by Jeffrey Ford
“I didn’t lead it enough along the arc,” said Cley, and Wood growled either in agreement or admonishment.
The bird circled southward again, and when it dipped low in its spiral, Cley aimed and shot. It continued to glide for a few moments as if nothing had happened, and then, suddenly, it plummeted straight into the water, three large feathers drifting after it.
The hunter yelled, the dog barked, as they looked to find the carcass riding atop the green water. They immediately spotted it bobbing toward them on the flow, its bright scarlet like a moving wound. Cley hastily set the gun down and, forgetting the danger of the slick rocks, leaped to the lowest dry boulder. Wood followed his lead and beat him to a safe landing. The bird was floating toward them, only thirty yards away. It appeared that all he would have to do was lean over, stick out his arm, and it would be his.
At twenty yards away, their dinner began to drift out toward the eastern side of the island. Cley moved left on the rock and, leaning out as far as he could, waited for the bird to pass. It seemed to take forever to come even with the boulder, but when it finally did, it moved rapidly past, just out of reach of his fingers.
“Shit,” Cley bellowed, but it changed nothing. Wood bounded twice, leaped over his companion’s body and into the swiftly moving jade river. The dog surfaced immediately and began paddling toward the kill. Cley called to him to return, afraid he would be swept too far off to fight the current back to the rocks.
“Come on, boy,” Cley yelled, as Wood took the huge bird between his jaws and turned against the current. The dog paddled with all his strength and began to make slow but steady progress. When Wood finally reached the side of the boulder that Cley lay on, the hunter reached down with both hands. He placed one on the scruff of the dog’s neck, one at the base of his tail, and with a mighty heave, pulled him up out of the water and to safety. Wood dropped the red bird at Cley’s feet, and although exhausted, moved in close to be praised and petted.
The sun descended toward a pale orange horizon. Cley sat atop the country of boulders, the bird laid out before him, and took his stone knife from his boot. Wood watched quizzically, his head cocked to the side. The hunter studied the carcass—the iridescent wing feathers shifting from red to purple to pink in the dying light. The eyes were an unsettling pure red with no obvious pupil, and the beak was as black and shiny as onyx.
“Not my first choice,” he said, “but it’s the specialty of the house.” Bringing the stone blade to the bird’s neck, he sliced the head off with one deft cut. Then, lifting the body as though it was a flagon of mead, he let the blood run into his mouth. At first, there was no taste, just a warm sensation passing down his throat. When the blood did reveal its flavor, it was not bitter or salty but almost unbearably sweet, like a wine made of sugar. He could feel the life liquid charging his body with energy as he drank it.
When he had taken as much as he could stand of the cloying sweetness, he held the carcass up to the dog’s mouth. He tilted the bird, but Wood growled, closed his mouth, and backed away.
“It’s all we’ve got,” Cley said, but when he again approached with the bird, Wood leaped down to another boulder and sat, watching.
Cley knew there was not much chance of it, but he wondered if the bird might be a female carrying eggs. Wood’s favorite meal was bird eggs. Lifting the knife again, he sliced open the body from the neck to where the tail feathers began. A dark smell rose from the innards of the prey. He gagged momentarily and then went to work, digging into where he believed the bird’s womb might be. At first, he felt nothing but a sickening, wet mess. Still, he continued probing, and his fingers actually closed around something substantial. He pulled whatever it was out into the dim twilight.
In his hand was not an egg at all but a human ear, severed neatly where it would attach to the side of a head. Cley felt the sweet blood begin to rise in his stomach. He retched twice without vomiting. As soon as he had control of himself, he lifted the remains of the creature and tossed them out into the flood.
As the dark came on, he fetched water in the cooking pot for himself and the dog and then enough to obliterate every trace of the bird’s remains. Only when the surface of the rock had been cleaned did the dog again approach the perch at the top of the island. Cley noted the uneasy look in Wood’s eyes as the moonless, starless dark clamped down over the Beyond. He fell off to sleep in spite of the dog’s soft whining.
He woke into darkness, half-delirious, with chills and sweat. His teeth chattered, and he could not control the spasms in his legs and arms. It was all he could do to remain awake while vomiting, afraid that if he lost consciousness he would choke on his own spew. The dog sat next to him, staring down at the shivering invalid he had become. The blood of the red bird had poisoned him, infected him, was turning him inside out. What he had thought was an opportunity offered by the Beyond for him to save himself he now knew was to be the agent of his demise. The wilderness had grown weary of entertaining his quest. Amidst the involuntary groans that welled up from his tortured gut, he cursed the land.
Hours passed, and his condition worsened. There was nothing for Wood to do but sit by and watch. Near morning, bright colors flashed in front of Cley’s eyes and the sounds of the water rushing by, his own frenetic heartbeat, seemed heightened to a deafening decibel. His head felt as if it would split down the middle in the manner in which he had cleaved open the bird. Blood ran from his nose and across his lips. Its taste was anything but sweet.
He drifted in and out of consciousness. Once, upon waking, he saw before him the apparition whose necklace he had taken back in the demon forest. She knelt above him, rocking forward and back, her long hair reaching down at times to cover his face. Her eye sockets were, as before, empty, and when he cried out in fear of her, she opened her own dark hole of a mouth, emitting a piercing note that drilled the night. The touch of her bony hand upon his chest quelled his shivering. He believed he was dying and that the worlds of death and life were mingling. The terror of her presence overwhelmed him. When something red and feathered shot from her mouth and into his left ear, he lost consciousness.
Cley heard Wood barking as if at a great distance. He was still burning inside, and the pain in his head made his vision blurry. The sun had risen either in reality or in one of the thousand dreams through which he flew. In the midst of his wavering awareness, he sensed that there were people nearby. He looked up through watery eyes and saw a man standing over him. The fellow was tall, with long, tangled hair, and perfectly naked. His skin was the oddest shade of gray, the color of cold cigarette ash, and marked everywhere with blue designs that looped, swirled, and turned into pictures of birds and bees and plants. Across his chest was etched the skeletal head of Sirimon.
Cley felt many hands upon him. He was being lifted and carried. In his helplessness, he cried out for Wood and heard the dog answer his call. Following this, he blacked out for a short time. When he revived, he found himself surrounded by others like the man—naked with decorated flesh. They all seemed to be moving together through the flood on a boat or barge. These images and sensations ran together like watercolors in the rain, eventually mixing into black.
Motes of dust whirlpooled through thin beams of sunlight that pierced a thatched roof. All else was bathed in soothing shadow. There was a woven mat of reeds beneath him and some kind of animal skin covering his naked body. It was warm inside the narrow structure composed of young tree trunks and branches. He caught a glimpse of a young woman with long black hair, her ashen skin a backdrop to a wild garden of blue vines. He did not notice her eyes, but he would never forget the intricately petaled florets whose centers were her nipples. Her face held no scribbling but for the finely rendered blue flies inscribed on either of her cheekbones. She poured water on his forehead and made him drink a bitter, herbal potion. Even in his debilitated state, he knew that one of the ingredients was flowering akri, a natural antibiotic.
“Thank you,” he tried to tell her, but when he
spoke, she covered her ears as if the sound of his voice was painful.
She gently put the fingers of her left hand to his mouth to quiet him.
He wanted desperately to stand as proof, if only to himself, that he would not die, but the mere movement of pressing his arms against the ground exhausted him and sent him again into a dreamless sleep that seemed to last for days.
When he woke again, he found that a good portion of his strength had returned. His mouth was no longer bone dry and his head had lost the whirling sensation that made him feel he was spinning in circles when his back was flat against the ground. He sat up slowly and stretched his arms.
The first clear thought that entered his mind concerned the fate of the black dog. Before he attempted standing, he put his lips together and whistled. There was no response. In fact, there was no sound coming from anywhere. He wondered where his rescuers had gone off to. He whistled again, this time louder, and a moment later, he heard Wood bark. The sound of the dog’s reply filled him with energy. He scrabbled to his feet and found his way, haltingly, to the animal-skin flap that was the doorway of his infirmary.
The sunlight was bright, and he was forced to close his eyes at its insistence. A refreshing breeze swept around him as he stepped away from the entrance. The movement of it across his body suddenly reminded him that he was naked. He stood there, a little weak now, wavering slightly from side to side. Then he heard Wood bark again, directly in front of him. He tilted his head back and rubbed his eyes to clear the glare from them. The twin dots of bright orange finally dissipated from his field of view, and he beheld a sight that startled him.
Sitting before him at ten paces was Wood, a garland of purple flowers draped around his neck. Gathered closely together in a semicircle behind the dog, as if posing for a group portrait, were twenty or thirty of the gray, tattooed people. Although men, women, and children were all naked save for the blue drawing on their skin, they all covered their eyes with their left hands, embarrassed at Cley’s immodesty. The young woman who had ministered to him in his illness came running forth, one hand still over her eyes. She slipped past him and into the hut. In seconds, she reappeared with his clothes. After dropping them at his feet, she fled back to the safety of the group.
Cley laughed out loud. He gathered up the pile of his belongings, finding both his knife and hat among them, and retired back inside to dress. When he stepped forth into the day again, he found that the people had dispersed to different areas of the small village. Wood had waited and leaped up to greet him. Cley hugged the dog to him and rubbed the top of his head. Just then, an old man approached. He was bent over, and his decorated skin hung loose. His face was a web of design and wrinkles, his head, bald but for one long, white tress descending from the back. He lightly touched Cley on the shoulder, then pantomimed eating. When the hunter nodded that he understood, the man pointed to a hut at the far end of the village.
“Thank you,” said Cley.
The old man turned to lead him, and the hunter noticed, with a stab of revulsion he dared not give voice to, that his guide was missing an ear. In its place was a ridge of ugly scar tissue surrounding a dark hole.
As they passed through the middle of the village, Cley noted its circular design—huts of various sizes, like the one he had recovered in, made of thin logs and branches and reeds, were positioned to form a perimeter. Within that ring there were places where men and women were at work, weaving reeds, cooking on small fires, using stone knives, not unlike Cley’s, to fashion either weapons or tools out of wood. Amidst this scene of industry, the children, also tattooed but not as thoroughly as most of the adults, ran and played. With the exceptions of the crackling of the fires and the knives hacking away at branches, the place was perfectly calm and quiet. Cley realized, as they reached the destination the old man had pointed to, that not one of the people had uttered so much as a single word.
He followed the old man into the hut, which was much larger and longer than the others. It was dimly lit by a small fire in the center of the dirt floor. Above the flames there was an opening in the roof of braided branches through which the smoke rose. It was warm inside, and a fragrant aroma of wildflowers mixed in with that of the burning wood.
Two virile-looking young men and a young woman sat around the fire. The old man took his place in the circle and motioned for Cley to sit next to him. The hunter smiled as he got down on his knees and copied their posture with legs crossed in front. They smiled back, and he noticed it was not genuine but more an attempt to imitate him. He nodded in a feeble show of thanks for their courtesy, and they nodded back. Wood then stepped up to the old man and sat close beside him. The old man put his head forward for the dog to lick his nose. For this, Wood was given a piece of meat from a gourd bowl resting on the fire stones.
Cley was impressed that the dog had already ingratiated himself to the tattooed people, for the animal repeated this act with each of those present and at each stop was fed a piece of meat. Then Wood approached Cley and waited as if expecting his companion to follow the ritual. The hunter tried to ignore him, but Wood sat and waited. Cley noticed that the others were watching, so he gave in and leaned forward. There was also a bowl of meat set by his place at the fire, and he fed the dog a piece.
“You sly bastard,” Cley thought.
Wood glanced at him from the corner of his eye and then walked over near the entrance and lay down.
The others began eating from the bowls, and Cley did not hesitate to join them. The meal, whatever it was, was delicious. The meat was cooked to tenderness and seasoned with a variety of spices, both sweet and hot.
“Very good,” said Cley, but the sound of his voice seemed to annoy them, for they winced when he spoke. For the rest of the meal, he remained silent, satisfied enough to be filling his stomach with real food.
Cley decided that the fellow sitting across from him must be the chief or the mayor of the village. He alone wore an elaborate necklace made of formidable-looking animal teeth and was decorated more profusely than the others. There was also the fact that his muscled, lean physique exuded an aura of strength and confidence.
When they were finished eating, this young man reached behind himself and brought forth an object of considerable size. Cley was surprised to see that it was the book he had carried with him on the journey. The chief passed it to his right to the young woman, who took it and handed it to the hunter. He looked up and around at the circle of faces. The other man to the immediate left of the chief squinted and fixed Cley with a piercing stare. The old man with the one ear opened his eyes wide. The young woman winked her left eye and the chief winked with his right.
Cley understood the seriousness of the situation but could hardly prevent himself from laughing. He wondered what he was to make of all this mugging and eye language. The old man leaned over and opened the singed cover of the book. Turning to the first full page of remaining text, he gently brushed his gnarled fingers across the words.
“Book,” said Cley.
They stared at him.
“Words,” he said.
They sat as if waiting for something to happen.
In the tense silence, he finally realized what they wanted. He lifted the tome and began quietly to read. As he read about the nature of the soul, they sat perfectly still, and when he looked up at the break between the third and fourth paragraph, he saw that they were not even breathing. He refocused his attention and hurried to the end of the page so as not to suffocate them. When he was finished, he saw their bodies relax and heard, only faintly, the air passing through their nostrils.
He looked around to see if they wanted him to continue. The old man leaned over again and took the page that Cley had just read between his fingers. The hunter waited for him to turn it and indicate that they wanted him to continue; instead he suddenly ripped it out of the book. Cley was startled, but he did nothing, knowing he owed them much more than the entire book for having saved his life. The page was passed around
to the chief, who balled it up, put it in his mouth, and started chewing.
The old man now indicated that the hunter should read the next page, and he did. Again they held their breath, and when he came to the end, he, himself, ripped the page out and passed it over to the young woman, who he guessed to be the chief’s wife. She crumpled it and put it in her mouth. This process was repeated so that the old man and the other fellow next to the chief each also were given something to chew on.
To Cley’s bafflement, they chewed the wadded paper for the longest time. He smiled at them every now and then, and they mechanically returned his smile. Finally, the chief swallowed and the others followed his lead. Cley nodded to them all as if to say he hoped they enjoyed it, but then he saw that they were not finished. The chief, his wife, the old man, and the one to the left of the chief moved from their sitting positions in order to get on all fours. They did this slowly, and each movement of their limbs was like some part of a ritual.
When all of their heads were facing in toward the fire, they suddenly spit in unison. Cley jerked back, partially at the abruptness of the coordinated act, but more because their expectorations had a luminosity about them, like copious gobs of quicksilver. The instant the spittle hit the fire, there was a sizzling noise, and smoke began to rise. It did not trail upward as before like a twisting, turning, blue-gray vine. Now it rose in a wide, undulating sheet. Within this living veil of smoke, an image began to appear.
Cley leaned back in awe at what he witnessed, but his wonder turned quickly to fear when he recognized that the figure in the smoke was that of the eyeless ghost woman who had visited him on the rock island in the midst of his fever. He saw her open her mouth to cry out as he had in his delusion. There was no sound, but the clarity of her image made him believe there would be. He sat stunned, with his own mouth open. Then, as before, without warning, a perfect miniature of the red bird darted from her mouth toward his ear. Cley screamed, but fast as a snake striking, the old man reached out and caught the terrible creature in his hand. As his fingers closed around it, the bird, the sheet of smoke, the apparition, all disintegrated into nothing.
