by Eugen Bacon
“Keera. Tssk. I like this sound.”
“Keera a Tafou, this my name.” Her gaze that went and went into my soul. “You name?”
“Silhouette of Grovea.”
“Sil-oo-ate.” She took a stick, scratched a map on the ground and pointed: “Grovea.” Pointed south of it: “Tafou.” She looked at me. “How you speak my tongue?”
I met her eyes, something vivid and moving inside them. “I wonder.”
“Sil-oo-ate.”
“Silhouette.”
“Sil-oo-ate. What this?” The amulet.
“Magic.”
“You . . . ma-gik?”
“I was born to it but I must learn it before I can use it.”
“Me ma-gik—I learn you.”
She was out in the garden and I was inside exploring my new habitat, being nosy to be honest, when on a shelf in her chamber I found a book of spells. It was old as a curse. There was no doubt what it was because it said in bold silver on the ebony cover: Book of Spells. Was it something in me, perhaps the amulet I wore, that allowed me to read this language? Already I could hear it when Keera spoke to me, talk back in it when I answered.
I felt eyes on my back, turned and found Peaches, a question in his gaze, or was he waiting for me to say something that would make him giggle? Keera was between us in a wind. She retrieved the book of spells and said: “Naw get!” She had no concept of time, nothing was rush, so to her I was an impatient apprentice.
Today she crouches at the edge of the water bowl near the crag, Peaches on her hips. She peers into the giant hearts. Her palm slips into the froth and lifts out a writhing tail that finishes with the head of a fish. She places it in a bucket bedded with weeds whose scent knocks the fish out of its writhe in seconds. She peers back into the giant hearts, slips her hand in and pulls out another fish. Her favorite is the rock mullet, its scales large as her thumb. Sometimes she pulls out a fish, strokes it with a prayer, returns it to the water bowl.
“She no good, sick.”
“How can you tell?”
“Eye tell a disease. This fish cloudy eye.”
She pulls out another.
“She good fish, lively eye. It skin shine too.”
She shows me I can close my eyes and tell a good fish because smell matters. A healthy fish smells faintly of seaweed. A sickening one is strong, fishy; you feel it and its scales are dry and gritty. You unclose your eyes and find discolor, sunken eyes, and you know the nose was right.
She puts Peaches to the ground so she can scale the fish. She holds it firmly with a hand, scrapes from tail to head with a knife. But before the scraping, she guts it.
“Inside go rot, spoil the meat.”
She inserts the tip of her filleting knife into a small opening at the tail, cuts with her hand through the belly toward the intestines. If the fish is female, Keera unfastens roe from the intestines, rinses it in a separate bucket. Sometimes she fillets the fish, sweeping strokes from head to tail, flip, and cleanly debones it. Sometimes she cooks it whole. Sometimes she skins it so we can later snack on crisped skin rich with smoke and a rub of spice.
“Tell me about the child’s father.”
“Taken.”
“Who took him?”
“His name, Taken.”
“Taken of Tafou?”
“Taken a Tafou. Spirit a fire.” She mutters a prayer. “He clan a fire. Me clan a land. No marry clan a fire, clan a land. Me defy, he burn.”
What-am-a-say? Keera made child with a non-enchanted, a defiance that cost Taken his life—they tied him to a stake and burnt him.
“He clan a fire, come together with blaze. In fire, I see him spread, become spirit, his soul float in horizon. No more touch me but protect me.”
The day she spoke of Taken, feeling unmapped from her face. Her countenance went plain. Her eyes did not become a world of hurt as you might expect. She said it matter of fact, like a narrator without personal claim. But Peaches showed interest. He halted mid-crawl, sat silent and faced us.
“They take from me him. Later, much later, secret, I take ash. When they outcast me, ash make land fertile. Taken not deadened . . . Taken”—she beats her chest—“here forever.”
Peaches clapped, big laughs that finished with a squeal and a hiccup. Keera went silent, said nothing two days straight.
That night I sat alone at the crag. Suddenly there was a rook and then a panther, gleaming eyes, beside me. “Together we know the dark,” they spoke as one. “Death and rebirth, remember this.” I looked back and in the distance where the sky met the earth in a line of orange fire, Taken was there.
When Keera broke her silence, she also broke her nakedness. She approached me, garbed in a flowing dress splotched with flowers. She drew me to her chamber. The skirt spread when she sat on the floor, the book of spells between her legs. She caked my face with a scarlet paint, then striped it with a white paint. Her chant, most bewitching, put Peaches to sleep. Light from her lantern danced and cast a circle around us. Our bodies swayed. Keera’s chant found my throat so I hummed.
She learnt me the ways of her ma-gik. I can cast a fizz of spit to ward off evil. I can detect lure placed on a thing, and dispel it. I can cast light into a creature to blind it, charm it to obey me. I can protect myself from evil in a barrier. I can hear thought and remove fear. What-am-a-feel? That night curled in Keera’s arms, her long frame holding me in a spoon on her bed, every inch of me burnt.
“My name is Silhouette of Grovea,” I spoke without sound into her hand cradling my face.
“Sil-oo-ate,” warm breath on my neck.
“I am an enchantress.”
“Mine . . . enshant-tress.”
MARGO
• 19 •
Folk nicknamed them Fidget and Sprinkles.
Fidget and Sprinkles were born in robust households full of kids. A parent in either household must have decided the secret to a vigorous child lay in throwing the tot out of the house. Neither Fidget nor Sprinkles wanted for a healthy dose of wind, sun and rain.
Ken was Fidget and Margo was Sprinkles. Fidget wore a gummy grin and was the bouncy, animated one—whoosh, off he goes again! Sprinkles wore a head rather big for her. “Skinny-balinki long legs,” as Fidget liked to tease.
The nickname Sprinkles came from a lolly with sprinkles at Cindy’s Blow Pops down the road, and the name was all about the little girl’s big head. Cindy sold all types of suckers, from chewy types to bubble gum center types, hard candy shell types to soft fruit-flavored shell types. Sprinkles preferred sour lollies that came without wraps and sold at half price. Fidget preferred blue raspberry ones.
Despite clear confectionery differences, the children found friendship at the local kindergarten in Sheepwash Creek. Every child but Sprinkles was uneasy with the boisterous little boy in dungarees who climbed tables and roared: “I am a dragon! Put out my fire!” Only Sprinkles neared enough to try and put out the roaring dragon’s fire.
Fidget continued to unsettle other kids with his fueled play. Everyone but Sprinkles huddled away, and this was despite the presence of a number of helper mums in the classroom, adults equally bewildered by the boy who must have gobbled a bag of jumping beans.
Soon after she met Fidget, little Sprinkles did not wait for her mother to pour her out of the house. She tumbled out of her own volition, yelling as she raced, “I go play wif Ken.”
Fidget’s father was a carpenter, and his nimble hands provided mobile objects carved in wood, objects that the children pedaled with fierceness that sent dust and roosters flying. The timber objects transformed as the kids grew older, from tricycles, carts and scooters to wooden bicycles.
Fidget and Sprinkles were competitive in their sportiness. Prize ribbons for cross country, athletics, netball and hockey—the only sporting activities in the local community school—decorat
ed their walls. Neither child went on to secondary school after finishing early learning.
From the time Fidget and Sprinkles were little, folk always joked about the two of them being together and predicted they would grow up (as if that needed predicting) and marry each other. No one imagined that one day they actually would.
Fidget quickly learnt his father’s trade. When he outgrew outdoor playing, one would find him gluing, clamping, bolting, drilling, gunning, sawing, sanding, and then some. His special talent lay in softwood. He was deft at making bowls, trays, racks, buckets, blinds, cutlery and toys. In no time he mastered cedar and black walnut, and expanded his crafting to chiffoniers, beds and boats.
Sprinkles had a father who was a landscaper. In time she too picked some of his trade. She amused herself with paving, decking, concreting, water featuring and turfing . . . mostly in other people’s compounds for paid jobs with her dad. What she enjoyed most was the gardening. She also loved being out on the farm with her mother. She was diligent in trying to learn her mother’s animal whispering and green thumb, and her mother was equally attentive in trying to teach her tomboy daughter these skills.
In time Sprinkles (who by now had grown into her head and preferred to be called Margo) found herself increasingly drawn to Fidget (who was still restless but preferred that people called him Ken). Margo admired Ken’s uninhibitedness, his confidence and amusement with life. His coffee eyes were always smiling, and each time you looked his way you became certain he was tripping to release a chuckle.
With her siblings way older than she and no longer living in the homestead, Margo took to discussing Ken out loud with herself. She also conversed about him with her mother’s favorite white oak at the edge of Sheepwash Creek. The tree was one of much age and squat appearance, and its gnarled roots insisted on poking above the ground. When Margo sat on its roots and talked to the tree, she was convinced that the white oak thought it was favorable, if not prudent, for Margo to try and kiss Ken. But Margo didn’t know how to initiate the kiss. Each time she thought to try and bring her face close, Ken merrily bounced away.
While they still chatted like dear friends, adolescent Ken became gentlemanly with Margo, oblivious to the lusting for a kiss. Their moments alone continued to be seemingly innocent.
While his unreachability kept her hungry, Margo found a new worry: Ken was showing interest in traveling, and his talk conveyed an increasing restlessness. When her mother died suddenly of whooping cough, it was Margo—not her siblings—who inherited the plow, yoke, axe and winnower. She did not inherit her mother’s green thumb. Her mother also left her a cased record player with red velvet in its interior.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” said Ken.
“It’s not like she was in my pocket,” said Margo. But she grieved.
Perhaps to distract her from her mother’s death, Margo’s father taught her to drive. One day he simply tapped her elbow, led her to the truck and rolled it into an empty paddock. He showed her how to move the clutch and gear, pointed at the brakes. He switched to the passenger seat and Margo took the wheel. She turned the ignition key. The engine started and the truck jumped and rolled forward. Soon as it began to speed along the dirt, across the grass and over horse poop, Margo’s father pulled his seat and leaned backward, put a hat over his face and fell asleep. He opened his eyes when the engine turned off and the truck was maneuvered back into the garage.
“Cracken hell,” he said.
This is how they both understood Margo was good with trucks.
With her newfound responsibilities in the garden, on the farm and with the truck, Ken’s suitability as a kiss recipient and someone greater became more and more unlikely for Margo.
• • •
One day when Ken was twelve or thirteen, his mother, who was nursing a newborn that later died, was astonished to find that Ken had pulled out all his bedding including the eiderdown.
“What’s with the bed?”
He said nothing.
“Accident?”
“Yes.”
Later, as she sorted the washing and found no smell of urine, she tackled the delicate subject.
“When boys arrive at your age they get wet dreams,” she said.
He said nothing.
“Heard of wet dreams?”
He nodded.
“Your body is forming and it’s ready to make babies, but when conditions are not right it shoots out breeding water.”
He nodded.
“If the body doesn’t shoot out the water, you might hurt some. This is why sometimes boys like to touch themselves. “
He nodded.
“Your father does it. He pulls himself all the time.”
Ken fled.
• • •
Perhaps nervous of the babies Ken might make with the landscaper’s daughter who drove trucks, his father sent him off to a carpentry apprenticeship with an uncle in Middle Creek.
• 20 •
Ken loved the apprenticeship, and Uncle was generous in his teachings. But Ken was torn because he also loved the moments when he came home to visit. It was no surprise that, when he did visit, he and Margo found themselves together in her barn, their backs on hay as they faced a corrugated iron roof that wailed when it rained.
One afternoon he reached for a straw of hay, put it to his lips.
“What shall we get to?” he said.
“I’ve got a few ideas,” she said.
He was not discomfited when Margo’s conversation meandered into prattle about their future.
“Lots and lotsa kids,” she said.
“Four,” he said.
“Lotsa them.”
“Four.”
She jumped and faced him. “Seven.”
He took her face in his hands and kissed her.
• • •
They tied the knot a month later in the same barn, decorated with blues and yellows.
• • •
Ken’s father allocated his basement as temporary housing for the couple.
The night of their wedding, Ken made music with his hands, chanted while Margo danced. She moved her body freely, but froze when he took her in his arms and unzipped her gown. For the first time in their lives they found themselves awkward with each other. But Ken’s playfulness steered them out of the odd moment and drove them into a merry jousting that culminated in a rubbing of toes.
It was on the second night that the couple discovered a giving and taking that left their bodies pulsing. It was as if this was only a beginning. Indeed, satiation quickly peaked to a new hunger that intensified to a necessity.
The baby making when it started was a playful curiosity. While the couple wrapped and unwrapped themselves in linen, as they giggled and grunted between sheets and the softness of the eiderdown, they began to speak of the seven children they would raise.
“Four girls and three boys,” said Margo.
“Four boys, three girls.”
Three miscarriages later, they started to lose their fun. Thermometers crept in as a precursor to their play. Ken discovered that Margo was at times agreeable, but often when he neared, she clawed at him—unless the thermometer said conditions were right. When it said so, one look from Margo and Ken took her hand, and led her up the stairs.
It was the thermometer that also said Margo should stop eating corn and spreading butter on her toast. Instead she gobbled ghee, honey, avocado and eggs, and drank nothing but water, raspberry leaf tea and nettle leaf tonic.
“Urine color must be right,” she said.
The thermometer also said no beer or smokes for Ken, but more salt to his dinner. Margo also gave him lots and lots of grapefruit juice and insisted he drink it all.
One night after their duty-filled routine in the bedroom, Ken said, “It’s a full moon—tried walking on your hands?”
“Now you mock me,” she said.
“But you sit on the roots of the white oak, wait for birds to shit on your head. Who really is the mocker?”
“For luck!” she yelled.
She was doing dishes the next morning when she broke down and hurled a plate. “It’s all your fault,” she sobbed.
“Mine? Why!”
“You’re not taking it serious.”
“But I am.”
“I don’t think so,” she hiccuped.
“Really, I am.” And he put his arms around her.
• • •
Without spoken arrangement, Margo started waiting for Ken on the front step of the porch and, soon as he emerged from his carpentry, she took his hammer and put it away. Then she took his hand and led him to the bedroom.
No matter how tired, how could Ken find voice to say no, with grace, to a coupling? He recrafted himself to a new version: dutiful husband.
The heaving bed provoked unease in both, but Margo did not seem to notice. She kept her eyes to the ceiling beyond Ken’s head until his duty was done. Their coupling continued to be a simple yet complex experience that left them both dull.
“It is what it is,” she said when Ken broached the subject.
“Perhaps we need a plan for the plan,” he said. “There has to be a more effective way—”
But she shoved his protest out of the way and rolled off the bed. “Too much thought doesn’t make babies. All you’ll find is a devil in the detail.”
The devil was in the detail—intercourse left them as childless as ever and sticky with distaste. Sometimes when the deed was done Ken reached out a hand, but Margo rolled away.
She agreed to see Dr Ace.
