(Glade, World, Master, Boy, Hero)

                                                 GLADE

There is a glacier.
Its blue tongue’s tip just tastes a frozen gorge.
There is a gorge, its walls shattered by cold; a once-green thing that, in dying, birthed a thousand aching fissures. It works its jagged way downhill, round ragged rifts and drifts until it comes upon a little frosted wood.
There is a wood, an island locked in ice.
Within this wood the gorge descends. It wanders and it wends; it brakes and all but ends outside a clearing wet with sun. And there, forking, its bent and broken arms embrace a strange, enchanted glade.

There is a glade.
And in this glade the black bears sleep, though salmon leap fat between falls. Here the field mouse draws no shadow, the eagle seeks no prey; they spend their while caressed by rays, and halcyon days are they. Here rabbit and fawn may linger, no longer need they flee. For in this timeless, taintless space, the Wild has ceased to be. (Outside the glade are shadow and prey, are ice and naked death. There blood may run freely. There the eagle, that thief, is a righteous savage, a noble fiend. But once in the glade he is dove, and has no taste for blood, running freely or otherwise).
And in this glade there nests a pool:  a dazzling, blue-and-silver jewel; profoundly deep, pristinely clear. All who sip find solace here, for this is the Eye of Being. They lap in peace, assuming blear, not knowing it is seeing. And ever thus this pool shall peer:  a silent seer, reflecting on—all that Is, and all Beyond.
(Outside the glade there lies a world where rivers ever run, where ghastly calves in random file revile a bitter sun. East, the day is born in mist. West she dies:  her rest, the deep. And North…North the Earth lies mute. Wind gnaws her hide, wind wracks her dreams. Wind screams like a flute in her white, white sleep).
But in the glade are tall, stately grasses, sunning raptly, spinning lore. Roots render the rhythms, blades bend without breeze, as signals ascend from the glade’s tender floor. (In this wise the glade weaves its word, airs its views. All the glade’s flora are bearers of news). They do not wither with fall, for in the glade there is no fall. They do not bind or wilt or brown—they gesture, spreading the mood, the mind; conveying, indeed, the very soul of the glade. As ever they have, as they shall evermore.
Bees do not hum here; they sing. They fatten the dream. Mellow and round are the timbres they sound, sweet is the music they bring. Birds do not sing here—they play. They carry the theme. Dulcet and warm are the strains they perform. Gifted musicians are they. (All in the glade are virtuosi. They were born to create. Melody, harmony, meter…are innate). Now the performance is lively and bright, now full, now almost still. For, though all in the glade may lean to the light, they must bend to the maestro’s feel.
And yet…there was a day, long ago in a dream, when this ongoing opus was torn. And on that day (so the lullaby goes) the wind brought a scream, and Dissonance was born.
There was a noise.
Moose tensed, their coffee eyes narrowed, their patient brows creased. Bees mauled the tempo, birds lost their place. The grass stood *****, all blades pointing east. There was a crash, and a shriek, and a naked, bleeding beast burst stinking through the fern, fell stumbling on its face.
Moose scattered:  unheard of. Sheep brawled, geese burst out of rhyme. The symphony, forever endeavored to soar sublime, fluttered, plunged, and, for all of a measure, ceased.
The pool was appalled…what manner brute—what kind of monster was this? Furless flank to forelimb, hide obscured by blood. As for its face…it had no face; only a look:  of shock frozen in time, of horror in amber. A deep welling rift ran temple to chin, halving the mask, caving it in. Such a grievous wound…the pool watched it stagger, on two legs and four, thrashing about till it came to a rise. There it labored for air, wiped the blood from its eyes, lashed at illusion, looked wildly round. Beholding the pool, the beast tumbled down.
And there this wretch plunged his thirst, drank his fill, fell back on his haunches.
The pool became still.
The two traded stares.
The glass read his features:  that durable eye pondered the wreckage and probed the debris. Revolted, the pool sought the succor of sky. But that thing remained—that face…in all creation…surely there could be…no other creature so ugly as he.
And he gazed in the glass.
Beneath the surface were…images…swimming in currents of shadow and light. He saw half-shapes and fragments…hideous men, exotic beasts…saw blue worlds of water, saw white worlds of ice…it was all so vague and unreal—yet somehow strangely familiar. Deeper he peered, but, as his mangled face neared, the sun smote the pool and the shapes disappeared. The brute pawed the ground and, dreaming he’d drowned, shook his head sharply and slowly looked round:
There were starlings at arm’s-length, transfixed with suspense, their tail feathers trembling, their dark eyes intense. Fantails and timber wolves, stepping in sync, paused for a sniff, stooped for a drink. Bees, pirouetting, threw light in his eyes. Seizing the moment, the pool pressed its hold.
And the glade revolved.
The freak watched it spin—saw the ferns’ greedy fingers reach round and close in, saw the tall grass rise high in an emerald sheen, swaying to rhythms from somewhere obscene. This place was madness; he struggled to stand, but, weak as he was, keeled over cold.
And the glade heaved a sigh, and the tall grass reclined, in curious patterns once rendered in whim. Far off in thunder the hard world replied, as iced pines exploded and screamed on the breeze. Down bore the sun, a chill just behind. The pool, grown blood-red, fended frost from its rim. Details dissolved in the oncoming tide. The pool dimmed to black. Night seeped through the trees.
Now flora found slumber while, pulsing below, the pool was infused with a soft ruby glow.
Soon birds bearing beech leaves, and needles of pine, laid down a spread and returned to the limb. But breath from the North blew their blanket aside. The wind grew in earnest, the air seemed to freeze.
And the wolf and the she-bear, of contrary mind, abhorring their task approached, looking grim. They sniffed him for measure, then, loathing his hide, growled their displeasure and dropped to their knees.
All night these glum attendants flanked his naked quaking form. The rising moon drew dreams in gray.
In time the man grew warm.

Morning swept through the glade in one broad stroke of the master’s brush, dappling the foliage with amber and rose. The pool was roused by the sweet pass of light. He opened his eye and the glade came alive:  into the whirlpool of life a thousand colors swam, chasing the scattering eddies of night. The magic of morning began.
Bluebird and goldfinch descended in rings, primaries clashing with robin and jay. Dollops of sun, repelled by their wings, spattered anew on the palette of day. Banking as one, the hues struck away.
There was a crowd.
And in this crowd that oddity sat, its chin on its chest, its rear pointing west. Its forepaws lay leaning, upturned and at rest. ***** and blood messed its muzzle and breast. Passed overnight. Or perhaps only dozed…tendril by tendril, claw by claw, the crowd decompressed:  the ring slowly closed.
And the stranger cried out and shifted his seat. His eyes sought his feet—rounding the arches, and topping the toes, the tall grass was questing. The little brute froze.
And the fauna took pause, and the flora went slack. Leaves followed talons, stems followed claws. Hooves tromped on paws as the crowd drifted back.
Not a breath taken. Not a move made. Stillness, like fog, enveloped the glade.
Now the grass tugged his feet, now the sea of jade splayed—left hand and right, the slender shafts reared. Gaining momentum, blade followed blade. The green field was torn till a deep swath appeared. The swath hurtled west, reflecting the sun. A hundred yards distant it died. Once more the grass stood, its tips spreading wide. The swath, born again, repeated its run.
Plain was the message, and clearly conveyed. The newcomer gawked. Confusion ensued.
The tall blades were swayed by the pulse of the glade.
But the swath was not renewed.
Something tiny bounced by. He ventured a peek, barely rolling an eye.
A chocolate sparrow, with pinfeathers black, popped past an ankle and paused to look back. The bird cocked its head, rocked in place, hopped ahead. It fluttered. It freaked. It glared and stopped dead. Vexed to its limit, it burst into flight.
The sitting thing watched till it passed out of sight.
Now a breeze bent his back, picked him half off his stern. The wind, done its best, grew flustered at last. It trailed to the west, thrilling lilies it passed. It wound round the willows and didn’t return.
So the fauna repaired to the live oak’s shade.
A strange kind of stupor fell over the glade.
From deep in the wood came a shape through the trees—a pronghorn, perhaps, or an elk swift and sure. But up limped a moose, a flyport with fur, low in the belly and wide at the knees. Wizened he was, scarcely able to see. Neither vision, nor vigor, nor velvet had he. He hobbled abreast, then groveled or died, his nose facing west, his tail flung aside.
The brute merely glazed.
But the glade was unfazed.
Those long shafts reshuffled. A tense moment passed.
The ominous shadows of badgers were cast. Three left their holes, as if to attack. They pedaled like moles and the stranger jumped back. He stumbled, fell flailing, and, kicking his guide, threw out his arms and tumbled astride. First he stepped on his tail, then he stepped on his pride. The moose bellowed twice and shook side to side while the little pest clung to his high, homely hide.
And the old moose unbent to his knees by degrees. He reeled like a drunk down the path of the breeze. Together they lurched through a break in the trees. And all morning long, and on through the day, both beggar and bearer would buckle and sway. The moose lost his temper, but never his way.
And the wind blew the sun to its deep ruby rest; the scrub, in obeisance, inclined to the west. Their slow taffy shadow in slinking would seem to slip round the rocks like a snake in a dream.
And the sun became a beacon, and the underbrush a stream. The wide Earth took their weight in stride, and the wind named him Hero.

                                               WORLD

When the sun was low the old moose began to stumble, at last limping to a halt beside a swift river lined with stunted pines. He’d half-expected a somewhat graceful dismount, but Hero, dug in like a tick, wasn’t about to let go. The moose knelt until his joints objected, shimmied, bucked, and with a sudden whirl sent the little bother flying.
Hero scraped himself out of the dirt and looked up forlornly. The ancient moose, his good eye gone bad, glared a long minute before hobbling away, his bony **** rocking with dignity, his scraggly tail fighting off imaginary flies.
Hero managed a few steps and dropped, staring in disbelief as the moose disappeared between half-frozen pines. He remained on his knees for the longest time, his jaw hanging, waiting for the moose—waiting for anything to show. At last a ruckus to his left snapped him out of it. His head ratcheted around.
Fifteen feet off the bank, three screaming gulls were dancing on an immense stone outcropping, fighting over a rapids-tossed sockeye. Hero was instantly famished. He wobbled to his feet and stumbled twice wading out, only regaining his balance by leaning against the current while rapidly wheeling his arms. The shrieking gulls reluctantly backed off as he stepped in slow-motion through the rushing water. Hero lunged at the slapping fish, cracked an ankle on the rock, and hopped around howling with both hands holding his shin. One foot was as good as none in the surging water. He went right under. Before he knew it he was being swept downriver.
This was glacial meltwater, so cold he quickly lost all sensation. Hero swallowed a mouthful and surfaced fighting for life; too disoriented to combat the current, too numb to realize his waving arm was striking something solid. That solid something turned out to be a swirling clump of rotted birches tangled up in scrub. He embraced one of these trunks as the mass slammed against isolated rocks, kicked his feet wildly, and somehow hauled himself aboard. The raft ricocheted rock to rock until repeated impacts sent it spinning. Giddy from the whirling and soaking, he clung freezing to the trees, retching continuously while the river roared in his ears. Through spray and tears he made out only cartwheeling fragments of the world.
But then the river was widening, its fury dissipating. The raft was approaching the sea. Hero gasped as the seemingly boundless Pacific swallowed the broad red belly of the sun. And as he spun he was treated to a panoramic, breathtaking spectacle:  the great indigo ocean with its slow traffic of driftwood and ice—voiced-over by the dismal calls of foraging gulls, and broken rhythmically by intermittent glimpses of the river’s rocky banks growing farther and farther apart. Whirling as it went, the dying man’s soul was taken by the sea.

At the 59th Parallel in winter, the Pacific coast plays host to numberless floes and minor bergs orphaned from Alaskan coastal glaciers. Hero cruised into a watery gridlock on a boat of ice-glazed birches, one bit of flotsam among the rest.
The cold wouldn’t let him move, wouldn’t let him breathe, wouldn’t let him think. He lay supine, feet crossed and hands clasped, terrified that to budge was to roll. An ice patina grew over the tangled trees like a white fungus—this growth soon webbed his fingers and toes, speckled his chest and thighs, glazed his hair and face, danced and disintegrated with his breath’s tapering plumes.
Floes and frozen-over debris tended to group with passing collisions; Hero’s married birches bit by bit accrued a mostly-submerged tangle of trunks and branches, all becoming fast in a creeping ice cement. Night came on just as resolutely, until land was only a flat black memory. The raft moved silently over the deep, still accepting the occasional gentle impact. And the floes became thicker and wider in a freezing doldrums; soon the proximate sea was all a broken field of packed ice, bobbing infinitesimally with the planet’s pulse.
Long ghostly strands of fog came striding over the torn ice field. They leaned this way and that, their mourners’ skirts tearing and patching and leaning anew. The ghosts were there to seal it:  their locked fingers and gray diaphanous wings were quickly becoming a wholly opaque descending shroud, its boundaries lost in the soughing wind.
Collisions came less and less. Darkness and silence, breaching some previously impenetrable barrier, began to take up residence in Hero’s chilling marrow. From his very center broke a weak little cry of refusal, of denial, as mind mustered frame in one desperate bid for freedom. His skin, frozen to the raft, peeled right off, and at that his inner brave succumbed. Hero’s smashed head arched back. His face contorted frightfully while the little lamp fluttered and paled within.
A raucous chorus slowly worked its way through the mist. It emerged a few hundred yards off—a tiny, terrified barking, growing in clarity as it grew in volume and urgency. It was a sound beacon. Hero strained eagerly, and when for one excruciating minute the beacon was cut off by a large passing body, was certain death had claimed him. Then it was back, and his heartbeat was quickening. He caught a heaving sound…something was moving his way down a wide tributary between floes. Hero could hear a gasping and snorting, accompanied by a hard slapping and splashing. The sounds vanished. In a moment the raft was rocked from below.
A sputtering muzzle blew salt in his eyes. A cold slimy flipper flapped across his chest and slapped about his face. The fur seal barked directly in his ear. Whiskers raked his dead cheek. The seal barked again.
Back below the surface it slipped. Hero listened anxiously as the splashing sound retreated whence it came.
The seal swam off perhaps a hundred feet and began barking hysterically.
From much farther off came a profusion of answering barks.
The seal swam back to Hero’s raft, circling and calling, circling and calling, while the responders approached en masse.
Now a sallow beam could be seen cutting through the fog. Several more showed vaguely along a plane yawing with some huge, barely discernible object.
A herd of northern fur seals burst into sight, barking madly, beating through the ice. They converged on Hero’s raft, really bellowing now.
Those odd yellow beams came in pursuit, and soon were close enough to eerily illuminate a gigantic wooden vessel parting the ice. The seals barked ferociously. Whenever the vessel leaned away, those nearest Hero’s raft would absolutely howl.
The fog deepened, condensed, crystallized, and then the collective light of a dozen lanterns was playing over a low, listing nightmare. Hero could hear the shouts of many aggressive men, but the waterborne seals, rather than scatter, boarded the ice and redoubled their din, fighting their way onto his quickly mobbed raft.
The sealers hurled serrated spears even as they clambered down rope ladders. When these men reached the ice the seals snapped and gnashed madly, refusing to be dislodged. The sealers lost all composure with the thrill of the hunt:  wielding clubs, spears, and hatchets—sometimes using iron bludgeons or any old utensil handed down—they crushed skulls, dragged carcasses, hooked animals still spurting and bleating. Clinging though he was, Hero was flabbergasted by the way the slipping and scampering men went about their butchery, hacking and smashing more with passion than with precision. But not a single seal attempted to flee—throughout the carnage they barked all the louder, egging on their slayers, carcass by carcass drawing the impassioned sealers to Hero’s ice-locked raft.
It was all so hazy and macabre. Hero’s eyes rolled back, and the next thing he knew he was sitting hunched on the vessel’s sopping deck. Two men were rubbing his limbs while another poured warm water down his back. He looked around in shock. The very notion of a boat containing more than one or two individuals—a sort of floating tribe—was way beyond his ken; so to see it, to have it come looming out of nothingness, was an experience almost supernatural.
He remembered some of those fur-covered men force-feeding him mouthfuls of halibut and seal fat, and he recalled a small group standing around him, shouting words that made no sense at all. After that he had a very vivid memory of their angry little chief repeatedly punching him while hollering one angry little word over and over and over. Hero couldn’t make out his inquisitor’s face, for the large feather-lined hood quite engulfed the man’s head, yet he could see those quick eyes flash as they caught the oil lamps’ light. Finally this man stopped boxing Hero’s ear. He stared hard. In these remaining decades of the tenth century it was fully within his power to administer as he saw fit—he could have ordered Hero’s immediate execution and not a man of his crew would have objected. He hesitated only because there wasn’t a hint of resistance in his prisoner’s pinched and frightened eyes. He leaned forward, studying the wound that all but split Hero’s face in two before grunting, raising his right arm, and yanking down its seal hide sleeve. Attached to the stump of his forearm was a primitive prosthesis consisting of a thick oak cap strapped to the arm with lengths of gut, and, hammered squarely into the center of that cap, a broad, cruelly hooked blade chiseled from a narwhal’s tusk. He held this obscenity in front of Hero’s eyes, traced the face’s deep diagonal rift, and once more demanded his captive’s identity. Hero then vaguely remembered being dragged along a tilting deck and thrown into the ship’s tiny hold. He retained a strong mental image of landing in a place of musty odors and dank projections.
There came a soft scuffling in the darkness, and presently a blind and exceedingly old woman felt her way to his side, mumbling as she approached. Her speech was comprised not of words; it was rather a running gibberish of cooing vowels and clucking consonants. The old woman was as mad as her circumstances; sick with sea and solitude, bedeviled by age and confinement. She sat cross-legged, patting her withered palms up his arm until she came to his face. Her strange mumbling soliloquy rose and fell as her bony fingers daintily explored the newly opened wound. Hero let his head fall back in her lap. A pair of hands like emaciated tarantulas scurried through the filth and tiny bodies until they came upon an old otter’s pelt bag that held her secrets. The woman loosened the bag’s cord and extracted an assortment of herbs, sniffing each in succession. She then scooped a handful of blubber from a bowl made of a previous occupant’s skull, kneaded the selected herbs into the blubber, and commenced gently massaging the wound, clucking and cooing while the black rats watched and waited.
For nine interminable days Hero remained in that cold, stinking compartment, rocking back and forth between life and death. The old woman never gave up on him. She clung to him during his seizures, rubbed his limbs vigorously when his blood pressure fell. She gathered various accumulated skins and, using woven strands of her own long hair, sewed him a multilayered, body-length wraparound with arm sleeves and very deep pockets, working by touch with a needle formed of a cod’s rib. By this same method she was able to fashion a pair of heavily lined snug-fitting moccasins. The old woman made him eat; she masticated the cod and halibut their keepers pitched into the hold, then shoved the results down his throat with a long gnarly forefinger. She called into his screaming nightmares, talking him out of sleep and back into their foul little reality. Together they lowed in the dark, while the keel groaned along and the waves beat time.
At the end of those dark nine days his strength was restored, but not his mind. Once again he was taken on deck.
The vessel had reached a chain of remote wind-swept islands, rocky and treeless, naked except for patchy carpets of hardy grass. These islands stretched far to the west, shrouded in mist. The ship was making for the smallest; just a chip on the sea. When they reached depth for anchorage Hero was hustled into a rowboat and lowered over the side. He looked up, saw two men climbing down by rope. These men positioned themselves at the oars and slowly rowed toward the islet. Seated between them, Hero felt like a man being led to his execution. He snuck a peek. The rowers’ heads were lowered, their features completely obscured by the heavy feathered hoods; they had all the somberness of pallbearers. Not a word passed between them as they rigidly worked their oars:  the only sound was the dip-and-purl of wood in water. Hero looked away. Against his will, he found his eyes drawn to that rocky islet waiting in the fog.
Not a bird, not a sea lion, not a shrub. It was lonesome beyond imagination.
Upon landfall one of the men used a spear’s point to **** Hero ashore. While his companion steadied the boat, he removed a skin sack full of half-frozen halibut, followed by a few armloads of precious tinder. These articles he tossed at Hero’s feet. He resumed his place at the oars and, without looking back, used the blunt end of his spear to shove off.
Hero watched the boat moving away, watched the men climbing their ropes, watched the boat being hauled aboard. As the mysterious vessel receded he saw a number of those silent men standing at the stern, stolidly returning his stare. Their hooded forms grew smaller and smaller, finally becoming indistinct. The vessel was swallowed up in fog.
Hero looked around, at a desolate world of rock and drifting ice. In the sunless pools at his feet a few purplish, flaccid sea anemones were waving in a sickly phosphorescence; along the rocks ran a tattered quilt of wild grass and lichen. It was the end of the world. He began to pace in his anxiety, only to crumple bit by bit inside his furs. At last he just sat with his face in his arms and wept. When he could weep no more he raised his head and opened his red, swollen eyes.
There were gulls all around him, staring like statuary in a madman’s garden. Standing in their midst were auks and puffins and murres, absolutely spellbound, unable to lean away. The silence was broken only by a wild, fitfully pursing wind—a wind that seemed, eerily, on the verge of producing syllables. And on that wind a flock of terns was rising slowly, their beady eyes fixed on the lone sitting man. The terns watched as he trembled, and banked as he swooned.
Then, beating as one, they threw back their wings and blew into the sun.

There was a blaze.
Behind that blaze a pair of black, bug-like eyes met his and immediately withdrew. A man wrapped in caribou hides stood abruptly, drawing angry swarms of sparks.
The Aleut peered queerly into the icy Pacific, his craggy profile merging seamlessly with a jumble of rocks showing just beyond his shoulder. The man was very tall, closer to seven feet than to six, and thin almost to emaciation.
He was also a mute. Soon enough he would display a talent for communication through gutturals, but now his body language spoke louder than words. It told the shivering stranger that he was not only disliked—he was feared.
The islander removed the hides he’d piled on the sleeping man. He produced a bone awl and strategically pierced a caribou hide, draped the hide over the old woman’s handiwork, and ran a cord of tightly woven tendons crosswise through his made holes, knotting it at the bottom to create a kind of cloak. He then killed the fire, heaped wood, fish, and remaining hides into Hero’s arms, and led him to a tiny cove where his long skin canoe lay in the grass. This was not the one-man kayak used by his people for centuries, but an actual canoe modeled on the graceful vessels he’d observed under the control of northern coastal tribesmen. After dragging it into the water he perched Hero in the fore, placed the cargo in the middle, and stepped into the rear like a gaunt furry spider. The Aleut dug out a paddle and began pulling with smooth strokes of surprising muscularity, his black eyes trained on his quiet companion’s back.
So began their long island-hopping journey. They stepped the chain one stone at a time, living off the sea. But much as the islander disliked Hero’s vapid company, it was not in his nature to proceed expeditiously; his people, remote as they were, had learned to count not in days but in generations. Given this, the Aleut took his time. He showed Hero how to build shelters of skin and gut; during bad weather the two would sit on an island in utter silence while rain hammered on their stretched seal-intestine window. And one very clear night he pointed out constellations while attempting to demonstrate, using broad gestures, just how the brighter heavenly bodies were in perfect alignment with the Aleutians. Hero followed his guide’s gestures as a pet follows its master’s movements and, like a pet, soon became bored. The Aleut did not grow flustered. He grew ever more wary:  behind that granite, weather-beaten exterior squirmed a very primitive imagination. Superstitious as he was, the Aleut was almost certain Hero could read his mind. So one time, and one time only, he threw a searing look at the back of Hero’s bowed and listing head. After a long minute of vigorous thought-projection he shifted his gaze aside. The brute appeared to feel this shift, and gently turned his head. And both saw the ocean break rhythm, and watched as otters and sea lions surfaced, noted their progress, and slipped without tremor beneath the waves.
In spring the fogs lifted. The grimness gave way to serenity, a generous sun buttered the dappled sea. On the islands grass grew lushly. Wildflowers leapt on the color-starved eye.
And one day the islander’s nape itched. He turned to see a flock of arctic terns casually tracking them under a gorgeous, white-plumed sky. As the day progressed the terns came drifting high overhead, slowly but surely taking the lead.
The Aleut squinted against the sun. He’d never known these birds to pursue a westerly migratory pattern—the terns were distributing themselves into a rough wedge shape, much like geese on the wing.
For a while he let the flock be his guide. Then, to test his stars, he cunningly steered his canoe north. At once the wedge disintegrated. Not until he’d lowered his eyes and pulled purposefully to the west did the disrupted pattern reassert itself. He peered up timidly. The wedge was now in the shape of a perfect arrowhead.
Just so were the fates of mariners and aviators inextricably entwined. At night, once the Aleut had landed his canoe on the nearest pearl, the terns would light in a quiet circle and remain until sunrise. As the Aleut and Hero took to sea, the flock would quickly form that same authoritative pattern.
In time the Aleut paddled his companion clear to the westernmost islands of the Aleutian chain. His people had dwelt, even here, a thousand years and more, but no contemporary islander knew for certain what lay beyond. Legend told of an enormous land mass forever gripped by cold, where a cruel people waylaid innocent seafarers for barbaric sacrificial rites.
So here the islander paused. But even as he vacillated he noticed the terns were veering south.
If the Aleut had been able to curse aloud he would have been vociferous. He was being compelled to follow an even less desirable course—that of the unknown open ocean. Now he looked upon his passenger’s hunched back not with fear but with loathing. He took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders, and defiantly continued west. The wedge broke up immediately. The terns dive-bombed the canoe, whirled around the windmilling Aleut, tore skyward and hovered determinedly. Something huge broke surface behind them, but the Aleut was way too frayed to turn. He dropped his head, a beaten man, and began paddling south. Little by little the birds returned to formation.
The tiny canoe had no business going up against the mighty Pacific. It would soon have been swallowed and smashed, had not the terns veered in close formation whenever the distant sea appeared too rough. Once he’d lost his bearings the Aleut religiously followed their serpentine course.
The days began to warm.
Now the sea’s bounty all but leapt in the canoe.
It seemed the Aleut was forever catching the finest currents, practically sliding down a corridor entirely free of peril. In this manner he was able to safely navigate waters no such craft had mastered before.
They were proceeding south by southwest, awed children of a plenteous, generous sea. The going became easier by the day, the ocean heavier with cod.
Nights the Aleut drifted comfortably, but a lifetime of wariness made him wake off and on. He’d slowly rise to find Hero sitting quietly under the stars, and soon he’d see, pallid in moonlight, a large body neatly pleating the ocean’s surface. The shape would precede them a while, only to vanish without a ripple.
All this strangeness kept the Aleut’s heart in a whirl, though he took pains to maintain his poise.
To allay his fear he kept a flat black stone planted squarely between them. It was his oldest treasure; an oddity he’d taken off the body of a mauled Tlingit woman when he was a child. Who she was, and how she’d come by the stone, were mysteries far beyond him, for no such piece had ever been known to Aleut or Inuk.
The stone was smooth and had been worked perfectly round. Bright yellow specks were scattered about its dull black face.
Long ago someone had etched a quaint and clumsy rune on that flat black surface—it was the crude, universal symbol for sun:  a broad circle surrounded by several rays. When the stone was rubbed against a pelt it possessed the curious property of growing quite warm and bright in the rune’s grooves, while the surface remained cool and dull.
This stone, both friend and overlord, had always “spoken to him”. It caused him to become restless when it was time to move on, and allowed him to relax when a destination had been reached. In this way he’d come to the familiar islet and discovered the unconscious little man. Just so:  the stone, he was sure, was responsible for making him “feel bad” as he watched the stranger shiver, and “feel better” once he’d built him a life-saving fire from the small pile of tinder he’d found nearby.
By now, however, the Aleut was wholly disenchanted with his stone, and deeply regretted having done its mysterious bidding. Never before had he been so long from sight of land, and never before had he felt so very, very small. The unimagined immensity of the Pacific was really starting to get to him when, after all their while at sea, a gray, seductive haze broke the horizon. They had reached another chain of islands, an Asian chain, the dark and smoky Kurils. Here a cold current kept the climate cool and foggy, and the chill, along with the prevalence of otter and seal, made him feel almost at home.
But this place gave him the creeps; he was a stranger, a trespasser somewhere sacred. There was a looming quality to the island mountains that made him extraordinarily aware of his transience, his pettiness, his puniness. He grew more and more cautious, sure their progress was being monitored—he could have sworn he saw wraiths in the trees, and wolves padding warily in the brush. The big islands looked on breathlessly. All along the rocky cliffs, thousands of auks and puffins followed the canoe in dead silence, their heads turning simultaneously, their countless tiny eyes peering redly through the fog. As the weeks passed, the Aleut’s anxiety was manifested in tics and sighs, and he’d cringe each time the crimson sun sank behind those black volcanic summits. In his imagination the mountains would rise right out of the sea, as though to pluck him. But the islands, in all their dignity, would always refuse to acknowledge so meek a stranger, and return their eyes to sea. The Aleut would hang his head, and timidly paddle by.
Then for days and days he pulled his weary canoe west—through a strait parting two mighty islands not part of the chain, and thence across a sea that was a warm, enticing bath. Spring had come to the East Asian coastal waters, and the Ainu, alone and in groups, were venturing deeper in search of increasing bounty. The Aleut, absorbed in his thoughts of sweet climate and bitter fate, was unaware they’d been spotted.
This first meeting between strangers of different worlds was a brief and awkward one. A lone Ainu fisherman, seeing the Aleut come paddling out of the unknown, dropped his net and turned to stone. The Aleut, for his part, instinctively froze with his body turned half-away to make the leanest target possible. Their stares locked. Never had the Aleut seen a face so heavily bearded, and never hair so fair. The Ainu began banging on his bronze catch pail. Other fishers soon appeared from the north and south, effectively cutting off the canoe. The Aleut caressed his stone and looked to the sky. The wedge had vanished. He put down his head and paddled for all he was worth.
With the word out, uncountable fishing craft appeared out of the blue and broke into hot pursuit, their pilots determined to force the canoe ashore.
Suddenly they were in sight of land, and the sea was absolutely riddled with watercraft. A train of small boats cast off from the mainland, even as a posse of two-man coracle-like tubs began to surround the battered skin canoe, their inhabitants calling back and forth in astonishment at the sight of these dark, savage newcomers. But the pursuing little coastal men, banging excitedly on the sides of their boats, were not Ainu. They had very straight black hair, prominent cheekbones, and strangely slanted eyes. And their speech, oddly marvelous as it was, was a rapid series of coos, chirps, and barks. Their boats formed a tight semi-circle around the canoe, forcing the Aleut to approach the mainland. The little men banged their boats maniacally, with more joining in as the canoe neared shore.
A bit farther south was a natural harbor swarming with fishing vessels of every description. As the canoe was forced into this harbor, people along the rocky coast began banging whatever they could get their hands on, until the air was filled with their lunatic percussion.
Tiny brown men came running along a soft yellow cliff overlooking the harbor, gesturing wildly. The canoe was squeezed between a chain of tubs and the shore, and, as it slowed, the tempo and ferocity of the banging decreased accordingly. When the canoe came to a halt the banging and shouting stopped. Hero creaked to his feet. The first North American to set foot on Asian soil stepped out shakily.
There followed the profoundest silence imaginable.
A second later it was as if a dam had burst.
Hundreds of hysterical, yammering voices erupted from hundreds of hysterical, clinging men and women. Hero was spun around, jostled about, handed along. He stared into their astounded, pinched little faces, and the sun, pulsing between their heads as he was turned, repeatedly stabbed his eyes. There came an excited outburst and frantic splashing which could only have been the Aleut’s violent demise, and then Hero was somehow limping alongside a primitive fishing village, blindly following a narrow dirt path that hugged the yellow cliff’s base. The warm spring sun caught the dust as he shambled. He rounded a bend and stopped.
Half a dozen children stood in his way, too fascinated to run. A chatter and scuffle rose behind him. He looked back to see that he was now in the midst of a small crowd of these children, and that more were running up with cries of amazement.
A stone struck his shoulder. As Hero turned another glanced off his chest.
A moment later he was being pelted from all sides, and the giggles and gasps had become something wildly unreal. He dropped to his knees in a hail of hurled rocks, covered his head with his arms, and slithered up the path on his belly.
A new voice broke in; an older, authoritative voice.
The children scampered off squealing.
Hero, shaken to his feet, found himself face to face with a diminutive, shouting, incomprehensible old man. The old man threw his arm around Hero’s waist and, jabbering all the while, led him to a secondary path cut into the cliff’s face. This path sloped gently upward over the waves. Together they picked their way to a place maybe halfway up, where the cliff’s face was honeycombed with natural alcoves and dug-out caves. Most of these spaces were used as one-man shelters; a few, cut deeper in the earth, as family hives. Strange gabbing people slid out of these holes like worms, reaching, but the little old man, who was evidently a little old man of some stature, embraced his find possessively and shouted them back inside.
The path narrowed as they climbed.
At its summit spread the upscale end of the neighborhood. Hero was led to a hovel nestled amid dozens of similar hovels, all scattered around a dainty stream wending between patches of stunted vegetation.
The old man’s place was basically a one-room hut fashioned of earth and salvaged boat hulls, with a slender side-yard surrounded by dry, dusty hedges. But inside it was clean and tidy, with rice paper partitioning and, built into the far earthen wall, a miniature stone fireplace. The old man sat his guest in the exact center of the room. There he fed him scraps from his bowl, using long sticks to pluck out bits of fish and clumps of tiny, starchy white pellets.
He studied the brute closely, watched him chew, walked round and round him. He poked here. He pinched there.
And that night he lit a fire on his crushed-shell hearth.
Hero curled up on a mat where the gossip of flames could reach him. Nearby, at his delicate wicker table, the old man sat in semi-darkness, illuminated only from the waist down.
But his eyes were alive. They spat and darted as they reflected the fire’s light, and, when at last they’d begun to sputter, his scratchy little voice came pattering out of the dark, muttering something vile and oddly modulated, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a gathering snarl.
Hero feigned slumber, unable to ignore those paired ominous flashes. Still, the room was cozy, and the fire warm, and the play of light and shadow kicked sleep in his eyes.

In the morning he woke in the old man’s side-yard, his head pounding, a rusty iron clamp securely fastened around his neck. This clamp was attached to the outermost link of a crude three-foot chain, and the link at the other end to a long stake driven into eight inches of solid rock. The chain and stake, like the clamp, were hammered of local iron. The clamp was too tight for comfortable swallowing, the chain too short to make standing possible. Hero could, however, spread out on his chest and stretch an arm to a low row of hedges. By parting the tangled undergrowth he had a limited view of the fishing village below, and of the harbor beyond. As the days passed he was able to tweak himself a view-space discernible only from his peculiar vantage. He accomplished this by gently breaking small branches strategically, then guiding their interrupted growth with the utmost tenderness. It was his secret garden.
He had no memory—none whatsoever—of being staked here. Obviously the old man hadn’t set this up overnight. Hero’s mind prodded timidly…how many others had been chained to this spot, and why?
But over the subsequent weeks and months he went beyond caring. Each day was the same:  just after dawn the old man would storm into the tiny side-yard swinging his reed whip wildly. The lashings were savage and unremitting. The old man, except for his eyes, would be mute. Only his whip need speak. And the snap of his reed had but one message:  when you see this whip you go down, and you go down immediately.
The naked savage, scarred head to foot, learned to go prostrate on the moment. Even so, the old man couldn’t resist the temptation to indulge in the occasional good old, all-out thrashing. And after each session he would toss the prisoner a vile mess of dead fish and rotting leftovers.
Hero lived like this for many months, lost in a confused world of pain and anticipation. Perversely, he came to look forward to the bite of that whip, for, whether he flogged him in passion or just for sport, the old man was always sure to make it personal. It seemed their relationship might go on forever.
But one day there was a great commotion in the sleepy little fishing village. Hero parted the leaves and beheld a small train of oblong coaches at rest near the harbor. Large oxen yoked in pairs lolled between the carriages, immune to the clamor around them. There were dark shaggy horses and colorfully dressed Bactrian camels. The horses and camels were tethered in the rear, but were occasionally paraded around the carriages by little men wielding long painted bamboo poles. The whole affair was exotic and mesmerizing, eccentric and profane. Hero watched all day in amazement, infected by the hubbub, though he was totally mystified by the crowd’s fascination on the carriages’ far side.
And late that afternoon he saw the old man come walking out of that crowd, talking heatedly with another man. The stranger was shorter and broader than the old man, with long stringy hair and long stringy mustaches. He saw them climbing the path, saw them crawl inside a hole lashing furiously. They were lost from view for a minute, then popped up big as life. Hero glowed and curled up eagerly as they approached.
The old man and stranger came into the narrow side-yard still arguing. The old man grabbed Hero by the hair and twisted until he was facing the newcomer.
The stranger had oily, porous skin, and a round but grave countenance. His highly slanted eyes were bright and restless. He studied Hero’s mutilated face with keen interest before borrowing the old man’s reed. When Hero scraped at his feet he grunted and returned the reed.
The stranger pulled out something shiny and hefted it in his hand. He then raised his other hand while considering Hero, as though weighing him too. The old man’s eyes glinted, and for an instant his expression became grotesquely servile. The stranger and old man, facing, nodded curtly in unison. The stranger dropped the shiny thing onto the old man’s itching palm. The old man whipped Hero frantically before taking a small ax to the chain. A few hard blows split a link, the broken link was bent back by the tool’s shaft, and the prisoner was at last released.
The old man handed the stranger a short hempen rope. The stranger bowed deeply. He then tied an end of the rope through one of the remaining links and began dragging Hero along. Hero’s hands sought the old man, who kicked and cursed him all the way to the path. The three stumbled single-file to the bottom. The old man waved his arms and shouted hysterically, trotting behind until he ran out of breath. But he got in a final kick and, before he came to a gasping halt, managed to lash Hero once for old time’s sake, and to spit on him twice for luck.

There were five carriages; a long one in the center hitched to four oxen, and two smaller coaches in the front and rear with a pair of oxen on each. The carriages were old and battered, built of splitting wood slats and rusted iron braces. Various hides, spare wheels, and a hundred odds and ends were tied to the sides and roofs. Hero’s new master, using him as a ram, shoved him through the crowd to the long carriage. He hauled him up the single wood step and watched the crowd’s reaction. Children hid behind mothers, mothers hissed and jeered, men spat in that smashed, disgusting face.
Satisfied, Hero’s master twisted the rope tighter and dragged him through the hide flap that served as the carriage’s rear wall.
A strange ruckus began at their entrance.
Inside the carriage were bulky shapes and quirky movements, yet the immediate and overwhelming impression was one of unbelievable stench. Hero, instantly covered with flies, was kicked and shoved down a foot-wide aisle. The carriage’s walls were riddled with black flecks of old dried blood, the floor coated with standing *****, a variety of small carcasses, and some clinging, indefinable slime. But the living contents of this hell were so horrifying, and so unexpected, that Hero at once dropped to his knees. Observing this, master grabbed a whip off the wall and lashed him along the floor.
A number of bamboo cages lined either side of the carriage, each four feet high, four feet wide, and three feet deep. In the first cage to their left, a quadruple amputee dangled in a leather harness in a cloud of flies, jealously gnawing a chicken carcass balanced on his belly. The second cage held a man who had been burned over ninety per cent of his body, and the third a middle-aged woman with no eyes or tongue, her head shaved. The next cage housed a fully grown black leopard, its bright eyes fixed on the horrified newcomer. Then an empty cage, and finally a cage containing a demented man whose long yellow nails were busily raking a face deeply scarred and bleeding.
The first cage against the opposite wall held two girls rolling in their own excrement. Siamese twins unable to part, they had developed a unique method of locomotion, and now executed a three-quarters cartwheel in Hero’s direction, their mangled, severely bitten hands attempting to reach him through the bars. In the cage next to theirs a naked dwarf glowered menacingly, his eyes following coldly as Hero’s master shoved him down the narrow aisle, occasionally pausing to lash a cage. The hissing and howling increased as each prisoner beheld the new neighbor.
The third cage held an intensely sick adult Bornean sun bear, so confined it was entirely unable to move. Its hide was a patchwork of scraggly fur and grayish skin, glistening with odd eruptions. It rolled its sunken eyes in Hero’s direction, its muzzle twitching feebly.
The next cage contained a man who was frightfully diseased. Broad fungal patches covered his face and limbs, terminating in waxy folds that dangled like a rooster’s wattles. Welling sores spotted his chest and back. His eyes were bugged and sallow; his lower lip drooped below his chin. He barked wetly at Hero’s passing legs.
The second-to-last cage housed a rare, completely hairless Chinese albino, and the last cage a very tall, skeletal woman. The albino snapped at Hero while repeatedly banging his head against the cage. The woman hissed and coiled like a snake, her spine arching amazingly.
Master hauled Hero to the empty cage on his left, swung its door open with his foot, and forced him to his knees by pushing down with all his weight. He kicked and punched until Hero had been squeezed inside, then shut and secured the wide bamboo door.
Master inched his way back down the carriage, hammering the **** of his whip on each cage as he passed. There was a glimpse of daylight as he lifted the flap.
Once he’d departed, the carriage grew eerily silent.
Hero cautiously turned his head. Less than a foot away, the black leopard was frozen in place, one paw waving hypnotically in his face. The beast’s fangs were bared, its ears straight back, its eyes glistening. Hero turned ever so slowly, until he was looking into the eyes of the demented man in the final cage. The man cocked his head quizzically. A second later he was screaming his lungs out in a bizarre downward spiral.
At once the carriage erupted. The freaks shrieked and scrabbled, the leopard spun in place. Directly across the aisle, the albino hurled himself against the bars of his cage. He batted his face with his fists, threw back his head, and just howled and howled and howled. The snake woman curled even tighter, her long scrawny legs entwined behind her head.
Hero sat with breath held, absolutely silent, absolutely motionless. He very, very slowly closed his eyes.

Later that night the flap was flung high. The menagerie came alive as master, weirdly illuminated by moonlight, slowly made his way down the aisle carrying a skin sack oozing blood. He stopped at each cage to toss in a dying chicken and a handful of smelt.
When he reached Hero’s cage he looked down thoughtfully.
He extracted a quivering chicken and held it above the cage so that blood dripped on the brute’s deeply pleated forehead. Hero lowered his eyes. Master’s face darkened. He smashed the bird against the cage, over and over, a vein throbbing in his temple. Finally he hissed and displayed the limp chicken high over the albino’s head. The albino yelped and kicked, thrusting his hand up between the bars and jerking it back to lick away the blood rolling down his forearm.
Master eyed Hero coldly before pointedly dropping the chicken into the albino’s searching hands.
Master hissed again. He slowly made his way out.
Soon there was a commotion outside. The carriage rocked a bit before settling. Hero, turning in his cage to peek through a rift in the wood, saw horses being urged forward. He could hear men shouting. The carriage rocked again. He looked up and saw the gibbous moon suspended in mist. For just a second something wedge-shaped cut across its soft white face.
But then the oxen were grunting, the wheels had been freed, and the horses drawn abreast. Master’s lash spat left and right, and the show proceeded…west.

                                              MA­STER

She was very round and very small, with very short, very shaggy black hair. Her arms bore the scars of numerous bites from beast and man, and around her neck ran long wheals from a particularly savage owner. Hero, having spent the better part of the morning watching master storm in and out of a strange screaming house, now watched him drag the little round woman through the dirt. For a while he listened to the song of his master’s lash, waiting for the woman to break. But there was never a whimper.
It had been a difficult transaction for master, and an altogether difficult morning. For hours he’d paced up and down the main carriage, alternately murmuring affectionately into, and lashing at, each cage he visited. The sun bear, long dead and stuffed, had been taken outside for barter. It had soon been returned.
Master had lingered over Hero’s cage for a good while, staring critically. He’d begun shouting, and three of his men had burst in through the flap, unlatched the demented man’s cage, and dragged him out by the feet for trade, master personally stomping on his torn and groping hands.
And now master was kicking and shoving the little woman down the aisle as his men restrained her by the hair and throat. Upon master’s command these men stripped her naked and commenced pinching and slapping while making threatening faces and mocking noises. The freaks sat right up in their cages.
The woman looked as though she’d fainted:  her arms were lax, her eyes rolled up. Her whole face seemed to purse, and her body, head to toe, began to run blue. Her fingers quivered, arched, and clawed—the woman was self-asphyxiating. Master fairly leaped with delight while the cages rocked around him. He had the men slap her awake. Once she was fully conscious they stuffed her into the demented man’s old cage next to Hero’s.
Master then looked in eagerly, one to the other, his hands balled into fists. The woman buried her odd round face in her forearms as she squeezed herself into her cage’s deepest corner. Hero gazed indifferently and went back to his peephole.
Master exploded. He smacked and kicked the cages over and over, swore up and down, ran the shaft of his whip back and forth against the heavy bamboo bars. Eventually he calmed somewhat. He stared coldly at Hero, made a ***** smile, and spat right in his eyes. A tense minute passed. Master slowly made his way outside.
Hero automatically relaxed. Across the aisle the albino ****** his face between his cage’s bars to sniff the newcomer. The leopard, bobbing rhythmically, emitted a high-pitched squeal that gradually descended to a steadily throbbing growl.
Hero looked the stranger over. Once she’d lowered her hands he saw that her eyes were crossed, her jaw slack, her face as round as the full moon. He looked closer. There were scars all over her throat and arms:  plainly, the small round woman had been treated very badly. Hero instinctively slid a foot between the bars; the woman cried out and scrunched even deeper. Across the aisle the albino quickly extended an arm. Without knowing why, Hero turned on him. The albino flinched, his eyes tearing into Hero’s. A second later he was stamping his feet and grinning wildly. Hero went back to his peephole.
Next morning master and two of his men dismantled the bamboo walls separating Hero’s and the woman’s cages. They bound the frames with broad leather bands, making a single cage of the two.
A common door was fashioned and secured. Master used his broad blade to shear away Hero’s rags. The men hunched around the long cage expectantly.
The naked couple backed away. Master was instantly exasperated—he shouted, lashed furiously, stamped and screamed, jabbed a broken shaft between the bars with malevolent intent, whirled and hurled the shaft at nothing. The carriage’s inmates went out of their minds. At master’s bellowed command a man scurried outside, returning with a long rope of woven leather strands. Master opened the cage and, applying all his weight, pinned Hero and his new mate in an awkward embrace while his men tied them together.
Again master and his men bent over the long cage to watch.
When Hero realized his predicament he made a desperate attempt to reach his peephole.
The men, misreading his struggles, babbled and cheered, but master threw up his hands. He then, through gesture, ordered his men to drape a number of hides over the long cage. Once these hides were in place he very quietly bent to one knee and placed an ear against the cage. After a while he cursed and rose to his feet. He shook the cage and stormed out, whipping and kicking the howling inmates.
In the semi-darkness the man and woman quit fighting their bonds.
A muffled patter began on the hide-covered roof.
Rain, as always, had a calming effect on the carriage’s occupants, causing the freaks and beasts to slip, one by one, into lethargy or slumber. Under such a spell, the attainment of master’s goal was inevitable.
It was a coupling both innocent and vile, without passion or celebration. Occasionally the freaks would surface, register their excitement by shrieking, shaking their cages, or otherwise clamoring…but very quickly the air would stifle them, weighing their heads and confusing their impulses. The atmosphere grew heavier by the minute. And, when night rolled over the carriages, the rain came down in sheets.

Leaning ******* the woman’s cage, master slipped his gnarly hand between the bars and slowly rubbed her belly in a counter-clockwise motion, his sinister features soft in the candle’s light. And he told, in nonsensical cooing whispers, of a lovingly secure and impossibly prosperous future.
How large and promising that belly had become! And how wise was he, the cunning and aggressive master, in his far-reaching business decisions. He turned his affection to the motionless gaping brute; stroked the battlefield of its face, tossed in another lizard. Master rubbed his palms together. From now on it was extra lizards daily, for both the woman and her mate. He remarked, with only passing interest, his star player’s continuing indifference. They didn’t know each other, didn’t need each other.
There’d been months of shows on the road now, broken only recently by this sensible rejoining of the mates at conception.
Hero’s horrible disfigurement was unquestionably top draw; he was a guaranteed crowd pleaser at every stop. So now master looked him straight in the eyes and smiled. He held the reeking candle high. The carriage was absolutely silent. Master smiled again, rose to his feet, tiptoed away.
Hero watched him retreat until the flap had fallen. He returned to his peephole, saw master round the rear of the carriage and slowly crunch by. For a time he could see nothing but the half-shapes of junipers bathed in starlight. There was a tentative movement to his right and a large shape came to obstruct his view.
The horse stood for a minute in profile. It slowly brought its head to rest against the carriage, applying its eye to the peephole. Hero froze. The two remained fixed, eyeball to eyeball, while a breeze played odd tunes on the outer wall’s hanging paraphernalia. The horse’s big dark eye rolled nervously. A long moment passed. Slowly the horse backed off. It stood uncertainly for a while, staring at the peephole. Then it quietly moved away.

Master kicked the cages one by one, left hand and right, as he slowly made his way down the aisle. Into each cage he delivered a personalized warning in passing—a growl, a hiss, a bark—but he was quickly losing control. Animal electricity hopscotched the carriage, cage to cage, ceiling to floor, front to rear and back again. Master froze. Much more of this excitement, he feared, could seriously agitate the woman—with grave consequences for master.
She was splayed on her back, in labor’s throes, her ankles and wrists bound to the long cage. Hero had been removed to give her room, and now sat hunched atop the snake woman’s cage, two men holding him by the throat and legs.
Master gnashed and snarled, listening to the woman scream, watching her stupid round head bounce up and down and back and forth. He knew it! He’d been suckered, hoodwinked, scammed—ripped off like a common rube. The woman was too ******* to handle even something as natural as childbirth. Still…it was too late to second-guess himself—all these months he’d been patient—he’d been supportive and vigilant and now he would not be denied. He flogged one of the men to alleviate his tension.
The blue lady was very slowly, very dramatically arching her spine. Master wiped the sweat from his eyes. When the bars were pleating her big round belly, her shoulders began drumming on the straw-strewn floor.
Master screamed one very colorful expletive.
A razor silence came over the carriage. Not a body moved or breathed.
At last two men tiptoed around their purpling master and leaned into the cage. One obediently ****** a foot between the bars. He pushed ******* her right knee while using a hand to grip the left knee, spreading her legs wide. The other man drew a broad leather strap between her teeth. After lifting the woman’s head he pulled the strap behind her neck, knotted it to make a gag, and yanked a skin sack over her face. He looked up anxiously. Master licked his lips and nodded. The man made a fist and frantically punched the woman’s face until her muffled screams ceased. She moaned gently throughout her contractions.
Master genuflected, brought a spitting candle in tight, and took a deep breath. As he raised his hand the candle’s light bounced off his knife’s chipped and scored eleven-inch blade. Master swore and reached down carefully. He flicked his wrist twice and the menagerie went mad.

The child was a tremendous disappointment.
Master had eagerly anticipated an infant ******* and deformed; something embracing the best qualities of its parents. He had even designed a special cage that could be expanded by degrees as the spawn developed. There also remained the tantalizing option of a family display, though such an undertaking would require the eventual construction of a structure even larger than the cage its parents now shared. Master anguished over the logistics, knowing it would break his heart to have to cut one of his jewels’ throats just to make room for a growing child. Nights he would slowly pace the carriage with all the possessiveness of a jealous suitor, one hand maneuvering a sputtering candle, the other tenderly rapping his whip’s **** against each visited cage.
But the boy was a flawless specimen; a beautiful, undemanding baby. From the moment master angrily tossed the placenta he felt cheated, even betrayed. He grimaced as it peaceably took to its mother’s breast, despite the surrounding horrors. Master hated it, immediately and entirely. The ****** thing was so docile it was almost charming. He drew his knife and was just reaching down, when an overwhelming sense of dread shook him like a rat in the jaws of a mastiff. Sweat poured down his squat, pig-tailed nape. He knew he would live to regret it, but decided to not cut the child’s throat right away. It was the oddest feeling. His knife hand had trembled for the first time in his life, and he had found himself momentarily contemplating right and wrong at the outset of a perfectly simple and commonplace procedure. That was it, then. His business instincts were letting him know there was a good, albeit unknowable, reason to let the sweet baby live. Master left the carriage anxiously, muttering in his ambivalence.
The boy grew to embody his worst expectations. Not only was it a poorly oriented child, clinging to its father rather than its master almost from the moment of weaning, but it soon proved a lousy draw with the patrons. Those who paid to view the child dangling in its special cage inevitably departed unsatisfied, some vocalizing, strangely, an acute sense of shame. So once again master entered the carriage with his knife hand steady, and once again he exited trembling, his heart in his throat and his soul in a whirl. He whipped the dwarf savagely before leaving. What place conscience in the mind of a businessman?
Soon as the boy could walk, master put him to work fetching and feeding. But the brat was slothful in his chores, preferring to hang around his family’s cage while staring wistfully at his father. For their part, the parents were wholly disinterested. Master would fume while Hero gazed for hours out his peephole—even as the mother lolled, perpetually ill. Sometimes that accursed woman’s condition riled poor master to no end. She could teeter at death’s door for months at a time, her body changing hues to the fascination of customers, only to bounce back with a hardiness that was of interest to no one. But at the peak of her performances the blue lady could really hold a crowd. Master produced an entire outdoors extravaganza around her:  within concentric rings of raging torches his men would slowly strip her naked before wild audiences, then allow the dwarf and albino to take her while the leopard strained against a gaily festooned chain. Master circulated his crew through the crowds to encourage his patrons’ cult-like behavior of breath-holding and fainting. No getting around it:  the customers were crazy about her—village to village, master’s Bactrian vanguard’s colorful robes shouted her approaching fame. And Hero’s popularity continued to soar. Many were the nights when master, pacing the perimeter, wondered just what devilry could have produced the lovely boy.
Overall, Hero remained his master’s favorite conceit and hottest property. Part of the little brute’s appeal was, of course, his exoticness. And certainly the ugliness arising from his deformity was compelling…but there was a detachedness about him that fascinated every soul with a fistful of copper cash coins. Whether they ****** him, cudgeled him, or spat in his face, he remained unflappable, staring only at the aching sky. Though many would leave uneasy, master noted with deep satisfaction that they almost invariably returned.
The boy soon evinced an amazing affinity for animals. No matter how agitated an ox or horse became, the child could pacify it with one hand on a lowered brow. This was a source of endless fascination for the crew. Wagers were made. The boy was pitted against oxen whipped to a frenzy. But they would not harm him; they would rather go prostrate and take the lash. Master tried to work this knack into a viable act, but his patrons just weren’t buying. They wanted freaks.
When the lad was a mere five years old, master had him trained in the peripheral art of the pickpocket. The boy worked well alone, and had all the makings of a fine little flimflam artist. Master sighed, his chronic nightmares a thing of the past. As ever, his business instincts were guiding him well.
Then late one afternoon he found the boy squatting outside his parents’ cage. The boy had done the unthinkable:  he had deposited his day’s pickings at the feet of his father instead of bringing the ***** to master. Master flew into a rage and raised his whip to give the little traitor the lashing he deserved. But before he could deliver a single stroke his other hand shot to his chest and he staggered back against the albino’s cage. He blinked down at the boy, who regarded him steadily while scooping the plunder into a little pile.
From that day on the boy placed whatever he could get his hands on at his father’s feet. As time passed he became ever more adroit at thievery, growing into a youngster both admired and despised by master and his crew; admired because theft was a cinch for him, despised because they were all that much lighter in their possessions.
Now, for eleven long years the strange little train had bounced along, sometimes camping outside villages for months, occasionally pausing on connecting roads. The show traversed the heart of Manchuria, skirted the Gobi in the north, and so eventually crossed almost the entire width of Mongolia before proceeding north to the confluence of the rivers Yenisey and Ob’. Much silver and copper had come to master’s coffer, much fame to his name, but he now sat looking over a vast, unmapped Siberian wilderness. The mostly nomadic characters they’d been encountering spoke in tongues unfamiliar even to his personal valet-translator-accountant, and the tone of these nomads had been unmistakably hostile.
Master huddled surlily under a canopy of sopping hides. Night was falling hard during a merciless rain, the wind was picking up, and his supplies coach was bogged in a growing sea of mud. At that moment he accepted the whole end-of-the-line concept, and knew he wasn’t going anywhere but back. And when he got back he was going to shine! He jumped from the coach.
The earth took his weight for a heartbeat—and he was up to his chin in muck, splashing about on his hands and knees, sliding forward on his palms and toes. He did a belly flop into a rain-filled depression and churned to his feet with the devil in his eyes. Wallowing in mud and bile, master stomped to the supplies coach and kicked wildly at the stuck rear wheels.
Somewhere between kicks he lost it completely.
Master broke for his whip. One minute he was blindly lashing his men, the next he’d succumbed to a mindless ferocity. He thrashed about like a berserker; whipping the beasts, the coach, the very night. His men were scarcely able to move in all that mud, but their dread of his savagery kept them hopping. They gathered as one and shoved the coach recklessly; slipping, splashing, shouting. A minute later, three lay splayed underfoot, but the mired wheel had been freed.
Throughout all this the oxen had swayed nervously, while the horses softly tramped their hooves in place. Master had his men turn the oxen about until the rickety train was pointing dead east. He checked the hitches and personally applied the lash. The oxen didn’t budge. Master swore and wiped the rain from his eyes. He had the horses hitched ahead of the oxen, but they were even less obliging. Master flew into a spectacular rage. His men, fearing for their lives, ran liberally with the lash.
The swaying of oxen picked up until the entire train of carriages was rocking. Yet the oxen could not, would not be compelled, under any amount of prodding, to take an eastward step. Master looked around in exasperation.
The night had gone insane.
Horses were fighting hitches, oxen walking on fire.
Master cursed the rain and mud and lashed all the harder. His men, seeking to please, whipped maniacally until the horses and both lead oxen broke their hitches and bolted west. The men immediately embraced the rear oxen, but the hitches shattered and the beasts stormed off. The remaining horses blew it, kicking at everything and nothing.
Inside the long carriage all was chaos. The albino was neighing and screaming, the aged leopard spinning in its cage. Hero stared out his peephole, amazed at the blur of figures stumbling by in the rain.
A pair of clopping blows rattled the opposite wall. Three slats cracked. A tremendous impact, and a huge section collapsed. A thrashing, hysterical mare burst through the breach in a veil of rain.
The horse went mad, killing the albino and snake woman in a flurry of hooves. She fell ******* the near wall, crushing the cages. The leopard shot into the air like a rocket, slashed at the mare’s throat and vanished in the rain. The horse reared above the family cage. She was just coming down in a wheeling storm of hooves when something made her freeze. Her stare locked with Hero’s, and a second later her eyes were rolling in their sockets. The mare kicked crazily and came down ******* her left flank, smashing the long cage’s side. She whirled upright and leaped outside.
For a tense minute the family sat in the rubble, rain bombarding their eyes. Nothing in their years of captivity had prepared them for such a situation. But by the end of that minute the son had taken full command. He rolled onto his back, braced himself, and kicked his parents across the aisle, through the remnants of the opposing cage, and out of the carriage. They all fell about in the mud and rain. To the west, the mare stared back strangely as she splashed into the night. The boy wedged himself between his parents, threw his arms around them, and pushed with all his might. Their bodies found a common center of gravity. Fumbling drunkenly, the family staggered through the rain in the wake of the mare.

The boy was the natural leader.
Master’s innocent-looking little ex-student could quickly assess and exploit almost any situation. He did the foraging and the figuring, slept with one eye open and one fist ready. He got what he wanted by charm or by stealth, slipping off at nightfall, returning at daybreak with small slaughtered animals and chunks of dark peasant bread. He also pilfered any bauble or oddity he could get his paws on, to be placed reverently at his father’s mangled feet. Breadwinner and watchdog, he faithfully held the family together; a nuclear son. He sewed hardy feather-lined cloaks of reindeer hide, and turned a cache of marmot pelts into a kind of side-slung backpack. He was doting nurse during his mother’s episodes, and unbending apportioner of calories in lean times. Dauntless when it meant crossing mighty rivers, relentless when it came to finding mountain passes. But the endless marching, the unreliable diet, and the countless predators made the three wanderers lean, haggard moving targets. There were times when the little lamp of family was all but extinguished, and long stands in places that seemed absolutely impassable. Still, the boy would work things out. He would stoop to any level to feed Hero, and for a stranger to threaten his father was to summon a psychotic, unyielding monster. He was both spear and shield.
The toughest job of all was maintaining a tight unit, meaning he was forced to become a hard-nosed ******* whenever his father was ready to wander off, which always seemed to be whenever the mother was hurting most. She’d become a tremendous impediment to Hero’s compulsion, and therefore her son’s chief nemesis. It wasn’t a big-picture concern anyway; the writing was on the wall. The blue lady’s attacks were increasing spectacularly on the steppe; her world had always been an enclosure of some kind, and the great horizon was proving just too much. Perhaps these intense affairs served as links to Hero’s suppressed memories, for at the onset of each attack he’d turn and hike, and then only exhaustion could curb him. The boy would press his mother on, dragging, shoving, and smacking—he could be mean when necessary, and though circumstances had made him the nucleus, their worlds unquestionably revolved around Hero. Where he sat, they sat. When he rose, they did the same. In this manner they marched for years across the vast steppes, single-file—father, mother, and son, respectively—unmolested, lacking possessions, always following the sun. Long before they could be measured they had drifted into obscurity.
The woman’s end came quickly and dramatically, in a rocky little depression on a half-frozen field. One moment she was responsive to her son’s prompts, the next she was flat on her back, her eyelids fluttering. That night she leapt from fever to chill, from alertness to stupor. The boy, squatting beside their campfire, watched her face and hands run cadaver-blue to fish belly-pale and back again. While he was staring her eyes popped open and her hands came scrabbling. He sweated through the clawing embrace until he could bear it no longer. He oozed out and ran down to fetch his father.
When they got back Hero watched incuriously for a while. His mate’s face was scrunched up and her skin the color of sapphires. She wasn’t breathing.
His gaze became glassy, his eyes returned to the night. As he rose the boy immediately grabbed an arm. Neither moved for minutes. When the boy at last relinquished, his father casually stumbled off.
Strange things were going on in Hero’s world. Some days he would notice how animals regarded him oddly, in a manner that seemed almost personal. He found, for instance, that particular creatures were recognizable even over great distances. A number of times he would sit with one in a stare-down, waiting patiently, until the animal’s natural disposition caused it to bolt. Though the meaning of these encounters was way over his head, he would watch, and he would listen.
In time he noticed an increasing skittishness in some of these familiar creatures. Something had them spooked. He then observed a number of lean gray wolves moving in and out of the picture with an air of complete indifference:  these wolves weren’t hunting; they were loitering—lounging in the grass, lackadaisically padding to the rear, filing by slowly in the distance. Once in a while a lounger would raise its head, yawn cavernously, and drop back out of sight. So unobtrusive was their behavior that even Hero’s ever-vigilant son began to take them for granted. They paused where the family paused, and halted whenever the woman broke down. Perfectly camouflaged by the gray boulders and dire sky, they were completely forgotten in the drama of her passing.
There were other, far subtler events existing for Hero’s senses alone. He could perceive patterns in everything around him; in the manner vegetation gave way wherever his heart was leading, in the way so many animals appeared to be not merely mirroring, but making his course. And wind, rain, running water:  these phenomena had voices. Yet not for everybody. No one—not his mate, not his son, not another soul on the planet could hear this call, for they were all of a sort. They were static, they were temporal. Hero couldn’t have cared less about the lives of his family, or about the mundane goings-on in the encampments and small tribes they skirted. Such beings lived in a world that was defined by the moment. They shouted, they banged, they clamored.
But west—west was music.
For his boy, once again watching Hero shamble off, the moment of truth had arrived. He looked back down, at his mother’s death mask being remade by the dying light of their campfire. As the flames dwindled he could have sworn he saw shadows creep into the wells of her eyes, while others, crawling up around her jawline, drew her bluing lips like purse strings. He hopped to his feet and ran for another handful of tinder. When their little fire provided enough light he dropped to his knees and looked again.
She was sinking right before his eyes, every aspect of her expression in collapse. The boy watched clinically, fascinated. As the flames began to sputter he thought he could see large purple bruises spreading across her cheeks like the seeping limbs of overflowing pools. He bent closer.
From deep in the night came the longest, the leanest, the saddest wail he’d ever heard. He turned to see the starlit ghost of his father, facing away, staring at a low barren hill. Uncountable stars embroidered the spot. The boy made out a low shape moving along the hilltop, cutting off patches of stars as it passed.
The wolf howled again; a mournful, spiraling cry to nowhere and nothing. Hero’s head notched upward. He began to hike.
Halfway to his feet the boy stopped dead.
It took a minute to sense why he’d frozen in place, and a good while longer for his heart to quit pounding. He was aware of a nervous padding, and, once his vision had adjusted, of a lazy stream of eyes gleaming in the dying campfire’s light. The eyes bobbed around him, glared momentarily, returned to the ground.
A massive gasp, and his mother was tearing at his wrist. He watched her hyperventilating, saw her bulbous yellow eyes sinking in a wide violet pool. With a sizzle and pop the last tongue of flame was taken by the night.
Then her clammy hands were all over him, pulling and demanding, caressing and beseeching. He had to pry them off like leeches, had to place them clasped on her shuddering arched belly.
A silky snarl rose almost in his ear.
With a little squeal he sprang to his feet, even as something nearby jumped back in response.
The boy stood absolutely still while the panting thing padded nearer. They stood very close, smelling each other. He instinctively extended a hand, palm forward. But it was no good; his arm was shaking out of control. The snarl rose again, not so tentatively this time. His mother’s nails tore at his ankle.
The boy gently stepped away, only to find himself surrounded by the shifting silhouettes of half a dozen gray wolves. They approached in a calculated manner:  two from the left, one from the right, another from behind. He was being goaded away from his mother; he could hear her fists beating the ground, and a few seconds later the sounds of a nauseating assault and ravaging.
He shakily raised his other hand. Now both arms were extended, and their message was clearly one of defense rather than control. Two snapping wolves stepped aside, leaving him a gateway into the night. A cold wet nose bumped his wrist.
Screaming like a woman, he took off after his father just as fast as his feet would carry him.

                                                  BOY

Alon­g the great Kazakh Steppe a man could wander a lifetime and never meet another of his kind—especially if his kind happened to be Alaskan Inuk, and if he happened to be the teenaged patriarch of a two-man family going nowhere.
Here history is mostly mute.
Upon this continent-spanning steppe, unnamed communities were scattered and rebuilt, lives blown about by the wind. The only centers of humanity a traveler might encounter, far removed from the Silk Road at the very crack of the new millennium, were temporary encampments of civilization at its rudest—shifting holes of cutthroat commerce existing solely for the barter of silk and spices and hapless souls. Life here was revered far less than merchandise, and the longest-lived men were those who kept their distance.
Hero and his boy hiked over permafrost and tundra for years; their meandering course a drunken mapmaker’s scrawl. Chronological entries along this imaginary line would reveal that they’d stopped, sometimes for months at a time, when the father had grown too weak and disoriented to continue. Hero’s internal compass was long-sprung, and his weight had fallen considerably. He’d sit on his lonesome, scarecrow-scrawny, wistfully scrolling a 360-horizon while his boy scouted and scavenged. Then, for no apparent reason, he’d just up-and hike—sometimes northwest, sometimes along a tangential plane that always threatened to spiral. It was brutal:  winters were frigid, summers, by odd contrast, running steamy to baking. Season by season these marches lost their tenaciousness, and eventually their heart. Hero’s obsession was becoming his demise.
Now, to a hypothetical observer, the ratty pair of woolly camels materializing out of the rising August heat might have been mirages.
These beasts were novelties here, and pioneers, for they were way beyond their normal stomping grounds. They’d tramped for months with a mind-numbing monotonousness, a thousand miles and more; round the Urals to the south, and through the hard territory braced by the Volga and Voronezh, avoiding anything that even smelled of men. They’d been wild camels; ugly, ill-tempered, and unpredictable, until the boy tamed them by touch…but this new pattern was a literal change of pace…for weeks the frail little man and his dark teenaged son rose and fell with the animals’ rhythm, lulled by it, sick of it, dreaming of lands far removed from hoarfrost and peat moss. In this manner they were borne clear to present-day Belarus, whereupon the camels’ stupefying march began to quicken. Mile by mile they put on steam, until one day they reached a broad area distinguishable from its bracing terrain only by its many deep surface cracks. Here the camels’ behavior became erratic; they crouched at an angle while tramping, their long necks oscillating, their noses bobbing along the ground. Eventually they came upon a dingy pool nestled in a pebbly depression. The local brush surrounding this pool was situated like iron filings about a lodestone. The boy hauled back his camel’s neck and laid a hand on its brow. The brute slowed to a halt. The other camel imitated its partner, move for move. Simultaneously the animals dropped to their knees.
The boy jumped off, catching Hero as he fell. The camels stood watching stupidly as son maneuvered father, but after a while grew nervous and began tramping their hooves in time. They slowly stepped to the pool’s rim and knelt woozily, their noses poised just above the surface. Their whiskers danced on the pool’s face, their lids became heavy, their hindquarters quivered as they drank. Their nostrils, having fluttered in unison, remained agape. They appeared to be asleep.
The boy began filling skins.
The water was quite warm; he slurped a palmful and almost immediately felt intoxicated.
He flicked it off his fingers; the water was bad.
Three heads were now mirrored in the pool; the camels’ at ten o’clock and two o’clock, the boy’s at six. He watched their reflections continue to ripple, long after the pool had become still. His face, melting and firming, rapidly fluctuated between extremes of age, and between his own recognizable features and those of some…monstrosity. The effect was hypnotic. He felt his joints stiffen; his eyes became weak, his thoughts muddled…his face was irresistibly drawn to the pool’s surface, and for a moment he was in real peril of drowning. He ****** his head aside and creaked to his feet.
Where the camels had knelt were only the prints of their bellies and knees. In the distance they could be seen galloping all-out for the horizon, right back the way they’d come. The boy watched until they were swallowed by their dust, and when he turned around his father was long gone.
Now he knew it was all just a matter of time.
And sure enough, after eleven more days of feebly staggering along, Hero completely ran out of gas. The boy bundled him up in a shawl, like an old woman.
Sitting there, cradling an unresponsive man weighing less than eighty pounds, he couldn’t help but let his morbid fantasies run wild. He was now old enough to realize his father had at some time suffered severe head trauma, and honest enough to accept that the man was rapidly approaching a vegetative state. This understanding accompanied him like a shadow, and that night he questioned, for the very first time, his own convoluted rationale.
He was just beginning to sense that his will was not his own.
He built a semi-permanent camp west of the Desna and foraged in a tight spiral, always returning in a straight line. Some days he came back feeling uneasy, sensing another presence. Then it was every other day. It bugged him to no end. At last, when it became every day, he hauled his father to his feet and began a resolute march to the west.
Again he became anxious, and after only a dozen yards.
He turned slowly while hunching, certain something bulky had just dropped out of sight. Nothing looked suspicious, everything looked suspicious. He walked Hero some more, occasionally peering back over his shoulder. There was…something.
He whirled:  only masses of rock and high brush. Yet, when he really strained his eyes, he was sure, pretty sure, that he could make out a large crouching body continuous with the rocks. Heart in his throat, he began a slow steady creep, only to pause, positive the bulge, whatever it was, had shifted in response. The boy very gradually raised his arm until it was level with his eyes, faced the palm outward, and extended the arm parallel with the ground. He could almost feel some kind of current passing between his itching palm and…nothing. He walked over to Hero, stopped again. There’d been the subtlest sense of traction. The boy propped up his father in a cloud of flies and waited.
In a minute the bulge drew *****.
Out of the brush strolled a furry gray wild ***, her back inclined from countless weary miles; stretching her neck, pausing to nibble, taking her sweet time. Grungy as she was, she fit right in.
At the boy’s first casual step she immediately hit the dirt and remained flat on her belly, one big dark eye staring between her hooves. Another step, and her **** bunched up. The closer he got, the higher her rear end rose. When he was almost at arm’s length she sprang back and danced away, seeming to bound with delight. But not to the east, as she’d come.
To the northwest.
She backpedaled while the boy came on whistling and cooing, matching him step for step. But the moment he threw up his arms in resignation she spun round as though cued, dropped on her belly, and peered over her shoulder.
The boy was first to blink. This time he approached fractionally, keeping movements to a minimum. She rose just as carefully, sauntering northwest in reverse, and at the first sign of hesitation turned, dropped, and cautiously gazed back. The boy glared at that huge mocking **** and broke into a sprint. She easily danced out of reach, plopped down, and continued to stare.
He began hurling stones, with venom and with accuracy, until she’d scurried into the brush.
But on the way back to his father he could feel her tagging along.
Twenty feet behind she halted, looking bemused.
The boy nodded ironically. He walked Hero over, murmuring baby talk all the way, and firmly placed a palm on the animal’s muzzle once her breath grazed his fingers. She stroked his hand up and down with her whiskers, gave a kind of curtsy, and waited on her knees while he helped his father mount.
At Hero’s touch a shudder ran down her body. She stood up straight. Her eyes became set, her back absolutely stiff. She put down her head and began the long trek northwest, never once breaking stride.
It was an amazing march, an impossible feat. For a little over three days and almost four hundred miles she progressed like an automaton, driving herself without rest, without food or water.
After trotting alongside for an hour the boy climbed on and force-fed his father berries and smoked meat, his dark eyes constantly searching the countryside. Occasionally he’d see a run of red foxes to their left, watching intently, padding cautiously. Sooner or later they’d vanish, only to be replaced by a train of feline or equine pursuers. Packs approached and receded while, high overhead, flocks formed triangular patterns that continually broke up and reformed. There was a peculiar rhythmic quality to this ebb and flow that lulled his senses further. The boy shook his head to clear it, but his exhaustion was deeper than he’d supposed—even the brush appeared to be leaning northwest.
That first day he grew numb with the pace, and that night the relentless pounding of her hooves drew him into a miserable slumber. He wrapped his arms around his sleeping father and lay half atop. When he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer he tore strips from his skins, then looped his tied wrists round her neck, his ankles round her belly.
On the second day she was breathing hard, but her back was still high and she showed no signs of faltering. Her eyes remained focused on the ground dead ahead. She always sensed the best routes; finding mountain passes, fording wetlands.
But by the third day they could feel her ribs quaking against their legs. Her breath exploded as she marched, blood frothed and caked about her nostrils. Still she pushed herself on, her pace so steady it was almost metronomic.
On the fourth day her legs were gone. She veered and stumbled, shuddering every few paces. The boy hopped off for the umpteenth time and tried to bring her to graze, but she wouldn’t be turned. He ran behind her as she staggered along, unwilling, or unable, to rest.
At last a foreleg gave and she went down hard. Sobbing and snorting, she plowed her muzzle back and forth in the soil, the useless leg repeatedly pounding the ground. After a minute she raised her head and brayed at the sky, her neck muscles taut, her head slowly swinging side to side. Her cry went on and on.
With a tremendous effort she pushed herself upright and butted the boy aside. Every part of her body was shaking. From her depths a low moan grew to a steady bray, and finally to a wild, pulsing howl. She came to a rise, but was too weak to climb without sliding. Stamping in frustration, she managed a few feet, reared feebly, slid some more. The boy got behind her and applied his back; it took all he had to assist her almost to the top. With a desperate lunge she crashed on her belly.
Amazingly, she dragged herself on, her howl now a scream, her head whipping left and right. When she could pull herself no farther she ****** forth her neck to its very limit and, with a shudder that ran from the tip of her nose to the tuft on her tail, shoved her muzzle straight into the dirt and died.
The boy hauled off his father and fell back. The animal’s eyes were fixed upwards, seeming, even in death, to be straining for a glimpse of what lay just beyond the rise. The boy half-dragged Hero the last few yards. They collapsed at the top, and together looked over the cold Baltic Sea.

At water’s edge a haggard fisherman sat on his boat’s ravaged deck, blindly staring out to sea. His was a queer vessel; a family structure built more like an aft-cabined barge than like seacraft typical of that period. The fisherman’s boat, like his mind, had been abused beyond repair.
He’d lost much in his life. Time had taken his dreams, pox his face, hardship his back and shoulders. And, more recently, a brawling band of drunken Baltic pirates had ***** his wife and daughter before butchering them along with his two fine sons, while he sat helplessly bound to the mast. Finally, to further their delight, they’d set the boat aflame and sent it crackling against the sun; knowing he could hear their hoots and howls, knowing he would drift undead, accompanied only by this last unspeakable memory.
But a squall, without prelude, had doused the flames and blown his home ashore.
There he’d remained for a full long day, staring at nothing, his shattered life caught on the rocks. On the second day he’d worked himself free and commenced staggering about in his memories, gathering shards. It was a pathetic claim. He made a pile of all the old bedding and linen and usable cords, and set about sewing a sort of mementos sail. All that third day he had sewn, and on the fourth he had hoisted this sail and been moved to see it billowing in a northwest-blowing breeze. Again he just sat and gaped. And later that day he’d become aware of a commotion taking place on the long grade leading down to the water, where a writhing mass of seagulls was proceeding like a tremendous slow-motion snowball. He’d never seen anything like it. It wasn’t uncommon to find gulls in a group of many dozens or more, but there must have been two, maybe three thousand of the birds now swarming toward his boat. They were making an incredible racket. In the midst of this cloud could be seen a couple of slowly walking figures; as they neared he made out a small man accompanying a boy in his late teens, both dressed in odd skins. When they reached the rocks his eyes were drawn to the small man’s face. It was a foreign face, brutish and dark, with a deep cleft running from above the right temple to the jaw’s left side. Whatever instrument had felled this man had been devastating—everything in its path was smashed, and with permanence. The forehead was caved in. There was no bridge to the nose, the left cheek was completely collapsed, one side of the mouth was a mangled mess. The jaw itself had set improperly, so that it jutted to the side. The general impression, especially from a distance, was of some unforgettable circus freak’s countenance puckering at an angle. It was a face right out of a nightmare. But there was nothing frightening about the eyes. They were the eyes of a child.
Maybe half the gulls hopped screaming on the rocks. The rest circled overhead.
The boy considered the fisherman curiously before placing a foot on the charred deck. His gaze went around the boat, lingered on the makeshift sail, returned to the slumped figure. He passed a hand before the eyes. No response. He then leaned in close and placed his fingers on the man’s forehead. Immediately that bleak expression became fluid, brimming over with horror and heartbreak. Tears rolled down the fisherman’s cheeks as he gasped, shuddered, and backed up the scorched mast to his feet. Thus propped, he squinted at his visitors and was overcome by a wave of homesickness so strong he had to turn away. The feeling bewildered him, for this vessel, and this sea, were all the home he’d ever known. He clung to the mast while the boy helped his father board. Once he’d collected himself, the fisherman tore a heavy crossbeam from the toasted cabin. He and the boy used this as a lever, and together they shoved the boat off the rocks. The wind picked up nicely, and the little craft was swept across the water.
Exploding off the rocks, the gulls shot after the boat as if it were brimming with fish, the loudest and orneriest vying for favored positions directly overhead. The melee attracted additional gulls—they came shrieking in their hundreds from all sides, banking and calling in the oddest manner, until the mass grew so thick as to cast a permanent shadow on the boat. All day long the clamor continued, and all that night. The fisherman rolled with the rudder, listlessly, allowing the sea to control him. Eventually he let go, that the wind might bear them where it would. His sail ballooned but held firm, and the boat fairly zipped across a sea somehow smooth as glass, broken only by the vacillating ripples of bottleneck dolphins and migrating humpback whales. The three tiny sailors sat hunched together, motionless, all throughout the next day, until the black coast of Sweden loomed in the twilight.
As the boat neared land the cloud of gulls broke up, shot to shore, and landed in groups of a thousand and more; a dizzying, wildly uproarious reception committee.
The dung-covered boat slammed into the rocks, shattering the fisherman’s trance. He intuitively walked his **** up the mast and, swaying there, watched the boy draw his father over the side and lead him to a clearing at wood’s edge. There in the dusk he made out what appeared to be a hefty spotted runaway heifer hitched to a rickety wood wagon. He saw the cow gallop up to meet them, saw the boy look around warily, saw him help the little man into the wagon and climb in beside him. The animal immediately began picking through the woods, the large brass bell round her neck clanging forlornly.
The clarity of that bell made him realize just how quiet it had become. He craned his neck:  there wasn’t a gull in sight. He fell back against the shot mast and slid onto his tailbone with a clacking of teeth. His eyes were misting up. In the gathering dark a few sail fragments flew past and were ****** into the woods. The boat rocked and relaxed. After that there was only the sound of the receding bell’s sad, monotonous song being batted about by the wind.

The little cow strode through moonlit woods until she came to a path formed by the rutting of wheels over many years. She followed this broken, serpentine track throughout the night, and by morning was passing farms and, occasionally, crossing broader paths that might realistically be defined as roads. All day long she bore down that ragged track, until she came in late afternoon to a clearing near a village. Here many such tracks converged. And here the boy slipped away while she grazed.
Sometime after dark he returned with a load of straw, a couple of pilfered blankets, and a fat iron kettle. Crammed in this kettle were salt, tubers, cheese, a few loaves of rye, legumes, and a plump foot of lamb sausage. Most of this ***** he’d brought in tied to the bowed back of a huge, puffing, highly amenable black pig which, thus laden, now followed the boy’s every step like a fresh convert tracing the heels of the messiah. The boy built a fire under the stars, filled the kettle with creek water, and commenced simmering their dinner. While waiting, he couldn’t help but note an odd feature of the local flora:  plants, especially trees, all seemed inclined to a northwesterly disposition, though no amount of wind could account for it. He shooed the pig. But rather than run along, it backpedaled in a nervous circle, round and round in reverse, until it lost its balance and fell on its ****. There it remained, a yard behind the wagon. The boy fed his father and lined the wagon with straw. They settled in for the night. The boy must have nodded, might have dreamt, but while he was drifting he became aware of a stirring in the woods. He sat up, saw the pig’s eyes gleaming inches from his nose. And there were a number of animals, some wild, some strayed from farmsteads, arranged in a broad circle around the wagon, their eyes glinting with moonlight. Not a rustle, not a peep, was lifted from the woods.
In the morning he woke to find the pig still staring. The fidgeting heifer, impatient to roll, began her long day’s march while Hero and his boy were yet stretching and scratching, and the ******* pig, galloping heavily, fell in close behind. Each new day this routine was repeated. They banged past farms and small communities until the ruts intersected a broad rocky road wending halfway across the kingdom. The cow addressed this road with vigor. They picked up followers—a goat here, a couple of sheep there—which hurried after the wagon as best they could. The cow stomped on with resolve, mile after mile, day after day, her bell keeping steady time. That bell’s peal attracted foals, lambs, and kids into the wagon’s narrowing wake. Hares hopped between hooves and wheels, boars and blue foxes fell in and withdrew. White falcons, normally solo fliers, whirled into wedge shapes high overhead.
At night the entire train would camp on the road while the boy raided proximate farmsteads, always returning fully laden. And as soon as the fire died the colony grew, creature by creature, and the moment the sun broke the horizon the heifer came to life and moved on, but each day a bit more resolutely, as though straining to meet a deadline. The march took on a sense of real urgency. The cow pressed on with attitude, the clang of her bell more strident with each passing mile. Soon her followers numbered in the hundreds, as animals deserted their farms or crept out of the woods to tag along. Tillers and traders stood dumbfounded, amazed by the bizarre flow.
Once they’d crossed into Norway the frothing cow veered hard to the west. The pace really picked up; no longer were Hero and his boy afforded the luxury of a night’s sleep in one spot. Days blurred into a single variegated flow as the bashed and lopsided wagon continued building its entourage; the riders were surrounded dawn to dusk by a confused and confusing scurry. Word of the flow’s weirdness preceded it clear to the Norwegian coast, so that now plowmen and merchants, wearily gathering their goggling families, found themselves lined in anticipation along the king’s highway. Horsemen went pounding to and fro with news of the procession’s progress and particulars, children ran through the streets banging pots in imitation of the cow’s approaching bell. Livestock wheeled and stamped, fowl leaped and crashed.
The slobbering cow broke into a run.
Bystanders trotted behind, calling back and forth excitedly, while the wagon’s permanent following squealed and squawked between their heels. The cow made a hard turn onto a widening swath in the brush. This swath, seeming to strain against the soil, ran straight down to the crest of a low hill overlooking the Atlantic. On either side a crowd had been studying the phenomenon for some time, but now all eyes swung to the dark and disfigured man and his son, clinging to the disintegrating wagon behind the careening spotted cow.
The trailing people traded views as they ran. Most—at the very outset of the new millennium, with Christianity burgeoning throughout Europe—leaned to the miraculous. Others, just as superstitious but prone to a darker point of view, threw looks of horror at the deformed little man. Yet they ran no less eagerly.
The galloping crowd made for the seaside, where only one local event of any moment was brewing:  on the coast a Greenlander Viking was preparing his longship for the rough voyage home. Impetuous son of the great island’s first permanent European settler, he’d just been baptized in Olaf’s court, and was now eager to sail—but not as a warrior—as a missionary. While his spirit remained in a tug-o’-war between his father Erik’s will and that of gods old and new, his duty was clearly to his king. And Olaf had charged him with the Christianization of pagan Greenland.
Something on the wind now made this destined man turn his head. From behind the gentle hill to his rear came a kind of thunder. Heads popped up, followed by a confused explosion of voices, and seconds later a frantic bug-eyed heifer burst into view, dragging the wheel-less skeleton of a shattered wooden wagon. On the wagon’s splayed frame a man and teenaged boy clung for their lives as the spewing animal made a beeline for his ship.
The new missionary, still egocentric enough to assume his Maker might actually toss him a personal, surreptitiously rolled up his eyes. The sky yawned at his arrogance. At his side a smallish cowled man rose irritably, but the missionary sat him right back down. He then snorted, squared his shoulders, and signaled his men to halt their preparations.
Knowing it was expected, he gathered his hard Nordic pride and coolly made his way into the crowd.

The priest clung to port, gagging above the waves.
After a completely uneventful minute he leaned back and stared through tearing eyes at the distant backdrop of gathering mists. Weeks now…a man of his constitution had no business at sea.
Along, too, were a quirky little man and his fiercely devoted son.
Through his pantomime, the boy had been so persistent in begging their passage that refusal, under the circumstances, would have been unbecoming not only a man of God but a man of the world.
So there it was:  a priest who couldn’t hold his lunch, a witless eyesore who couldn’t sit still, and a surly teenaged protector who snarled at the first hard look. This crossing just had to be some kind of divine test—of mortal patience as well as moral values. Norsemen weren’t made for babysitting.
The mists condensed.
And the shifting shape became a hard familiar coast.
And the longship was mooring, and the crew were jostling and clambering, and the big missionary had booted off the haunted little freak and his hypersensitive son, and was condescendingly half-escorting, half-carrying, the green priest ashore.
And they were home.

Priest in tow, Leif quickly took up the Christianization of Greenland’s Western Settlement, as per Olaf’s command. The mangled little man and his son followed him around like dogs, slept outside his door and annoyed his visitors, ultimately proving far easier to adopt than to shake. Barely tolerable shadows…still, the lad was simply amazing with livestock…and though the youth’s useless father seemed time and again to be just begging for a whooping, his son’s presence bore some ineffable quality that always curbed the missionary’s hand. Several times he’d witnessed the father approached by settlers bent on abuse. Each time the boy had stepped in, and each time the troublemakers were mysteriously repelled. The missionary of course didn’t attribute any kind of celestial intervention to these episodes, and certainly the popular notion of devilry was a natural reaction to the pair’s outrageous exoticness, but…in the son’s company, and even under the sharp eyes of his fellow Norsemen, Leif more than once found himself oddly moved to protect the father. And so the deformed man and his boy day by day blent in—as village idiot and mystic guide. And when in time a ****** brought tales of an unvisited land to the west, it was only natural for the restless Greenlander to buy that ******’s boat and, before stalwart comrades, weary family, and whimsical God Almighty, reluctantly accept the eccentric father and son as sort of seagoing mascots.
Hero was from then on irrepressible. During preparations he would pipe and stammer in his half-mute way, brimming with a confounding anxiety that kept him underfoot and at odds with all. On frigid nights he perched on the westernmost rocks, moaning to the horizon in the strangest fashion while his son stood guard. He positively spooked the locals; they’d gossip, nervously and with bile, of an answering wind that came wailing off the sea like a banshee in labor. The whole island wanted rid of him. And when his champing beneficiary, still clinging to the notion of Christian charity, bundled him aboard with his son and a crew of thirty-five, not a single settler was sorry to see him go.
Almost from the moment they cast off everything went wrong, as all attempts to control the longship were met with some kind of unknowable countermanding force. Vikings were not renowned for passive resistance—they fought, squaresail and steering oar, leaning oarsman to oarsman, until the ship rocked on the waves like a bucking bronco. An erratic weather system pursued them, worsening dramatically at each minute variation in heading. The Norsemen doubled down, and when the clouds finally burst wide, the cowling sea went mad. Dervishes whirled about the hull, crisscrossing winds bedeviled the sail. Patches of kelp belonging to much warmer waters came heaving alongside, fouling the work of the oars, while far to the west a humongous fog bank formed, eradicating the navigable field. The lightning-streaked horizon was a throbbing gray slit.
The longship became locked in a slow westerly current.
Fatigued crewmen complained of headaches and hallucinations, and of a nasty, slightly metallic tang to the air. There were numerous walrus sightings; bobbing flippers and snouts amid drifting ice chunks that came prowling the North Sea like a circling pack of famished white wolves.
Worst of all was the boy’s father—instantly agitated by everything and nothing, prey to some primitive impulse that caused him to periodically incline his head, shudder to his feet, and loop his arms as though embracing the sky. Leif would watch him scrabbling at the prow like a cat at a tree, furs snapping in the wind. He’d watch the boy re-seat him for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time be filled with an immense contempt. By now he’d acknowledged that it takes a special kind of strength to shoulder charity and tolerance. That brown little freak struck him as an enormous malformed barnacle, slowly working its way back up the prow. Trying so hard to go unnoticed, looking and listening so intently, though there was nothing to see other than the growing shelves of fog, and nothing to hear save the rising, almost hysterical voice of the wind.
Leif sniffed the air, his ******’s instincts nagging him. This was a foul current, and a fool's errand; he took a deep breath and tentatively ordered the longship brought about.
The ship kicked twice, as though an enormous submarine hand had seized and released the hull.
A whirl formed in the water, causing the keeling ship to sweep around like a clock’s second hand. All about them, those drift-ice ghosts cruised dangerously near.
But they’d been liberated from that accursed current. Leif fiercely urged on his rowers, and at last the ship broke free. They made a bead due north.
Night came and the temperature plummeted.
Small sheets of ice converged, drifting between the hunks. The Norsemen, instinctively huddling amidships, passed out one by one in a massive pile of fur and flesh. In the freezing silence the floes bumped and recoiled, bumped and gathered, bumped and bonded. The tiny ship, swallowed whole, was dragged along in a labyrinth of black sea and interlocking slabs of ice.

The Norsemen came to in a surly, foul-smelling heap, lost at sea. While they were still groggy a voice cried out that a darker patch was developing in the fog. The men all fell to port. Under the confusion of their voices could be heard a distant rumble.
At this Hero hauled himself up the high curved prow. A half-light began to penetrate the fog, barely illuminating the irregular faces of drifting ice. The missionary stormed forward and indicated by gestures that if the boy didn’t restrain his father he would have the man tied down.
The longship stopped dead in the water.
The men found themselves regarding a perpetually frozen coastline swathed in bluish veils of mist. Directly before them loomed an immense ice cliff hundreds of feet high. Rising beyond this cliff were endless snow fields, where lean violet shadows seemed to drag about of their own volition. And upon those bleak fields a thin howling wind prowled, kicking up brief white dervishes, leaving a strange zigzagging signature.
Even as they stared, a darker shadow high on the ice cliff’s glistening face began to widen, accompanied by a cracking sound that could be felt before it was heard. With the illusion of slow-motion, a stupendous chunk broke out of the cliff and came screaming toward the sea. It hit the water like a bomb. The thunder of its separation and the explosion of its impact took a moment to reach them. Then, out of a spewing crater of crests and spume, the new calf came lunging, tromping the sea so hard the longship, fully a mile to sea, was swept out and ****** back in like a cork. The floundering mountain of ice bobbed and lilted, generating huge waves which continued to rock the ship long after the monster had settled. In a while the roaring in their ears subsided and there remained only the swirling, nerve-wracking howl of the wind.
The missionary’s eyes swept left and right. Whatever this place was, it sure wasn’t the fair shoreline he’d been promised. Hero again scrambled up the prow, and Leif again yanked him down. This time he made good his threat; he had the little nuisance bound, though he was half-tempted to let him take his chances overboard.
From somewhere deep in the haze grew a soulful, otherworldly call. It went on and on, electrifying the air, bottoming out once the ship had merged with that previously fought westerly flow.
By now Leif’s nerves were shot. He ordered the oars raised.
The longship began to drift. Ship and ice were pulled due west.
The clouds fell far behind as the ship embarked upon an amazingly calm sea—so calm its entire visible surface was featureless except for the faint wakes provided by the ship and its hulking ice companions. To the east a huge fog bank appeared on the horizon, and a while later a smaller bank to the north. Then a very dense one to the south. In time these banks converged, imperceptibly becoming a single mass that closed about the ship, bit by bit creating a slowly heaving dome. Tiny beads of water appeared on beards and eyebrows; in a minute everything was soaked. The only sound was that of the dragging steering oar. The men were now sopping ghosts, speaking only with their eyes.
Directly ahead the fog began to dimple. The dimple became a hollow, the hollow a cave, and then ship and ice were being towed through a low, ever-extending tunnel in fog. The current increased its pull. Ship and drifting ice accelerated through the tunnel.
After a while the missionary quietly stepped forward. He stood with one hand on the prow’s neck, listening to the mist, so motionless he might have been a carved extension of the longship’s aggressive design. Not a man breathed. The tunnel’s dilating and contracting bore was producing an all but seamless series of oscillating, near-phonetic sounds. Leif almost tiptoed back. No god, pagan or Christian, could account for the strangeness of this situation.
They were borne on a course that grew more southerly, and the following day beheld an inhospitable shoreline glazed by dazzling white beaches. Their course held. Two days later they came upon a far pleasanter, thickly wooded coast. Here the current released its hold, and here the missionary untied Hero and personally placed him and his son in a tiny oak faering. He was just as sick of them as he was excited by this promising new land. Once the rowboat had been heaved over the side, he and another man stepped aboard and took up the oars. They began rowing with easy, powerful strokes.
When the boat kissed sand the missionary stood unsteadily.
The first European to set foot on North American soil now placed one hand on his crucifix, the other on his sword’s hilt, and awkwardly plunged his leg into the thigh-deep, ice-cold surf. Before he could take another step the boat lurched as Hero leapt headfirst into the water, followed an instant later by his son. The Greenlanders watched sourly as the two splashed their way into a mad dash for the waiting pines. Leif wished them both good riddance and turned to grin wryly at his fellow Norseman. He must have blacked out for a second, must have been blinded by a shaft of sun, for he found he was staring stupidly at a point midway between his companion and the longship. It felt like he’d been kicked between the eyes.
Everything was dissolving.
He studied the beach and pines closely, but saw nothing of the man or his boy. He turned back, disoriented. With what seemed a superhuman effort he took up his oars. He rowed out sluggishly, in a dream, and the fog rolled in to meet him.

The boy broke into the trees and embraced a trunk, fighting for breath. What happened next happened so fast and so unexpectedly he didn’t have a chance to react.
Three savages stepped from behind the pines and beat him to his knees. They twisted his arms behind his back and hauled him to his feet. He’d barely processed the impression of a wild painted face when something sharp struck him ******* the temple and tore down his cheek to the jaw. Two of the assailants manhandled him into an upright position and held him in place while the third brought his weapon down again and again and again.
All but dead, he watched a nightmare countenance shouting through a shot veil of blood, and behind that image a reeling crimson sun. He lay there gushing while the savages went through his rags. They propped him against a pine and shrieked with triumph, tore the hair and gory scalp from his skull, threw back their heads and screamed at the screaming sky. Tooth and nail, they ripped apart his face and throat and, certain he would die, split what bits of fur were left and let his carcass lie.

                                                HERO

The weeks stretched into months while he fought his way back into the light.
He progressed in stages; only half-conscious, stumbling along in a blood-red stupor punctuated by a slow strobe of frequent blackouts. Days loomed and decayed, nights pounced and were gone; the backlit, swirling gray cosmos collapsed and expanded on every missed beat of his pulse. A thousand times he broke down to die, and a thousand times he clawed to his feet, driven to pursue a tiny, ghost-like figure fluttering in his memory.
Everything conspired to check him.
A bay like an immense landlocked sea was skirted over months or years—it was all the same. Cold locked him in, Hunger drove him afield, that rude ***** Wind lashed him blind, wore him like a shoe, screamed for his skin while he worked his way west.
Somehow he ate, somehow he avoided being eaten; the instincts that had served him halfway around the planet were still vital beneath the abused exterior. His simple burrows became sturdy temporary shelters. He relearned the art of fire, and began to cook what he killed. He manufactured crude snares and weapons and, when his recuperation was complete, paid closer attention to the on-again, off-again trail he’d been following…forever.
Sometimes this trail would call to him like a lover. Other times he stood peering uncertainly, trying to recapture meanings and aims. Then the ground would turn spongy and the sky revolve, and once again he’d be lying all but dead in the woods, while from the face of the sun emerged a vile winged horror, its ugly pale head lashing side to side, its cruelly hooked beak dangling something that glistened in the wild pulsing light…then the fat moon, rising like gas against the icy black night…the feel of the wind:  the slashing of her nails, the chafing of her hem…the sound of things crunching and pausing and sniffing…then the sun, blazing anew. And again that thing, descending, its wide black wings beating slowly, metronomically—but none of that mattered any more. For his mind had quit him, had flown howling into ice and pine to roost with things surreal. In the day his madness might muddle and run, or spend the light stalking, cat-like, watching and waiting. But at night it came creeping from all sides. Sometimes it came in waves. It could gnaw like the devil, or wrap around him like a warm second skin. But none of that mattered either.
The only thing that mattered was the trail—whether it was lost for good, or for only a while. He’d been following it through his episodes, always north, wondering just who and where in the world he was, and trying to shake a ridiculous notion of being led on a wild goose chase.
The cold was unbelievable.
The deeper north he delved, the more confused he became. He grew starved for colors and scents, finding nonexistent patterns in the stark contrast of shadow and snow. He thought he could detect a kind of otherworldly design in the overwhelming number of dead ends he encountered, and, too, in the diabolically frustrating locations of natural obstacles. He seemed to be forever fighting the wind—a hulking, despondent snowman, he hiked face down and focused, while another aspect of his attention floated just behind, disembodied, watching his silent pursuers…leaving no tracks, blending perfectly with the environment in their clever winter coats…not predators, but creatures that normally should have been hightailing it away from him. By the time he could turn, they’d become nothing more menacing than snowdrifts. But they pursued him nevertheless.
And so his paranoia increased…had there ever really been a trail…and when did this miserably cold, miserably anemic crusade begin…his long-term memory was falling apart a chunk at a time. It just got colder and colder and colder until at last, one snippet of a day during one blur of a year, he found himself utterly lost, and clueless as to his history or objective. His mind was a blank, as colorless and featureless as the endless world of ice around him. He’d come this far solely to learn that the only trail he’d been following was his own—and now even that trail was succumbing to ice. On all sides there was nothing to see but an infinite field of glaring whiteness, and nothing to hear but the ululating wail of the tubular polar wind. It was the loneliest, the unholiest, the creepiest sound imaginable. But it wasn’t insanity that made him wheel. It was his self-preservation instinct.
And then he was somehow on his knees in the woods, facing a furious setting sun.
Whole seasons had passed from his memory like chalk from a board. His only recollections were those of a broken, haunted animal:  of being perilously sick, of fearing the unseen, of blindly struggling across a solid-white wilderness. That he’d survived such an ordeal meant nothing to him. And that he had in some indecipherable manner stumbled across the cold-as-stone trail did not fill him with amazement or with thankfulness—there simply wasn’t anything visual or emotional left to draw on. A significant part of his life had been whited out.
But now he could focus entirely on the trail. And before he knew it, the fuzzy area between fantasy and reality found a seam. He began to analyze and plan. He paid attention to hygiene, and kept a kind of running mental journal. Things were sorting out. Yet there were nights when the old sickness would resurface, reestablish its hold, and leave him sweating and uncertain under the stars. Then, paradoxically, his perception would become razor-keen. And so he would see, on a distant hilltop, a pair of scrawny silhouettes, one on four legs and one on two, slowly crossing the faintly pocked face of the setting moon. He would become strangely excited, and thereafter retain crystal-clear images of himself, as if seen from above, hurrying with adroitness through the silent, graveyard-like setting of black and blue night and white-frosted trees. Then the fuzzy area would broaden, and it would be the next morning, and he would be staring at the prints of man and elk in snow. And he would see how the elk’s prints doubled back, and how the man’s prints terminated where he had obviously mounted his guide. An unfathomable glow would bring tears to his eyes. But, even as he gathered himself, a fresh snowfall would wipe out the prints. And once again the world would plummet into white. And the wind would howl as the snow hammered his eyes. And he would ***** on.

A haggard animal sat shivering in a small grove of frozen pines, watching his campfire die. His eyes were fixed. Like the fire, he was running out of warmth, running out of fuel. There wasn’t a whole lot of tinder round his bones, and not much feeling left in his limbs. The slowly heaping downfall was burying him alive, but he was too numb to care.
It had taken him six long years to cross an entire continent, and during that time he’d known only cold and excruciating pain. The pain was leaving him now. The cold was making it right. His eyes glazed over.
Along a narrow plain to the west a herd of caribou filed dreamily through the snow, cutting across a panoramic backdrop of dazzling white mountains. The slow-motion parade was hypnotic. After a while it occurred to the drifting man, in a roundabout way, that he was dying, that he was nonchalantly freezing to death. Concurrent with this notion there rose in his chest a wonderful liquid warmth. His eyes slowly closed and, once shut, began to set fast.
He was jolted from within. It was as if he’d been kicked in the heart.
He ****** to his feet, pounded his fists on his thighs, felt nothing. The breath spurted from his mouth in small white clouds as he stumbled downhill after the slow caribou train. He swam through the snow, hallucinating, imagining that certain individuals in the herd were mocking him by slowing and accelerating, while others glanced back with expressions of contempt.
As he burst into their midst the animals stepped aside indifferently. A few galloped ahead to keep up the herd, but most simply sidestepped while he danced there, stamping his feet and smacking his hands. The herd grew thinner, until only the old and infirm were filing by. The man desperately embraced a hobbling female for warmth, but she cried out and kicked, triggering a panic reaction in the herd. Clinging for his life, the man was dragged along beside her as the herd stormed into a maze of flying ice and snow. His weight caused her to stagger sideways until they slammed against the flank of a sick male. The man instinctively threw an arm over the male and, thus draped between them, was borne across the drifted plain for upwards of a mile, his freezing feet alternately dangling above and dragging through the snow. The herd broke into a hard run, forcing him to assume a broken trot. Soon his legs were stinging. Sensation rushed through his body.
Now the herd, still picking up speed, began to contract, jamming him between his bearers. There was a quick jolt to his right and he was lifted clean off his feet, nearly straddling the bucking female. It had become an all-out stampede. Through hard-flung snow he saw the cause:  just ahead, the caribou had run head-on into a solid wall of galloping wood bison, and both frantic herds had blindly veered to the east; were in fact running side by side down a deep, ragged canyon—were pouring over the canyon’s lip like a cataract. He was approaching, at breakneck pace, that very place where the converged herds so abruptly swerved. The hanging man snarled as he was borne inevitably to the point of deflection.
There came a concussion at his left shoulder, followed by a blast of snow. In an instant the ailing male was tumbling head over heels to the east, ****** into the stampede’s plummeting mass by the fury of its descent. The man and female, rebounding from this impact, were shot to the west in a crazy jumble of flailing legs. The caribou lost her footing, flew nose-first into a snowbank, and came up running. Kicking off, the man used the last of his strength to heave himself astride. At first she fought to shake him, but the spell of the run was too strong. She and half a dozen others went pounding in the opposite direction of the stampede, quickly joined by a number of bison that had likewise splintered from their herd. The riding man could make out their huge hulking shapes thundering by in a blizzard of flying ice, could hear their heavy gasps and explosive grunts. One passed so close he felt its massive flank brush his leg. He peered to his right and saw a black, pig-like eye regarding him excitedly, moving up and down like a piston as the beast ran alongside.
The eye shifted, focusing on the gasping, completely obsessed female. The bull dropped its head and slammed into the caribou’s side, sending her and the man careening down a ***** to the west. The caribou brayed hysterically and her backside went down, but she managed, despite the weight of her rider, to return to all fours and frantically continue along the *****. Again the bull charged, crashing into her shoulder. The man and caribou were launched sideways into the white searing air.
He sat up carefully. The huffing bison was straddling him like a bully laying down the ground rules. Its big wiry beard came right up to brush his chin. The stench of its breath was stupefying.
The bull stamped and snorted, thrusting its stubby horns left and right as the man used his elbows and heels to back away. The bull followed, move for move. When the man collapsed under his own impetus the bull shoved him along with its snout, bellowing furiously. Clear down the ***** they lunged, shoving and lurching, until the man lay sprawled on his back; up to his chin in snow, completely helpless. The ton of a bull butted and kicked, but only glancingly:  those hooves could **** with a blow. At last the man, in one clean sequence, spun on his rear, dropped to his side, and went rolling down the ***** using his elbows for ******.
At the bottom ran a narrow fence of frosted saplings marking an ice cliff’s precipice. He lay face down in the snow, too done in to do anything but **** at an air pocket.
And there came a high-pitched crackling, a sound like the protracted gasp of embers in a dead fire. He turned just as those saplings began leaning to the west, their frozen skins cracking with the strain.
The bison bellowed menacingly.
The sprawled man looked back and saw it still standing with legs spread wide, silhouetted against the sky. In a moment it began huffing downhill, lurching side to side, surfing the snow between lunges.
It chased him through the genuflecting saplings straight into a frozen gully where, protected by a few feet of insurmountable verticality, he was able to slide on the ice between its stomping hooves, downhill out of reach, then downhill out of control—spinning just in time to glimpse a breathtaking vista:
Partly framed by the gully-straddling saplings was a vast crescent of jagged white mountains seemingly huddled round a small stretch of snow-draped pines. The little wood these mountains surrounded was isolated in a broad lake of solid ice. Hundreds of fissures radiated crazily throughout this packed ice field, appearing to issue from somewhere near the frozen wood’s center, which was completely obscured by a ring of rising mist. Above this thumbnail panorama the sun showered gold.
Then the gully dipped radically, and he was skidding headfirst, slamming back and forth against its slick white walls. This uncontrollable plunge had the positive effect of getting his blood flowing. Yet it tore him up. Had the gully concluded in a cul-de-sac, or had further progress required a single calorie of uphill effort, his struggle would certainly have ended here. He would have been too weak to move, and death would have been swift.
But there was a glacier—a great river of ice pouring slowly out of the clouds. The gully, terminating in a little scoop formation near the glacier’s base, spat him flailing onto its gnarly glass hide. He went head over heels, bits of skin and fur flying like chips from a band saw. Somehow he gained his footing, and then he was running against his will, tumbling and recovering and tumbling again.
He didn’t catch much of that crazy run. He half-glimpsed whirling walls of ice, felt a fickle surface underfoot, and broke through an assaultive mist that clung to his ankles and arms. He remembered having the ragged hides torn right off his body, and then being skinned alive. And he remembered reaching the glacier’s base and crawling like an animal; round its sweeping drifts, past its peaked moraines, all the way to a twisting frozen gorge.
And he followed this gorge down; ricocheting wall to wall, delirious, small plumes of thrashed snow marking his descent.
Through a freezing wood he fumbled. In a veil of mist he tumbled down a steep and verdant grade. As cold consumed his closing breath, he fell upon, near-blind, near death, a strange, enchanted glade.

There is a pool.
And in this pool a man lay purged, his broken body half-submerged.
The stumbling man stopped. He knelt to weep, but lost his thread. One hand took a bicep, the other, the head. With a twist and pull the corpse emerged.
That visage…that face—misshapen mask, contorted, bleached; of life’s deposits fully leached. Essence dispatched—a void, sodden wretch.
He let it fall and the glass was breached. All a freak, all a stretch:  upon this act his grip detached.
And the bridge collapsed…one vagabond grasp…what were these feelings; recaptured and trashed…a span elapsed…who was this puckered mass…he hauled it by the waist and thighs…slid it in, watched the pool react:  purse and recover, expand, contract. The glass reformed, now silver-backed…a sudden mirror…the man leaned nearer…saw his reflection, just smashed, remade intact.
The pool grew still.
Within its depth a shadow stirred—visions gathered, some distinct, some obscure. What they meant, and who they were, was much too much to fathom. The glass became blurred.
He closed his eyes, let his heavy head fall, fell back on his haunches, felt the sweat seep and crawl. The air was a pall—as he struggled to rise, a nib crossed his wrist.
He opened his eyes.
Between his fingers the blades poked and crept. Round his knuckles they ventured, up his forearm they stepped:  they seemed to be triggered by prompts from the ground. He shook his head slowly and dully looked round.
There were jays grouped about him, their black eyes aglow. Red hens came running, their fat chicks in tow. Gophers engaged in a weird hide-and-seek. Bluebells and buttercups craned for a peek. Sparrows hopped past and, paying no heed, burst into flight. He watched them recede.
Westward they flew.
Bewildered, he slumped.
Bumped from behind, he jumped to his feet, flabbergasted to find an ancient gray moose near-eclipsing the sky, with grit in his snarl and fire in his eye.
The old moose took aim.
The man turned to flee and stumbled, then tumbled and fell on a palm and a knee.

But there lies a world (so the lullaby goes) where rivers ever run.
Poked from behind, pushed out of his mind, he staggered into sun.







Copyright 2020 by Ron Sanders.

Contact:  ronsandersartofprose(at)yahoo(dot)com

Trigger warning : aggressive ****** encounters, ****, violence

Walking down an empty street in London, I‌ was drawn to a crumbling, empty church. It's as if ‘decay’ was written on the walls. A sight unseen, I‌ just had to explore. It looks as though no one has been there for years, decades, or maybe even centuries. Wooden trim adorned the boarded up windows and an altar like a hidden stage lay in the very front. Layers of dust coated the floor. Two balconies towered over either side of the altar and what was left of the chairs sat facing the front of the church. The room was almost a half circle, drawing the attention to the front altar. The ceilings seemed to rise for miles and the windows cast haunted shadows on the floor. Everything is dingy and dull in color, as if it was a forgotten coloring book page that has faded overtime. As I tiptoed across the floor, I inspected each little thing almost in search of a lost treasure.

The energy is strange, almost as if it had been frozen in a paradox of time. Everything was left as if they fled in a hurry, untouched by the passing of years. What was it about this place that I was drawn to? What community used to worship here? What happened to them that left this church in this state. I‌ wasn’t sure I would find out the answer to any of these questions until I‌ spotted a dusty old book on a table by the door. Inside was a language I‌ did not know and notes scrawled on the page margins in pencil. “Gratias agimus tibi propter Princeps tenebris, princeps infernum.” it read. Was this latin? That might make sense as many of the Christian religions’ texts derived from the latin language. Since google is a thing now and we have an infinite access to so much information, I decided to give it a go.

‘We worship thee prince of the darkness, ruler of hell.’

I don’t think this was a Christian church…

As I‌ read these words aloud, a whisper seemed to escape from the walls around me. Carefully, I continued to explore, making sure to not disturb anything. Toward the back of the room was a wall trimmed in wainscoting dusted in a faded brown stain. A large hole was torn through a space on the bottom and a faint light flickered from inside. Was I not the only one here?

Next thing I‌ knew, I‌ was on my hands and knees, crawling through this hole. Why am I not able to control myself? I‌ should have left the instant I‌ read the inscription.‌ Something tells me that someone wants me to be here. Through cobwebs and rodent dung, I‌ reached an opening and stood up. It was a room with dirt walls and floor. There was a single oil lamp lit on a desk across the room. The furniture was skewed about and a questionable, almost luminescent red powder on the floor across the room. When I‌ got closer, I‌ also noticed the shards of glass spread on the ground around the powder. I reached down to touch the powder. I‌n the blink of an eye, I‌ was across the room, wondering what had happened. Before I‌ could even form a full thought, there was movement from the hole in the wall I‌ had just climbed through. A‌ little boy appeared, no older than 8, dressed in ***** wool trousers and a half tucked in, stained linen shirt. He wore a newsboy hat on his head that had certainly seen better days. On his shoulder was a worn bag which looked to be carrying something heavy.

“Hi there. My name is Anna. Are you lost?”

He walked by me as if I‌ were a ghost.

He was looking around, almost searching for something.

“Wh-what are you looking for?”

He made his way to the desk in the corner with the oil lamp and laid his bag down on the chair. He looked under and around with a near disappointed look. What was he trying to find? His eyes suddenly widened and he darted toward a nearby bookshelf, pulling down a crystal decanter from the top shelf. It was full of that same ghastly powder I saw before!‌ I‌ turned to look at that spot on the floor, only to find it clear and no broken glass scattered. To my surprise, the decanter came hurdling across the room, right passed my head, and smashed into the wall. I‌ turn quickly to see the little boy and he was gone. I blink and again am across the room where I‌ was before. I‌ shake my head and rub my eyes. What just happened? I‌ should really get out of here - I don’t think its safe to be here.

I‌ turned to leave but caught a glimpse of the little boy’s bag on the chair. Why was this still here? Why wouldn’t he take it with him? I‌ had to see what was inside. I picked up the bag and pulled each item out; a rock-hard loaf of bread nearly mummified, a small black book on elementary mathematics, a very old key, and sort of spherical item wrapped in a brown cloth.

I‌ removed the cloth to reveal a black clouded crystal ball. As soon as my hands touched its surface, I blinked and I‌ was out in the main room of the church with at least 30 people lingering around their chairs talking. I was no longer holding the ball, and everything had a bit brighter of a color to it. The room was still dark but the windows were not boarded up. There still lie some rubble on the ground but much less than before.

“Uhm, hello? Who are you? What is happening?”

I reached out to one of the people and they said nothing - they didn’t even acknowledge my existence. Everyone was dressed in very old clothing. Corsets, bustles, and shiny leather shoes. It was as if I stepped into a chapter of a victorian era book.
Despite the demeanor of the patrons, their clothes were still a little worn, torn, *****, and drab. Everyone carried on their conversations in a reasonable tone until a bell rang - everyone found a seat.

A lanky gentleman appeared at the altar in black clothing and spoke to the crowd.

“My fellow followers of Lucifer, I‌ beseech thee to bow down in worship to our almighty prince. He hath lead us to the depths of the fire and bestowed on us the power to destroy life itself.”

Each person knelt down and faced the ground in what I‌ would assume is reverence.

“For over a thousand years, this temple has held a dark mass for our dark lord, in which we show our dedication to his unholiness in the form of a sacrifice. Who among you has brought a gift to Satan himself?”

A petite, young, beautiful woman rose and approached the altar. Her head bowed in reverence and a veil over her head, she held out her arms. The man took a small item wrapped in a brown cloth from her and set it on the altar. They continued their ritual by spreading what I imagine was blood along the edge of the altar in a circle. As the man worked, the crowd of people mumbled in unison like a prayer. I watched from the side, trying to understand why I‌ was here and why no one would speak with me.

“Ma’am, what is this place?” I‌ asked a nearby worshiper. She said nothing.
“Excuse me,” I‌ nudge a young man to her left, “what is everyone doing?” He did not even look at me.

The mass continued in latin and I‌ watched quietly in confusion.

Nearly an hour passed and the mass seemed over. The people start chatting away as they had before and the gentleman at the front makes his way to the back wall where the hole was before. The young woman stopped him and asked to speak. I follow them to the back of the church. The gentleman quietly opens a door hidden in the wall right where the hole was and they walk in. I sneak in with them as the gentleman closes the door.

“Elizabeth, I am glad you came today. I was starting to worry that your faith was wavering. You haven’t seemed yourself lately since that human left.” the gentleman addressed the young woman as she sat in the chair by the desk. Everything was neater now and the furniture was placed in a purposeful way, much like a room in a house.

“Jonathan was the love of my life, Cain. I miss him every day. I don’t wish to go on in this world any longer.” Elizabeth squawked back with tears in her eyes.

Cain goes to comfort her, sits with her, and holds her in his arms as she sobs gently. He offers her his handkerchief and she accepts gracefully.
“Darling, you have so much more to give here. Lucifer needs your fortitude and dedication. But most of all, I need you.” He says, wiping a tear from her cheek.

As she rests her head on his shoulder, I look around the room. The powder is no longer on the floor and the decanter is on the table. I turn my attention back to the couple and I‌ see him kiss her softly. She turns away,
“Cain, please…” she whimpers, “I am not ready for this yet.” Cain nods and stands up. He walks across the room to a metal bowl with a pitcher and pours a glass of water.

“You should leave, Elizabeth.” he states without making eye contact. “You have no business being here if you will continue to cohort with humans. You have been given a dark gift that you are wasting away. You have been made beautiful to be a glorious gift to our community and you have disgraced us by your unfaithfulness.”

Shocked, Elizabeth stands and walks toward him with more tears in her eyes, “Cain, you know I‌ love you. I‌ want to stay with the community, to contribute and prove my worth. Please give me a chance.” she sobs.

He takes her in his arms and calmly says, “Elizabeth, you know what you must do. You know your purpose. You are the source of intimacy in this coven. You are our only hope to offer what we have to Lucifer.”

Elizabeth sighs and softly agrees. She looks defeated, tired, sad. I just want to wrap my arms around her and tell her it will be okay. I‌ blink back tears from my eyes. As I open them, I‌ am back in the main room surrounded by people. Cain is standing at the altar beside Elizabeth who is dressed in a beautiful black lace gown and veil. Cain lifts the veil from her face and kisses her neck. Her expression unchanged, still flooded with defeat. Cain starts to unbutton her gown. What is happening? Why are all these people watching this? She doesn’t look happy… why is no one stopping this? Cain starts to aggressively remove her clothing until she is standing bare and vulnerable in front of the crowd.

“What are you doing?!” I‌ scream.
“Leave her alone!” I‌ run to the front to try and stop them but I‌ am invisible.

As Cain removes his trousers, Elizabeth stands there calmly but with deep sadness in her eyes. He motions to the altar and Elizabeth lays down. Cain climbs on top of her and starts to penetrate. He begins aggressively … well there is no other word for it besides ****. He is ****** her. Her eyes fill with tears but she blinks them back. He gains speed until he finally ******* inside her. She blankly stares at the ceiling and a single tear rolls down the side of her face, landing in her now unkempt hair.
Why? Why did this happen? What is going on? Why did no one stop this?
A man in the crowd stands up and walks to the front. When he reaches the altar, he begins to undress.

No.

Not again. There is no way. Why would they be doing this? Why is no one stopping this?!

Man after man after man violates Elizabeth while she lays silently on the stone altar. I am sobbing now. Why am I‌ powerless? Why can’t I‌ stop this? Why is this happening?

What seems like hours pass of this horror and Elizabeth finally stands up. She puts her gown back on and replaces her veil. Cain stands beside her and grabs her hand. He recites something in latin then repeats in English, “The marriage of the many.” They begin a ceremony similar to a wedding but instead of a groom, on the altar lies the decanter of powder.
The ceremony continues and I can hear Elizabeth faintly sobbing, “Jonathan…” she whispers. She blinks back her tears and looks up. She sees him standing by the door, tears off her veil and runs to him. He was not there. Men from the crowd drag her back to the altar. She is screaming, “I‌ won’t marry him! Jonathan has my heart. I‌ would rather die than give myself over to Lucifer!” Cain hits her across the face leaving a throbbing red mark.

She cradles her face from the pain as Cain yells,
“Don’t you dare disgrace us! You are the ultimate sacrifice to our king and you must obey!”

Cain drags her back to the altar and chains her down. He pulls a knife from his belt and lifts it in the air yelling, “To thee I‌ offer, oh king of hell, this sacrifice of violated innocence. Come forth and bestow your gifts upon us as we offer her to you.” I‌ lunge forward to try and stop him. Just as he is about to plunge the knife in her chest, the decanter on the altar opens and the powder bursts into the air. A loud voice bellows through the church,

“You dare disgrace this innocence. An offer of such little worth hath no result for a coven such as yours.” A strong gust of wind throws Cain against the wall. The blow kills him instantly. The crowd bursts into chaos. Elizabeth, still chained to the altar, is hysterically sobbing and trying to break free. From the cloud of wind, a man walks toward her. He is tall with dark features. He has deep black eyes and a chiseled jaw line and body. He walks to her. Elizabeth looks up and is speechless. The man crouches down to unchain her and kindly helps her up.
“They hath defiled you, oh innocence. For this they shall burn.” He speaks in a deep voice. He extends his hand and half of the crowd turns to ash. He looks into her eyes and kisses her neck.

Elizabeth looks to the ceiling with tears in her eyes and mutters, “Please don’t hurt me…”
“Why would I hurt the most purest gifts my father has given the world?” He says as he holds her face. “I have removed the human from your life to clear your path to glory. In my father’s spite, we will be betrothed tonight. You shall rule hell beside me and bear my children.”
She sobs, “You … you killed him? I loved him!”
“Girl, you know nothing of love.” He says flatly. She looks at him in surprise, tears still falling down her cheeks. Chaos is still roaring around them as the crowd tried to escape the hellfire. “These filthy creatures are not worthy of your power. You belong to me now.” She tries to break free of his grip but he is far too strong for her. He lifts her up and lays her on the altar and begins to overtake her as she cries.
I stand to the side helplessly. Sobbing with her. I close my eyes and wish it over. I‌ want to leave now. I can’t take this.
Silence. I open my eyes to the sudden stillness and there sits a pregnant Elizabeth in a dark, empty church. Tears are gently running down her face and I realize that I‌ have not yet seen her with a smile on her face. Lucifer appears to her and holds her in his arms. I can’t hear anything. They are speaking but there is no sound. He lays her down and she yells - she is in labor. A small bundle wrapped in a cloth is delivered and the dark lord holds it in his hands and looks down calmly. Elizabeth stands up behind him with anger in her eyes. She pulls a knife from her cloak and plunges it in his neck. He drops the child but Elizabeth reaches to catch it just in time. She runs to the door with the cloth in her arms and slams the door behind her. A furious Satan rips the knife from his neck and runs to the door. He slams on it with his fists and yells. I‌ still cannot hear.
I blink and see Elizabeth on the steps of a church, crying softly. She gently lays the bundle on the door step and runs away. A woman appears at the door and picks it up, cradling it in her arms.
I‌ blink and see Elizabeth back in the church, holding the decanter and stealthy creeping around the corners. She turns around and Lucifer is standing there.
“You have betrayed me. All freedoms have been stripped from you. You will no longer sit beside me and rule hell. You will be caged and retained for only reproduction. You WILL bear my children and I‌ shall take them from you, never to be seen again. This will continue until I‌ have used the last of you and then you will be destroyed.” He exclaims angrily.
Elizabeth stands straight up, holds the decanter in her hand and yells, “I‌ banish thee, Satan, to the confines of this prison. You shall never again walk the face of this earth.”‌ As she opens the lid, the dark lord plunges the knife she used on him into her chest. A gust of wind engulfs him into the decanter. Elizabeth drops to the floor. A‌ knife in her chest, she struggles to put the top on the decanter. She crawls to the wall where the door once was. She begins to peel away the pieces of the wall weakly. She works in pain for what seems like hours until she makes it into the room. She drags herself over to the bookshelf and hoists herself up. She places the decanter up as far up as she can and tries to cover it with a cloth. As she reaches, she falls. Upon hitting the ground, she fades into dust.
I‌ stood there silently, shocked. This woman. I feel like I‌ know her. She is so strong and brave. I‌ am in awe and also in tears. I‌ collapse to the ground in the dust she left behind. I‌ mourn her, her hardships, her life. She deserved so much more.
I open my eyes and I‌ see a little girl, maybe 5 or 6 years old enter the room. She looks around. I yell, “Leave!‌ This place is dangerous!‌”
Bewildered by the things around her, she wanders to the bookshelf. She looks so much like Elizabeth. Could this be? Could it be her daughter? She is holding a small bag. She sits down at the desk and opens it. Its her lunch. She begins to eat and continue looking around. She sees the light from the oil lamp gleam off the crystal decanter. Excited, she pushes the chair up against the bookcase and climbs up. On her tippy toes, she manages to reach the decanter. She sits back down and twirls it around, moving the powder from one side to the other. A small amount of powder escapes in a puff. You can hear a whisper, “Victoria…” I‌ hear. She hears it too.
“Hello? Who’s there?” she squeaks. She puts the decanter down and walks around. She turns around to return to her lunch and is greeted by Lucifer himself, though she doesn’t know this. He is weak. The remainder of his strength lies in the decanter. He can’t speak. He grabs her and yells - she screams and breaks away from his grasp. She takes off in the other direction and crawls back through the hole. She looks behind her then darts toward the door. He is standing there in front of the door. He waves his hand and the large metal door bolts shut. She stops dead in her tracks, stares at him for a moment, then takes off.
Frantically running through the church, Victoria is trying to find any means of escape. Tears in her eyes, she evades Lucifer’s grasp several times. The windows are boarded up, the doors are bolted, and it seems there is no way out. Suddenly a little gleam of light comes from above. The balcony. She starts toward the wall and begins to climb up the trim as quickly as she can. Lucifer is close behind, yelling but unable to speak words to her. She reaches for the balcony and pulls herself up.
Suddenly I‌ am outside on the balcony and Victoria is reaching for the railing. She is reaching for the light. She is reaching for me. She looks into my eyes and yells, “Help me! Please!” and extends her hand. Surprised that she can see me, I reach out to grasp her hand but before I‌ can get her, she is pulled screaming back into the church. I‌ lunge forward to pull her back but land on the floor of the back hidden room breathing heavily. I stand up and dust myself off. I am in the middle of the powder and glass that was on the floor. I grab the book I‌ found and start to run for the door. I‌ can’t get caught by him, he will **** me. A thousand things are running through my mind. I crawl through the hole and head toward the door. Something compels me to look back as I pull open the door.
There he stood.
Staring at me.
“Daughter, fear not. I will find you and we will rule together with your sister.” He says.
Daughter? Sister? Who am I?

‘This is a pleasure. A composer in our midst, and you’re seeing Plas Brondanw at its June best.’ Amabel strides across the lawn from house to the table Sally has laid for tea. Tea for three in the almost shade of the vast plain tree, and nearly the height of the house. Look up into its branches. It is convalescing after major surgery, ropes and bindings still in place.
 
Yes, I am certainly seeing this Welsh manor house, the home of the William-Ellis family for four hundred years, on a day of days. The mountains that ring this estate seem to take the sky blue into themselves. They look almost fragile in the heat.
 
‘Nigel, you’re here?’ Clough appears next. He sounds surprised, as though the journey across Snowdonia was trepidatious adventure. ‘Of course you are, and on this glorious day. Glorious, glorious. You’ve walked up from below perhaps? Of course, of course. Did you detour to the ruin? You must. We’ll walk down after tea.’
 
And he flicks the tails of his russet brown frock coat behind him and sits on the marble bench beside Amabel. She is a little frail at 85, but the twinkling eyes hardly leave my face. Clough is checking the garden for birds. A yellowhammer swoops up from the lower garden and is gone. He gestures as though miming its flight. There are curious bird-like calls from the house. Amabel turns house-ward.
 
‘Our parrots,’ she says with a girlish smile.
 
‘Your letter was so sweet you know.’ She continues. ‘Fancy composing a piece about our village. We’ve had a film, that TV series, so many books, and now music. So exciting. And when do we hear this?’
 
I explain that the BBC will be filming and recording next month, but tomorrow David will appear with his double bass, a cameraman and a sound recordist to ‘do’ the cadenzas in some of the more intriguing locations. And he will come here to see how it sounds in the ‘vale’.
 
‘Are we doing luncheon for the BBC men? They are all men I suppose? When we were on Gardeners’ World it was all gals with clipboards and dark glasses, and it was raining for heaven’s sake. They had no idea about the right shoes, except that Alys person who interviewed me and was so lovely about the topiary and the fireman’s room. Now she wore a sensible skirt and the kind of sandals I wear in the garden. Of course we had to go to Mary’s house to see the thing as you know Clough won’t have a television in the house.’
 
‘I loath the sound of it from a distance. There’s nothing worse that hearing disembodied voices and music. Why do they have to put music with everything? I won’t go near a shop if there’s that canned music about.’
 
‘But surely it was TV’s The Prisoner that put the place on the map,’ I venture to suggest.
 
‘Oh yes, yes, but the mess, and all those Japanese descending on us with questions we simply couldn’t answer. I have to this day no i------de-------a-------‘, he stretches this word like a piece of elastic as far as it might go before breaking in two, ‘ simply no I------de------a------ what the whole thing was about.’ He pauses to take a tea cup freshly poured by Amabel. ‘Patrick was a dear though, and stayed with us of course. He loved the light of the place and would get up before dawn to watch the sun rise over the mountains at the back of us.’
 
‘But I digress. Music, music, yes music . . . ‘ Amabel takes his lead
 
‘We’ve had concerts before at P. outside in the formal gardens by AJ’s studio.’ She has placed her hands on her green velvet skirt and leans forward purposefully. ‘He had musicians about all the time and used to play the piano himself vigorously in the early hours of the morning. Showing off to those models that used to appear. I remember walking past his studio early one morning and there he was asleep on the floor with two of them . . .’
 
Clough smiles and laughs, laughs and smiles at a memory from the late 1920s.
 
‘Everyone thought we were completely mad to do the village.’ He leans back against the gentle curve of the balustrade, and closes his eyes for a moment. ‘Completely mad.’
 
It’s cool under the tree, but where the sunlight strays through my hand seems to gather freckles by the minute. I am enjoying the second slice of Mary’s Bara Brith. ‘It’s the marmalade,’ says Amabel, realising my delight in the texture and taste, ‘Clough brought the recipe back from Ceylon and I’ve taught all my cooks to make it. Of course, Mary isn’t a cook, she’s everything. A wonder, but you’ll discover this later at dinner. You are staying? And you’re going to play too?’
 
I’m certainly going to play in the drawing room studio on the third floor. It’s distractingly full of paintings by ‘friends’ – Duncan Grant, Mondrian, Augustus John, Patrick Heron, Winifred Nicholson (she so loved the garden but would bring that awful Raine woman with her). There’s  Clough’s architectural watercolours (now collectors want these things I used to wiz off for clients – stupid prices – just wish I’d kept more behind before giving them to the AA – (The Architectural Association ed.) And so many books, first editions everywhere. Photographs of Amabel’s flying saucer investigations occupy a shelf along with her many books on fairy tales and four novels, a batch of biographies and pictures of the two girls Susan and Charlotte as teenagers. Susan’s pottery features prominently. There’s a Panda skin from Luchan under the piano.
 
These two eighty somethings have been working since 8.0am. ‘We don’t bother with lunch.’ Amabel is reviewing the latest Ursula le Guin. ‘I stayed with her in Oregon last May. A lovely little house by the sea. Such a darling, and what a gardener! She creates all the ideas for her books in her garden. I so wish I could, but there’s just too much to distract me. Gardening is a serious business because although Jane comes over from Corrieg and says no to this and no to that and I have to stand my corner,  I have to concentrate and go to my books. Did you know the RHS voted this one of the ten most significant gardens in the UK? But look, there’s no one here today except you!’
 
No one but me. And tea is over. ‘A little rest before your endeavours perhaps,’ says Clough, probably anxious to get back to letter to Kenzo Piano.
 
‘Now let’s go and say hello to the fireman,’ says Amabel who takes my arm. And so we walk through the topiary to her favourite ‘room’,  a water feature with the fireman on his column (mid pond). ‘In memory of the great fire, ‘ she says. ‘He keeps a keen eye on the building now.’ He is a two-foot cherub with a hose and wearing a fireman’s helmet.
 
The pond reflects the column and the fireman looks down on us as we gaze into the pool. ‘Health, ‘ she says, ‘We keep a keen eye on it.’
 
The parrots are singing wildly. I didn’t realise they sang. I thought they squawked.
 
‘Will they sing when I play?’ I ask.
 
‘Undoubtedly,’ Amabel says with her girlish smile and squeezes my arm.

Ethel echidna
had a date wid Pike,
a fiiine!
young hedgehog
who be doin' the backpack

she got n' egg
ya see bout a rave
up in the mountains
in a black cathederic cave
doof doof in the dandenongs

d' message said
up dee track
where the ding dongs
don't dare follow
round d' hollow n'
up the back

Ethel she preened
and she polished
the dreds down her back,
clickety, click, clack.
painted her claws
a fetching shade
of orange neon
all watched on by
Pike the backpack peon

then to the doof
dey departed
at a fast shuffel
leaving behin
barely a ruffle
in the burrowed air
they followed
d'directions to
d' right section
dis dey knew
by d' sound of
d' massive party
goin down

on payin d' dosh n'
getten d' mark
off dey went
inta the fray
***** boy mumbled
"woyhoy gotcha!"
when he saw who
was providin
the goodmuse vibing
up ona stage
Jagger the emu
was a struttin'
with Ringo the dingo
on drums an bongos
while Hendrix
the numbat riffed d' strat
an  Entwhistle
d'frogmouthed owl
grooved on his gibson
wid ***** left stage staring

Ethel got bizzy
check'n out the dancefloor
lookin for bling or moves wid a sting
perhaps a little ******* headbangin

well down
at the southdoor
trouble was brewin'
foul words
was spewin between
d magpie n seagull crews
till the bouncers,
kanga & roo
hustled dem
all outside for a brew

up near the stacks
Pheobe the lizard
was flashin
a matchin
frill n grill ensemble
while Stan, her man
was fillin his bill
at the buffet table
as only a pelican can
at the grub bar
sat the kookaburra trio
Max,Tom, Deccy
havin a speccy
at tha lady
cockatoos n' galahs,
givina chuckle
at the bruhaha
they had created
comin flyin from
near n' far to this
surberb n spectacular
festival of fauna
"tho hot as a sauna
best dis year sofah"

jus inside
d' recovery corner sat
Horn a blue tongue lizard
feelin a bit pukey n' flat
den dere was
Kayla n' Jac
a pair o koalas
who now be zonin
from d eucalyptus
dey been a chewen
alldayz

outaback time it's awastin
with dis watchin n waitin

Ethel hit the floor
wherever
she booggied,
grooved or h-banged
she got a big crowd,
given her ground
to shake
her dreds around
cause dat girl
is dangerous
wid her dredlocks man,
to which Zach
the one eyed wombat
can well attest

Now not bein a dancer
***** got lonely
so looked upa chat
with the rest
of d' backpackin crowd
he swapped recipes
for green brownies wit
Boomer the orangatang,
harvest spots wit
Goth the friutbat,
Hamish de otter,
quiet de globetrotter,
did giv ***** some tips
about surfin rips
furder down de coast.

so dey shimmyed
an dey shammyed,
dey talked
an dey squawked
till d' old sun
came out to play
den dey wandered
and dey wended
back down
d' track to d' town
to sleep d' day away.

as to our Ethel
and *****,
well
dey crawled
gingerly
inta their bed,
they cuddled
an dey clicked,
dey kissed
an dey snicked
and dey
blew dey
selfs away

The trail rose up
through the sand
and sage covered hills
following the sinews of a land
scoured by fire and flood.
Even the most severe carving
here was nothing
compared to the city below-
its concrete grid
glaring over my shoulder-
sprawled out,
******* on its dingy
comforter of smog-
******* up
the dust of the desert
around it.

The trail led me up.
Up past twisted
juniper bones,
past pale green yuccas
curling
fine white filagree
from their dagger blades,
past sandstone boulders
swirled like confections,
past ancient cooking pits
nested with ash,
and ghost-like hands
outlined on stone-
to a white cliff face
up-******
beneath the cloudless sky.


From a lone stump
a pinyon jay squawked
drawing my eyes down.
A sentinel
to its comrades-
who rose up
from the draw to my left
and sailed in twos and threes
sinking down into
the draw on my right.
Right before me,
around me, behind me,
first two- then six,
then tens of metallic blue
wings beating heavily against
the unfamiliar desert air.

They had come down.
Down from the scrubby
forests of pine.
Down from snow
covered slopes.
Hungry,
they searched the green
fingers of the washes-
the winter forcing them
down across the trail
that was drawing me up.
They passed close by,
wing beats feathered my ears,
first up, then down-
the sentinel
keeping an eye .


Listening, suddenly hearing
my breath beat
against the wind-
I stood motionless, perched
beyond starting
and destination-
blue wings lifting
the hunger within.


Tom Spencer © 2017

There was once a hungry lonely lion
Who hadn’t any friends
It never stopped him from trying
But it was too late to make amends

He had eaten Mr. Zebra for dinner
And Sir Buffalo for the crunch
The animals thought him a sinner
When he ate Mrs. Kangaroo up for lunch

He didn’t get invited to Giraffe’s party
It quickly created a void
He heard it was chill and hearty
And they played a lot of Pink Floyd

The lonely lion sighed
His carnivorous desires left him bleak
As much as he really tried
New friends were impossible to seek

One fine day he was struck
By a lightning of epiphany
This idea could very well bring him luck
And end his spell of infamy

While on the toilet seat
He browsed through a magazine page
A new diet with no meat
Seemed to suddenly be all the rage

He grabbed a bowl of grass
And ignored his craving for gazelle
He’d decided to be a lion with class
As he excitedly snacked on lightly salted pretzels

For breakfast he had a juice
And Mrs. Parrot noticed it was kale
Soon the lonely lion declared a truce
And Mrs. Parrot squawked of his vegan tale

For lunch the lion ate cauliflower
And the animals gasped in shock
“Come animals, witness my vegan power!”
Roared the lion as he chewed on a grassy stalk

Soon the animals welcomed the lion
Except Mrs. Owl who was wise
There’s something about him I'm not buyin’
I just can’t seem to believe all his lies

When there was finally peace in the forest
The lion threw a grand feast
He called the best chefs and the florists
To give his new friends a treat

The spread was mighty splendid
All the dishes were vegan and gluten-free
And when the dinner had ended
The animals sipped on piping hot tea

“You’re generous and astounding!
Our herbivore brother and kind beast
This transformation has been confounding
But thank you for the wonderful feast!”  

The lion was now glowing with pride
In the animal kingdom he was admired
But something rumbled from deep inside
Something in just the way he was wired

His hunger which he ignored
Came bursting through the seams
The satisfied lion now got bored
With his desperate vegan diet dreams

He pounced on Mr. Rabbit
And gobbled him up pretty fast
Blame it on the bad habit
But his vegan diet did not last

He ate Mr. Deer and Mr. Moose
Yet his tummy growled for some more
He ate Mr. Hare and Mrs. Goose
Until nobody was left on the forest floor

The owl watched completely flustered
as her friends were brutally killed
Mr fox and his wife covered in mustard
gobbled by the lion who was weak willed

I apologize for my condition
My weakness is delicious meat
I need to tend to my nutrition
And thus I must simply eat

I truly am sorry said the lion Stud
As the night grew silently grim
But the chances of us being real buds
Are unfortunately pretty slim

one day my teacher asked me
why I always wrote in lowercase letters
her glasses perched on the top of her beak
she squawked,
"you were not taught that in school, young lady.
it is not proper, young lady."

and I gripped my pen tighter
or maybe a little looser
it's hard to tell lately.

but I looked in to her black beady eyes
and disapproving frowny face
and whispered "see how I am whispering
do you see how you are leaning closer
like I have a secret
more intimate, correct?
that is my writing:
an intimate secret.
for you"

They come by dawn’s early light


Just past Five am, they do an extended aerial search,
though well familiar with the shoreline and our oppo
campsites, they fly over in formation noisily debating,
which hunting grounds seem most secure, least guarded.

the scouts, numbering six, descend to the far edge of an
adjoining neighbor’s property, as always, remaining close
to the water’s edge, while the main body of these ghastly,
geesely beasts, numbering today a massive force of 42, land and storm our beach, after traversing up the earthen berms that buffer the bulkhead, and that also provides them a out-of-sight, surreptitious, secretive approach to the fresh green grass, that has emerged from two days of much needed sky watering.

Our preparations are at the ready, the old faux velvet slippers by the door, next to it our weapon of choice, a white parasol, most suitable for a tour group of tourists to follow, but this day, it is an extension of a waving arm and low growling.  Once the bevy of heads are espied bobbing spotted coming over the rise that downward slopes to the beach, the battle commences!

The two forces well known to each other, we advance slowly,
with a deliberate mien on our faces and in our step, and the enmity, I mean enemy, sees us coming and the alert is squawked, and all heads raised. they the geese, are in full dress fight or flee modality.  

We get within but a few paces when they squeak retreat, and in good order march to the beach, hoping to observe us in an early retreat and plan a sneaky return.  But we  proceed closer and they beat their wings and head to safety, and seeing us close observing their action, wisely to the water go.

But we know them well. Uncannily uncanny, they pretend to hide evasively, with semi-wounded pride nursed, while under the cover afforded by the dock. Yet, seeing our presence in attentive attention,  go forth finally to a safe distance to the wide, broad Peconic Bay.  

But this day is not yet over, for these foul fowl, counting upon human laziness and the appeal of a quick victory, paddle over to our other neighbor’s unguarded land mass and start to clamber up onto dry land 100 yards further east.

We gamely observe and realize furthest action now required,
descend to the beach, each side warily observing, regrouping.
Our approach is well kenned, and the enemy decides this day their cause is lost, and to the water retreat once more, heading around the bend, onwards to Shell Beach and West Neck Harbor.

As we return to our encampment, the bunny rabbits who,live beneath the deck emerge to give us glorious applause, for love no lost tween these two mismatched species of the same Kingdom, who share the appetite for the grasses greenest nutrients, though the geese leave their dreaded cluster bombs most unpleasant, and fully ravage the grass as if it was theirs alone.

The rabbits bring us coffee in porcelain mugs, steaming hot, for they have witnessed before this dance, most progressive, this charade of derring do, and love the quietude of the early morning, happy to share it with the itinerant beach walkers of the early hours and our
Dawn Patrol.

We drink in  our victory in deep and hot, and note per doctors orders, that our heart rate never exceeded 125 beats per minute, as ordered.

Sunday Jul 25
Silver Beach Armed Forces (SBAF!)
Peconic Beach Division

Officer Natalino (his official code name]

In line for the new roller coaster
was a group of ex-protestors
in cobbled monogamous flocks.
They squawked and squawked.
She warbled.
He wooed.
She swayed.
He swooned.
And she only had sunscreened her front.
Her back must've stung.
Bright red.
But I bet she reserves her best stories
for unreserved reservations in bed.

Bill played piano down by the bar,
moldy old show tunes
gray-haired folks listened to,
in youth they'd played over...and over.
He once told me he was terminal,
diagnosed with months left,
and had just one request
of his own to be met
before accepting eternal rest -
peace in the kiss
of a handsome young man
who's powder blue eyes
might make him feel young again.
I thought he would weep,
and heart aching, obliged,
gratified by the smile,
sweet joy it seemed to bring him...
'till Sarah stuffed a dollar
in the tumbler of tips
he kept perched on the edge
of the piano he played -
he'd won their wager
he could get the
straight kid to kiss him.
Sarah cooked in the kitchen
and I always wondered
what sort of mother
named her son -
Sarah Vaughn -
then heard the sparrow sing
on the radio, laughing
because the one I knew
squawked like a crow
and dressed
in wigs and woman's clothes
when work was finally done.
The coincidence seemed
a delicious, karmic prank,
payment for some past-life indiscretion.
Michael studied flamboyance,
raised to high art in sweeps of his hand,
head tossed back, as if to keep pace
with legs was annoyance.
Adolescent innocence ended
when I realized the only other
guy employed there
who was straight like me -
was really a she -
chest wrapped real tight.

When the first sweet scent of summertime,
sifted through the sea-salt scented air,
so many things and everything
were bright, light and happy-go-fair,
the Summer Life with you was finally here.

As soon as our bare feet hit the wood bridge,
running from the road up over the dunes,
great grey seagulls squawked, dove and swoon,
we held hands together, one and one
made two,
dash-dancing across the shiny sand with you,
dressed and undressed in our Summer Life moods.

Colours like pinwheels spun like yarn,
flashed and clashed bright orange to blue,
you danced and giggled like a loon,
pulled me up and so close, so close
to you,
that I had to dance, I had to dance like a loon,
I just had to laugh and dance and laugh along with you.

How we played, we frolicked beneath the beachy sun,
belly-surfed upon the waves just for funny fun,
flicked flecks of sand from our sticky picnic lunch,
shared swigs from a big blue thermos jug
of fruity-fruit yummy punch,
sharing and caring beneath the Summer Life's sun.

By evening-tide the air grew cool,
you called me 'lover,' I called you 'fool'
-with a big ol' blanket draped over our shoulders,
we kissed and cuddled, growing much bolder,
falling flat back
upon the mighty mattress of sand,
feeling the mists of the waves licking our hands,
as the Man-In-The-Moon arose and shone,
to dance and laugh with us on the Summer Life's throne.

There was a vicar from Crewe
Whose congregation were few
To make amends he brought in his hens
And they all lined up on a pew

Then he compiled an avian choir
(For the singing voice of the hens was dire
And the only song the cockerel knew
Was ****-a-doodle-do)

The church fell silent as we heard
The Lord is my Shepherd from the minor bird
The vicar invited us to pray
And we got the Lords Prayer from the African grey

There followed a rendition of psalm thirty four
Performed without fault from the tenor macaw
The parakeets squawked and scratched their fleas
As they jumped up and down on the ***** keys

The vicar was thrilled it was going so well
The geese gave a honk as they pulled on the bell
But then there appeared right at the back
An evil sparrowhawk poised to attack

Calamity reigned inside the church
The African grey fell off his perch
The first to escape was the tenor macaw
As fast as he could through the open door

The chickens shrieked and went home in a flap
The minor bird had a heart attack
The geese walked away back to their pen
And the church fell silent once again

This year was different
or was it me?

same Trafalgar crowds
link-armed-laughing

pigeons
puff-chested gluttons

different air
full of afterthoughts
I could almost touch
fluttering away
like rusting leaves
on winter's breath

I waited
on our bench
dark cold
stark old
wood

lovers kissed shyly
birds squawked
she laughed
eyes wide
flushed cheeks

Valentine's heart pounding
in a fledgling chest

I wondered if she were me
willing me to remember
hugging him close

I longed
to melt inside her happiness

old words, love and burger-boxes
where do they go?

the soldier knelt to fix his cap,
dug deep into trenches, he stopped.
amidst the shots, he reached for the map
if not in his pocket, it’s lost.
“it seems like we’ve been here for years”
the man beside him squawked.
“an hour seems like many days,
because we’ve gotten so lost.”
unsure of quite how to respond,
the soldier raised his brow
but as he was about to speak,
the man who’d spoken went down.

the soldier raised his head to see the great alsace-lorraine.
the war had raged for far too long, and so he contrived an escape.
he planned to sneak across the flank,
advance the trench on his own
but as he stood to make his break, his heart
sank quite gut-wrenchingly low.
he thought to himself in a humble tone,
“i can’t do this alone.”
although his intentions were clearly courageous,
his weakness truly had shown.

as lady luck would have her way,
the days kept withering by
as the soldier so fervent to capture this land
tried not to keep track of the time.
they advanced to the east, but to their dismay
the french would push them right back
and until a day they’d find a way,
the men had no way to attack.
a fateful storm rolled in one day,
a blanket of snow o’er the field
and the mood of both great war machines,
had slowly came to a yield.
the soldier, so tired of the weight of the war
climbed out, with a fire in his eye.
he raised his rifle high in the air
and cried “Deutschland über alles”

the soldier then fell onto his knees,
and raised his hands to the the sky
not seconds passed before the scream
as snow and french bullets did fly.
the soldier was struck right through his lung
and grasped his chest to breathe
but all could see his head was hung
as the soldier collapsed from his knees.
there was no escape, he said to himself
as the snow slowly blurred into light
and he passed away on the holy ground
and they never did win that fight.

Matt and John sat at John’s kitchen table,
it was 5’clock in the morning,
there was plenty of time
but there was none to waste.
John was glad that Linda and his daughter
were still upstairs asleep.
He was glad too that Matt was driving;
no one knew the streets and alleys better.
John thought that Matt was a bag of hammers,
but he was loyal as hell, kept quiet most of the time,
was brave to the point of stupidity, and drove like a bat.
John got up from his chair;
poured another coffee.
Matt nursed a beer.

Everything they needed was in the mini-van;
an innocuous thing lifted rather smartly from
a long-term parking lot near the airport.

Pistols not shotguns, John had insisted.
Matt’s argument was simply that shotguns
were scarier.

John lit a cigarette and sipped some
coffee.

First National would fall.
John was sure of it.
He and Matt would leave
that bank’s lobby with about
3 million dollars strapped to their backs;
they’d lose the bulls, skate by the house,
pick up the girls, and be California-bound
by the time the fast food joints
stopped serving breakfast.

On the other side of town,
the police barracks was alive
with activity.
Two old-school throwbacks
Det. Luke Richardson and his partner,
Det. Mark Gonzalez, had gotten
a tip.

A greasy little stool-pigeon
named Hector had said
the word was that Johnny Dunn
and his raw-wired cousin, Matt,
were planning to take down First National Bank
on Friday, the first of the month,
payroll day.

They’d been leaning
on Hector for a couple
of months,
finally offering
him a knockback
on a B & E pinch
that they’d held
over his head like
an anvil.

Hector squawked
for immunity on that one
as well as
state’s evidence
regarding chatter
he’d heard about
the bank job.

Their gear was set,
vests cinched tight,
shotguns in the car.
Their service pistols cleaned,
oiled, and loaded,
with one in the chamber.
Holdout pieces strapped
to their ankles.

It was about 6:45 am,
First National’s drive-thru
opened at 7:30.
The lobby would open by 9,
but staff would be in the building
by 7;
tellers making sure their cash-drawers
were customer-ready.

The two detectives left
the briefing room,
strode the short distance
to the motor pool,
started the car…
the radio crackled
to life…

static
All units this is Control
static
We have a silent alarm triggered
for a 211 in progress
at 14th and  Carver Avenue
static
First National Bank
static

Mark was behind the wheel,
Luke flipped on the siren,
it blipped then began to wail.

The Gospel was being written.
All units, saints and sinners,
were on the move.
*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications

Down, down and down he goes
To rich navy troughs and cerulean hues
His winged arms flailing to the skies
Wishing for his father's watchful eyes

The sobs of Daedalus are silenced by the sea,
And his tears are drowned in the waves
Icarus has fallen! Icarus has fallen to his death!
Oh how the seagulls squawked with mirth!

I've never eaten a salad so fast
as when my best friend and I
went to a restaurant where
a man with one leg
and a loud voice
squawked about
something artistic,

and since I'm still a little girl
in body, soul and mind
I sit on my feet.

My friend and I stopped talking
about something artistic as well
and listened to them.

"I gotta take a ****,"
said the one-legged man,
and though my back was turned to him,
I could hear how tall and broad he was.
As he passed me-
that's how I saw his one leg-
he stopped at my table,
noticing my insecurities
and said,

"I wish I could still sit on my legs like that.
Hey get a load of this,"
he said to his friend with
blue eyes and no teeth.
"hah," said his comrade
and the one legged man
hobbled off to take a ****,
I guess,
but now I'm left wondering

Did he mean before he lost his leg
or before he was that small?
I thought it was a relevant question.

The seagull squawked:
Are you dead?
I cannot see him - there is sand
In my eyes. A crab (it must have been)
Scuttles across my foot;
Picking up scraps at the seaweed
Wrapped around my toes: the vibrant
Green now worn out from its trip
Across the seas.

Land **! We rejoiced,
Docking at Island ---
It's your turn to name it.
Log Number 712: we are intoxicated
With a tropical fruit
That made your face flush
Putting every sunset to shame.  
And at night we play a game
To guess which is sea or sky.
You are my mirror.
A gentle breeze caresses my thigh.

Are you awake?
You whisper, your breath tickles
Condensing into dew
Landing on the tiny hairs of my ear.
The sand feels like mud but
My mouth is dry
I lick off the trail of sweat
On my upper lip - it is hot
I open my eyes to the sun screaming
at my face: Get up. You're late.

We had begun falling asleep  
At different times.  
You built a tree house
It made your heart race
And there you drew a scape
What was there to look beyond?
One night the sky had
The sea turned into smoke  
You followed the beating
Of thunder
So distant you couldn't
(Listen to me) yell Watch out!
Lightning --- the water shimmered
As you disappeared.

(Water)
Log number 890: we are capsized
(Water)

The crab picked out
The sand in my eyes
Dragging the seaweed to my mouth.
I chewed then spat and the seagull squawked:
"Are you dead?"
No, I said. I think I have arrived.

"Y'got city hands, Mr. Hooper."

I felt his coarse hands grip mine, too;
I lived through Mr. Hooper vicariously
as I looked down at open palms
spread to the heavens,
illuminated in the flashy brilliance of the glare.

I saw wrinkled, calloused eyes peer into mine;
I stood on that rickety old dock
in my fitted and worn wool cap,
faded denim shirt matching pants
and dingy white tennis shoes.

"Y'got city hands, Mr. Hooper."

My ego crestfallen as well,
pride in my intelligence proven in the Academia
withering, as the gritty gap-toothed
leery-eyed barnacle of a sailor
peered inquisitively into my soul.

He saw the smooth hands--
ah, but the callouses engraved deep between joints
on my fingers; a musician!

His eyes grilled, "In bourgeois leisure,
smiling meekly dwelling within milquetoast afternoon hours,
or,
from downtown haunts sweating jazz in the midnight hour,
dancing screaming cursing moaning lovingly?"
My eyes cast down again.

But I know not of the city as my abode!
I know the ****** and the farmer
more than any contributor to painted landscapes, nay;
they are my acquaintances, neighbors, cousins, brothers, and sisters!

For I have lived on the water;
I have eyed the vessels
commandeered by the gritty, grubby,
greased captains of my soul,

as I float buoyed in their wake,
eager to catch a semblance of the waters
that trail before them.

I live treading their wake,
eyes open and pencil in hand.

And lo;
I found sanctuary in the vast fields of the rustic farmer!

For I ate breakfast of the freshly-slaughtered calf;
I drank its mother's milk,
eggs fresh from the poultry den--
I squawked along with the mother hens.

I took in the bucolic smell of the country
atop the rugged tractor,
eyeing squinting
grimacing like a smile in the sun
burning burning down upon stiff backs
and leather necks--

I, the leaves of grass scattered
in the wake of the farmer,
I, the bails of hay furled tightly
sitting patiently in the once golden meadow,

I watched the tractors and their commandeers
disappear in the bombinate horizon;
the sound of insects ushering in the night sky

like unrolling the starry-eyed carpet
before the hazy late afternoon moon.

I watched, I lived,
waiting coiled in their wakes
eyes wide open and paper clenched in hand.

I lifted my eyes to once again
hear his curt admonition:

"Y'got city hands, Mr. Rhine."

Felt like I've been wondering around
Don't think I'm lost but that sure ain't found
Nobody seems to notice me
Set myself on pause as I look around
Saw  in  the far-off distance City of Gold and I said to myself that must be where I'm bound

Bought me a big brown bag of broken down chips
From a one-armed Soldier with a toy 45 hanging from his hips
Give me a 16 ounce bottle to catch the water that drips
From the stalactite that grew From his left fingertips
And I heard him yell hoarsly as I went on my way.... best be sure that you take small sips

Along.the steep winding trail where I made my way
To a purple-flowered valley where I found a 57 Chevy made all out of clay
And a broken pair of mannequins making love in the backseat who said be on your way
And I would have moved even faster if not for the locked gate and the half bald parrot that  blocked and   squawked
I need $0.86 exact change ...zact change. . zact change.
If you don't have the jack a loan we can arrange
I gave you three quarters  a penny and a dime
Then he looked at me like I committed a crime

ZACT CHANGE ...ZACT CHANGE he squawked to the pushy mannequin in the car
Shrugged his shoulder and said well there yarrr
You made the deal he had the freight
So now you little **** squawker you need to open the gate

Let the man through to be on his way
Then he yelled at my back don't be a stranger stop in next time you be this way
Just make sure it's not the third Monday in the month of May
That's when we go down to Marshmallow Creek for some fresh clay

And I heard em all start giggling as I made my way around the corner
Where I ran into a picnic table and there sat a silver lighter and I multi colored ****
Just beyond was a fat oily little    dump of a man
Perched on one end the silver teeter totter
And a purple eyed blonde Angel sitting on the other end he said how you do I'm bud this is my daughter
And you can share that bowl with us you got the price or some water
Now I know why the soldiers said I'd be best to take small sips
I handed the bottle to the shimmering blonde Angel
Who said   so sweetly in a voice that suddenly   dropped 6 octaves

"Hey buddy what gives!!"
Slowly I begin to realize where I really was
The guy on the other side of the counter sayin
"Are you alright cous?"
"I told you to take it easy - greasy
We call this blonde white angel "
He pointed to  purple and green bud on the end of the scale
"This is the best you will find for sale
Anywhere in the city of Golden
Maybe in all of Colorado"

So I got me a five gram bag
Went outside for fresh air and to sit at the picnic table
Where I mellowed out while I drank the rest of my bottle of Teeters Water......Wooow!!

I walked down my front steps
this morning on a
sweltering January Wednesday,
and across the street
a mean hawk
had in its grip a truly unremarkable
run-of-the-mill pigeon.
I couldn't tell if the bird was dead yet
but something told me
there was a life yet to be fully realized,
so I made sure not to get run over
while crossing the street.
When I got too close that feathered dinosaur
squawked at me
for interrupting his breakfast,
but his breakfast was still alive,
and I couldn't sleep at night
knowing this.
The hawk cursed me one more time
but I had taken a step too far.
He let the poor thing go and
I have never seen any living animal
fly so fast in 22 years.
It was something like watching
a man being chased by another man
with a chainsaw,
the anticipation and uncertainty
of whether or not
Herr Hawk caught up
with the unlucky *******.

Bored meeting again,
And we’ve assembled ourselves,
Well situated, to see the clock,
Later arrivals take the leftover chairs
And the words begin to drone.

Pencils getting pushed,
While we’re thinking, how’d we get here;
We left in such a rush,
Our brains are scrambled mush,
When suddenly there’s a silence-

A response is now required;
More murmuring and muttering,
Chair legs being squawked,
Drawings on white boards,
Handouts passed about:

We wish that we just had the guts
To get up; walk right out.
Our lives are lived in neutral,
While clocks hammer out our days;
We owe our every bit of food

To something someone says.
This meeting feels interminable,
In so many different ways,
And just when we’re most sure, we’ll die-
Adjournment comes; the end.

I heard my life in mono before I met You
We became stereo
Me: channel left
You: panned right;
A cohesive strengthening of sound
A mutual clatter of turbulence, with such underlying beauty
Only we knew the clamor was best for Us, though no one believed
As the cacophony grew, Your speaker buzzed and squawked
I played unaware, loving the crescendo
-
Eventually, as stereos do, You
Shorted out
Grew weaker and weaker with each
Note; melodies were crumbling
I fiddled with the wires,
Hoping, wanting both sides of our discord to stay true
-
Then you were silent
Eerily and I kept screaming
Roaring with a clatter that could have blown my own side of this
Disquiet. You were muted, hushed
Now I hear but half of my life
The left remains;
The right, You, are not even
Static, and I pray for mono
Again

I met an unfriendly parrot
I can’t blame him really. He lived in a cage
He stood there and squawked
Screaming displeasure at all who passed.
Staring balefully at sunburnt tourists
Asking if polly wants a *******
He doesn’t want a ****** single one.

I did find out what he liked.
Completely by accident.
Turns out he likes songs,
Click songs, because
“The white people cannot say Qongqothwane”

Images ran wild, they boiled the water,
Like a train running off the track
They trickled down, metaphors poured out
The world, million voices, reverberated
Buzz-buzz-buzz, inside my head.
I was alone in that room
With panic attacks, lust and voices-
That slipped in through my half-window.
I broke the mirror, the brutal paparazzo
Who printed pictures of my many facades
I looked at him and grinned,
Clink-clink-clink they smiled once-
Dancing with wine glasses and alcoholics.
I walked, walked fast and twirled-
Like a tornado inside my cube
People spoke outside-life tales, notebooks,
Their late night phone calls and fine men.
The world didn’t bother to open the door,
Tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock the clock yawned.
I sat on the floor and opened my pen,
It vomited blue letters on the yellow paper-
The customary dilemmas, past and blunders
But something was new, a story.
I looked for The English Patient, the nurse
And his burnt skin I misplaced
They did not appear, I lost hope.
Gur-Gur-Gur, I snorted like a mad cat
Misdirected to an old jute sack.
I climbed up to my bed, hid under the rotten-
Blanket and closed my eyes, the images ran,
Ran away from me, climbed the hardwood staircase
And fell down, I broke my knee.
I opened the books- USSR, Pasha, Buddhism,
Laughed loud like an unbalanced bloke,
Tore them apart into pieces and pieces,
Hush-Hush-Hush, my yellow monkey warned
And I played with him “hush-hush-hush”.
I sat next to my half-window
The pseudo city, dozy walls and the distressed-
Street light. Out of track.
Images flashed again- chewing gums, pink house,
The anonymous Christmas gift, malnutrition
And the hibiscus my mother planted,
“Incey Wincey Spider- Incey Wincey Spider”
I sang all day looping around a pole.
I sneaked down to the floor and dreamt
Eyes wide open, a black and white old film.
There was no exile, no god and his sins
No wafers and secret lessons upstairs.
Only the sea, popomatic, DD evenings
Cassettes and a rocking bamboo chair
Aw uck- aw uck- aw- uck , the seagulls squawked,
I slept.

I'm standing on a square.
A metre each way, a square
If I move I'll fall off this square
is squaring me up, squinting at me
Learning it has power over me
This square is all I am
This square is scaring me.

I think it's made of wood, a wooden square
Solid yet creaking this wooden square
rotting beneath me, a square
that snares me, spares me the fall I'd have without it
This square stares at me.

I know every part of this, this square
it squeaks this square, at me this square
I have walked to all it's corners but this square that squared me up and squawked at me, squealed and stammered under my feet
It became my home,
this square
that ensnared me, still stares at me but continues to spare me
is starting to show me,

At least now I know where I stand.

Das dunkoff deliberately drafted dis **** daffy drivel
dont denigrate doodling, deftly demonstrated,
diligently doled, dribs drabs, dosay doing dandy dancer
displaying dopen derived dimwitted drek.

Exercising effort encompassing expressing *******
eliminating every eminent excellently evolved equalizing
element er excruciating exertion earnestly elbowing explictly
each endowed equipoised eppaulted
essential earmaked e-z editorialized expose.

I reckon there must be a gamut of grammarians
waiting in the wings (shutterflying
at the speed of Soundgarden),
cuz soon after pumping iron heck,

kinetic, narcotic, pathetic, quixotic, rhapsodic,
poem within a flash fans descend and feast
upon thy warbling, twittering rocketing
my ego to the moon!

King Kong Kennedyesque Kappelmeister
cuckolded, cinched, canoodled, keepsake
capitalone Dixie Chicks, Indigo Girls,
Lady GaGa Godiva cagily,

knowingly, Kafkaesquely, kinesthetically  
kissed kepi's kewpie dolls causing capitulation
crushing Candy– clean cleft clear clobbering kaput -
clinched culture club moss commotion
calling Casper Weinstein the overly friendly ghost

granting clemency clearly convinced
crowning Charlie Chaplin chief corporal
kickstarting clandestine covenent
kept Locked Horns -

cleaved cloistered community cohesion
creating civil unrest
tandemly totally tubularly trounced
thru trumpetting Don debacle

detonating divisiveness driving Miss Daisy
(a hybrid flowering biracially
Black Eyed Susan) daringly declared debutante,
she sprouted sense and sensibility

without prejudice, but plenti pilgrims pride
paternally passed from Mayflower coterie Compact
Massachusetts Plymouth Rock venerated vocifersously,

near Salem witch trials bewitched secular citizens,
where Razzle Bathbone (held heretical liberalism)
freed Wicca Witches of Witchita
wayward wretches willingly casting their Lot
with fortunetelling forcefield manifestation
forecast, an Oracle of Delphi,  

where hurled discobulus trajectory traced arc
resembling Moisbus strip without nose hound
but distant barking brought bedlam
by half baked, battered, berserk
Betty Crocker brand Fitbit binnacle

encompassing blazed blitzkrieg
stymied mutiny on the bounty hunters
synchronized yelping at birth, sans this *******,
stirring cry of echoes,

which cosmic Flickr ring soundcloud reverberated
whimpering infant (Fingerhut size) detected
via uber reincarnated voodoo warlocks
twitching triggering happy full figured slug
hook gushed upon pressed release mechanism
screaming (Banshee like) bullet tin heard worldwide,

where webbed warped woeful Widowersdating wretch
woof whistled while witnessing
wondrous once in a lifetime phenomena

meanwhile kitsch hen squawked
with pan dim mown deem
signifying sell **** re:us son
settling Harris heir apparent,
wherein gyser spewing gremlins awoke gargoyles
grimacing grotesquely ouiji board blamed.

Well done rabbit reading ridiculous rodomontade
reaching runneled stream strewn with vibrant vistas
offering Avast Outlook Linkedin to a Yahoo mailer daemon
the Buzzfeed ding bugaboo badly crashing gateway
necessitating fix Uber Lyft via spell checking incantation
at the door, whence Earthlink from Godaddy helped Indeed.

Cosmic Consciousness

At the gas station
I offered to buy a man
A granola bar
He had returned

I thought he couldn't
Afford it

But he just returned it
Because there was
An ingredient in it
He couldn't have

I said I
Was embarrased

He said it was
Sweet of me

And that I restored
His faith in mankind

Well, that was
Kind of him

Just try to love
Your fellow man

I went on a walk
In the neighborhood
In the mountains

I met a kind woman
She complimented me
And I did the same

I won't say what was said
Some things
I keep only for me
And don't even
Type them here

It was a wonderful walk

I heard the birds

And I picked up
The conversations
As I often do

Dream time

I turned left down the street

As I type
I am listening to
A recording
Of birds

I cannot remember where
It was taken
There are voices
In the background

On my walk this evening
The parrots squawked
Four flew close together

"Feed the birds"
She said
She was giving them seed
On her front porch

Through the trees
Of a front lawn
A woman in her kitchen

And on the corner
A man and woman
Surveyed the small trees
And plants on their lawn

And I am reminded
That this is America

This is a beautiful land
A beautiful land
And these people
Live in peace

And in these beautiful
Mountain homes

And aren't they blessed

And I prayed
For these people

Just like I prayed
For the people
At the gym

I did not know them
But I spent so much time
WIth some people
At the gym

They are my brothers
And sisters

We spent time
Doing the same activity
In our American gym

And everyday
You have food
And shelter
And some friends

Well be grateful

This is the Field Marshall, tall and grand,
Who bellowed at Generals beneath his command,
Who shouted at Brigadiers in fine attire,
Who hollered at Colonels to make them jump higher,
Who screeched at the Majors and caused them to shake,
Who yelled at the Captains to keep them awake,
Who squawked at Lieutenants to keep them in line,
Who wailed at the Sergeants in double quick time,
Who shrieked at the Corporals and made them feel small,
Who screamed at the Privates worth nothing at all,
Who stood in the trenches and will never forget,
When they ran a man through with a fixed bayonet,
And held his hands tightly, as watching him die,
They whispered to no one, *"Oh why, but oh why?"

Pieces of eight
Pieces of eight
Polly's a parrot
Squawk.

Diamond Dip was the name of his ship
and it boasted sixteen guns
eighty five tonne and two tots of ***
for the rabble who dabbled in death.

Pieces of eight
and the skipper was late, caught
a broadside from his
blindside,
got carried in deep to where
the crew now sleep.

Polly squawked once
and died.