The Physiognomy, Memoranda, and The Beyond

by Jeffrey Ford

  Three Beshanti found Cley’s hat lying on the ground. The leader of the party was a large muscular man with a painted face—two streaks of white cutting diagonals across either cheek. He wore the delicate skeleton of a hummingbird on a lanyard around his neck, and a black, sleeveless blouse decorated with red-dyed circles. His two partners were dressed in green tunics and wore their hair in triple braids as was the custom. The trio bent over Cley’s hat as if it was an animal that might spring to life at any moment.

  Wood suddenly appeared from behind the tree in front of them. Startled, they rose and turned to run. Facing them now, with his rifle aimed at the largest, was Cley.

  “What do you want?” asked the hunter.

  The leader of the Beshanti spoke in his native language, making signs that seemed to be imploring Cley not to shoot.

  The hunter smiled broadly but did not relinquish his aim. He was about to speak again when an invisible force violently pulled the weapon clear of his hands. He stared in amazement as it floated in midair a few feet in front of him. Wood growled at the presence of a Wraith but remained standing behind the warriors.

  Now it was the Beshanti’s turn to smile. The large man spoke quickly in his own tongue. Cley shook his head, showing he did not understand. It was obvious that he was being lectured to. Then the leader took a knife from his belt and passed it in a cutting motion an inch from his own throat. When he was finished speaking, he motioned with his left hand to where the invisible Wraith stood, holding the hunter’s rifle. From that empty patch of air, a white scrap materialized and unfolded into a sheet of paper. It floated slowly toward Cley, and when it was within his reach, the hunter took it.

  As he turned it over and noticed the handwriting on one side, his rifle fell to the ground and the three Beshanti brushed past him and began to walk away. Intent on what he was reading, he did not watch them leave. The script was beautifully rendered and at the bottom of the page he saw the name Misnotishul. When he was finished with it, he tore it into small pieces and threw them to the muddy ground. Wood walked over and sniffed at the fragments.

  It was morning. Cley had eaten and was preparing to go out into the forest to hunt. He called softly to Wood so as not to wake the mother and child in the other room. When he was putting on his hat, Willa appeared at the doorway.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Olsen,” he said, and opened the door to the outside.

  “Mr. Cley,” she said, and he was surprised that she had spoken.

  He turned back. “Yes?”

  “I need you to watch Wraith for me while I go out to get some fresh air,” she said.

  The hunter was silent, at first stunned by the request and then working mightily to come up with an excuse why this might be impossible. “I have to go hunting,” he said.

  “We’ve got enough salted venison here to last two months,” she said. “I need to get outside in order to keep my health up. I’ve been in this house for weeks. I won’t be gone long. Wraith is asleep. I doubt he will awaken for some time. All you have to do is listen for him.”

  “Very well,” said the hunter. “But do not go far, the Beshanti are about. And take my pistol with you.”

  Willa walked over to the windowsill where the gun rested and lifted it.

  “I can send Wood with you,” he said.

  “No, I’d feel better with him here, with the baby,” she said.

  The door opened and closed, and she was gone.

  Five minutes passed and Cley was still standing in the same spot, wondering about the change in Willa Olsen. Not only had she spoken to him, but it was more than a single sentence. She could almost have been said to be animated. A moment later, Wraith began screaming.

  Although the hunter was a successful midwife, he had never been a baby-sitter. Delivering children was one thing; having to amuse them was something else entirely. He tried at first to ignore the cries coming from the back room, hoping the child would fall asleep again. The noise did not stop, though, and gave no indication of diminishing.

  “Demons in their death throes send up a less obnoxious caterwauling than this baby,” he said.

  Wood ran into the other room and then back out to stare at Cley. The hunter stood his ground. The dog barked at him.

  “May I first just say, shit,” said Cley. Then he walked in and gathered up the squirming child.

  Willa came through the door to find Cley sitting in the chair before the fireplace, the baby wrapped in blankets on his lap. Wood lay on the floor, watching the child grab at the hunter’s beard. In his free hand, Cley held open the empty book cover. The house was quiet but for the low murmuring that was a story about a man fishing for the answer to a great problem through a hole in a frozen lake.

  Cley and Wood were returning from the south. The day was waning as a beautiful golden light drenched the birches. They had taken a large rabbit and a partridge. The hunter thought about Vasthasha and where he would find him once the weather grew warmer. He wanted desperately to leave the woman and child behind, but now, after reading Misnotishul’s letter of warning, he knew the Beshanti would not let Willa live.

  Before the log house or lake came into view, he smelled a peculiar scent on the air. He feared it was the smoke of a fire, and the first thing he could imagine was that the Beshanti had torched the house with the woman and child in it. Whistling to the dog, who was lagging behind, he ran frantically toward the lake. As he neared the house, he stopped in his tracks, realizing it was not the aroma of a fire, but rather the smell of wild onions and venison cooking.

  “She’s making a home,” Cley whispered to Wood with a look of great sorrow.

  The meal was tragic in its excellence. Willa watched Cley carefully as he took each forkful. This night, it was the hunter who did not look up from his plate. He noticed out of the corner of his eye the small purple blossom floating in a bowl of water to his right. The venison had been cooked all day in some kind of rich gravy, but he could not enjoy it, for simmering in the back of his own mind was the fact that Willa and Wraith must again be displaced. His thoughts were ablaze with scenarios of how he would break the news.

  “Did you ever wonder why the Beshanti did not destroy this house, Mr. Cley?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “I’ll show you after we finish eating,” she said.

  His curiosity getting the better of him, he looked up and saw her face illuminated by the candlelight. Her features were plain and honest and appealed to him more than ever before. He wanted to look away again, but knew he couldn’t without seeming rude.

  “The food is very good,” he said.

  “You have cooked so many meals since we have arrived that I thought it was only fair,” said Willa.

  “The house looks different too,” said Cley, “less cluttered and jumbled.”

  “I had a chance today to clean. Wraith slept quite a stretch this afternoon,” she said, and pushed the bowl of potatoes toward him. As he took one more, she said, “Please, Mr. Cley, will you try to knock the mud off your boots before entering from now on?”

  Cley could not help but smile. “Granted,” he said.

  There was a long silence, and then at the same moment, they both said, “It was a beautiful day.”

  When Cley had finished his second helping, they cleared the table together. Willa then told the hunter, “Stay there, I’ll be right back.”

  She moved off toward the other room, stepping over Wraith, who lay on a blanket on the floor next to Wood. A few minutes later, she returned carrying a three-foot-wide wooden platform with six-inch sides. It was open at the top, and there was something growing from within. As she set it down on the table, Cley looked inside and what he saw astonished him.

  There was a miniature landscape, a slight, grassy rise with two perfectly real, diminutive pine trees growing at either end. At the top of the small hill, there sat a house carved from dark wood. It was incredible in its detail.

  “The windows of the house are made from slivers of qua
rtz,” she said. “If you take the candle and look inside, you can see the people who live there.”

  Cley did as she suggested and leaned over with the candle close to his face. There, in the flickering light, he could easily make out a man and a woman and two girls sitting at a table. He blinked and saw that the woman had a miniscule pipe to her lips and, even more fantastic, there was a trail of smoke coming from it. The man was at work on a box, very similar to the one the house sat in, with a birch tree the width of a fly wing growing from it. One girl had long blond hair and the other had brown.

  The hunter shook his head, and reached out to touch the delicate pine needles of one of the trees. Quickly, he pulled back his finger. “They are real,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Willa. “Notice the lower branch of the one on the right.”

  Cley looked and, for the first time, noticed a boy, scrupulous of detail, swinging from the branch by one arm.

  “The carving is miraculous,” said the hunter, “but the trees, the trees …”

  “My husband, Christof, grew them from the seeds of real trees, and then through some process I do not understand, that has to do with the twisting and pruning of their roots, stunted their growth. He was a master carver and created the house and the people. I remember him working always with two jewelers’ loupes, one in each eye,” she said. The excitement in telling about the small wonder was evident in her voice.

  “He must have been an incredible artist,” said Cley, now truly absorbed in the tableau.

  “He was an unusual man,” said Willa. “He was quite naive and open and somewhat strange. He would always tell me stories about the people who lived in the house. The Carrols, he called them. Long, involved stories with happy endings about their everyday lives. There was a point where I believed they were real.”

  “Did the Beshanti know of this?” asked Cley.

  “Yes, some of them would come with that one who knew the language of the realm, and Christof would tell them about the lives of the Carrols. Their leader would interpret for them. They were mightily intrigued, to say the least, and somewhat leery of the little world. His stories were as detailed as his carving, and through them, the Beshanti were convinced that this was a kind of magic they should not disrespect. This is why, though they killed my husband, they left the house, because they knew the miniature was here.” She looked over at Cley when she finished speaking, and he could see that there were tears in her eyes, and she was smiling.

  “Listen, Willa,” said Cley. “We can’t stay here.”

  “We can,” she said. “Things are working out perfectly.”

  “No,” said Cley. “We must leave in a few days. The other day in the forest I got a letter from the Beshanti, Misnotishul, in which he warned me that there is great agreement among his people that you should be disposed of.”

  Willa brought her hands to her face and turned away.

  “Listen to me,” said Cley, raising his voice. “They won’t kill me, and they won’t harm Wraith, but they know I was lying when I said you were my wife.”

  “You what?” she said, and looked at him as if he had betrayed her.

  “I told them that, the day I went with Dat to get Wraith from them. I did it to save you and the child.”

  “I can’t go away from here,” she said.

  “Misnotishul, the Beshanti who knows the language of the realm, has been protecting you. In the next few days, he will undergo a ritual to cleanse him of our language. He told me in his letter that while the words of the realm still live in him, he has sympathy for us and because of this has made an attempt to warn me. Once this ritual has been performed, there is nothing that can save you. They will come for you,” said the hunter.

  “I don’t care anymore,” she said.

  “Think of this, though,” said Cley, pointing to the baby on the floor. “If you die, the child dies. There is no way for me to feed and care for him.”

  She walked over and picked up the baby. Cley heard her begin to cry as she moved into the other room.

  That night, the hunter smoked all but one of the rest of the pack of cigarettes he had been rationing over their time by the lake. There was no pleasant murmuring from the back room. In the fire, he saw only nightmarish images. These and the sounds of the mother’s distress followed him into sleep.

  Two days later, Wood and Cley found the bloody naked corpse of Misnotishul tied to a tree. His tongue, eyes, fingers, and nose were strung in a necklace that hung across his chest. Lying beneath him on the ground was a large slaughtered pig, wearing the maroon jacket. The derby hat was affixed to the animal’s head with a knife.

  It was a warm, moonless night, and they moved quietly through the dark. Cley now feared the Wraiths more than anything else and was counting on Wood to be vigilant. He knew they had to cover a great distance by morning, which at the rate they were walking, weighed down with supplies and weapons and the child, he knew was impossible. Misnotishul had told him in the letter that if they were able to cross a certain stream many miles east of the house, they would be free of the Beshanti territory, and the warriors would not follow them beyond that point.

  Before they had left the house, as he was closing the door behind them, Cley remembered the sight of the Beshanti leader tied to the tree. This filled him with dread but also gave him an idea. He went inside and found the platform holding the miniature world. Without hesitation, he ripped off the roof of the little house and lifted the figures out carefully. Next, he found a needle and thread in one of Willa’s boxes and made, from the diminutive family, a necklace of the mother, father, and boy for her to wear. With this charm around her neck, they set forth.

  Willa had, somewhere in between his revealing to her the nature of their situation and the moment they had to leave, come to terms with the fact that she must endure more hardship. She traveled without complaint, carrying the child in one arm and a loaded pistol in the opposite hand. When Cley whispered to her, she whispered back, and he was at least pleased with the fact that she had again found the will to survive.

  The cracking of twigs, the sound of footfalls—something was moving in the deep shadows to her right. Willa Olsen cocked the hammer of the heavy pistol, reached out toward the noise, and pulled the trigger. There was a blinding flash of fire and smoke, a deafening report from the weapon followed quickly by a high-pitched squeal. Wraith woke and began crying.

  “Cley,” she called out just above a whisper. “Cley.”

  The hunter answered a moment later, but not from her left where he had been walking all night. His voice now came from the very spot at which she had fired. “Nice shooting, Mrs. Olsen,” he said.

  “Beshanti?” she asked, rocking the baby so as to quiet him.

  “Deer,” said Cley. “You drilled it right between the eyes.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought …”

  “No need to apologize,” said the hunter. “I appreciate your vigilance.”

  “Yes, but won’t it draw them to us?” she asked.

  “Perhaps,” said Cley, “but I’m surprised we have gotten as far as we have. It will be morning soon. They may be waiting for us at the stream. Or they may not know we have left yet.”

  They traveled faster than Cley had suspected they might, but all of their efforts in this direction were circumvented when Willa had to stop to feed and change the baby. Wraith’s cries of discomfort at being hungry and wet were like a siren moving through the forest, letting the Beshanti know of their position at every step. Once the child was again asleep, they continued as rapidly as before.

  “Move as quickly as you can, Willa,” he told her, “and when we cross that stream, you can rest all day if you like.”

  “You, the same,” she said in response, and this drew a smile from the hunter.

  The sun had risen within the hour, and when Cley turned and looked behind him, he saw a thick column of smoke emanating from the forest to the west, reaching high into the sky. He knew that the house
by the lake was in flames.

  “They are coming,” he said to Willa, who had stopped alongside him.

  “How much farther?” she asked.

  “A mile maybe, a mile and a half,” he said.

  Wood barked at them to move, and they began to walk again, weighed down by the fatigue of the long night.

  An hour passed and the stream came into view at the edge of the wide meadow they were traversing. Cley was exuberant that they had made it without incident. Wood bounded ahead and leaped over the narrow watercourse that was the gateway to their freedom.

  The hunter turned and brought his rifle up. “You cross first, Willa, and I will watch our backs,” he said. When there was no answer from her, he looked and saw the baby, wrapped in its blankets, lying on the ground next to the pistol. Willa Olsen was gliding backward, her feet off the ground as if caught up in a powerful current of air. She struggled and screamed.

  Wood dashed back toward Willa, but Cley told him to stay where he was. The dog reluctantly stopped and began to growl as he took up a position next to the child.

  Cley surmised there were at least two Wraiths carrying her and wondered how many more were in the vicinity. He knew his chances of saving her were slim, and that if he failed, she would meet the same fate as Misnotishul or perhaps worse. He remembered a distant time when his friend Calloo had put a bullet into Mayor Bataldo in order to save him the experience of being rent apart by demons. These thoughts passed through the hunter’s mind in the instant that he took aim for her heart.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered, and as he was about to pull the trigger, a large bird swooped across his field of vision. Momentarily startled, he fired, and that element of surprise marred the shot.