The Alehouse at the End of the World

by Stevan Allred

  The Kiamah beast licked the tip of his tail with his tongue to soothe himself. “What I have of late,” he said, “is a great big case of heartburn. What is going on down there on the Isle of the Dead? I feel a discombobulation inside of me.”

  The pelican took on her Cariña shape, and scratched the beast around his ear hole, something that he had enjoyed in the past. She really had not thought this through. They had tried to kill him, cutting his heartstring the way they had, and he felt the injury of that, even though he did not know the cause. She had bought his affection with grisly treats, but without the canoe of the dead, there was nothing to harvest for him. She must find a way to reach him.

  The pelican took on her pelican shape and flew to the tip of the beast’s tail. There she shifted into her Cariña shape, and she swayed her hips back and forth. The beast took no notice, not that he ever had, but she needed his full attention. She pulled her sarong down, wearing it round her hips as the goddess did, baring her breasts. The fisherman was very fond of her breasts, and she hoped that the Kiamah would like them too.

  “Hmmmmf,” said the beast, “you look like a tasty morsel.” His tongue came out from between his lips, ready to slurp her up, and the pelican ran backward. This was not going at all well.

  She made one last attempt to reason with him. “Listen, my pet,” she said, “you can’t go on the rest of your life eating everything there is. Sooner or later you’ll run out of things to eat, and then what will you do?”

  The beast opened his jaws wide and yawned. His mouth was gargantuan, and there were scrapes on the inside of it, no doubt from the wood he had been eating. The pelican looked down at the driftwood log, and she could see there was a deep gouge in it, with the beast’s toothmarks roughening either side, and the wood within it splintered and torn. At the bottom of the gouge there was a long crack through which she could see the sky of the material world, with clouds passing by, and far, far below them was the world itself, where lived all its countless beings, and all of them at risk. A cloud leaked up through the crack, and with it the earthy smell of rain not yet fallen. Time was running out, for the beast was about to break through, and when he did, he would swallow it all, just as he had swallowed the spirit world. She had failed to stop him then. She must not fail now.

  “What would you have me do?” said he. “I am growing ever more hungry, and it is my nature to eat whatever is before me.” The beast licked his lips, and then he bared his fearsome teeth at her. “You, for example, are before me right now.”

  What could she offer him? She backed away from him, but there was really no escaping his reach. He could eat her up this moment, and then all would be lost.

  And then it came to her, that she was thinking like a woman, when she should be thinking like a pelican. She was, after all, a goddess. A lesser goddess than Dewi Sri, but she was goddess enough to have just what the beast needed.

  She ran forward to the tip of his tail, toward the very mouth that had swallowed the spirit world. She was done with reason, and she saw only one way to end this. Old greedy-guts, she would trick him. She took on her pelican shape, and she vulned herself, and she let drip a drop of her own blood onto the tip of the beast’s tail. She sang the song the crow had taught her, and the drop of her blood became a good-sized puddle. Then she stood back, and called out to the Kiamah beast, telling him to lick his tail, for there was a special treat for him there. His long tongue slithered out from between his fangs, and though the puddle of blood was tiny on the enormity of his tail, his tongue was dexterous, and sensitive. He found her blood, and he slurped it down, and it was good.

  “Mmm-hmmm,” said the beast, “delicious. Is there any more?”

  “Yes, lambkin. Does it calm you, and soothe you, and staunch the hunger in your belly?”

  “Mmm, perhaps.” The beast ran his tongue round the tip of his tail, licking at the pelican’s feet, and she couldn’t help herself: she laughed at his tickling touch. “Let me have some more,” said the beast, “and I will tell you how much it soothes me.”

  The pelican vulned herself again, and this time she let more of her blood flow, for the beast was large, and she wished to give him every opportunity to take the bait. Again she sang, and again the beast licked at the blood on his tail, beslobbering himself, and again he slurped it down. “Yes,” said he, “it is very soothing. A bit more, and I shall be ever so much better.”

  The pelican vulned herself yet again. She backed away from his slavering tongue, leaving a trail of blood, singing it larger, and the Kiamah swallowed more of his tail as he licked it clean. That’s it, old greedy-guts, she thought, keep going. Keep going, and you’ll swallow enough of your own tail to choke yourself to death. A bad, bad, terrible thing, to kill the Kiamah this way, but his death would be a good thing. She served the greatest good for the greatest number, and that was all that mattered. The beast ran his agile tongue round and round, slurping her blood in, groaning with pleasure all the while. So much pleasure that his lurid green eyes closed all the way.

  Ichorous love, that was her weapon. The beast, born from the bloodlust of fallen warriors, had never known a mother’s love. His tongue had yet to miss a drop of the pelican’s blood. What better way to trick this motherless beast than to bleed for him?

  She let a great deal more of her blood drip onto him, smearing it with her breast as she backed along his tail. She was getting just the slightest bit dizzy with the giving of so much of it. She pulled her bill from her chest, and her bleeding stopped. The beast opened his jaws, and he drew more of his long tail into his mouth, the better to suck it clean. She backed away from his sucking lips, and she watched as they came closer and closer to her, following the trail of her blood. Then he coughed a muffled cough, and he began to pull, ever so slowly, his long tail back out of his mouth.

  There’s no turning back now, she thought. “Oh, greedy-guts,” she said, “you are the greatest beast that ever lived. You can do this. Keep going.” His lurid green eyes opened, and in them she saw his lust to swallow all in his path.

  “Mmmmffh,” said the beast, “I eat, therefore I am.” Though with his tail so deep in his mouth, this last bit sounded more like “Um-hmmf, furm-furm um-um.”

  “Oh yes,” said the pelican, who had learned, over the course of a thousand times a thousand years, some Latin from the cormorant. “Ego manducare, ergo sum.”

  “Mmm-hmmm,” said the beast. The tip of his tail must be at the top of his throat now. Her mind was growing fuzzled, and she could no longer remember the song, but she had to keep the beast swallowing, she knew that much. She lay her breast on his tail, and she plunged her bill into her chest, and she bled for him, dragging herself backward. This time she let the blood flow and flow.

  §

  The sun was at its zenith over the fisherman’s house, and sunlight filled the room inside. Dewi Sri, the frigate bird, the fisherman, and Cariña lay where they had slept, in a jumbled row of arms and wings and legs and bodies. The ribald silk coverlet was in disarray, their limbs woven under and over it, and they had all of them been too exhausted to enact any of the many positions of coupling depicted on it. Now their eyes were open, and they lay on their backs staring up at the raddled roof, which was full of holes where the storm had torn away the thatch. The day’s task was before them, to slay the Kiamah beast, and the mood was somber, for none of them had the slightest idea how they might accomplish this.

  It was the fisherman who rose first. “Let’s be off,” said he. “The sooner we leave, the sooner we can put this foul task behind us.”

  “Has anyone seen the pelican?” asked Cariña.

  They had not. She was not in the scrape of a nest she had made for herself in the sea grass. She was not floating on the waters of the inlet. And she was not flying above, looking to skim a breakfast fish out of the waves. Those who could fly flew, searching for her, and the fisherman and Cariña went into the forest, calling out for her. They did not find her, but when they came upon the
crow’s pile of shiny things, the fisherman was reminded of the gold brooch he had taken when he first arrived. Now he took it out of his pouch and showed it to Cariña.

  “If we make it back to the land of the living, this may be of some use,” he said. Cariña nodded, and put her finger to his lips. He was saying they might yet have a future together, and she was glad to hear it.

  “When we make it back,” said she. “Not if.” He tucked the brooch back into the pouch, and they headed back to the inlet, where their companions waited. No one had seen any sign of the pelican.

  “Where could she be?” asked Cariña.

  The goddess and the frigate bird looked at each other, and they looked at the far corner of the sky.

  “She’s gone on ahead,” said the frigate bird.

  The goddess nodded. “I fear for her life,” said she.

  Icy tendrils of fear slithered round each other inside the fisherman’s belly when he heard this. “Then we must make haste,” said he. He had buried his friend the cormorant only the day before, and he had no wish to bury another friend so soon. Especially not the pelican, who had loved him so ardently in her guise as his beloved.

  “Let’s be off,” the fisherman said again, and then, “Wait.” Something told him he might not be returning here. He ran into the house and found the cormorant’s spectacles where he had left them on a windowsill. He looked around for something to wrap them in, and spied the ribald silk coverlet. He cut a square from the cloth with his knife, and wrapped the spectacles into a small bindle, and he tied the bindle to his belt. He ran back out and said, “I’m ready.”

  The goddess bade Cariña to climb aboard her back, and the frigate bird and the fisherman climbed a tree, for the extra loft it would give the frigate bird, and there the fisherman mounted the frigate bird’s back. Together they soared off, joining the goddess and Cariña. They flew to the far corner of the sky, where they entered the Kiamah’s throat, and made their way up the long neck of the beast until they stood in the cavern that was the back of the beast’s mouth. Above them, and behind them, was the beast’s blowhole, a passageway that led to a spot at the back of the beast’s head. This was to be their escape route, but first they hoped to find the pelican.

  “What’s that?” said the fisherman.

  Something blunt and bulbous was in the Kiamah’s mouth, something very large, the tip of which was moving about, touching the beast’s molars here and there as if searching for something.

  “Mmmffh,” the beast said, and then his jaws opened, and they saw that the beast had his own tail in his mouth, and the pelican stood atop it, just beyond his lips. And as they watched she plunged her bill into her bloodied breast and her blood flowed red, and she leaned forward, the better to let it drip onto the beast’s tail. The beast closed his lips round his tail then, and the last they saw of the pelican was her feet backing away.

  The beast drew more of his tail into his mouth, and its waving, searching tip threatened to beslobber them. They backed away from it, but the tongue sought them out, as if to squash them against the walls of the cavernous mouth. The fisherman stuck his knife into it, and the beast coughed. The tip of his tail receded from them a bit, but then it came toward them again.

  “This way,” the frigate bird cried, pointing upward, “through the blowhole,” he shouted, for the beast’s mouth was full of slurping noises, and they could barely hear each other. “Launch me down the beast’s throat,” he cried, “and then be ready.”

  “Ready for what?” said the fisherman, but the frigate bird had already sailed away from him, and did not reply.

  “Climb on my back,” the goddess said to Cariña, and the woman did so. The goddess fluttered her wings, and rose with Cariña, and together they disappeared up the beast’s blowhole.

  “Ready for this,” shouted the frigate bird, who was now gliding back up the throat of the beast, his legs and talons extended, and he snatched the fisherman with those talons, and then flapped his wings mightily, and they too rose through the beast’s blowhole.

  Now they stood atop the beast’s head, and they had a clear view of the pelican. She was backing away from the Kiamah’s lips, which swallowed ever more of his own tail, greedy as he was to taste her blood.

  The pelican saw them, and she waved, but her wings moved languidly, as if she had all the time in the world. She vulned herself, and her blood flowed, and she pressed her breast against the beast’s tail and backed away. The beast’s lips followed her.

  “We have to save her,” the fisherman shouted. He stepped forward, ready to climb down the beast’s snout. His shoulders were bloodied from the grip of the frigate bird’s talons, but he paid that no mind.

  “No,” the goddess said. She put her hand on the fisherman’s arm. He glared at her, but she answered him with the serenity of her smile, and drew him back. “No,” she said again, “we must let the pelican do what she will. Perhaps she has a plan.”

  “That’s it, greedy-guts,” they heard the pelican say, “keep going.”

  Shiny spots flashed in front of the pelican’s eyes, and her head began to spin, but she opened her chest, and she let her blood flow. The beast was spinning around her, and her tired, tired head found its way to a resting spot on the Kiamah’s tail. She was dying, she knew that, but she thought of the she-eagle, who loved her husband so much she died so that she might join him—what a shiny, shiny thought that was—and she thought of the fisherman, and the love they had shared, and how some day he would join her, though she knew not where.

  “Hmmmfh,” said the beast, and in a trice the beast drew more of his tail into his mouth, and his fearsome teeth bit down and crushed the pelican. Her head was smashed flat, and ground into the beast’s tail. The tip of his tongue found the smudge of feathers and bones and blood that was all that was left of her, and all this he slurped into his mouth.

  “Swive me!” the fisherman shouted. “She’s gone!”

  And still the beast lives, thought the goddess. Was there no killing him, no matter how many might sacrifice their lives?

  “Mm-mmffh,” said the beast, “delicious,” but with his tail in his mouth “delicious” sounded like “mm-mptious.”

  “I’ll kill him!” screamed the fisherman. He drew his knife, and he made to stab at the beast’s head, but the frigate bird wrapped his wings round his friend. “You cannot,” he said, “so do not draw his attention here.”

  Cariña wailed, and the fisherman sobbed. The goddess, who felt the need to grieve as keenly as anyone, nonetheless kept her wits about her, and took note of the fact that the beast seemed to be swallowing more and more of himself. She peered down his blowhole, and saw that his tail blocked the bottom of the passage like some enormous earthworm. Perhaps this, she thought, is what the Turropsi have led us to.

  Once he had started, the Kiamah could not stop himself, for he was entirely a creature made to swallow whatever went into his mouth. The fisherman mounted the frigate bird, and Cariña mounted the goddess, and they flew circles above the beast, watching and wondering, crying and mourning and marveling all at the same time. Never, in all the days of all their years in the spirit world or the material, were they more alive than they were at that moment, nor ever were they closer to the great mystery of life and death, of destruction and renewal. And so they were filled with awe as well as grief. The great beast swallowed his long tail bit by bit, pulling his hindquarters toward his jaws, his neck turning sideways, his body forming a loop. His hindquarters followed his tail, disappearing between his jaws, his hind legs waggling until they too were swallowed. Then his jaws unhinged themselves and he began to pull his belly down his throat, the loop of his body tightening. The belly, as wide and full as it was, took some considerable time to swallow, but his unhinged jaws gaped, his lips slavered, and his mouth gobbled and gobbled, squeezing the broad girth of his belly tighter and tighter with each ingurgitation, until the beast had swallowed his belly right up to his foreleg pits. His forequarters came next, an
d with them his leathery wings, long since atrophied, his spine bent double now, his long neck stretched and straining, but with the bulk of his belly now swallowed, the rest came faster, just as a baby is birthed the more quickly once the head has squeezed through, and his neck vanished down his throat, the back of his head inhaled as if it were naught but a bit of popped corn, and the serpentine slither of his tongue with it, then his jaws breaking loose and gobbling themselves up, until his lips turned themselves inside out and swallowed themselves, and there was nothing left of the Kiamah beast, nothing at all.

  §

  And so, dear reader, we have come to the end of our tale. The tyrant has been overthrown, the beast slain, {11} the material world saved. The Turropsi have survived and will go on weaving the present from all that is possible. On the barren plain where once lay the Kiamah, the goddess Dewi Sri will bring forth the egg she carries, and that egg will hatch, and that hatchling shall be Queen of the Dead. And the goddess Dewi Sri will scatter the broken shards of the eggshell across the plain, and from those shards will grow a new spirit world. The Queen of the Dead will rule there with her father’s sense of mischief, and his sly cunning, but not his cruelty, for her nature will be tempered by a kindness and a wisdom borne of her mother’s love. And the dead shall not suffer.{12}

  Some say Cariña went with the fisherman and the frigate bird to the material world, and that the moment she arrived, she turned to ash and was blown away by the wind. They say the fisherman put his arms round her to save her, but that all he could save was the silver chain round her neck. They say he grieved her loss for forty days and forty nights, weeping and wailing and howling at the moon, and that on the morning of the forty-first day he rose and wept no more.

  Some say Cariña became a goddess, the goddess of the forgiven, and stayed behind with Dewi Sri, and that they live together in the Spirit World. They say the daughter of the crow and the goddess is the Crow of Many Colors long foretold by oracles and seers. They say Dewi Sri became the Gray Goddess, who accepts love in all its forms, and judges not. They say that Cariña, the Gray Goddess, and the Crow of Many Colors are the three bright stars that, together with Gienah, the Raven’s wing, form the constellation Corvus, which hangs in the southern sky between Virgo and Hydra. They say that a tryst carried out in the open beneath the constellation Corvus will be blessed by them, and that the earthly lovers beneath will never know the sorrow of love lost.