The Alehouse at the End of the World

by Stevan Allred

  “Perhaps,” said the fisherman. “Only the crow would know for sure.”

  “The crow?” she said.

  “The crow,” said the fisherman, “is the local satrap, and a foul tyrant, and he means neither one of us any good.”

  She took this in with the unflappable calm of a seasoned sailor who discovers that his sinking ship has caught fire. It was a quality that the fisherman had always admired in her.

  “We are in danger then?” she said.

  The fisherman considered. “I have been promised by the crow that we might live together here for a year and a day. The crow is a creature of violence, and foul cunning, and not to be trusted. Even so, he is bound by certain laws, and I believe he will allow us the time we have been promised.”

  The fisherman stood and held his hand out to his beloved. She took his hand in hers and stood, and together they walked to the beach, although she let go his hand after only a few steps. The loss of her touch made the fisherman want to wrap his arms round her and hold her close, but instead he simply walked with her, spear in hand, and kept his eyes on the sand beneath his feet. Patience, he counseled himself. He had waited this long. He could wait a little longer.

  When they reached the wet sand at the water’s edge, the fisherman saw that there were clam holes scattered everywhere. This was how it had begun, this adventure of the clam, and he began to tell his beloved the story of how he had come to be here. He was not a boastful man, but he was not above casting himself as the hero of his tale in order to win back her favors. He had earned the right, had he not, by setting out in his skiff and sailing into the storm? His skiff had been split to splinters, he had been swallowed by a whale and shat out on the Isle of the Dead, and as he told her all this, he watched for any sign that she still loved him. They waded together in the shallows, and while she listened politely to his story, she seemed distant, as if she had other, more weighty matters on her mind. She asked again about her father, would she find him here, and her mother, and he explained about the clams burrowing their way across the inlet, and the canoe of the dead, and the rebirth of the souls in the land of the living.

  “My parents,” she said, “could tell me who I am.”

  The creases across her brow and the furrows between her eyebrows were deep with worry. The fisherman stabbed his spear into the sand beneath the waters of the inlet and put both his hands on her shoulders. “I will do anything in my power,” he said, “to make you happy here.”

  The steadiness that had been in her eyes before was gone. She trembled beneath his hands. “I know I should be grateful,” she said. “But I have no notion as to why my happiness should matter to you.” She pulled back from his touch, and said, “I should like to go back to the fire. Come find me when you’ve something to eat.”

  The warmth of his fire and food for her belly were all she would take from him. Of course she rejects me, he thought, for I am hairless and blue. He bent and pulled his spear out of the sand so she would not see the tears forming in his eyes. “How can you not know me?” he said. He spoke to the air between them, to the unseen power of fate that surrounded them, his voice tight and shrill.

  “I don’t even know who I am,” she said. “Try to fathom what that feels like.”

  §

  Dewi Sri sat in a shallow cave just below the peak of the highest mountain on the Isle of the Dead. Even a goddess needed a moment of respite on occasion, and the others would not find her here. Below her were the fisherman and his beloved, tiny figures sitting beside their fire. Above them the frigate bird circled on a column of rising air. What passion they had shared, but she banished from her thoughts the memory of their night together, for she had matters of much greater import to consider.

  The morning after their liaison he had led her to the roof of the world, and from there to the realm of the Turropsi, where she was given an audience. The Turropsi were like no other creature she had ever encountered, tentacled like a creature of the sea, yet borne upon currents of air like herself. Their tentacles hung beneath their pellucid bodies, which were like shimmering cups turned upside down. She was surrounded by a covey of them, hovering in the mists of all that might be, with the great standing wave of the present at her back.

  Out in the Fetch, they told her, something approached that would destroy them all, ending the weaving that balanced destiny and free will, good and evil, the mutable and the immutable. A great change was coming, the most perilous they had ever seen, and beyond it, if the Kiamah beast swallowed the material world, lay a thousand times a thousand years of dark stagnation, in which evil was fully ascendant.

  They would not have it so, they told her. Great change, they said, meant great opportunity, and a great change required a great sacrifice. The few must defeat the many, and a hero must slay the beast. You are the hope of the future. Bind together your allies, and find your hero. Or be that hero yourself.

  “I am no hero,” she said. “I am a fertility goddess. It is not in my nature to slay anyone.”

  Listen to us, they said, and do not argue. What was needed, they said, were lovers who were willing to die for love.

  “Lovers?” Dewi had asked. “Why?”

  That is the way of things, they told her. It was not for her to question why. Understand this: that to save the material world and the spirit world they needed a lover from each realm. The frigate bird had brought such a person from the material world to the Isle of the Dead. He must be reunited with his beloved, and together they must die. Out of this sacrifice, out of the smoke of their bodies burning on the pyre, would come the renewal of all that was.

  “What has all of this to do with me?” Dewi had asked.

  You are chosen, they told her, for your skill at weaving the pleasures of the flesh together with the needs of the people.

  “How am I to fulfill this task?” Dewi asked.

  That is a pattern not yet woven, they told her. This much we can tell you—the new ruler of the spirit world must be the offspring of the crow. His daughter is the one favored by us. Go to the Isle of the Dead, and revive the beloved one. Go there, and seduce the crow. Return for further instruction once you have done this much.

  The chorus of their voices, it seemed to Dewi, had beneath it a counterpoint of contrary mutterings at this point, though she could not make out what they were saying. But round their necks they each and all wore a gold abacus, and many of them now clicked their beads this way and that, and their mutterings rose in pitch and volume until the voice of the chorus silenced them, as if they were disobedient children.

  One more thing, they told her now. The first rule of the Turropsi is that you do not speak of the Turropsi. You must speak of us to no one save the frigate bird. To do otherwise would be to risk undoing our intricate design.

  She was unaccustomed to being ordered about. She was the Rice Mother, and a goddess, and it was she who gave the orders. If she was to do their bidding, they must tell her more. But before she could give voice to these thoughts, they silenced her with a vision of a dark mass out ahead of them in the Fetch, a mass so immense they could not go around it, nor under it nor over it, nor move it aside. When that dark mass reached the great standing wave of the present, it would overtake all that was. They showed her Mount Agung, her palace dark and desolate, the rice paddies in all their fecundity reduced to stagnant ponds, the villages of her people empty. She would risk this? They showed her the Kiamah beast swallowing the material world, her beloved Bali Dwipa obliterated. They showed her the beast swallowing their own realm. The Turropsi themselves would be obliterated.

  No more questions, they told her. You are meant to help us.

  She had formed the abhaya mudra with her right hand then, to banish the little-death of fear from her mind, but her hand trembled still. A calming breath kept the tremble from her voice.

  “One more question,” she said. “How much time do I have?”

  There is time enough, they told her, for love to work its magic, but not so mu
ch time that you should dally. Go now, they told her, for the sooner you begin, the sooner this catastrophe will end.

  §

  The fisherman returned to his camp with a pair of fine fish for their morning meal. His beloved had the coals banked for cooking, and her hands were busy lashing the legs of the spit together with cedar strips. She smiled at the fisherman, but it was the practiced smile of a woman who knows her place in an uncertain world, not the smile of love. She watched as the fisherman gutted the first fish. He laid the mess of guts on the far end of the driftwood log for the pelican to eat, should she happen by. His beloved reached for the second fish, and the spear.

  “I know how to do this,” she said.

  Strange, the fisherman thought, how the soul was a dull creature with no more sense than a clam when it came to remembering the past. Yet she remembered how to gut a fish, how to bank a fire, and how to tie a lashing or a knot. But not me.

  “Have you any seasoning?” she asked.

  “None,” he said. “Had I a kettle we could boil salt water and make salt.”

  “A kettle,” she said, “would be a fine thing.”

  She tossed the fish guts on the pile, spitted the two fish, and laid the spit in its place above the fire. Her lips knew how to speak, yet the life she had lived with him was cast adrift on the flat sea of her empty memory. He was marooned, and for company he had the constant torture of the face that he loved.

  “Cariña,” he said, and he held out his hands to her. Perhaps her lips remembered more than mere speech. She came to him, her eyes lowered, modest, coy, and she took his hands and raised her face, ready to play the part of the princess in the fairy tale. Their lips met, hers soft and yielding, his shy and tentative, and they lingered in osculation, the fisherman waiting for some heat to warm them both, but nothing came. His beloved pulled away, and she opened her eyes into his, and she shook her head no.

  “That’s not the story we’re in,” she said.

  So it isn’t, thought the fisherman. His love for her was constant, he had always thought so, yet it needed to be fed with her love for him, and so was perhaps a lesser love than he had always believed. They let go their hands and turned away from each other and stared into the hot coals beneath the spitted fish.

  “What story is this?” the fisherman said. “I thought I knew, but I’ve lost my way.”

  His beloved considered, and her lips parted several times as if she were about to speak. “I do not know,” she said at last. “It’s as if I am filled with half-remembered dreams. I see their shape, but the people in them have no names.”

  The fisherman nodded his assent. If they knew the story they were in, they would know what to do next.

  He sat on the driftwood log and picked up his spear. He felt the blade with his thumb, and wished for a whetstone, for although the blade was not yet dulled, he knew it would need sharpening before the day was out. There was a faint smell on the breeze that told him rain was coming. He had a shelter that needed to be enlarged if it were to hold the two of them this evening.

  Now here was a story he knew well. All his life, harsh weather had been his mistress. She would be obeyed, or he must suffer. It was time to get to work.

  §

  The crow sat on his favored perch, drowsy in the morning light, as was his custom. The cedar tree was fragrant with pitch, but not nearly so fragrant as his musings about Dewi Sri. Gone from his thoughts was his usual morning reverie about the tasty morsels he had torn from the flesh of the dead the night before. His head was filled with the black shine of her coif, gleaming in the light of the sun, like feathers preened to perfection. Her wings were more beauteous than a doubled rainbow. Such colors! Such iridescence! Such divinely angled barbs!

  Contrary to his usual practice, the crow sat on his perch in his man form, his legs dangling, his skin oiled, his chest broad with pride. He was the undisputed King of the Dead, he was the master of all he surveyed, and now fate had sent him a woman—a goddess, no less, worthy of being his consort. Yesterday all he had cared about was fortifying his hold on power, and enjoying the privileges of a divine ruler. He’d had no thought of a companion, no intimation of the heat simmering in his loins, no desire for the touch of another. Today he could think of nothing else. He held his hands in front of himself, and saw for the first time that they were meant for no other purpose than to touch the skin of a woman, that his fingers had life only to trace the curve of her lips. He would give his kingdom and more to touch her bounteous breasts. How he longed to nuzzle his beak between them! Such uplift! Such heft! Such perky little nipples!

  So what if that flaming dingleberry of a fisherman, against all odds, had found a way to revive his beloved clam—let him. His quest for breast milk, after all, had led the goddess to the Isle of the Dead, and soon she would be his. She wanted him, did she not? Was that not the meaning of that look she had given him? He had no experience of the fairer sex to guide him, but his breast was filled with desire for her, and that was all that mattered.

  It was a fair day on the inlet, the sun warm, the breeze off the sea fresh, and the sky above a fervid blue. And there she was, Dewi Sri, in all her glory, circling the inlet, her wings spread wide and flecked with gold. His heart soared at the sight of her, for she had stolen it with a single glance, a heart he did not even know he had until he had lost it to her.

  But she was not alone up there. The unmistakably sinister shape of the frigate bird joined her, and they flew lazy circles in tandem. He had never liked that meddling frigate bird, but now he despised him. That son of a fart was not fit to clean up her guano, let alone fly with her. She was more beguiling than the Bride of Babylon, more enticing than the glitter and gleam of ten thousand gold and silver goblets, and the frigate bird was a foul, lowborn thief, known to steal the eggs of other birds for his breakfast.

  The crow passed his arm in front of himself and took on his crow form. His lady was clearly in need of companionship of a better quality than that vile, shite-eating vulture, that sluggardly scalawag, that pompous, piratical poltroon. It was time to show this awkward Autolycus{6} of a rival what he was up against: the awfully handsome, audaciously autocratic, aw-aw-awe-inspiringly clever regent of the Isle of the Dead, King Crow.

  “Aw aw aw aw aw,” said the crow, and he let loose a gobbet of guano to lighten his load before he sailed off his perch,

  The crow flapped his wings and lifted himself higher and higher, until he was well above Dewi Sri and that miserable miscreant. How dare he annoy her with his pathetic and hopeless infatuation. The crow let the wind aloft carry him over the top of the circling pair, and he dropped his shoulders and glided down into formation with them, on the other side of Dewi Sri from the frigate bird.

  “Hallo, Goddess,” he said, “’Tis a fine fair day for a flight of fancy, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Good day, Crow,” said the goddess. “And yes, it is. A fine day indeed.”

  “No one invited you up here, you poxy pip,” said the frigate bird. “Your mother’s tits are on a pole for all to see in the center of the souk.”

  “Lick my hairy onions,” said the crow. “Your grandmother was a barboog, your mother is a barboog, and you are the son of a barboog.”

  “Your mother was a maggot,” said the frigate bird, “and you are nothing more than a pimple on the arse end of a low-flying duck.”

  “Boys,” said Dewi Sri. “Behave yourselves. I insist on some decorum from my suitors.” She turned to the frigate bird and said, “Perhaps you should go on about your business. We shall renew our acquaintance anon.”

  The frigate bird nodded and hid his disappointment with a fierce glare at the crow. “May a thousand infections afflict your zibik,” he said, and to the goddess he said, “I shall take my leave now. I look forward to continuing our conversation in more suitable circumstances.” And then he flew off westward, across the Sea of Bones.

  “Your mother’s rooster is covered in gummas,” the crow called after him. The goddes
s put a finger to her lips and bade him be quiet.

  “My apologies, dear lady,” said the crow. “He is not worthy of you, and to see you together is maddening.”

  “The lover who is worthy of me has mastery over their own feelings,” said the goddess. She gave him the serenity of her smile, and he felt himself calmed. In return he opened his beak in a broad grin, although to anyone watching, he would have appeared to be a fledgling simp begging his mother for food.

  “May I show you my kingdom?” said the crow.

  “I should be enchanted,” said the goddess.

  Together they flew higher, so that the whole of the Isle of the Dead was below them. The inlet was but a small portion, but when asked by the goddess to what use the rest of the isle was put, the crow was slightly flummoxed.

  “There’s nothing much out there,” he said. “Empty land, a forest full of quiet, and not a creature stirring. A dull place, with nothing bright and shiny to delight the eye, and no other crow for company.”

  Dewi Sri allowed a gentle wingtip to brush his with the lightest of touches, and she said, “You’ve lived here a long, lonely time, haven’t you?” The crow nodded, afraid to speak lest the tremble that would surely afflict his voice become a sob, and the sob become a shriek. He had never felt his loneliness so keenly before. In fact, he had never felt it at all, fixated as he had always been on his own lowly position in the spirit world, and how he might rise to power. “You shall never be lonely again,” said the goddess, “for now, you have me.” And at this, the crow wept.

  §

  They flew out over the Sea of Bones, chatting about this and that, the way they both loved long walks on the beach, and the glow of an open fire, and a dinner by candlelight. The crow was so besotted with her that he easily imagined himself as an entirely new being, wise and forgiving and untroubled by the vicissitudes of regency. Yet the whole time they flew together, the gold hibiscus flower at the front of her coil of hair and the flashes of gold from her feathers snatched at his attention, and he stole sidelong glances at her breasts, and dreamt of fondling them with his hands.