The Year of the Hydra

by William Broughton Burt

  Before I can say what Chapter Thirteen, the naked youth has vanished in a burst of tiny bubbles, and I am alone in the cold, dark waters, save for the multi-maniacally pursuing Julian Mancer. It seems I’m now supposed to recall something I’ve known all along from an incinerated and never-to-be completed, utterly deleted novel from hell and its immediate outlying environs—while bleeding and fleeing myself in carnivorous fish form. Nothing occurs to me, but as the nips are coming quite close to my heels, I decide to emit another explosion of song, its vibration calculated to splinter the tiny bones and appalling teeth of this ill-timed cult following. I let fly, and the burst of song roils the cold water into a cloud of foam, jetting me forward. For a moment, I see nothing at all behind me—but once more, my dark side has anticipated me. The frenzied fish re-emerge from the foam unfazed, their ranks and files re-formed into a confectionary swirl, and I realize that Julian Mancer possesses my own understanding of wave dynamics and is using that knowledge to dip between the dip slopes of my attack.

  Ah. Dip slopes.

  The beginning of Chapter Thirteen, I now recall, goes into quite some detail about untangling the syncline and anticline of concurrent tectonic vectors by means of reverse osmosis, past life regression, and spare rubber bands. What are the chances, I conjecture, that a solution to the current quandary might lie in those very details, and what that might mean in terms of fish food? No matter. The water is chopping with Julian Mancer’s German-made-pencil-like teeth, and my strength is fading. Time to find out whether that fair-haired boy might actually be onto something besides the divan.

  I begin to move through the water in such a way as to create syncline/anticline currents, to which my school of followers respond as one, simultaneously proving and disproving Sandborns’ Unified Wave Theory as each fish is intent on remaining in sync with the others and simultaneously in sync with me. Little do they know, this introduces a breach between undertow and overtow in a way that opens a probability window through which I might actually manage to wriggle, escaping these dark waters of geologic unknowing. Which is to say, I’ve no idea how Chapter Thirteen might apply here, but I’ve had quite enough of this aquatic rudeness and so dip quite suddenly between the two presiding probabilities, which are that I am either (a) eater, or (b) eatee. It now tumbles to the center of my awareness that I am, in fact, whichever I elect to be. That is, while the situation is inescapable, I am at choice as to what perspective to experience it from.

  Let’s not be the eatee.

  No sooner postulated than all is reversed and I am no longer pursued but pursuer. I am the terror that now opens its fiendish maw to rip at the white flesh of Julian Mancer with his own needle-like teeth, his horrid blood now uncoiling in the dark waters like a toxic cloud—and it is I who spins away from his pitiful death throes to zip alone through the anonymous waters, one with their blackness, with my blackness. Ever farther behind me falls Julian Mancer’s shrill, bubbling wail, rising in pitch until it is indistinguishable from the churning of the deadly waters.

  I crash clumsily onto the white marble of the uppermost terrace of the Circular Mound Altar. The neighborhood hasn’t improved much in my absence. Foul-tempered Hydran heads still rear from simultaneous directions and dimensions.

  Tree, still leaning against the innermost gate, croons, “. . . From thy WOUNN-NNN-NND-ed side which flowed…”

  A familiar voice cries, “My General!”

  Just before it takes off my head, I pluck from the air a spinning double-edged sword, until recently Ana’s pocketknife. Standing in the midst of the maelstrom is our fair-haired boy, no longer but naked but wrapped in a red toga and silver chain-mail. I realize it is Heracles’ nephew Iolaus I behold, in his right hand a white-hot firebrand.

  But wait. Two serpentine heads are now coiled to strike at Iolaus from behind. I spring into action, spinning through the air to hack off both heads in a single stroke, the cold blood splashing my face. As quickly, Iolaus cauterizes the stumps, and I turn to face a new attack from three overlapping dimensions. The three Hydrae strike at the same instant, and I spin again, my sword describing a deadly arc. Again, the white marble is stained a dirty red, and the firebrand sends up a hissing cloud of steam.

  “Be of sin-nnnn,” sings Tree, “the double CUURR-RRre.”

  We’re doing our best, sweetie.

  Above the Altar, the air becomes thick with a stinking grey-brown cloud of vapor as Iolaus and I spin and deal death until the terrace is all but covered by severed Hydran heads that lie twitching and spurting blood.

  “Save from WRATHhh-hhhh,” sings Tree, “and make me puu-uurrre.”

  Finally the air clears to reveal exactly nine remaining Hydrae, each with one remaining head. Those nine heads, though presently stunned, would be the immortal ones, I’d say, which cannot be killed but only trapped beneath a rock. If only we had a…

  Iolaus and I share a questioning look. Now we turn to gaze at Tree, who is inhaling deeply, preparing to deliver her money line.

  “Rock of Aaaa-AAAAAAAAAAAA-ages…” she cries, and I drop my sword to join in, a third above. Iolaus drops his firebrand and hits the fifth.

  We’re not half bad, this trio.

  At this moment, all nine Hydran heads gaze skyward, their maws slack. They can’t like what they see. Directly above the Circular Mound Altar, arcing through the sickly green firmament at an alarming velocity, is a spinning and smoking rock. Of ages, one assumes. With a shrill hiss of alarm, the nine Hydrae scramble together, collapsing into one creature which tries desperately to claw its way beneath the Heaven’s Heart Stone.

  “Cleft for me-EEE-eeee-EEEEEEEE-eeeeee…”

  As we push our quavering notes quite near the breaking point, the enormous descending rock clefts into two precise pieces, the smaller one flaming out quickly but not before deflecting the larger piece ever so slightly. That larger chunk now hurtles directly toward the center of the Circular Mound Altar. I decide I’ve seen enough. No longer singing, I’m flying through the air, making haste for the nearest exit.

  I don’t quite get there.

  A horrific blast shatters my senses. The whole upper terrace of the Altar leaps skyward in a billowing cloud of crushed white marble. I seem to spin through the air for a foolish eternity before coming to rest on my back amid a downpour of debris and finally a suffocating powder-like dust. The only sound now is a fading series of echoes of the calamitous crash, leading gradually to an eerie silence broken only by a curious sizzling, popping sound. Now I hear coughing. Gradually I realize it is my own.

  Slowly and painfully, I rise to my knees in what seems a moonscape. No longer someone’s sing-song superhero, I am a dust-covered man in torn khakis. The air feels oddly empty. There’s no trace of the shrill energy that quite recently gripped this place. Wiping the dust from my face, I rise and look around myself. It appears I am alone. No fair-haired child, no severed heads, no bloody remains. Gone is the entire detritus of what seemed a very real battle, now no more than a dream. Dazed, I find myself ascending what remains of the rubble-littered steps of the upper terrace of the Circular Mound Altar. On the top step, I stop and stare.

  Embedded at the center of the obelisk is an enormous, irregular grey-green meteorite the approximate size of a road grader. It’s from this prodigious rock that the hissing and sizzling sounds emanate.

  Now my eyes catch sight of something. At the base of the meteorite are two feet wearing tan desert boots with checkered laces. The remains of the late Timothy Dobbins, it would appear, lie crushed beneath the steaming meteorite.

  So it goes.

  Again, the sound of coughing. This time it isn’t from me. Following that sound, I pick my way around the overheated boulder to discover a dusty head and shoulders struggling to emerge from the debris. Those shoulders, unless I’m very wrong, are draped with very long, very platinum hair.

  “Lilly?”

  Dropping to my knees, I toss aside a clutter of white marble. Finally I take hold of two white
hands and pull my sister from the rubble.

  “Lilly! Are you okay?”

  Lillian, clad in a hospital gown, finally croaks, “God, I need a cig. What the hell just happened to me?”

  “Where are the others?” I ask.

  Wiping dust from her eyes, Lil replies, “What others? All I know is somebody hits me with a needle and I wake up in Chernobyl.”

  “Is that my baby?” cries a familiar voice.

  We turn to see the approach of Tree.

  “Oh my precious Jesus!” she cries.

  “Tree!”

  “Aaaaaaaughh!”

  “Aaaaaa-AAAUUGHH-hhh!”

  Laughing and crying, a white-faced Tree and a whiter-faced Lil embrace. I peer, meanwhile, at the anonymous mound of debris. No new siblings after all, it seems. I was kind of counting on a sister upgrade.

  “You see what happens,” Tree says to me, still clutching my sister, “when you call upon the Rock? You see what happens, Julian?”

  What I’m seeing is an enormous green crystal embedded in one side of my favorite meteorite. That crystal is moldavite. As I watch, the cooling green crystal pops loudly and a large piece breaks off, clattering onto the marble.

  “Thank you, Jesus,” says Tree, examining her fingers, which once more number exactly ten.

  I check inside my pants. No real changes.

  Thank you, Jesus.

  Suddenly comes the unwelcome sound of a racking shotgun, followed by an East Texas drawl. “Move away from the mutants, ma’am.”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  “Ralpho?”

  “Nothing personal, Julian,” replies the man on the other end of the shotgun. “I knew you’d eventually lead me to the nest. The hard part was keeping you alive. I’ve never known anybody with a stronger death wish.”

  “Uh, there is no nest, Ralpho,” I tell him. “In fact, I think you’ll find things here largely under control.”

  Ralph O’Malley answers, “Dr. Carter, would you kindly move away from the mutants?”

  “Ralpho?” I say again.

  “This ends exactly here,” he says resolutely.

  A furrow appears in Tree’s dust-covered brow. “I have had too crazy a day for this. Why don’t you put that ugly gun somewhere out of my sight?”

  Lillian moves a little closer to Tree. “She means it, man.”

  I notice a movement behind Ralpho. It’s Xu, sans wooden leg, crawling toward Ralpho. He’s hopelessly far away.

  “Actually we’re all mutants, Ralpho,” I say. “And no one here is a vegetarian, so…”

  “Is that Dobbins under that rock?” asks Ralpho, pointing with the shotgun.

  I nod. “So it goes. But we have important things to discuss. Like…” I look at Lillian.

  “Anthropomorphism,” says Lil.

  “Yes, anthropomorphism. Agree or disagree. It’s humanizing and dehumanizing at the same time.”

  Xu, now upright, tries hopping toward Ralpho. He’ll never make it in time.

  Ralpho levels the shotgun. “Either move away, Mrs. Carter, or I’ll have no choice.”

  Pulling Lil and myself closer to her, Tree says resolutely, “We are always at choice.”

  I raise my hands, palms open. “I know. Let’s all think about this for a minute.”

  Ralph O’Malley spreads his feet and drops his center of gravity. “Three… two…”

  Desperately Xu extends his arms and his one leg, becoming a rolling hoop.

  “One…”

  At the end of his final cartwheel, Xu delivers a solid kick to the side of Ralpho’s head, and the shotgun goes off. At the same instant, a white shape flies through the air, intercepting the tight pattern of buckshot.

  It’s Ana Manguella, Director of Security.

  “Ana!”

  Shotgun blast still echoing in the air, I run to the bloody form lying in the rubble between myself and the unconscious Ralph O’Malley. Turning Ana’s crumpled form over, I search frantically for a wound, finding only a ragged and singed hole at her breast pocket. Amazed, I pull from the pocket a badly deformed yet basically intact titanium-shielded journal.

  “Crap,” I say, looking at the remains of my journal.

  “Shit,” moans Ana, curling around her bruised chest.

  “Geezly,” says Lil, kneeling to examine Ana. “It looks like all that blood’s from her nose. I think she’s okay. You hear me, hon? You’re going to be okay.”

  Checking Ana’s other pockets irritably, I say, “Where are my pencils?”

  Again, the racking of the shotgun. I look up. One by one, Xu is ejecting the unspent shells, which rain down on a motionless Ralph O’Malley.

  “Mr. Xu,” says Tree, “would you please place that thing as far away from us as you can? We’ll have no more of those in the world now being born.”

  Xu flings the shotgun. Placing his hands on his hips, he smiles broadly. “The Thirteen. It’s here. Look around.”

  I look straight up into an unclouded sky. It’s actually blue. Along one side of the reappearing sun is a newborn brightness. I almost imagine that I hear a bird.

  As Xu begins searching for his wooden leg, a smiling Tree dusts the powdered marble from her face and says, “It’s time to rededicate the temple, kids.” She extends both her hands.

  Lillian steps forward and accepts one of Tree’s hands before turning to me. “Doo?”

  “Jules?” says Tree, waiting.

  I look at both the extended hands. Oh what the hell. I accept both hands, and they pull me into a tight embrace.

  “My boy and my girl,” coos Tree.

  I have to strain to keep my forehead from touching theirs. A moment later I’m straining a little less. Finally I’m not straining at all. The three warm foreheads meet. I feel it now. Despite myself. Despite everything. I know it for the first time. Completion.

  On this ancient altar, amid the ruins of every possible blunder, every foul betrayal, our feet seemingly melting into the cool white marble, eyes closed yet filled with an unmistakable inner brightness—we are here at last.

  Everything we thought we knew, everything we thought we doubted, falls gently away, leaving us empty and transfigured, our arms entwined, our warm breaths mixing. All at once, we three are a vast column of light connecting sun and earth through the soft, intervening half-brilliance of that which we are.

  “We send a voice,” says Tree Carter, her breath hot and sweet, “unto all who have come to this world to struggle and to live, to laugh and to cry, and we say, ‘Have heart, loved ones.’ We send a voice to our own past, to our very ancestors, and to those whom we ourselves have been, and say, ‘Persevere, loved ones. Every tear that falls upon your precious feet will someday nurture the hearts of those whom you shall become.’ Holy Lord God Nimbutsu Nimbutsu.”

  “Holy Lord God Nimbutsu Nimbutsu,” echo Lil and I.

  “We send forth a voice and a song to our future selves, those mighty ones whom we shall one day constitute and construe, conjugate and corroborate, and we say, ‘Believe in us. Wait for us. Help us.’”

  I open my eyes. There’s no frown-line between Tree’s eyebrows. Her dusty face is as smooth and unlined as a baby’s. As I watch, the golden light of the newborn sun falls across her features.

  “We say unto all,” continues Tree, “and unto our own selves: this is a new world. Not someday. Not somehow. Not someone else. Right here, right now, right or wrong, all the way. We are the new temple. This is a new world and we shall never, ever go back to where we have been. Thanks be unto all who shine, and all who shine, and all who shine. Be it hereby and forevermore so.”

  “Be it hereby,” say the Mancer twins, “and forevermore so.”

  Jesus Jehosefat Archbishop Tutu.

  Epilogue

  I’ve discovered a new room. Sometimes at night I throw open the curtains and windows of my new room to gather in the neighborhood scents and sounds that I never cared to know before. There’s a lot about Memphis that I never cared to know before, be
ginning with this small apartment on a poplar-lined street, my home during the closing years of an old epoch and the beginning of a new one.

  Thus far I’d have to say that not much has changed. There are still winos in the parks and panhandlers on the street. There are people with good hair on television and ball games on Saturday. Maybe it’s only I who has changed.

  I’ve taken to carrying cigarettes for them, the panhandlers, the unshaven men of the streets and toppling downtown parks. I hold the flame steady as they cup their shaky hands. Sometimes their fingers touch mine and I am reminded of something or someone just beyond recall.

  By afternoon I wander Memphis by foot, looking for a way to enter. I’m too alert for the bar and grills, too tragic for the bookstore cafes, too abstract for the polished supermarket aisles and shopping mall benches. You have to find a doorway into the story, I was told late in the last epoch.

  My mother is awake, say the nurses, though she doesn’t speak. There seems to be a point where we have said enough. I think I have a personal understanding of that.

  Tree still teaches small children and satellite-feeds her weekly radio show. My sister has resigned her position at Stuebans, Stuebans, and Rehnquist. Her immediate plans are to quit smoking and begin a counseling service for recovering conservatives IHW.

  I too have resigned my post, that of providing fraudulent articles to Miriam Goldfarb’s glossy tax-write-off of a magazine or fully intending to. I never was that kind of writer. If I never pen another word, my journal has already served to save the life of the most exquisite woman alive, wherever she may be and whomever she’s sidebarring now.

  Harold Sternbaum is dead. So it goes. He was the central launderer of money for the Triad, they say, before it was decided that he used a little too much starch. After handling the details of his considerable estate, Phoebe vanished along with her mother and a hazel-haired child with a thing for plastic make-up mirrors.

  The Temple of Heaven Park is closed indefinitely, “for maintenance” say the Chinese. My own sources whisper that the remains of seven tall, blond Westerners were discovered in the Temple of Heaven’s Hall of Abstinence shortly after the beginning of the new epoch. Poor devils, it appears they fell upon each other in a frenzy shortly before my sister’s arrival. Amid the bodies was found a chocolate bar, one bite missing.