“We have so much in common,” said the crow. “Where have you been all my life?”
“I have been asking myself the same thing about you,” said the goddess. They were headed back to the inlet, and the beach along the edge of the Sea of Bones lay before them. “Shall we tarry down there a moment, and indulge ourselves in a long walk along the shore?”
“It would be my pleasure,” said the crow. They coasted down together, wingtip to wingtip. The moment the crow’s feet were on the ground, he passed his hand in front of himself and his body took on its man shape, although his head remained, as ever, a crow’s head. He took the hand of the goddess in his, the thrill of touching her running like . . . like . . . like lightning in his veins! They walked along the sand, paying no mind to all the bones scattered about by the surf.
“The sunrise must be beautiful here,” said Dewi Sri.
“Oh, yes,” said the crow, who was struck by how sagacious her observation was. Of course the sunrise would be beautiful here. He had lived on the inlet for a thousand times a thousand years, and yet he had never watched the sun rise over the Sea of Bones. This woman, with her wisdom and her keen sense of beauty, would make a new crow of him, a kinder, gentler crow. A compassionate crow. Not only would he see the suffering of his subjects, but he would regret, ever so deeply, that it had to be so.
“I can well imagine,” said Dewi Sri, “coming here after a night of passion, and watching the sun’s orb rise over the waves with you.”
The goddess turned to the crow, and the perfect bow of her lips widened, and the tip of her tongue licked her upper lip. She closed her eyes and offered him a kiss. The crow leaned in, but his beak got in the way, and he had to settle for rubbing it along the side of her neck. His breath was rank, but she would bring him some cloves to chew when next she saw him.
She caressed the back of his head and whispered to him that she would like nothing better than to watch the light of dawn break from the shelter of his arms. “My dear one,” she said, “there is an old saying where I come from. We must harvest the rice before we can cook it.”
“Rice?” said the crow. “Not something I’ve eaten much, but I like mine raw.”
“Such a funny fellow”—the goddess laughed, pulling back to look him in the eye—“such a rapscallion, such a wit. We shall spend many a happy hour amusing each other, of that I am sure. But darling,” she said, and at this word, the crow’s loins grew hot, “I am a goddess, and it would be unseemly if we consorted together in the wild. I shall need a proper bed in which to receive you.”
“A bed?” said the crow. He was used to sleeping on a perch in a tree, or on the cormorant’s shoulders. Long ago he’d built himself a nest far up a cedar tree, but he scarcely spent any time there, and in any case, he had a feeling that the goddess wanted something a bit more elaborate. Dewi looked up at him, and she stroked the length of his beak, and let the promise of her fancy for him shine forth from her eyes.
“Yes darling, a bed. A four-poster, with a canopy of finest silk, and thick bedding, of the softest goose down, and pillows scented with orchids. Our love must have a home fit for gods such as you and me.” She stroked his arms, tracing the curve of his muscles, and cooed her approval. “You’re so strong,” she said, “prove your love for me by granting me this wish.”
“Yes of course,” said the crow. He was dizzied with desire, and his hand rose with a mind of its own to touch her breast, but she caught it in hers and brought his palm to her lips for a kiss.
“All in good time,” she said. Her smile made his heart melt. She stepped back from him a few paces and raised her arms above her head, bringing her palms together. She began to hum a low melody, and the crow felt his chest glow, as if a crimson flame were burning beneath his breastbone. Her wings were spread in all their glory, and she danced for him, her hips swaying from side to side, her head moving back and forth in the space between her arms, the bounty of her breasts mesmerizing. His eyes were half closed, his eyelids heavy with the ardor he felt for her. The front of his breechcloth bulged with his zibik, and he was completely besotted with her pulchritude.
“Your wish,” he said, “is my command.”
“Under my thumb,” the goddess hummed, “Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-mm-hmm.”
§
By the end of the day the fisherman had more than doubled the size of his lean-to. His beloved had gathered a mound of dried grass and laid it out for her bed. Together they wove branch after branch into the raddled roof, until only the smallest of raindrops would find their way through. They spoke little, and let the rhythm of the work render pleasant the passing of the hours. When the roof was finished, his beloved lay herself down in her bed and closed her eyes.
“Cariña,” the fisherman said, his pet name for her spilling forth from his lips as naturally as breath itself, “I must go into the forest. I shall return soon.”
“Mm-hmm,” said his beloved, her voice drowsy and languid. She has every reason to be tired, the fisherman thought, having come from clamshell to full stature in a day’s time. But did she know how alluring she sounded, and did she have any idea how he struggled not to crawl in and lay his amorous body next to hers? She could be a tease, he knew this, the better to arouse his interest, but this torture she worked on him unwittingly was almost more than he could bear.
In the shade of the forest the moss on the tree trunks was thick and lush. He peeled great swaths of it, fragrant with the earthy smell of the bark beneath, until he had gathered an armload so huge he could barely see around it to walk. He brought the moss back to the lean-to, where his beloved lay sleeping, and he lined his own bed with it, and he covered her with a blanket of green. She murmured her thanks, and then sleep took her from him.
The fisherman backed out of the lean-to. He fed his fire, and he took note of the darkening rain clouds offshore. He walked down to the inlet, and he stripped off his breeches, and he went for a swim.
He swam the length of the inlet and then returned to his starting point, where he could see the glow of his fire. He turned on his back, and was soon joined by the pelican, who floated next to him.
“Ho, fisherman,” said the pelican. “How does the evening find you?”
“Ho, pelican,” said the fisherman. “Let us return to the shore, and I shall tell you.”
The fisherman swam shoreward a few strokes, the pelican paddling along beside him, until his feet found the bottom of the inlet, and he waded onto the sand, and then on to his fire. The pelican joined him, squatting by his side on the driftwood log. The fisherman fed the fire, and then said, “Let us keep our voices low, for my beloved sleeps just there, and she is weary.”
“It must be vexious,” his friend said, “to have your beloved so close, and yet she does not know you.”
“It is,” said the fisherman. “It burdens my heart. She is exactly as I remember her. Her voice is the same. The bronze of her skin and the blue of her eyes, the same. The way she guts a fish, the same.”
“Just when you’ve found her again,” the pelican said, “you lose her. Tell me, what was she like when first you met?”
“Aye, what a beauty she was. And still is.” His tone became that of a teller of tales, of one who knows his story well because he has oft told it before, if only to himself. “That first night, in the Firefly, she served me a flagon of ale, and she was shapely in her sarong, the sway of her hips as she walked away a fine thing to behold. Her manner was saucy and brash, as if she knew exactly what she wanted from me, and that it was her choice whether or not I was worthy of her favors. Her blouse was of cotton, a finely woven buckram that lay softly and quite fetchingly on her bosom. She took a coquette’s pleasure in the game she played with me, leaning in closer than needed to set my ale on the table, her cleavage but inches from my hopeful hands. I watched her as she flirted with every sailor in the alehouse, from callow youth to seasoned jack tar like myself, gauging my chances. There was a bagnio down the way, a bath house in the oriental style
, with women ready to sell me their affections, but I held myself aloof from those pleasures, preferring to think the barmaid fancied me, and that she might claim me as her own.”
The pelican’s striped bill lay in the fisherman’s lap, and her yellow eye gazed up at him, rapt. “This is the way of it in the material world?” said the pelican. “Tell me more.”
The fisherman’s fingers were drawn to the fine feathers along her neck, and he stroked them as he went on with his tale.
“I spent the next evening in the Firefly, having bunked alone the night before. Each time she brought me my ale she stopped to talk. Was I sailing on the morning tide? No? And why not? Was there something keeping me in port? ‘I am not ready to sail,’ I told her. ‘I’ve had enough of the sea, and this isle of spices is as fair a land as ever I have seen. Perhaps I’ll settle here.’ ‘I’ve heard that before,’ she told me, ‘but I’ve never known a sailor who could settle anywhere for very long. You’ve all got a woman in the next port,’ said she, but her smile was friendly, as if having a woman in the next port were not so great a sin. ‘Once I was that sailor,’ I told her. ‘But now you’re not?’ she said, with a saucy curve to the rise in her eyebrow.
“Late on the third night she sat herself down on my lap and gave me a nuzzle. ‘Come to my hut,’ she told me, her lips to my ear, ‘and let us see what kind of love we might build together.’”
The pelican considered this. She had no experience of love, nor lust, save what she had observed in the newly dead after they came off the canoe. They often looked around for their mates, who were seldom there, and they lamented their absence. But there were others who were pleased to be free of those they left behind, and still others who took the opportunity to couple with a stranger, once they understood where they were, as if death gave them license to do something they had always wanted to do, but had not done.
“Were you true to her always?” she asked. “Or did lust lead you astray?”
The fisherman considered a moment before he answered. “My love for her is as constant as the stars by which all sailors navigate,” he said, “but it was not always true. Once, I sailed from Ambon, where we lived, to Qali, where the great ships came from the north to fill their holds with ivory and spices and tea. I was gone some several months, chasing the silver coin I wanted to build us a better home. In Qali I crept down Cock Alley when my loneliness was too much to bear, dipping my wick in the punch houses and bagnios. In my absence, my beloved took some solace in the arms of a freebooter who arrived on a privateer. But the freebooter was gone by the time I returned, and forgotten as soon as my lips kissed hers.
“We did not hold these dalliances against each other, neither did we speak of them overmuch when we were together. But my beloved wanted me to stay home. Not to keep me in her bed, but to keep me in her heart, as she told me, for she missed me sorely when I was gone, and faulted me my need for the adventure of the sea, and for silver, just as she faulted herself for falling in love with a sailor. Still, our love was as fierce as ever, and we reveled in each other’s company night and day.”
“So that is the way of it in the material world?” the pelican said. “One grows lonely, and then wanders?”
“Many wander,” the fisherman said, “and many do not. For my beloved and me what mattered is that we always returned.”
“As you have come here, to find her again,” said the pelican. The pelican spread her wings, airing them in the cool evening air. She looked the fisherman up with one yellow eye and down with the other, thinking what a strapping good man he was. Cariña was lucky to have him, and yet, she had him not.
“For such a fine tale, I will bring you a fish,” she said, and flew off over the inlet.
With all this remembering of his days with Cariña, the fisherman’s loins were heavy with blood, and his lonely heart rattled in his chest. There was but one cure for what he felt. He must have her love again.
Patience, he told himself. She must come to him of her own free will.
§
Far above the inlet, at the top of a column of rising air that spiraled perpetually upward in the warmth of the day, Dewi Sri circled, alone. ’Twas one of the pleasures of having wings, to rise on this air current, entering at the bottom and gliding to the top, as she had watched, the day before, the frigate bird rise. Though he was lighter than she, his form more slender, and so he rode the current without ever flapping his wings. He was, in the air, both elegant and nefarious, as he had been in her bed.
Now the frigate bird entered the column of rising air at the bottom, and rose up to meet the goddess. His heart was full of ardor, and his mind was full of courtly phrases he might use to woo her. For he would have her as his own, if he could, whatever that might take, and he let the spiral current of air take him to her.
They flew side by side and wingtip to wingtip, the frigate bird stealing glances at the goddess, and the goddess herself serenely facing the wind. She settled her breath, and thus calmed, found the balance point within.
“Where is that scoundrel crow?” the frigate bird asked.
“He is sleeping on his perch,” the goddess said, a well-chuffed smile on her lips, “having been up all night, vexed because he knows not how to build a bed.”
Excellent, thought the frigate bird. I shall seize the moment.
“Look at them,” she said, pointing with her eyes at the fisherman and his beloved, wading in the inlet below. “He is full of desire, his heart is ruptured with it, and it is all for naught. That which is eternal in humans is without memory, and his beloved does not know him. Therefore he suffers.”
“As does she,” said the frigate bird, “for the lack of desire for a man who has declared himself to her. If her memory were restored, would she not love him as before?”
“Perhaps,” said the goddess. “But when love’s moment is lost, it is seldom recovered.”
“Is that our tragedy as well?” said the frigate bird. His heart aflutter, he took the liberty of brushing his feathery wingtip on the wingtip of the goddess. “What of the night of passion we spent in your palace? We are lovers, are we not?”
They flew on in silence, the goddess directing her steady gaze at the far circle of the horizon, the wind molding her sarong to the fair form of her legs.
“We are all of us but parts of a pattern not of our own making,” said the goddess, “and will always be so. You know this. Let the moments fold themselves, like the beautiful origami they are. And do not cling—it will only cause you pain.”
Dewi’s words, so diplomatically phrased, were nonetheless a dagger piercing his heart. He was being spurned, however gently. He let out a long sigh, and his throat pouch collapsed.
“So this is not our time?” said he.
“This is not our day,” said the goddess, and she gave the frigate bird the boon of her serene smile. “How can you not know this?” said she, “You, who travel outside the bounds of time, do you not know your own destiny?”
“Even a traveler such as I has many blind spots,” the frigate bird said. “I see the threads of fate, but not always my own place in them.”
“The Turropsi themselves have blind spots,” said Dewi Sri, “for they did not foresee that this woman would have no memory of the fisherman.”
“They told you she would know him?” said the frigate bird.
“Not in so many words,” said the goddess, “but ’twas clear they expected her to.”
The frigate bird considered, and said, “If not even the Turropsi know the way forward, we are in greater peril than we knew.”
“So it would seem,” said she. “It shifts the burden of planning onto us.” The wind fell off just then, the two of them dropping precipitously for a moment until the air held them aloft again.
“The way forward leads through stormy weather,” said the frigate bird.
Dewi again pointed at the fisherman and his beloved below. “He needs a diversion,” the goddess said. As do you, she thought. “A man in th
e throes of love spurned needs something to take his mind off his woe.”
He nodded, his spirits buoyed by the hope that if he helped Dewi Sri she might bestow her favors on him again. “I have just the thing,” said the frigate bird. “Grant me but a few days, and we shall have the beginnings of a new enterprise.”
“Let it be so,” said the goddess.
They flew on together, circling the inlet, and the world around them spun, as indifferent to the tumult of feelings within the frigate bird as it was to the serenity of the goddess.
§
The cormorant came upon the fisherman as he sat alone by his fire, the remains of a roasted fish beside him.
“Ho,” said the cormorant, “might I join you?”
The fisherman barely looked up, but he offered, with the palm of his hand, the remainder of the driftwood log. His beloved had wandered off and was now swimming in the inlet. She had turned down his offer to accompany her. The cormorant hopped up on the log and spread his wings to dry them.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but this cooking of the fish before one eats it seems like a lot of bother, and surely it ruins the delicious wriggle of a live fish sliding down one’s throat, does it not?”
“I suppose it does,” said the fisherman, “but the thought of a live fish in my belly makes me bilious. I’ve eaten fish raw, in the islands of Nippon, and fish salted and stored in barrels on long sea voyages, but I prefer mine cooked over an open fire. The smoke gives it a meaty flavor that I quite like.”
“Perhaps I’ll try it sometime,” said the cormorant, though he was certain he would not care for it. The fisherman stirred his coals with a stick, not, it seemed, because the fire needed it, but rather to pass the time. He was deep in some rumination, his brow troubled, his mouth turned down at the corners. The cormorant was not one to intrude, so he sat quietly for a while, until the fisherman finally spoke.
The Alehouse at the End of the World Page 17
