by J A Campbell
She called up to Beenard who was still busy cleaning the dead animal.
"It's me," she yelled up at the man who was at peace in purging away his pain. "It's Clara!" It felt strange to use her own voice again, to find herself outside the tormentor.
Beenard lowered his head to the floor to try and see what had made the noise.
He was shocked. "Is it really you?"
"Indeed."
"You have returned to us at last."
"I have."
"And saved us, every one."
When the town heard of this, the conclusion was unanimous–all the people of Fankfret agreed that Clara must have been the one who brought the beast to its end by tricking it to come out in the light of day and thus helping Beenard to kill it. The poor bastard was almost blind and terribly clumsy, so to have thought Beenard was capable of murdering the evil creature without any help was improbable. The people nodded and gave thanks for their blessings. It all made sense, really–redemption was all of theirs.
The myth then spun was the most logical and generally accepted opinion of the town since the tiny and prophetic girl had returned to her people from death and ended the raccoon's rampage of terror. And so goes the story of Clara Humbert Rupershire who was kicked out of her town as a burden and who returned as a savior, despite and because of the fact that she was but the height of a quarter.
A great party was launched for the death of the coon and the return of Clara. The town was littered in a potpourri of petals, and bands thumped out music for a month. There was a continuous train of offerings presented to Turnik and Maya who now kept Clara on the bill of her father's hat, high above the action below. The house was filled with cakes and meats and wine. The couple was so happy they now had a skip in their step, one they couldn't control when navigating around the goods. Often times, they knocked items off tables from their daily and merry traffic.
"We knew you would come back," they told their small daughter, not lying because they believed the lie.
But Clara was not so sure. She had forgotten much of the past, inflicted with this newness sustained by the people, yet staying in the home of her parents did not seem fitting. Clara asked the town for a teapot, not a hole the size of one, but an actual pot with a lid that opened on a hinge and a cork for plugging the spout. She wanted it painted too, she explained, with images of things that grew like trees and crops, animals and thoughts. The townspeople nodded in approval since Clara was a prophet, all things she uttered were naturally correct.
"When this is completed," Clara continued, "you will have fulfilled your obligation to me and thus redeemed yourselves in full."
So the people set out, organizing the best artists to paint the saga of growth in tangible forms. Seasons passed and the people continued to paint, aiming to capture everything that lived and grew on the earth. They were so thorough that there was only the space of Clara's thumb left to paint on the teapot. But they knew that they had yet to paint thoughts. This worried them, since they couldn't imagine just how to depict such a thing. What would a growing thought even look like? What color would it be? What form could it take?
They came to their prophet, wringing their brushes in fear. They asked Clara what she wanted them to do, because they had no thoughts on the troubling matter.
"Place me in the pot," Clara said, "and set me in the river Leading Out."
The townspeople did as they were told, but they were nervous. They didn't understand, and not understanding terrified them. But Clara explained. "Like the candles of our vigils that drift away, I, too, will become smaller and smaller to you." She turned then to see the townspeople one last time. "In your minds though, I will continue to grow."
The people thought on this awhile as their idol slipped down the river and disappeared before them, and they never stopped thinking of it.
As much as a thought or idea can grow, it can, I assure you, also die. Any living, stretching, shaking thing can die. You see the problem of taking over another's body and having it destroyed in the process of fulfilling one's own sadistic needs, turns out to have consequences.
Although the coon was dead, its spirit remained. Its demise was due to Clara's manipulations and in that reality, it was owed something. True, it was but an animal, but even animals have desires beyond the primal. Even animals have spirits linked to the black earth and the light beyond. And as Clara drifted down the river Leading Out, so did the spirit of the coon−unbeknownst to her−bobbing right beside her painted teapot, belly up and quite enjoying the journey. Since it was spring, the river was in full throttle and the further it went from the tiny town of Fankfret, the harder the water ran in its self-made trench that widened with the mounting current like a watery impregnation.
Clara's teapot swiveled and quaked in the gurgle of the river, it flipped and submerged, which caused her to bang her head against her vessel's walls and knock her out cold. The teapot surfaced, followed the bend of the river and wedged between two boulders. The water was so determined that Clara's vessel became immobile, pinned by the constant flow. It might have been the end of Clara, and perhaps this story, if the coon hadn't been bound to her. You see, the coon did not desire revenge for what Clara had done (He did in fact eat her, which got him into the trouble in the first place). Instead, he wanted to know what it felt like to be alive again. If not for a short while, he yearned to remember what the world tasted like and how a tiny beating heart the breadth of a pinprick might come to know it in its entirety.
You see, the coon and Clara were inextricably connected, fused together by their reign of torment and the coon's unhappy ending. He dove under the raging water and lifted the teapot from between the two stones. Even a spirit−when driven−can inflict necessary force in the world of the living. Together, they spun downward through the river until they reached an embankment, a muddy spit of land in which to be thankful. The coon carried the teapot up the wet earth and set it on a grassy hilltop. Then he waited.
The vessel could only be opened from inside, a design Clara made sure was in place for her journey. But she was fast asleep inside, dreaming of her adventures to come, the knob on her head pulsing with the throb of her little heart. The night came and still Clara did not stir. The stars filled the sky and the moon loomed large, as yellow as a daffodil. The coon did not worry until the sun rose to the middle of the sky and still Clara didn't stir. Just when he was about to drift on to join his brothers and sisters in the afterlife, there was a tiny moan from the teapot. A clanking of items, the sound of footsteps as loud as a butterfly's beating wings, and the lid opened.
Clara looked around. From the hill she saw a stretch of woods, the river in the distance and the sun, heavy with heat in the sky. A fly buzzed by the teapot and hovered. It took in the strange girl just double its size. Its many eyes blinked. Was it a flower? A bit of meat? It went to land on her and taste with its feet when Clara screamed.
The coon felt her terror ring through his soul and swatted at the fly, but the fly was quick and flew back up into the air a moment before the coon connected with the teapot. It went flying down the little hill, its many painted pictures spinning in its fall. Clara tumbled inside with all her items, the many gifts of the townspeople: a miniature hairbrush, a few of her trophy coins, a feather bed, and other things to sustain her such as a handful of grapes, a quail leg and a thimble of cream. She was nearly crushed by her own face, smiling benevolently on the coin, if the feather bed had not tumbled just at the precise time it did, covering her body and preventing a painful squashing.
The coon raced after the rolling pot. If he'd still had a heart it would have been beating madly, but instead all he could feel was Clara's terror alone. He experienced her sensations as one might feel the static of a storm, a million threads of current soundlessly quivering in the air between them.
The pot hit a rock half-submerged in the earth and cracked. On the next roll it split and out flew Clara with everything she'd ever owned. Face down in the dirt between
towering blades of grass she landed, her limbs bruised and spread out like a baby starfish.
"Are you alright?"
A cough of dirt and another moan. "No."
"Are you alive?" The coon circled her, wanting to lift her out of the grass, but he refrained. What if every bone in her was broken? He'd never know the joys of life. He'd only feel her constant pain and inevitable end, all because of a greedy fly.
"Of course I'm alive." She pushed her thin frame off the ground. "I'm talking aren't I?"
In a state of shock (which would be natural to any after a blow to the head, a near squashing by a coin the size of your person, and an ejection from your home that only a grasshopper could emulate and land safely), Clara did not question with whom she might be talking. She didn't even bother to look upward in the faded, desperate face of the coon.
"Where am I?"
The coon sat and wrapped his tail around his body. He could feel her little aches. "I don't know."
Clara stood and rubbed the bump on her head that was peeking out from her fine black hair. She dusted off her knees and wiped at her dress, seeing now it was torn in the back.
"What a near disaster," she said. "I might have died and been discovered with my rear end exposed." She had to change into the dress she'd made with a bit of dried apple rind. Although a pretty dark red hue, it became sticky in the heat.
"I'm glad you didn't," said the coon.
"Didn't what?"
"Die."
"Right." She searched the grass for her possessions. An ant had already found her leg of quail. "Me too."
She picked up a twig and batted at the insect. Its antennae danced on its head, its mouth pinched and opened at the thrashing twig. Clara kept at it, swinging hard until she bopped it in the head. It scurried backward over the piece of bird meat.
She dropped the twig, exhausted.
"Where there's one ant, there'll be more," said the coon.
"How would you know?" It was at this moment Clara finally looked up to see from where this voice was coming, to whom it might belong.
The coon smiled at her−at least tried to−it came across as more of a grimace. The poor thing was the exact image of his former body, a face complete with a twitching nose, beady black eyes and pointed rodent teeth. Before Clara fainted, falling back into the grass, a tiny thought flashed through her mind−she was assuredly dead and in death, the coon had come to eat her once again.
The coon, distraught at how terribly the journey had gone thus far, picked her up with his black paw and placed her on the bit of feather bed the town had made. He kept watch over her, waiting until she'd awake so that he might explain himself, since he hadn't been able to before with Clara in his brain and controlling the rest of his destiny.
When she did open her eyes, she felt better. With sleep, she'd been able to come to terms with her fate, deciding that if she was going to be eaten in the afterlife, she probably deserved it, that somewhere in the cosmos, this had always been her fate, having been born the height of a quarter.
She lay very still and anticipated the coon's mouth−since she had felt it before−this was not a stretch for her imagination. The coon simply starred back at her, waiting for her to scream again or say something. He controlled his mouth, and prevented a grin, despite being very happy she was awake again.
"Well," she said at last. "Get on with it."
The coon lowered his head to the ground. "With what?"
"Eating me."
"I wish I could," he said. "Not you, of course." He wiggled his nose, trying to smell, but nothing came to him.
"That didn't stop you before." She crossed her arms, still lying flat.
"Yes, but you were attached to a piece of cheese then."
"Sprinkle me in cheddar if you like."
This was not what the coon anticipated. "I couldn't eat you if I wanted."
Clara sat up.
"You should eat though." He rolled the leg of quail toward her. "You're as thin as a blade of grass."
"I'm always as thin as..." She stopped. "I'm not dead?"
"No."
"And you're not dead?"
The coon explained the predicament of the dead to Clara, how he was bound to her because of his untimely death at the hands of Beenard. He talked of what he desired−to know the world again, to feel alive, and how he hoped it'd be through her that he got to taste like the living. As he talked, Clara ate, and he learned how tasty quail was: salty, crispy, and deliciously gamey. Through her he then tasted some grapes with chalky skins and a burst of juice, finally her bit of cream, smooth and sweet. Thank goodness Clara was famished from the trip. As the coon talked, recapping even the terror they evoked on the town, she ate, taking it all in stride.
"That's just awful," she said at last, her mouth full of cream.
"It was."
"But you did eat me." She swallowed. "Perhaps this all wouldn't have happened if you hadn't."
"That's a pointless thing to ponder. The reality is it did happen and now here we are."
"Yes, but for how long?" She scooped her hand into the thimble of cream for another taste. "Will you follow me and live through me until I die?"
"No." The coon hadn't really thought of a time frame. He'd only yearned to be satiated.
"Then for how long?"
"Until it's enough."
"What will be enough?"
"Until you fall in love, then I'll leave you."
This seemed fair to the coon, especially since Clara had gotten him killed, skinned even.
She pouted. She'd become rather spoiled from the townspeople worshipping her. In fact, it was the death of the coon that brought her great privilege. "How am I going to fall in love with a dead coon hanging around me?"
This offended him, obviously. "You should have thought of that before you..."
"Before what?"
"Never mind."
They spent that spring tasting everything from the berries in the forest to the flowers in the field. Clara ate so much in fact, she was beginning to resemble a berry herself. The coon's appetite was vigorous and she could do nothing but oblige, considering what she owed to the dead animal. On they ate, and the coon remembered what it was to be alive while Clara remembered the entirety of her life. They shared stories of their youth. Clara talked about what it was like growing up in the town, and the coon shared with her how he was the smallest of his litter and received countless bites from his bigger sisters and brothers. In this way, they began to understand each other, even enjoy each other. It might have stayed this way, Clara eating often and growing big, if she hadn't begun to feel empty from this new life.
"Who will love me when I'm as plump as a berry?"
"I don't think you've looked better." And he meant it. In fact, the coon was falling in love with her. It could be said it was an unfortunate side effect of their partnership, considering she'd inadvertently been his persecutor and then executioner. And how could one fall in love in death? How would they ever be together unless Clara died or never fell in love and they remained in this stagnation until she did? Perhaps more importantly, how could a pretty girl the size of a quarter fall in love with a raccoon who haunted her with a desperate need to live again?
In the height of summer, Clara knew her only way out was to fall in love and so she started searching. She asked the ladybug if she might love her, to which she tucked her wings and said, "improbable." She asked the mole who said nothing and returned to his hole. She asked the toad who laughed and hopped away. She even asked the sun, which did not reply, but continued to come and go and come again. She'd just about given up, feeling altogether rejected until one very warm day, while the coon was dozing, she climbed the stalk of a tiger lily to eat its stamen. It was there that she had the surprise of her life.
It was already occupied and with none other than a boy, half the size of her. She nearly fell from the head of the flower at the sight of him.
"This flower is mine, so get off," he said, rath
er recalcitrant.
"I had no idea."
"Now, you do." He was gathering pollen from the flower, tucking it into a tiny satchel across his hip. "Beat it."
"There are others?"
"Others?" He hardly looked at her. "It's my flower."
"Small people," she said. "Like me."
He stopped. Then really took her in. "I don't know where you came from, but you're certainly not from Mead. That's the place of my people and we are all this size. There is nothing small about it."
"Mead?"
"Yes, and if you don't mind, I have work to do."
With that, the boy jumped from the flower's petals and slid down its furry green stalk. Off he ran, but Clara couldn't let him go. This was too much to bear. All her life, she'd been alone with the thought that she was the anomaly, a diseased creature who had no explanation for her stature. The boy was fast though; he cut through the field of flowers and ducked into a hole beneath the great trunk of a red tree. She waited in front of the hole.
Should she go inside? She most certainly wasn't invited, but she had to get answers. She couldn't live her life not knowing about others like her.
Fear began to seep into this newness. What if they were cannibals? What if they were a fierce and violent race? She knew what she'd been capable of and so she waited outside the hole, in case one of them ventured out and she might have a better idea in how to approach the situation.
Night set in and no one came out of the hole. By then, the coon had found her and began to complain of being hungry.
"You're delusional from hunger," he told Clara. "You made the whole thing up."
"I didn't." She kept her eyes on the hole. "He was as real as you and me." She looked at the faded coon who was pacing around the enormous tree, "Okay, maybe just me."
