The Alehouse at the End of the World

by Stevan Allred

  The frigate bird snatched up the rope with his beak, and tried to drag the crow forward. “Quickly!” he said. He pointed with a wingtip at the falling heart of the beast, and then at the ground next to the pyre, covered with the beast’s black blood. “Drag him there!” he shouted. Cariña hesitated, still afflicted, the pelican thought, by her affections for the crow. But the pelican did not hold back, and she grabbed the crow by his feet, and dragged him to where the frigate bird pointed.

  “Leave him!” the frigate bird yelled. “Run!”

  The pelican looked up and saw the heart bearing down on her, and that glance upward nearly cost her life. She leapt away headlong, and felt the wind of the falling heart on the soles of her feet. So close was it. So near to death.

  She felt the thud of the heart’s landing in her chest as she lay on the sand. She heard the stomach-churning crunch of the crow’s demise. “Huzzah!” she called out, “I’m all right!” She stood, and turned to look.

  The heart was enormous. She walked around it to where her companions stood, Cariña with her lips parted, and a face ready to laugh or cry or both at once, the frigate bird with his head cocked to the side, the better to see what lay before him.

  “Ye gods,” the frigate bird said, “it’s as big as a house.”

  The crow was not to be seen, save for his feet, which stuck out from under the beast’s heart on one side, and, less than a fathom away, the tip of his beak. They stared in silence, all of them with breath held, waiting to see if the crow would move, for they knew that the fisherman had tried to kill him, and could not, and that the crow had sprung back to life time and again.

  The pelican then spied a bloody bit of gristle on the sand, just beyond the tip of the crow’s beak. His syrinx! she thought, the secret to singing forth the souls of the dead, and so she gobbled it down. Now she would have the power, and she would use it more wisely than he.

  “Is he dead?” Cariña asked.

  “May it be so,” the frigate bird said. “The crow and the Kiamah both.”

  He bent down and pecked a vicious peck at the crow’s feet. They lay there, as still as death, save for the welling up of blood. The frigate bird pecked and pecked again, drawing more blood, and more blood, until the crow’s feet were covered in ruby red. Still there was no response.

  He stood. “We’ve killed him,” he said. “It must be so.” Yet still he stretched his neck out, and turned his head from side to side, looking at the crow’s feet with first one eye, and then the other.

  “Surely the heart of the Kiamah beast is god enough to kill the crow,” the pelican said. They all nodded at one another, hope rising in them. They had done it.

  The goddess, with the fisherman on her back, landed next to them, and they were both covered in the beast’s black blood. They took note of the crow’s feet, and of the others gawking, and of the blood on the crow’s feet and the frigate bird’s bill. The fisherman slid down and planted his feet on the firm ground again.

  “Both of them?” the fisherman said. “We’ve slain two tyrants with one blow?”

  The goddess looked upward into the dark night and felt a great relief. This is what the Turropsi had asked of her, and she had done it. “’Tis a fortune beyond good. We are all of us blessed.”

  “It took more than fortune to do this,” said the pelican. “We all had a hand in it.”

  “It’s true,” said the frigate bird, “for we gave the crow some encouragement as to where he might situate himself to best witness the end of the beast.” His bloody bill stretched wide in a piratical grin.

  Cariña let out a great sigh and turned away, to hide the tumult within her from the fisherman. She had wanted her lover back, but could not have him without his darker side. Her lover, her tormenter. And now he was dead at her hand. She was dizzied, her head spinning, and she sat down hard on the sand.

  The fisherman thought to comfort her, but did not, for he knew what she wanted to hide from him, and was wounded still by her desire for the crow. Moreover, the death of the crow made him want to shout huzzah, and to hide that feeling from his beloved was a favor he chose not to grant. The pelican, for her part, felt something she had never felt before. She felt triumphant. She had helped to kill the crow, and though killing was a bad thing, the death of the crow was not.

  It was at this moment that the Kiamah’s heart began to beat again.

  “Curse me!” shrieked the goddess. “After all we have done the beast still lives?”

  “So it would appear,” said the fisherman. He looked at his blood-drenched arms, and he, too, sat himself down on the sand, too weary to shed tears.

  “Why does his heart still beat?” the woman asked.

  The wings of the goddess drooped, and in the furrows of her worried brow, she showed her great age.

  “Because,” said Dewi Sri, “I am not a greater god than he.”

  §

  They sat around the fisherman’s fire with the beating of the Kiamah’s heart louder than ever before, and a constant reminder that they had failed to slay the beast. The crow’s death, which might have buoyed their spirits, was as nothing if the Kiamah still lived. From time to time they heard in the far distance a splintering sound, and felt the ground beneath then tremble and shift, and they knew the beast was hungry, and trying to eat his way into the land of the living. To the west they heard the sound of waves pounding on the beach beyond the mouth of the inlet, and they knew the storm would soon arrive.

  Their only plan was to wait for the canoe of the dead to arrive, to gather as many conaria as they might, and then to feed them to the Kiamah beast so as to sedate him again. What would happen then they did not know, and it was this that kept them silent, most especially Dewi Sri, who was as forlorn as she had ever been in all her days and nights. She was their leader, and she had failed. She could not fathom what the Turropsi wanted of her, what more she might have done. Did they still want her to kill Cariña and the fisherman? No, their gambling had exposed how hollow their dicta were. She was responsible for her own fate. They all were.

  When the pelican asked if she should sing to the dead that night to free their souls, the goddess barely raised her head.

  “Yes, I suppose,” said she.

  The pelican went off by herself to practice. Her song, which she devised in the moment, was made of clownish honks and squawks and high-pitched barks, a song that sounded like laughter, and she imagined that when the dead heard it, they too would fall to laughing, and as they laughed their souls would creep up their throats and spill out onto the sand. The dead would then stare at their souls with foolish grins on their faces, happy as only the half-witted can be happy, and the pelican would ask them to stand in a line and join hands, and when they did, she would lead them to the sacred fire.

  There they would form a circle around the red glow of the embers, and the dead, cold as they were, would be drawn to the heat, and one by one and many by many they would lie down in the embers and catch fire. Their souls would by then be burrowed into the sand, soon to be safe inside their newly formed shells, as happy as only clams can be. Their bodies would roast away, and no one would be made to suffer. She had the power now, and this thought made her breast swell with pride, for she would rule the Isle of the Dead with a kindness and a benevolence never before seen, not even when Raven ruled.

  She returned to the fisherman’s fire after a time, the wind now blowing stiffly, and her head still filled with thoughts of how she would act as ruler. Should she appear in her pelican form, or in her old-woman shape, or might she stand before the dead in the shape of Cariña, who was more comely than the other two? Her thoughts were interrupted by rain, which fell in scattered drops at first. They all looked up, and lightning split the darkness above them, and then came a great clap of thunder. The storm was upon them, and the thunder was so loud it drowned out even the beating of the beast’s heart. They all stood, but before they could make their way into the fisherman’s house, the fish eagles swooped in out
of the darkness and landed before them.

  “The canoe,” the she-eagle said. “Capsized.”

  “The dead,” the he-eagle said, “gone overboard.”

  “Failed,” the she-eagle said, her eyes sad as she gazed at her husband.

  “As never before,” the he-eagle said.

  They stepped into the light of the fire, and now our small band of heroes saw that their bodies were riddled with splinters of wood.

  “Strange times,” the she-eagle said.

  “End times,” the he-eagle said. “The sky rains wood.”

  They were covered in blood, both of them, and their bodies trembled. The wind drove rain sideways, blowing harder than ever, and all of them leaned into it lest they be knocked over. From out of the storm-dark sky a great splinter slammed into the sand and stuck there, quivering like an arrow. It was taller than any of them. More splinters filled the wind, mixed in with the rain. They covered their faces and ran into the fisherman’s house. There the walls and the roof protected them, though the wind was already peeling bits of the roof away.

  The storm beat at the house from the outside, while inside they huddled together, the shutters shuttered, seeking what comfort they could from each other’s company. None of them knew what would happen, but they all felt that the end of everything was at hand. The fish eagles nestled together in a corner, leaning against each other for support, the she-eagle with her wings round her husband. She rocked him gently, as if he were a nestling still in downy feathers. The rest of them, save the pelican, fell into fits of sleep, for they were all exhausted. The pelican wept silently, for she had been counting on her moment of glory as the ruler of the Isle of the Dead. Now, it seemed, that moment would never come. The canoe was no more.

  And all those souls, lost forever. ’Twas almost as much a horror as when the crow ate them. The pelican wept, for the lost souls, for the thousands of crows dead in the battle, for the fisherman’s suffering, for all of it, even the crow himself. Her own sorrow was the least of it. And yet she cried for that as well. But at last, hollowed out by the shedding of the great rabble of her tears, she gathered herself and went to the fish eagles, and offered to vuln herself, to heal them with a drop of her own blood.

  The she-eagle shook her head. “Too, too late.” Her voice was tremulous. Slivers of wood scattered the ground before her.

  The pelican stretched her neck out, the better to look at the he-eagle. The she-eagle pointed with her bill at her husband’s neck, where a large splinter pierced him. Much blood had flowed from that wound.

  “You should have told me,” the pelican cried. “I might have saved him.”

  “He died almost as soon as we nested here,” the she-eagle said.

  “I have the power to save lives,” the pelican said. She was shaking, so bereft did she feel. She lived to serve, and had been denied the chance twice now in a matter of hours. “That fellow over there, the fisherman, he lives because my blood saved him when he washed up on our shore.” She shook her head. “I could have saved your husband. I could have.”

  The she-eagle looked at her with sad, wet eyes. “Thank you,” she said. “My husband,” she said, rocking him still, “all done with living.”

  The pelican bent her neck and pushed the tip of her bill into her chest feathers.

  “Thank you,” the she-eagle said, “but no.”

  “No?” the pelican said. “You must, or you too will die.”

  The she-eagle shook her head, her round eyes fierce, and brooking no cajolement from the pelican.

  “End times,” she said. “No more living.” Her hooked beak was built to tear fish apart, for such was the way of things, that the living fed on the living. Now the she-eagle, her beak delicate and precise, pulled a sliver from her flesh with it, and let it fall to the ground.

  “Help me join my husband,” said she.

  The pelican watched her pull more slivers. Fresh blood flowed from the wounds, staining her feathers. The pelican had spent her days healing her friends when the occasion arose, rare though that was on the Isle of the Dead, and the healing of the fisherman had been one of her finest moments. But now this fish eagle wanted not to be healed, but to be helped on to her death.

  On the Isle of the Dead the dying of all those people had been a thing that happened elsewhere, and she had been an instrument in the cycle of life. But so much had happened, with the crow, with the goddess, with Cariña. The pelican had been to war, and she had felt a new kind of love when she lay herself down with the fisherman. She was not the same pelican she had been before he arrived. She was the pelican who had snatched up the crow’s broken tether and brought him down. Yes, yes she was. She could do this.

  She leaned in, her eyes on the she-eagle’s, who nodded at her, yes, I really mean it, yes, help me. Such a personal thing it was, to bring about the death of another. The pelican tried to pluck a sliver from the she-eagle’s breast with her bill, but she had trouble distinguishing between the she-eagle’s feathers and the slivers. She kept trying, anxious to be helpful in any way she could, rooting around as if she were looking for feather mites, but her efforts were so inept as to be clownish. The she-eagle opened her beak and chir-chir-chirupped at her, chir-chir-chirrup, chirrup-chirrup-chirrup, and the pelican understood that even in this dire moment, there was room for laughter. She honked her own laughter back at the she-eagle. Then she stepped back, and she waved her wing in front of herself, and took on her old-woman shape. She used her hands to pluck slivers from the she-eagle’s flesh, and the she-eagle looked back at her with gratitude in her eyes.

  The pelican pulled a particularly stout sliver near the she-eagle’s heart, and now her blood began to spurt in time with her heartbeat. The pelican reached her hand out to stop the blood, but then caught herself, and pulled back.

  “Yes,” the she-eagle said. “Let it flow.”

  The pelican sat down beside the she-eagle, and put her hand on her head, soothing her, she hoped, as she sped on her way to death. The she-eagle closed her inner eyelids, rendering her eyes cloudy. Her breathing grew rapid, and then slowed. She let her head drop down, overcome now with a great fatigue. The spurts of blood slowed, and then stopped, and the she-eagle’s eyes grew dim, and she was gone.

  The pelican reached out to her, her hand trembling, until her fingertips touched the delicate skin of her outer eyelids. She closed them, one last good thing to do for a fallen comrade. She took the two bodies, he-eagle and she-eagle, and laid them down together in the corner where they had nestled. She took the moss from the bed where she had slept, and she covered them with it. She bade them a silent farewell, and she wondered where their spirits might be heading, for the way of things that had been the Isle of the Dead was no more.

  The rest of her companions slept, but she could not join them. Too many thoughts tumbled through her head. They had no way to sedate the Kiamah beast. The goddess, she was sure, was out of plans. None of them was god enough to slay the beast, but perhaps she could reason with him. She knew him better than any of them.

  Outside the storm slowly blew itself out, and the raining down of splinters abated. It would be best, the pelican thought, if she went all on her own to visit the Kiamah. The beast trusted her, and she him, and she must now use that trust to persuade him not to devour the material world. She was certain that he ate things out of habit rather than hunger. She would promise him more sea grass, to soothe his troubled belly. He needed roughage to aid his digestion, but it needn’t be from the driftwood log. If his belly were less bilious, his own good nature would emerge.

  She would tame the beast with her love, and thereby save them all.

  While the others slept in the light of dawn, the pelican flew to the far corner of the sky, and entered the beast’s throat. She flew upward through the familiar passage, singing a soft lullaby as she went, and crawled along the slab of meat that was the beast’s tongue. He seemed to be at rest. She took note of the splinters of wood stuck between his molars. Perhaps he
was like a puppy, chewing on things he should not chew, but out of mere boredom rather than any real malice toward the material world. He was a reasonable fellow, she was sure of that, for in all the times she had been here, he had never once tried to eat her. Now she crawled out between his teeth, and stood on the tip of his tail, and in her Cariña shape she sang a hymn of praise to the beast.

  O Kiamah, O Kiamah,

  you are the beast most beloved!

  How often you give us delight,

  devouring all within your sight

  O Kiamah, O Kiamah,

  you are the beast most beloved!{10}

  The beast raised his lazy eyelids, which he never completely closed, and he looked at the pelican with his lurid green eyes, and he felt around with his tongue for the treats the pelican usually brought him.

  “How are you this fine day?” said the pelican.

  “Mmmfh,” said the beast. “Where are my tasty tidbits?”

  “Well, my pet,” said the pelican, “it seems that there’s been a storm, and the canoe of the dead has been capsized.”

  “Mm-hmmf,” said the beast. “Then find me something else to eat.”

  The pelican took on her pelican shape, and flew to the spot above and behind the beast’s eye where his ear hole was.

  “Listen, my pet,” said the pelican. “I’ve come to warn you. Bad things will happen if you eat your way into the material world.”

  “Bad things? What sort of bad things?”

  The pelican had no ready answer to the Kiamah’s question, and so she decided in this case, it was best to lie to him. A good lie might save his life.

  “The earth shakes, and rivers run backward. Kings fall down from their thrones, and—umm, umm—and the temples of the gods are torn asunder!”

  “Mmmmfh,” said the beast. “You see how powerful I am.”

  “But people will be hurt!”

  “Mm-hmm,” said the beast. “Why should I care about that?”

  “Oh, greedy-guts,” said the pelican. “Of course you care. You have a great big heart.”