept at her arts, and good company besides.
It was his custom to spy out what he could before he entered the dominion of the Turropsi. They lived just beyond the edge of the story of all that is, in a realm of swirling mists, the great standing wave of the present at their backs. The bottom of the wave pulled the mists of all that was possible toward itself, and the Turropsi, a vast swarm of them, formed a net through which their many hands deftly sorted, out of all that might be, what they wanted for their intricate design. Ahead of that net, farther into the mists, were more of them, who used their paddled arms to hold back what was not wanted, and to let through what was. The frigate bird was sometimes allowed to fly into those mists, and it was there that he acquired the knowledge of thoughts as yet unthought, and heard songs as yet unwritten, and saw visions of stories as yet untold.
Far out in the mists, in that region called the Fetch, he saw a line, as if there were a break in the usual ebb and flow. He trained his spyglass on it, and saw that the mists there were funneled through a single point, and beyond that point the mists were heavy and dark. There was a knot of the Turropsi around that point, as numerous as bees in a hive, and they were troubled. Some swam back toward the great standing wave, no doubt carrying with them some new knowledge of this disturbing singularity, while others held back, and it came to him that the Turropsi knew that single point as something monstrous, and fearsome, and that they wished to contain it before it reached the great standing wave.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and was so startled he dropped his spyglass and nearly fell off his perch. Several things then happened all at once, the frigate bird turning to see one of the Turropsi, that Turropsi reaching an arm to snatch the spyglass before it fell out of reach, the frigate bird himself falling sideways and flapping his wings, the Turropsi pulling him back with several more of its many arms.
The Turropsi were beings like a soft sea creature, part jellyfish, and part octopus. Their movements rippled with an undulance that made him queasy if he stared at it too long. They had clear, dome-shaped, faceless heads, within which could be seen a glowing red organ, and it was from here that their speech seemed to emanate. Where their heads joined their bodies, they wore a necklace from which depended an abacus of golden beads.
Below the head was a silvery, cup-shaped body, and from that body hung
tentacles too numerous to count, with which they could touch the many possibilities floating in the mists. Amongst the tentacles there hung as well some several arms, thicker and more muscular than the tentacles. One arm ended in an eye, with which they gazed into either the uncertainties of the future, or the certainties of the past, and another arm ended in a wide paddle, for shaping the flow of possibilities before they reached the great standing wave, and the remainder of their arms ended in many-fingered hands. This one now handed back to him, with one arm, his spyglass, while with another arm the creature steadied him on his perch. The creature’s tentacles fluttered beneath the body, the Turropsi hovering in place.
Never before, to the frigate bird’s knowledge, had any of the Turropsi come to the roof of the world. They must have a great need to send one of their own this far into the time-bound cosmos to summon him, for their lives were never-ending as long as they stayed outside the bounds of what already was. This Turropsi risked its own death by coming here.
The Turropsi never spoke aloud to him, but rather their words formed in his mind, and there he heard the creature say, “This way.” Several arms beckoned him onward, and together they flew from the roof of the world and into the mists of the Fetch, where this Turropsi led him to a vision of a winged goddess, who lived in a palace high up on the slopes of Mount Agung, in the southern reaches of the great sea. To find her he must start in the land of the living, on Bali Dwipa, a beautiful isle with many rice paddies, and he was to fly upward through the mists that hugged Mount Agung until he passed through the roof of the world. Now the many voices of all the Turropsi were in his head, like a chorus that spoke with one voice, for they were, the frigate bird knew, like a hive of bees, who acted with one purpose, and who all together formed one great mind. “Her name is Dewi Sri,” the voices said. “Go to her, and when you have found her, we shall instruct you further.”
This the frigate bird was more than willing to do, for Dewi Sri was a great beauty, with a saucy curl to the smile on her full red lips, and the sway of her hips was full of promise. He bade the Turropsi farewell and left the Fetch then, and flew back to the roof of the world. On his way he set aside his plans to return to the delights of that tickle-tail in Qali.
Onward, thought he, for his services were needed elsewhere.
§
The crow, after he held court, decided to drowse away the morning perched on a favorite branch, high up a cedar tree. He’d made quite a night of it, gorging himself until his belly was so full he stuck his wingtip down his throat, so that he might start in again. Three times he’d hurked up his feast of delicacies. Or was it four? Aw-aw-aw-offal, so rich and earthy, heart meat and sweetbreads and liver. Liver was salty, like braised blood, with a hint of wild plums. And tongues, a new favorite. The meat was firm and flavorful, and boneless. What a binge he’d gone on after the first time he tore out a tongue. So many tongues, so little time.
All those bodies coming out of the canoe, milling around, wondering were they really dead, and if they were, where on earth had they gotten to? Nowhere on earth, my little chickadees. You have left the earth behind. It must be confusing, this dying, this letting go of who they had been, and what they had done. They all seemed to think they were special, and that their questions deserved to be answered. They wanted an explanation, they wanted sympathy, they wanted to go back home. But there was no return passage for them on the canoe, and explanations, let alone sympathy, were beneath his station as King of the Dead. Sympathy was the pelican’s bailiwick. He had his own duties to perform. Getting the dead to line up and be still long enough to cough up their souls was no easy task. Listen to the song, chickadees, you’ll feel so much better if you just listen to the song.
All those wriggly little balls of slime, dropping to the sand and burrowing in. Though now that he’d eaten a soul straight from the shell, and knew how tasty those were, he ought to try one of the little slimeballs. They might be even better. There was no more Raven, no one to tell him not to, least of all that busybody, the pelican. And what a pleasure it had been to scandalize her. She took the whole business of clams and souls far too seriously. Anybody could see that there were plenty of them, and really, once his plot with the Kiamah had come to full fruition, none of this would matter.
From his perch he could see most of the inlet without being seen himself. The pelican was busy rebuilding her nest, which had been inundated by the wave the great whale had made with his flukes. The cormorant sat on a log, reading Early Empiricists in the Lands of Araby, the title in gold leaf on the cover. They’d tottered in when the night was mostly gone, clucking and giggling, obviously impaired, and it took the cormorant three tries to settle himself in his customary perch atop the pelican’s shoulders. Even then they looked a bit unsteady, and the crow had considered, before he landed on the cormorant’s shoulders, whether or not he might be better off sleeping in a tree. But after half of eternity with that cursèd Raven sitting atop the cormorant who sat atop the pelican who sat atop his shoulders, he was reluctant to give up the privilege of being the top bird.
Heat shimmered the air above the pyre of bones, still burning down from the night before. What a useful thing it was to hold court in the morning, for it shored up his legitimacy as the new king. How many times had he sat with his head bowed before Raven, speaking only when spoken to? Too, too many.
“Kiaw aw aw aw aw,” the crow said. “‘Tis good to be the king.”
He sang his crow song, the sweetest, most mellifluous, most melodic, most utterly expressive, most divinely regal song there ever was, although he knew the other birds, tasteless bumpkins that they were, found it grating and repetitive. But that was their loss, wasn’t it, and if they didn’t like his singing, they could fly upside down and be-shit themselves for all he cared.
The last of his song echoed off the cliffs, and in the quiet that followed the crow flew from his perch and rose high above the inlet, searching for that meddling scoundrel, the frigate bird. Never before had that blackguard taken such an interest in the Isle of the Dead. He was up to something, and no doubt about it. The crow looked north, and the crow looked south, and the crow looked out to sea, his sharp crow eyes piercing the mists, but the frigate bird was not to be found.
Now the crow flew lower, the better to spy out that rube of a sailor, who was wading out into the water. He had his fire burning again, that walking, talking dunghill, and the crow’s blood grew hot with his anger. Had he not bartered the clam for the fire, and wasn’t this new fire a trespass on their agreement? Of course it was, and for that there must be a reckoning. The sailor was engrossed in his clam, holding it up to his ear as if it possessed the power of speech, and so the crow flew low over the sailor’s fire and let fall a nice fat gobbet of guano. He missed the fire by a yard, but still he left a foul surprise for the sailor, and there was plenty more guano where that came from. He would improve his aim with practice.
The cormorant and the pelican were paying him no mind, the one busy reading and the other busy nesting. Excellent, the crow thought, now is the perfect time to visit my diggings. And so he flew into the canyon at the back of the inlet from whence flowed a stream. His wingtips brushed the rock walls at the narrowest spots, so great was his wingspan, a proof that his stature was regal and imposing. He flew into the bowl at the head of the canyon, and into the mist from the waterfall there, which bathed him with cool droplets of water that clung to his feathers. Swiftly he circled the bowl, banking his turn, the rock walls flashing by mere inches from his belly. He spread his wings and slowed himself to land in the cave behind the waterfall. The cave was shallow, but the crow had been busy, digging away at the back. He passed a wing in front of himself, and now he was one of the mole people, squat and paddle-footed, yet with a stature befitting a god. This was a shape he had practiced often of late, and he knew it well. What a sly fellow he was, a trickster beyond all others, full of guile. He crawled into the hole he’d started at the back of the cave, and he began to dig. Ahh,
the smell of the earth, the feel of it giving way to his claws, the velvety darkness wrapped around him, it was all so delicious. And the silence. A deity never had a better chance to be alone with his thoughts.
Deeper and deeper he dug his burrow, packing the earth to the sides with his paws. How far he had to dig, he did not know, but he kept at it, smelling his way forward, delighting in the thousand different scents of the earth, here loamy and damp, there rusty and dry. He dug until he was thirsty, and then he made his way back to the beginning of the burrow. He passed a paw in front of his face, and made himself a crow again, and he flew to the pool at the bottom of the waterfall, where he quenched his thirst. Soon he would dig his way through to the material world, and once through, he would wreak havoc upon all that was.
“Aw aw aw aw aw,” the crow laughed. “What a bad, bad, bad bird am I!”
§
The fisherman checked his fire, and then he walked out to the point where the inlet gave way to the sea. Here the waves broke off shore, a sure sign that there was a sandbar beneath the surface. Twin pinnacles of rock framed the mouth of the inlet, the distance between them the broadside of a ship. He stood with his back to the cloistered kingdom of the crow, the salt air fresh in his nostrils. He would bathe his beloved in the waters of the open sea.
Beyond the pinnacles was a narrow beach. The beach was cliff bound, with dark rubble at the base, and then sand. He rounded the point and walked northward along the base of the cliff, picking his way through the rubble. When he turned back to look it was as if the inlet did not exist, for he could no longer see the gap in the cliff walls that was its mouth. The empty sand was dotted here and there with whitish rocks. The waves rolled in and broke, their rhythm a comfort to him, and a reminder that he had always been a man of the sea. They spent their force in foam and flux on the rising slope of the beach, the waters of each wave pulled back to shape the next, and in that constant motion sometimes rolling the strewn rocks closer, and sometimes dragging them seaward.
The Alehouse at the End of the World Page 9
